This is a random collection of thoughts from my second two weeks in Israel.
In America, I am a minority as a Jew. One of the main reasons that I practice Judaism (more than people would expect me to) is because I am asserting my Jewish identity in a place where it’s easiest to assimilate. Here in Israel it’s normal to be Jewish. People will actually know what you’re talking about if you ask if something is parve. When I took a cab on Friday afternoon, the driver argued that I should pay more because it’s erev Shabbat. How many cabbies in San Francisco know what erev Shabbat is? It’s nice to not be a minority, but it’s an adjustment.
There are bats in Tel Aviv, and I greatly enjoy watching them fly between the trees when I am walking alone at night. They fly low, and sometimes they chase each other.
I have been taking intensive Hebrew classes, called Ulpan. Because Israel is a country of immigrants from across the globe, a system of learning Hebrew was developed which maximizes output, in a manner of speaking. I adore our teacher. She speaks to us in Hebrew, but can understand our English questions. People speak Hebrew as best they can, and she validates them without correction. She has been unable to come to a few classes, and our substitute-- though she seems like a really cool person—reminds me of why I learned almost no Hebrew after 9 years of day school. She speaks so fast, and asks us to orally recite conjugations, which I just can’t do! I can do it on my own at my own pace, but hearing my classmates do it is rather discouraging. She drew a number of verb charts, since Hebrew conjugates its verbs according to a template. Of course it makes sense when she draws it out, but getting accustomed to what sounds right is more important than mentally scrolling through a pattern each time I want to say a verb. I definitely feel my Hebrew has improved, and I’ve also seen effective and ineffective language teaching, which is directly relevant to my upcoming internship.
My Ulpan class is held in a gay community center. There is a giant pink penguin outside, rainbow flags fly on the roof, and there are a surprising number of rainbow and anti-HIV items around. It made me homesick. It’s not just a safe place for gays, but also for families. New moms meet up with each other, people sit with their dogs. I haven’t been here long enough to say much about the subject, but it seems like the gay subculture here is quite strong. One evening I looked interesting in torn stockings and a hand-made cadet jacket. I passed a group of punks in studded jackets and Doc Martins, and they stared back at me, vaguely smiling. I was never really into it before, but the graffiti here says a lot about who lives here. No matter where you go, young people are restless.
If you enter “Ben Yehuda & Ben Gurion, Tel Aviv, Israel” into GoogleMaps, it will ask you if you meant something in Hebrew. Click on that, and you can see where I live. It is about 300 meters from the Mediterranean shore. The location is great, even though the rest of the participants in my program are about 25 minutes away. I am sharing a studio with three other girls. I am going to go ahead and call it a fail. The pictures featured on the apartment’s website show luxury living with modern furniture and appliances. Our studio is short. I saw someone five feet tall touch the ceiling in the bathroom. Our windows are about 3 feet tall. We are on top of a glasses store, and the noise from the traffic softens between the hours of 11 pm and 6 am, sort of. The motorscooters can be quite loud, despite the fact that we have two windows, with about 6 inches between them. There are bars between the windows, and the door only opens if it is unlocked with a key. That is a crazy fire hazard!
In many American bathrooms one can find a toilet plunger for unclogging the toilet, and a round brush for removing mildew or traces of last night’s dinner. In Israel, a surprising number of bathrooms have brushes, but people seem to use them as plungers. You can see them with dried toilet paper stuck to them, or worn down to half their size. People: it is disgusting to unclog a toilet using a short bristled brush.
I had a craving for waffles on my first day in Jerusalem, and I was in for a few surprises when we finally found a waffle bar. The first was that there are waffle bars. Next was the stingy amount of syrup I got. And most surprising of all was that they were served on two sheets of paperboard. I have experienced this phenomenon a number of times since then, and I have mixed feelings about it. First, if syrup is involved, real plates are recommended. However, paperboard for takeaway pizza is brilliant, and I fully support it. On the other hand, it is wasteful. I’m not sure if it can be recycled, but it doesn’t matter because no one freaking recycles here.
There are bakeries on every block full of rugelach, croissants, and fresh rolls. Even little markets have fresh baked goods. There is no sourdough to be had. So far I have been enjoying trying new things, but get the feeling that at some point I am going to want something predictable and safe.
Synecdoche: a term used when a part is used to refer to a whole. For instance, “wheels” for “car,” and “Washington” for “USA.” News sources regularly use capitals to refer to the governments of countries. Al Jazeera in English online refers to Israel as “Tel Aviv,” contrary to the fact that the capital of Israel is Jerusalem. They do this because many in the Arab feel that Jerusalem is the rightful capital of Palestine, and that Israel has no claim to it. But imagine what this does to people who don’t know all the political implications behind this: they just think that Tel Aviv is the capital of Israel.
While listening to my flatmate’s conversations on Skype, I have heard her say “life here is so hard” a number of times. To back up this assertion, she describes how her sister essentially lives hand-to-mouth, and how bad customer service is, and how certain things are impossible, difficult, or expensive to acquire. More than complaints about Israel, I am hearing her privilege when she talks. Life here is not that hard. This is a first-world country. There are universities and hospitals and due process under the law. There is toilet paper, cell phones, and Ben & Jerry’s. What she is describing is shock at not living at the level of comfort she is used to. Her sister is a teacher and barely makes enough money to pay the bills. Is this shocking? Has she not seen how most Americans live? Worse, most Americans live on credit rather than subsisting on what they earn.
Tel Aviv is loud and busy, and its people are rude and sexy. I don’t want to leave!
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