The truth about sabras.

I’ve been in this mood lately… I’m not sure what it is exactly, but it’s this subtle hostility I’ve been feeling towards my Israeli surroundings.

Perhaps it was the head-on collision between two cars on the Beit Shemesh road (speeding drunk teens versus middle agers at 5pm). Perhaps it was the pointless fire in my neighborhood yesterday. Maybe a frustrating experience at the bank last week. Annoying telemarketing calls I’ve been getting. People at the supermarket.

Probably all of it.

Despite that, today I felt like eating a tzabar/sabra (cactus fruit) and as I was peeling it open, I was thinking about that old cliche: A popular slang term for native-born Israelis is ‘sabra,’ because like the Mediterranean fruit, they are all prickly on the outside yet sweet and soft on the inside.

Yet, what everyone fails to mention in that metaphor is that within the sweet fruit you swallow there are lots and lots of hard, dense seeds.


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