Archive for the 'what a country' Category
March 2nd, 2010 by elie
I was in Tel Aviv today for the Bird Brain Unconference. The event was great, thanks for asking, but then three things happened that left me feeling like I learned about more than just Vardi awesomeness and actual birds.
1. Cabbie culture.
I don’t take cabs often because I hate the experience of feeling waited on and for me the ultimate being waited on is sitting in a cab as someone drives you somewhere. Maybe it’s exacerbated in Jerusalem; maybe it’s not like that everywhere.
But I had a pretty good experience in Tel Aviv today. Dude stops by the road to let me in and his daughter or niece or granddaughter, I don’t know, is in the front seat. He tells me he’ll just drop her off nearby and then we’ll go. And he was really sweet with her, all ‘boobah’ and ‘metukah.’ It just made me happy. He was also just an honest cutie.
I’m thinking based on past experiences, Tel Aviv cabbies rock the socks off of Jerusalem cabbies.
2. The foxes of the hills.
Said cabbie guessed I am a Yerushalmit. He also thought I was in high school, so 1 out of two isn’t bad.
It made me realize how Yerushalmit I actually look: I rarely have any product in my hair, never a fleck of makeup on a weekday, I wear sandals in any weather above 9° Celsius, and my jeans aren’t ass-hugging tight. So yeah, I get it.
Anyway, it came up that I live in Tzur Hadassah. He couldn’t understand where it was, so after a few other indicators, I threw in, ‘it’s in the hills around Jerusalem.’
So… It would be an understatement to say he flipped out.
“The hills??? You live in the hills? How can you live there? With all the FOXES? You live with all the FOXES right around you? The FOXES are everywhere in the hills! How can you do that??”
“I… I live in a house… With walls…”
“But the HILLS! The FOXES! How? FOXES!”
“I live in an apartment building… It’s nice… Trees, the view… It’s beautiful…”
“But the FOXES!”
Seriously, that is how the conversation went. Every time he said שועלים (foxes) he emphasized it like it was the Devil.
I stand by living in the hills, though. It’s lovely out here.
3. Coming off secular.
This was a fun little exercise in self-identity. Not once, not twice, but thrice did I have conversations with folks today where they assumed I was secular and bashed religious people. Fascinating experience!
Of course, I can’t blame them for assuming I was a safe listener. I was in Tel Aviv wearing jeans and a capped-sleeve shirt, hair uncovered and, well, I was in Tel Aviv.
One of the people was my beloved cabbie, who gasped when I told him I was taking the train to Beit Shemesh (to get to the HILLS with the FOXES) and told me: “How can you do that? Don’t you know, it is filled with religious people? Ichs, Beit Shemesh, it’s disgusting! And the train will be filled with religious people! Take the bus, it’s quicker at least…”
There is so much work to be done in this country. Maybe starting with the foxes.
February 24th, 2010 by elie
Israel’s new Ministry of Hasbara and Diaspora is not a shocking development, though probably ten years late. The thing is, it seems it’s completely missing the point. The heart is in the right place, but the message is… a bit off.
The videos on the homepage: Do British people honestly think we ride camels? Who cares if the Spanish don’t think we cook in indoor kitchens? The only one of the video examples on the new government-funded hasbara website that might actually make sense is the French woman reporting on gun shots heard all over Israel all the time. Acceptable, as it’s what a lot of people abroad (Jewish or not) truly tend to think after watching news coverage.
Then there are the tips offered when speaking to non-Israelis on your travels. Connect to someone by using broad hand motions, wavering voice tone and good body posture when speaking about Israel to someone else. Ok, I’m simplifying it, a lot of the advice makes sense - body language is important. But. It’s a shame there is no mention of learning about the other culture before you go; studying the etiquette and ways of that region so you don’t make a wrong gesture or tone of voice and offend your hosts. I find that cultural-awareness and respect for other kinds of people is a problem, even inside our borders.
But the biggest thing the campaign completely misses: Derech eretz. Remembering who you are wherever you are, minding your manners and being a good example. Israelis have a reputation for traveling with no etiquette, no empathy and no concept that everyone is watching and making judgments. When you’re a guest in an another country, you have to play by their rules, or, yes, feel unwelcome.
And I don’t know that jumping on every native, waving your hands in a loud voice, talking up your own country is going to do just that. Maybe the best thing is to be a polite, appreciative, curious, memorable person who sets a great example of what Israel is deep down.
February 19th, 2010 by elie
When I think of ‘Israeli Innovation’ here are some of the associations I make:
- micro chips
- water purification
- desert irrigation
- swallow-able pill-cameras
- Google, Intel, IBM R&D centers
- Uzis
What I don’t think of is… hair conditioner.
I did pretty well though for 10 shekel. Product of the year!
February 13th, 2010 by elie
Five years in Israel, and this is the first one where “יום המשפחה” or “Family Day” has caught my attention. Well, it figures.
What used to be Mother’s Day here in Israel evolved into Family Day, including celebration of mother, father, grandparents, or whoever is taking care of you. It’s not a Hallmark holiday; there are no commercial gifts given. Children experience the most significant portion of the day at school, where they create paintings or art projects reflecting their families and in some cases, share photos of their families.
From what I gather after reading up, Family Day has actually turned into an inevitable problem. Israel is a place where getting married - even to a member of the opposite gender - can get very political very fast. Civil marriage is a sore topic and even two born-Jews trying to get married can run into issues. Plenty of Israeli couples opt to not marry at all but remain ‘domestic partners’ with their own marriage contracts. Others are same-sex couples raising their families, born from a buffet of alternative methods. The divorce rate in Israel is sky-high, so single-parent families could arguably be ‘the norm’ in many communities.
So the inevitable problem of Family Day in Israel is when kids pay for not belonging to a ‘normal’ family. The most unfortunate thing is when kids are the ones who pay the price of ignorance, intolerance or insensitivity by being singled out, made to feel like less and mocked. Where is the education of children in tolerance and diversity? The concept of diversity being ok is so lacking across the societal board here, despite being such a multicultural society with a rainbow of histories and backgrounds… Why not start teaching children about it with Family Day?
Kids were only born; they didn’t commit to their same-sex lover or divorce their incompatible spouse. They didn’t feel like victims of the Israeli marriage laws and settle for living together unmarried. So why make the kids feel ashamed? Why leave children to defend societal non-norms and marital evolution?
Way to turn a happy occasion into a depressing State of family affairs.
Here’s a little piece of trivia, then. Israeli Family Day is held on ל’ שבט every year; random, no. It’s the yirzheit of Henrietta Szold, the American woman who founded Hadassah and started the first Youth Aliyah projects. She was known as ‘the mother of children’ for her work in starting the Zionist organization in Palestine that saved 22,000 Jewish children during the Holocaust.
Of course, Henrietta Szold had no children of her own, but hopefully she felt fulfilled, connected, loved and cherished by the thousands of children she touched with her work.
I wonder what she’d have to say about alternative families.
February 1st, 2010 by elie
I work in the Israeli equivalent of a big, fancy office building. That basically means it was built to be big and fancy, but it’s half empty and constantly under shiputzim (renovations).
My daily exercise consists of taking the stairs as opposed to the elevator to get to my office, so the ‘no smoking’ signs stuck in the stairwells are already a subconscious part of my climb.
Despite a ‘no smoking indoors’ policy, officially and non-profit stickerly, the stairwells always reek of smoke.
So today I wasn’t necessarily surprised to see that someone had taken it upon themselves to deliver a stronger message:
Hey, this is Israel. It takes more than soft diplomatic words to get what you want ’round these parts.
So would you please stop murdering the pregnant women and their unborn children with your nasty, poisonous, teeth-yellowing habit?
January 7th, 2010 by elie
Are the birds in Ashkelon turbo birds? What are the chances?
Also, you can loosely translate the Hebrew to say: “…to prevent the entrance of Lords of the Wing.”
Sorry.
December 13th, 2009 by elie
Home, sweet Israel. Koala and I arrived back from my work trip to the States in two pieces.
Soon to be five years here and, oh, how the tables have turned.
Anyway, nothing says ‘welcome home to Israel, immigrant!’ like an Israeli marketing campaign.
Bezeq Parrot, eat your heart out:
Because the manliest men carry a tin of gum in their man-purses.
Yalla, Balagan! I really don’t know what else to say, Party Boy, except that your gum is really masculine. Must be the Men Collection.
September 24th, 2009 by elie
I love the ‘טיסה נעימה’ campaign from Discount Bank in Ben Gurion airport. Here’s a sample:
In case Google Translate is off by a word or two (ha!) here’s the gist:
New Zealand? Take a right at HaSharon shore, a left in Australia and where all the sheep are - there.
If you happen to be traveling soon, check out the London ad, it’s pretty good too.
July 22nd, 2009 by elie
It was about 10 o’clock and I finally had the boy calm and rocking in my arms, reading superficial feature stories in the cyber New York Times. I was between starting breakfast and finishing breakfast, because Koala really needed to be held.
Then I heard The Siren pierce my world outside.
For a split second I thought, what’s today? and then I shot up, grabbed my phone and his pacifier with my free hand, and dashed up the stairs to the mamad. I practically dropped Koala on the bed, slammed the door, and went for the window. The window is stubborn, and at a certain point I just let it go; I experienced the nothing could possibly happen to me I have a little innocent baby here rationalization. And besides, Koala was crying too hard so I picked him up and sat in the corner of the room by the door, staring outside at the sunny day.
Note: Never let sunny days fool you - a sunny Tuesday in 2001 changed everything for the worse.
The siren finally ended and I just kept staring while my mind raced, what comes next?
I remembered my phone next to me and called my husband, at work in Jerusalem.
“Did you just have a siren in Jerusalem?”
“A siren? No…”
“We just had a siren.”
“What kind of siren?”
“A bomb siren.”
He checked the news, and lo and behold, a siren drill was posted at 8 am to take place at 10 am in the Beit Shemesh region.
Thankyouverymuch. I don’t read real news anymore.
But now I know what it’s like when (you think) it’s not a drill.
My heart is still racing and the taste of vomit lingers in the back of my throat.
July 13th, 2009 by elie
These days, as you know, I’m a housewife. I’m really not that bored or desperate, as the cliche goes, but I appreciate entertainment when it comes around. Today it came around.
For a country built on stones and concrete, I’ve discussed and seen a few too many fires in my years here. But this one takes the (burnt) cake.
Walking by my living room, I noticed the sky had turned gray and dim. Thinking for a split second that clouds had come to save me from the heat, I realized - it was heat - in the form of smoke.
A lot of it.
The valley below my section of Tzur Hadassah was lit up:
I have no idea how it happened but over the next hour or so I watched the flames evolve:
The (quite slow on the uptake) fire brigade and KKL trucks managed to put it out before it blew too close to the school or the houses nearby, revealing the scarred valley. It was a bit surreal after watching all that coverage of the wildfires whipping across Victoria, Australia, a few months ago.
So who says being a housewife makes you desperate?