Oh, so the past week we were reviewing hitpa'el...and the teacher was like, "Who can give me a verb in hitpa'el whose root starts with zayin so that I can show you how the letters switch around?" And I almost, without thinking, blurted out


להזדיין

!

Which is a legit word that has a zayin in the root, but is probably not something you want to say to your frum ulpan teacher.

So basically I got out: "Lehizda---uhhhh ooops!"

Wait...Jews don't believe in xyz?

I forgot to mention: on Monday I was in the supermarket, and I saw a woman who was clearly American. I mean, she was speaking English with a perfect American accent to her little boy. I think she must have been an immigrant rather than a tourist, because when her little boy (around age 8, I would estimate) responded in English he had a strong Israeli accent.

It was really interesting, so I continued to watch this woman and her child, and I noticed that while the boy was speaking in English there were several words he simply didn’t know in English so he would say them in Hebrew.

Watching this really blew my mind. How strange it must be for a mother to have such a foreign child. I think this is what happens to most immigrants though. How strange it must be to have a child that might not understand every word or every nuance or every whatever you use.


At Shabbat dinner I realized how bizarre it is that I am considered as Jewish as can be, simply because my mother is Jewish. How strange it is that there are people who agree almost 100% with Jewish beliefs and are observant, and they have to convert to be considered Jewish, whereas I have my bizarre hybrid beliefs and am close to completely not observant and yet I could at this moment get married by an orthodox rabbi (assuming I found someone to marry!).

Being in such an orthodox environment like Jerusalem (and especially in an immigrant absorption center in Jerusalem—everyone made aliyah for religious reasons!), I feel like a weirdo for not being orthodox. Because I’m so surrounded by religious observance, I feel simultaneously more Jewish than I’ve ever felt before in my life also more like an alien than I’ve ever felt in my life. Sometimes when I’m around these people I feel like I believe more in Christianity than I do in Judaism, except for the parts about Jesus and turning the other cheek. (Sam never turns the other cheek! Sam either fights back or holds a life-long grudge!) *

My problem is that my solution cannot be to simply go off and hang out with secular people. I’m not secular. I believe so strongly in SOMETHING, but I don’t know what that something is. That’s a lie, I know what I believe in I just don’t know what to call it. I know what I believe, but it’s not pure Judaism.

Some thoughts

Still no letter from the army. Having a “Retard Battalion” dream has kind of calmed me down a bit about the whole thing, cos I realize that panicking so much about it is kind of stupid. Like, when you have dreams about “The Retard Battalion,” you know you’re panicking about something stupid. But then I’m still checking my mailbox every two minutes…so clearly I’m not 100% calm.

Speaking of dreams, I had a rather bizarre moment in my dream last night. I don’t remember exactly what was going on in my dream, but at some point someone was singing one of my favorite Brad Paisley songs, “Ticks.” And then in the middle of the song a call to prayer in Arabic kind of floated in. Like, literally floated in through the window, and the music was this visible cloud.
…and the person singing “Ticks” gradually faded from “Ticks” to the morning call to prayer. But the incredible part is that in my dream this vocal cross-fade transition from “Ticks” to this Muslim call to prayer was absolutely seamless!
And then I woke up and, lo and behold, it was early in the morning and you could hear all the calls to prayer from the many mosques that surround my neighborhood.


Also, if I haven’t already mentioned it: earlier this week I saw a girl in an army skirt to the floor….carrying an M16. Just had to share. It was maybe the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. I really had to fight the urge to ask to take a picture with her. It almost makes me want to become religious so that I can get a skirt in the army, and then try my hardest to get a gun-toting job….just so I can bring as much joy and amusement to other people as the sight of this girl brought to me.


So I’m still debating whether or not to contact my only “family” in Israel. Apparently I have “second cousins once removed.”
How does one write an introductory e-mail or make an introductory phone call to such distant relatives? “Hi, you don’t know me but we are both descended from my great-great grandmother. Let’s do coffee sometime?’

This is why I’d like to think I’m doing my close family an immense favor. If they ever make aliyah or come to tour Israel, THANKS TO ME they can say, “My sister/cousin/aunt [unborn relatives]/whoever lives in Jerusalem, we’ll go spend Shabbat there.” None of this “second cousin once removed” shit.

Also….there is this German heavy metal song that cracks me up called “Gott Ist Ein Popstar.” And I really just want to blast it through the Old City loudspeakers.


So I just got back from helping out on a Purim package assembly line. Basically a charity gives a shit ton of goodies to this other charity that asks people to come package up the goodies to be given to soldiers or people in Sderot for Purim. So that was cool. I unfortunately got stuck in the assembly line next to this 10 year old orthodox girl who was apparently “STARVING!” The well-behaved 10 year old orthodox girl on the other side of me just kept reassuring her friend that her hunger pangs were actually a gift from G-d as they showed that she could still feel. I thought that was interesting. But apparently the really hungry girl didn’t care, and she kept screeching across the room (to the benefit of all the volunteers) at her mother about how hungry she was. It was appalling display. The mother just kind of meekly told the girl that they’d eat later, but hungry girl wasn’t satisfied and spent about an hour whining.

Seriously, what is up with modern parents? When I was a little girl, me and most of the people I knew growing up would have been smacked if we behaved like that. And if we were in public, our parents would have given us a stern look and said something like, “You’re hungry? Well, stop whining or I’ll GIVE you something to be hungry about!” Which makes no sense, but this was the way of our parents. If you constantly whined to them that you felt X, they would respond with a stern look and, “Oh, I’ll GIVE you something to be X about!”

I noticed a pattern of REALLY bad behavior among immigrant children though…I think their parents must feel really bad about making them move, so maybe they spoil them?

My kids though? All 29 of them? Hell no. We’re gonna live like boot camp. Actually that’s a lie. But not really. We’re going to have the most chaotic house, but my kids are gonna fucking know how to behave in public or I’m gonna know the reason.


Finally, the question at the back of my mind is where I’m going to live in a few months, after ulpan. It’s not for quite some time, but definitely something I want to think carefully about. I had really wanted to go to Haifa at the beginning, but I’m starting to really like Jerusalem, in terms of familiarity and easy access to religious sites. The problem though is that I don’t like being the only girl in pants for what seems like miles, and I also can’t stand the thought of being taken for a tourist for the rest of my life. Not that I’m gonna have a convincing accent ever in a place like Haifa, but the natural assumption in Jerusalem is that you’re merely a tourist passing through, or a religious American immigrant who may as well be a tourist when you consider how crap their Hebrew is. And I really want to minimize the English responses I get when I speak Hebrew, which is something that happens ALL the time in Jerusalem but less often in Haifa (proportionally at least…clearly I’ve spent more time in Jerusalem than in Haifa).
Oh well. Just something to consider for the next few months.

The Retard Battalion

I had the most vivid dream last night…so vivid that when I woke up and was doing my morning routine, I didn’t even immediately realize that it had only been a dream.

In my dream I received my letter from the army with my enlistment date and a list of jobs that were open to me based on my health profile/tests/whatever. And all of my options were stuff like, “Potato Peeler” or “Soldier Responsible for Taking Out Kitchen Trash” or “Tank Wipe” (a sub-conscious reference to “King of the Hill”?). I started panicking, and frantically I flipped through the pages in the envelope I received, and it seemed like the jobs available to me just got worse. “Window Washer Soldier.” My final job option was “Latrine Sanitation Soldier.”

I started panicking in my dream, “Oh my G-d, what am I going to tell my parents…how can I tell them that I’ll be doing something so incredibly stupid for two years!”

I then re-read the cover page that came with my packet of job options, and in the opening letter it said that I had been placed in “The Retard Battalion.” (In my dream, everything was in English.) I continued reading and the letter explained that the army, not wanting to leave out any part of Israeli society, had formed a battalion just for people who failed their army tests and who were deemed to be retarded. And that I was to be placed in this battalion.

Anyway, when I eventually woke up, I felt as though my army letter had already come, and although I knew I wasn’t in “The Retard Battalion” because as far as I know there is no such thing, I thought I had limited options because the army found me to be stupid.


With the realization that this was only a dream comes immense relief—hopefully my REAL army options will be much better! Emphasis on “hopefully.”

Well, apparently I'm a man.

So things are going much better with my roommate. I think she was just having a rough couple of weeks or so with her boyfriend (or something) and I think I was just kind of getting the bad end of it. Anyway, last night we had a friendly conversation and we were laughing and things were back to how they were at the beginning when she wasn’t a scary bitch.
Towards the end, she repeated her long-standing offer to do up my hair all nice. And then, excited by the idea, she then went on to say she was going to teach me all about make-up. So, not stuff I’m particularly interested in, but it’s definitely sweet of her to offer, no? Finally she clapped her hands together and call out, “We’re going to teach you to be feminine!”


A line which, while I have no doubt it was meant with good intentions, caused me to put on a show of giggling and smiling, but when I turned over to try to go to sleep kept me up for a couple hours.

It’s not exactly a news flash. I’ve always known I’m not exactly the most feminine girl. Part of that I’m going to blame on only having older brothers, and part of that I’m just going to be blame on how I am. I’ve never been particularly interested in hanging out with other girls, and I certainly don’t dress like one. So yeah, I get it, I’m not particularly feminine.

But am I really so unfeminine that I need “lessons” on femininity?

It’s a bit like being told I need lessons on blue eyes. I have green eyes. Teaching me how to have blue eyes isn’t going to make blue eyes natural for me.

I feel like raising a protest and screaming, “Excuse me, I read ‘Pride & Prejudice’ all the time and watch the Colin Firth BBC version repeatedly…how am I not feminine?” But I guess that’s more the exception than the rule for me.

I guess for me, being told that not only am I not feminine but also that I don’t even know HOW to be feminine, is one of those things like my glasses or my weight—something that totally doesn’t bother me until someone else (usually my mom) says something, and then it becomes this huge issue.

As I write this, it’s about 15 minutes before class. My roommate and I got up an hour ago, around the same time. I’ve been ready for about 15 minutes, whereas she’s still brushing her hair and putting on making and so on and so forth—and I took a shower this morning, whereas she took one last night. If being feminine means that it takes forever to get ready for something as stupid as ulpan class, then I want no part.

During ulpan, however, I was constantly thinking to myself, “Oh G-d, everyone in the room must think I’m a man!” I wanted to run upstairs and put on a skirt to clear up any confusion—but then I realized that, as bizarre as this might sound, I think I actually manage to look even less feminine when I wear skirts than when I wear pants.

Part of this makes me wish I lived in a burqa-wearing country. Cos I’d just walk around in a burqa, and if anyone tried to tell me I didn’t dress femininely enough, I’d be like, “Dude, do you not see we are all wearing sheets? How can one walking pile of laundry be any more or less feminine than another walking pile of laundry?”

Somehow though, I think I’d still manage to wear the least feminine-looking burqa in the country.


Okay, I realize that I’m taking this too seriously. What made me realize this is that when my little immigrant children pals were talking to me (they saw me at the gate to our building carrying groceries, and a couple of them came running up yelling stuff like, “LOOK, MY FRIEND IS HERE!” and then insisted on carrying my groceries for me), and I noticed that several times I was addressed using a masculine form. “Oh my G-d,” I thought to myself, “I’m so not feminine that these little girls think I’m a man!”

I then started really listening to the girls talk, and I realized that it was simply a matter of them not speaking with correct grammar. Sometimes I was addressed using feminine singular, or masculine singular…..but then I noticed a couple of times I was also addressed in the plural, and unless all of the little kids here have double vision, that can’t possibly be an intentional thing.

So….feminine, masculine, plural or whatever else I might be (maybe I could also be the Hebrew/Arabic dual form)….I guess I should just shrug it off and say, “Whatever.”


“Whatever.” Usually only girls say that, right?

dude, what if i changed my name to "Laura Ingalls Wilder" on my teudat zehut? That'd be so bizarre. Hahah, I might...just for a laugh. But I'd still go by Sam.

Stranger: "Excuse me, Laura Ingalls Wilder--"
Me: "Oh please, no need to be so formal, you can call me Sam [Last Name]."

Cups of Pee Revisited

Well, folks, I am done with army exams. Now all I have to do is wait for my enlistment date to come in the mail.

The day actually went magically well. Everything went smoothly, including the bus tickets. After I did my eye exam (I UNDERSTOOD EVERYTHING THE DOCTOR WAS SAYING TO ME IN HEBREW!!!), I went to go see about retaking the Hebrew exam. I took the Hebrew exam back in July or August, so hopefully my Hebrew has improved since then. So I went up to the part of the enlistment center that deals with that sort of thing, and I asked to retake the exam. They took my teudat zehut, typed it into the computer, and one of the soldiers said to me in Hebrew, “You are not eligible to take the Hebrew exam again.”

Well, fuck, I thought. Everything was going smoothly until now. I felt really panicked because I didn’t want the army to think I was shit in Hebrew, and I’ve been panicking for at least a week about having to retake this exam and not doing well enough, etc etc. So I started arguing in Hebrew, “Wait, not eligible? But I was told that it’s possible to retake the Hebrew exam!”

“Yes, but you did very well the first time you took it and you don’t need ulpan, so you don’t need to take it again. You’re not eligible to take it again.”

YES!!!!! Life just got awesome. I’m done with army exams, and I didn’t have to take another Hebrew exam. So much for panicking all week…


Veteran readers (all one of you?) might remember that the thing that interested me the most about the enlistment center way back in July/August was the fact that when they have you do the pee-in-a-cup test, you have to pee in a bathroom in the other side of the building from the doctor’s office where the pee gets tested. (Oh, and in case I didn’t mention: you get to test your own pee! How cool is that?!) So basically you’re stuck carrying a cup of your own pee—with no lid, mind you!—through a crowded building with narrow hallways, trying desperately not to spill it.

Well, as fate would have it, the eye doctor is basically right next to the pee doctor, so as I was waiting today in the narrow hallway outside the doctors’ offices, I watched no less than 10 cups of pee go by my face.

And while the last time I was doing tests at the lishkat giyus I was that scared person cradling a cup of pee, today I got to sit back and relax and try not to laugh at the expressions of extreme concentration upon the faces of those who were doing their first tests today, as they tried not to bump into the Haredi men blocking the hallway and thus spill pee everywhere. Oh man it was amusing…

Also, just want to say I'm grateful for having a foreign name here. Today on TWO occasions the doctor called out a name and two people responded. But when he called out "SemenTAH?" I knew it was for me.


Anyway, all is set and done with me and the enlistment center. And now we play the waiting game...

NO, bitch!

So last night I was walking around the building and this religious girl bumped into me a couple minutes before the religiously observant were to light candles. “Candlelighting’s in five minutes, do you want to light?” asked the girl. I thanked her but said that I didn’t really want to this Shabbat.

“Aw, come on, you know you want to,” she pressed. I just kind of shrugged and smiled and said I’d rather not today.

“[Elbowing me in a friendly way, as if she’s letting me in on some secret] Come on, it’s not that hard, just come light a candle…what do you say?” I kept a smile and said that I didn’t feel like it today.

“Oh, really, come light a candle, they’re so pretty.” Now I was starting to get pissed off. I explained that, in addition to just not particularly feeling like lighting Shabbat candles right now, I only really like to light Shabbat candles on Shabbats I actually plan on keeping, but since I would most likely be sitting on my computer this Shabbat, I felt uncomfortable lighting a candle.

“Well, that doesn’t matter, come light a candle anyway! You can light a candle and not keep Shabbat.” Oh G-d. Now I’m getting really pissed off. LEAVE ME ALONE. I ended up explaining that I knew that I COULD, that there was no rule preventing me, but that this is just how I personally roll. Plus, I just. Don’t. Feel. Like. It.

“Okay then…well, you should really come down and light a candle because it’s really fun! But I’ll see you at dinner then!”

I understand the whole thing with English speakers, that if you offer them something, like a favor from them or a drink or a car ride or a whatever, they’ll usually turn it down once or twice out of politeness or something. But usually that format is, “Would you like _____? Are you sure? Okay, well, if you change your mind just let me know.” You don’t keep pushing it like six times though.

NO, BITCH, I DON’T WANT TO LIGHT A CANDLE!

I’m doubly pissed because this religious girl is acting like this is something that we all have to do, like it’s the family tradition of everyone. This is NOT my family tradition, lighting Shabbat candles probably doesn’t have the same meaning or feeling for me as it does for her. I think I go through phases of feeling connected and whatever to Jewish tradition, where stuff like saying Kiddush has meaning for me even though we never did it at my house growing up, and then sometimes I go through phases where I simply don’t feel like I belong to that. And these phases either last months or weeks or days, and I’m constantly fluctuating in and out. And at this moment I happen to be in the phase where I simply don’t feel all that connected to Jewish tradition. Which is fine. Just don’t fucking try to pressure me into lighting YOUR candles right now. Stuff like this makes me wish I hadn't come to Jerusalem and had chosen a more secular location instead.

Antsy-ness unto the Lord

You know what I don’t get? The religious people in my class, like all of us, have so much trouble sitting through class. We’re all antsy, bored and eager to get out.


But these religious people pray three times a day (at least the men do), and they devote large chunks of their weekends to sitting through incredibly boring services—and much of these services are the same EVERY. SINGLE. WEEK. And these religious people have no trouble sitting through these services….yet put them in a class where every single day is different and we learn and read new things, and they can’t stand it.

So why does an inability to sit through class make me pick on the religious people in particular, when I myself am guilty of 1st degree antsy-ness? Because they’ve actually proven themselves to be capable of sitting through something long and boring, whereas my inability to sit quietly in class is hardly surprising, given my track record. I mean, let’s get it straight, I love G-d, but that doesn’t mean I want to wake up early on Saturday mornings and go to synagogue for Him until the afternoon.

Maybe there’s the whole fear issue that motivates them through services as opposed to Hebrew class.
But surely the fear of G-d is not THAT much greater than the fear of spending the rest of your life sounding like a retarded 2 year old.

Frankly, to me the potential to be humiliated by Israelis mocking my accent or word choice (or lack of word choice) is a lot scarier at this point.


Another* person mistook me today for a German. I was speaking Hebrew to the lady ringing me up at the supermarket, and she asked where I was from. When I said I was from the US, she looked surprised so I asked where she thought I was from. And she told me she was certain I was German! WHAT? I gotta say, it was exciting not to be assumed to be American for one time out of every 5000, but perhaps being considered German is kind of a downgrade in this country…

*This has happened a couple times this time and the last time I was in Israel, but it is still EXTREMELY rare. For example, the French arsonist on the kibbutz who I knew and talked to for several months in French made some reference to my being German after he had already known me for like a month. So I don’t know what the deal is. I think maybe the problem is that when I really make an effort to speak with an Israeli accent, I miss the mark and I come out with a German accent? No? Most of the time though when I’m trying to speak relatively fast I won’t always remember to make an effort on accent, so I come out as 100% pure American.




Also, today I researched how to advance the date of my army enlistment. Granted, I haven’t gotten an original date anyway, but I figure I’m going to want to go as soon as possible. I figure that any enlistment date after August is too late, and seeing as it’s likely that my enlistment date will indeed be after August, I want to be prepared to change it. I checked online on Hebrew chat forums regarding the army and the impression I got is that it’s unbelievably difficult to change your enlistment date, and that the army only does it if you have like serious family problems (one website said something in Hebrew like, “You basically have to come out and say ‘My parents beat me,’ “ and since my parents aren’t in this country that’ll be a hard one to pull off…) or you want to study in a university immediately after being released. And this is really making me panic, because I get out of this program I’m in right now in June. What if I get assigned an enlistment date in December or (G-d forbid!) something in 2010?! I’m scared of having to live in Israel outside of a program. I don’t want to have to live for a few months or a year on my own, trying to make my own way, doing some crap dead-end job, and having no support structure. Also I’m already gonna be older than the other girls, and so waiting even more time seems appalling. I don’t want them calling me Savta or anything.


Wow…we got like THE most massive storm last night. Someone told me the other day that this weekend we were gonna get a huge storm, and so when I went to bed on Friday night and it still wasn’t raining, I said to myself, “FALSE!” But at 2 am I was woken by this heart-stopping crack of thunder, and when I looked outside it looked like the apocalypse had come. The palm tree a few yards from the building (right in view of my window) was shaking like crazy, like it was going to snap in half, and there was this blinding rain. And meanwhile there were these constant bright flashes of lightning that lit up my entire apartment, followed by deafening thunder. Oh man. It was pretty awesome. This morning has been less impressive, as it’ll be 30 minutes of no rain, but then a cloud will come and it’ll be torrential rain for like 15 minutes, then stop.

This weather report was brought to you by Aw Eff.
(P.S. Someone told me there is a meteorology unit of the army. WHAT?)

back to the future. i mean kibbutz.

So on Sunday I’ll walk into the army enlistment place for a final test, and this will be the first time that I’ll be in that building with my parent’s full knowledge. This is an unbelievably comforting thought, because the other times I’ve been in there (or at the place in Tel Aviv where I registered to be eligible to enlist without citizenship) the overwhelming thought in my head was, “Oh my G-d, my parents are going to kill me.” Or, “I have to come up with a cover story when I’m on the phone with my parents and they ask me what I did this week.” Or when, during the oral portion of my Hebrew exam, the soldier examining me asked me about my parents, and about what they thought about my joining a foreign army…and I just wanted to throw up.

As I’ve said before, it’s just an eye exam. My mom is still desperate for me not to be required to join the army, so she keeps telling me to try to get my eyes as bloodshot as possible and wear incorrect glasses so that it looks like I have a serious eye problem and am near-blind….she thinks maybe this will get me out of the army.

Also, I’m gonna retake the Hebrew exam. I’ve already passed out of army ulpan, so it means that as of right now if I joined the army I don’t have to take more Hebrew class, but everyone I’ve talked to says to take the Hebrew exam again if you can because you can get a more interesting assignment if you know more Hebrew. And, well, since I did the Hebrew exam back in July or August or whatever, I would HOPE my Hebrew has improved at least a bit… I don’t know what happens if I do worse though. I should probably investigate that before I ask to take it again.


Okay, so now a question: do Israelis not walk much? Every single time I walk up the hill to go the supermarket, every single taxi that passes by honks and gestures to see if I’d like a ride. Every bus driver that passes (not that many, since it’s a residential neighborhood) looks back at me and gestures to see if the driver should wait for me at the next stop. I really don’t understand why taxi drivers would be so aggressive for business—if I really wanted a taxi, wouldn’t I be flagging it down? I remember during my “Farewell Tour” back in August/September, I was walking along the street in Tiberias and a taxi driver honked at me. Whatever, I thought. He slowed down and kept honking. Then, upset that I wasn’t getting into the cab, he pulled into a driveway in front of me that blocked my path, and asked me if I wanted a ride. That’s determination….


Also, at some point within the next couple weeks I will be making my glorious return to The Kibbutz. Apparently some bills/bank statements got mailed there, so now I have to call the ulpan office there and arrange to pick them up. Oh G-d. Be strong, self!

Passing by the kibbutz [on the way to Haifa a couple weeks ago] for the first time since I left back in September was bizarre. I surprisingly got sort of a warm, comforting feeling by the sight of something so familiar, but part of me also wanted to yell at the bus driver to stop so that I could get out and curse obscenities at it.

I think it’ll be very weird to be actually walking around on the kibbutz again though. What if the Women of the Wash see me, or (worse yet!) don’t recognize me?! That would be horrible if I had to deal with those bitches for 5 months and then in the end they don’t even remember me. It’ll be weird to see my old room and the rest of the kibbutz in general, because as crap as it was, it was indeed my first home in this country.

bathroom escapades.

Omg omg, can’t stop laughing, I love my life.

First, my little friend from Iran (the kindergartner) was sitting across the room with another little immigrant girl, and my little friend was saying in Hebrew, “See that girl over there? In a little bit I’m gonna play puzzles with her on her computer!”

And I just smiled to myself.


A couple minutes later they both came over and wanted to show me that they could spell their names on the computer in Hebrew, and one of the girls wanted to spell her name in English too. One of the little girls was taking too long, and my little friend in kindergarten yells at her friend in Hebrew, “Nu, hurry up, I have to go to the bathroom!”

And then she just ripped a massive fart.

Oh my goodness, I have just lost all my composure. The girl’s eyes just bugged out like she was surprised that she had made such a noise, and then she couldn’t stop laughing either. Then she said, “Wow, I REALLY have to go to the bathroom!” and ran off.

Omg, omg omg, little kids crack me up. I am seriously crying with laughter right now.

I'm sorry, i just have to get this out there. sorry for two posts in just a couple hours...

I’m not so sure I like my roommate so much anymore. I’ve decided that she is 100 percent crazy. So first there’s the sleep walking, sleep talking and sleep screaming/arguing….and then there’s her increasing selfishness and anger towards me. I have no idea what I’m doing wrong. I think I’m a relatively simple person to live with—I’ve had several roommates over the years and I never had serious issues with them or anything.

First of all, there’s the smoking thing. I wrote about it on this blog, but I’ll say it again: immediately after she asked me what I thought of her smoking in our apartment, and I said that I prefer she didn’t smoke in our room but that I’d forgive it if she wanted to smoke in the bathroom or kitchen….she immediately lit up again. She’s started smoking more and more and more in our room, and now is too lazy even to go to the window. Instead she’ll sit on her bed on the far end of the room and chain smoke. So there’s that.

Then she also gets pissed off at me all the time because I haven’t put away one of my suitcases under the bed. You might ask, “Why don’t you put your stuff away in the closet and then move the suitcase to make your roommate happy?” Well, good question, and I would totally agree to do that. Unfortunately, my roommate has taken over well over ¾ of our closet space. So I have no space for all of my clothing—and I don’t even have that much! Thus, I use my suitcase as a wardrobe. Which pisses off my roommate. But it’s her own goddamn fault.

We HAD a dining room table. But it’s now my roommate’s make-up table, for her sole use. Okay, fine, whatever, I don’t really need a dining room table or a make-up table. I actually thought it was kind of funny to start, and I’m sure I mentioned on this blog how many creams and whatevers my roommate has.
With the dining room table came two chairs, in addition to the two desk chairs in the bedroom. When the dining room table became my roommate’s own personal beauty salon, one of the chairs became her second personal chair. And she decided that the other chair that belonged to the former dining room should go into the bathroom so that she could do the bathroom-dependent part of her boudoir sitting down in comfort.
So basically, both of us have turned our desk chairs into coat racks, making them unusable for sitting on. When my roommate wants to watch a movie in bed, she’ll pull up her beauty salon chair next to her bed, put her computer on it, and watch a movie. Well, last night I decided I wanted to watch a movie in bed, too, so I took the second dining room table chair from the bathroom, put my computer on it, and then watched a movie in bed.

Well, one morning I’m getting ready when my roommate goes into the bathroom. “FUCK!” she screams in French. “FUCK!” She comes storming out of the bathroom, looking thoroughly pissed off, and goes, “Where’s the fucking chair?” She then sees that it’s next to my bed, she tells me to move my computer, gives me a nasty look like I’m just Satan himself, and then brings the chair back into the bathroom, all the while muttering dirty things in French under her breath.

What the fuck did I do? I took a chair? So I’m only allowed to use one, but she’s allowed three? What? And was it really all that horrible lugging some crappy, light-weight chair couple yards back to the bathroom? Was it really worth swearing over?

In the morning we have always worked out that she gets up first to turn on the hot water, then gets to sleep in for about 30 minutes longer. A few minutes later though, I’m the one who has to actually wake up and take the first shower while she gets to sleep. I think it’s a really fair system, and I think she thought so too.
This morning I woke up at my appointed time…and found that this girl hadn’t turned on the hot water. Whatever, no big deal. This just means that I have to turn it on and then wait like 10 or 15 minutes. So I did. After about 15 minutes I hopped into the shower…but since the morning schedule was running late because this girl didn’t turn on the water, I was basically getting into the shower at the same time that I’d be coming out of the bathroom to let my roommate take her turn in the shower. So I had basically just gotten into the shower, when my roommate came and started banging on the door and loudly telling me to hurry up, asking when I was going to be done, declaring that she needed to take a shower. Mind you, this was still a full hour before class was to start, so it’s not as if she was in danger of being late.
I tried to hurry up, but when I got out my roommate gave me such a dirty look, as if I were just the most selfish bitch on the planet, and she was muttering angrily to herself in French. I don’t get what I did! It’s her fucking fault, she didn’t turn on the hot water!

I was really upset that I was being treated like some selfish person, so I hurried up with getting ready and sat in the lobby of the building for a while. Eventually I decided I NEEDED to brush my teeth before class, and when I went up to the apartment my roommate barked at me, “Where were you?” Sounds like a harmless question, but this was not a harmless question. This was an angry question, DEMANDING to know where I was, as if I were supposed to ask for permission before being allowed to sit in the lobby.



So the common thing here is that the roommate will create a situation in which I do something that pisses her off….and then she gets mad at me as if it’s MY fault and she had nothing to do with it! I can’t stand it. I hate going back to my own room, because I feel scared that I’m gonna do something to piss her off again, and even when she’s not there I hate being in the room because it smells like smoke. Even when she’s asleep she makes my life miserable because she wakes me up with sleepy French yelling that scares the crap out of me.

Also, I’ve decided that ALL French people are crazy. Whether it was the two girls back on the kibbutz, or it’s this girl….they’re all fucking nuts and I can’t wait to deport them when I’m Prime Minister.

shiiiit

So I got a ballot for LA’s elections. It feels strange that I have the right to vote in LA when I feel like I haven’t spent most of the last three years living there, whether I was in Israel or Chicago. But I did live exclusively in LA until I was 18, so I guess I have some sort of right to decide what will happen there.

I do love the ballot pamphlets that you get at every election, you know, where under each candidate’s name they list the occupation? This year running for mayor we have a “Whistleblower,” and “Entertainer” and a “Union Meat Packer” among others. I’m not really sure how one’s occupation can be “Whistleblower.” I mean, I think it’s great if you call attention to things that are not right in your workplace or whatever, but I think if you make it your job to go around looking for things to blow the whistle on…that’s not a profession, that’s just you being a prick.

The current mayor is running for reelection, so under his name his occupation is listed as “Mayor of Los Angeles.” I’m not really sure that’s an accurate description of what he’s been doing for the last few years. I think more accurately they’d put “Pretends to be busy in an office but really just has sex with the Univision newsreader.”

Well, speaking of Univision and LA’s massive Spanish-language media market….I miss things like Sabado Gigante, this weird Spanish-language variety show thing that would come on every Saturday night. But I missed that when I was in Chicago, too. One of the things I loved about living in LA was that you could flip on the radio and the chances of you coming across a commercial about Disneyland in Spanish were immense—it was almost an unavoidable occurrence. I miss buying tacos out of trucks. ☹ Oh well. If I can just wait for this trend in aliyah from Spanish-speaking countries to continue, then maybe eventually I’ll be set…


Also, can I just address the issue of really good dreams? You know, dreams in which everything you ever wanted comes true. And then suddenly you wake up, realize that none of it was true, and then you’re like, “Shiiiiit…..” Well, that happened to me the other day. Not that my real life is all that shit or anything….it’s just that, in comparison, my dream was basically the ending of a particularly happy Disney film.


Today in class the teacher taught us different argument words, being just “I think…” or “I agree…”. Like, 10 different ways to say that we agree, or 10 different ways to say we disagree or that the other person doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Stuff like that. We then had to do one-on-one exercises with different people as we argued over various topics. At the beginning we were all very polite and reluctant to shut down others, and the students from England were particularly reluctant. But the teacher kept saying, “Be like Israelis!” and kept saying, “Use this phrase, it’s very Israeli” and kept pushing the Israeli-ness. So gradually we all got a little bit more forceful, and by the end the noise in the room was deafening, and people were shutting each other down, and jumping out of their seats with angry disagreement. Okay, it wasn’t quite like that, but by the end I think the teacher was very proud of our Israeli-ness….

Geshem kal ba'tzafon

When I was younger I had a friend who used to fart in elevators. A prime farting location for her was an elevator with a small handful of other people, preferably businessmen and women. She was the master at keeping a straight face (something I’ve never been capable of), and (like me) she used to really enjoy watching people’s reactions to things. And a particularly loud and pungent fart with a serene face was her ultimate tool. She wasn’t a particularly gross person, she just really enjoyed watching respectable people turn bright red, shift their feet uncomfortably, lose their composure and avoid eye contact with her after she let one rip.

Not to be gross or anything, but this is the sort of friend that I would love to have in Israel. Not necessarily another elevator farter, but someone who is as amused by other people as I am, and someone who is willing to go “the extra mile” to create an opportunity to watch people suffer through an awkward situation.

I’ve found some nice people to hang out with, but unfortunately most of the other girls here are either skirt-wearing orthodox girls who came to Israel for religious reasons or party girls who came to Israel because they thought it was gonna be some sort of 24/7 Mediterranean party. And as for me, I’m not really sure what I am, or exactly why I came to Israel. I guess if I had to classify myself as something, I’d call myself an inappropriate religious person. I believe in G-d and believe in prayer, hope and goodness and all that shit, but I can’t stand services and don’t keep commandments. I believe in modest dress, but to me that’s not necessarily a skirt. When I’m older and (G-d willing) have kids, I’ll probably make them ham and cheese sandwiches for school lunch, simply because no child should miss out on something as wonderful as ham and cheese together in a sandwich, but I’d still want them to be the most knowledgeable kids in their class on stuff like Jewish history and I would hope that they believed in G-d and prayer and all that. I don’t know what that makes me.


Also, completely unrelated, one of the most popular bottled water companies here in Israel was found to have fecal bacteria in its bottled water—and yes, today I learned the word “fecal” in Hebrew. And while for a second I felt grossed out and sad for the hundreds or thousands of people in Israel who drank infected water, I noticed the logo. And I remember seeing that logo EVERYWHERE in the laundry room back on the kibbutz. The ladies drank this brand, and this brand alone, of water, and they drank it religiously. They had extra bottles of this brand lying around, and they even got large jugs from this brand delivered on a regular basis. So while I’m sorry that other people were affected, all I want to say to the Women of the Wash is:

YOU’VE BEEN DRINKING SHIT, BITCHES!

Karma, man….


Class is going nicely.

Student: Do you know how much time Hertzl was in Israel?...10 days!
[*impressive pause*]
Different Student: So Hertzl did Birthright?

_--____________
FROM YESTERDAY:

Today I met my “Absorption Counselor.” An “Absorption Counselor” is a surly person assigned to you to help you through your first steps in Israel. Well, they’re not paid to be surly…I guess that’s just a bonus. From the way the pamphlets that you get at the airport made it sound, your Absorption Counselor is the most helpful person ever, and very quickly will become your new best friend, will be the best man at your wedding, and will be the godfather at your firstborn’s bris.

In reality, I was ushered into my counselor’s office, he asked for my ID card, I gave it to him, he asked for my bank info, I gave my bank info, and finally I was asked to sign on the paper allowing the government to directly put money into my bank account.

That was it. I have no idea what this man’s name is. All I know is, I hope he won’t be expecting a wedding invitation in the future.


Since I was in the downtown area, I figured I might as well go out on the job prowl. I don’t know if I found anything fitting (basically, for me anything involving people isn’t “fitting”), but I did poke my head into three different establishments. And at each one, without fail, a variation on a conversation like this happened in Hebrew:

Potential Boss: So tell me about your experience in this field…….what hours are you available for work? ………. Okay great…let’s see….And I definitely don’t need to ask you if you speak English….HA HA HAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!

Okay. I get it. Apparently I have a ridiculous American accent when I speak Hebrew. I actually didn’t think it was SO terrible, compared to a lot of the Americans I’ve encountered, but I guess that when I talk I sound like a more obvious American than George Bush.
I wouldn’t mind so much if they simply said, “I don’t need to ask if you speak English” and moved on with a straight face. It’s momentarily embarrassing, but whatever. If that was what had happened, I’m sure I would have forgotten about it already. But they DID laugh. Three different people laughed hysterically, laughing like they couldn’t breathe, like they’d just made some clever, new joke. HAHAHA YOU SPEAK MY LANGUAGE WITH A STUPID ACCENT, IMMIGRANT! HAHAHAHAH!!!! I AM SO AMUSED BY YOUR LACK OF FLUENCY AND YOUR STRUGGLE WITH CERTAIN FOREIGN SOUNDS SUCH AS THE CHET AND THE RESH!

The worst part of all of this is that, because I’m in the position of wanting a job, I just had to stand there and smile. THREE. DIFFERENT. TIMES.
This is what I hate about interacting with people. You have to put up with their asshole jokes at your expense and you have to smile instead of giving them what they deserve, which is a smack across the face with a frying pan or chair or whatever else is handy.

Well you know what, Israelis? I think you all sound like retards in English. So there.


Anyway, after the job search I walked up to the central bus station. (“TEL AVIV TEL AVIV TEL AVIV!”) I like the central bus station and all, but I hate the little jingles they play over the loudspeakers referring to the central bus station as a sort of “mall.” No. I’m sorry. You are not a mall, you have the shopping selection of a mediocre airport terminal.

I sat down and ate some McDonald’s, which totally made my day, and as I was eating I looked up at the Chinese restaurant across the food court, and I read the name of the restaurant. I then looked down at my chicken nuggets, continued eating, and thought to myself, “K, whatever…let’s see, where’d I put the ketchup. There it---OH MY G-D I JUST READ CHINESE!” I looked back up at the sign to confirm that I had read it and that I understood it, and then I realized that FINALLY I had some sort of confirmation that I was a genius. “Holy shit,” I thought to myself, “I just spontaneously learned how to read Chinese.”

I sat there for a minute, my mind totally blown, my hands gripping the edge of the table to find some sort of stability in this crazy new world in which I’m suddenly a genius….and then I realized that the sign I read wasn’t in Chinese. It was in Hebrew made to LOOK like Chinese. Well, fuck…..

If it’s any consolation to me (which it isn’t), I think the reason I didn’t immediately realize it was in Hebrew was that Hebrew has (perhaps) become a lot easier for me to read. Like, an English word I just glance at and recognize, whereas with Hebrew I usually have to actually read it…and lately I’ve been a better about just glancing at words and recognizing. So when I saw the Chinese-ified Hebrew letters and didn’t have to concentrate so hard on reading, I probably didn’t realize I was reading Hebrew because my brain wasn’t making the usual reading effort that Hebrew normally requires me to make.

Finally I ended up going to the mall to see “Defiance,” complete with a “hafsaka” (break) in the middle of the film. I actually really liked the movie, even if it got mixed reviews, and I think part of what made it so special was the fact that I saw it in Israel. I think I also liked it for the same reason that Chanukah is my favorite holiday—I like stories in which the Jews fight back.

And geshem kal ba/tzafon.

You have The Plague. Please leave.

So back on the kibbutz, one of the big problems we had was that people would take days off from class a lot. Sometimes it was to just go hang out in Tel Aviv, and sometimes it was exaggerated illness—like, a person would have nothing more than a runny nose but insist on staying in bed instead of going to class. It’s really frustrating when this happens when you’re in a class with only 3 or 4 other people, because sometimes back on the kibbutz I’d be one of two people who bothered to show up to class.

In this ulpan, however, we have the exact opposite problem. We have people coming to class who should really be back home in bed, or at the doctor’s office, or at a sanatorium. For the first two hours today I had to sit next to a girl hacking and coughing, and blowing her nose so juicily that I could have sworn she was making orange juice.

Meanwhile, across the room from me is a guy who is coughing so horribly that I want to scream, “YOU CLEARLY HAVE TUBERCULOSIS. GO HOME IMMEDIATELY.”

My problem is that I have a serious issue with germs. No one ever believes me because my room is always so messy, so my room must be crawling with germs….but see, that’s just it. I don’t have a problem with germs in general—just other people’s germs.

I feel like I go to class with wounded World War 2 soldiers. “Go on without me!” they call out to their healthier comrades, as they slowly drag their wounded lungs and sinuses to class, desperate to arrive on time.

Class for me, especially in winter when people are always sick or so it seems, is an exercise in trying not to breathe. On average about every two minutes one of the many sick people will make a noise, like either a “squelchy” cough or a wet sneeze, that makes my insides cringe and the voice in my head scream, “Oh my G-d, gross gross gross!” I keep telling myself that at 1 (when class is over), I’ll allow myself to break my own rules and take a second shower of the day.

(My rules have to do with water conservation here in this desert land.)


Anyway, my point in this post is that I’d like to make a public service announcement:

While I fully support mildly sick people (i.e. people with runny noses) who choose to make an effort to get out of bed and come to class, if you sound like you have The Plague/the Ebola Virus/the advanced stages of consumption….STAY THE FUCK HOME! Or at least don’t sit your sick ass next to me.

Cos, wouldn’t you know it, now it looks like I’ve caught The Plague.

KILL THE BUS!

Okay, so Purim is fast approaching and apparently everyone else in my building is dressing up for it…so I guess I should too. It actually didn’t really occur to me to dress up for Purim, but I guess here we are in Israel….. Also, we get a VACATION for Purim. Like, two days off from studying. FOR PURIM?? What a magical country!

So, what’s the deal with Purim costumes? Is it basically like anything I could dress up as for Halloween is acceptable for Purim (minus scream masks/ghosts/witches/etc)? Or are you only supposed to dress up as Purim characters (like we had to in the younger grades in religious school)? I’ve basically only celebrated Purim once since I was 8, and it was two years ago and I was exhausted, taking a brief prayer break from a dance marathon thing in which I was part of the lighting crew, so I barely had time to take note of costumes. Pretty much all I remember about that service was that in the middle of it a religious girl farted and I couldn’t stop laughing.

Stressing about costumes aside, I am thrilled that I will be in Israel for Purim. Sure, there’s the whole thing about Purim being a holiday about how the Jews almost got wiped out but ended up getting the last laugh, and then actually celebrating this holiday in the ultimate “last laugh,” aka Israel. But mostly I’m just excited about homantaschen. You know, the Yiddish term for “Haman’s Pockets,” the tasty pastry for Purim. Actually, here in Israel they’re called “Haman’s Ears,” which is just disgusting. Quite possibly the most unappetizing name for a pastry ever. I mean, the criticism you could make about the term “hamantaschen” is that they’re literally called “pockets,” but we’re taught in religious school that they represent Haman’s three-cornered hat. So that makes no sense, but whatever.

Here in Israel (now correct me if I’m wrong!) however, they’re taught in school that hamantaschen represent Haman’s ears, which fell off during his execution, or some weird shit like that. Wait. So now we’re gonna EAT HIS EARS???

Anyway, no matter what they’re called, I’m excited about being in a country where hamantaschen/Haman’s Ears are readily available.


Anyway….
Was watching a Mr. Bean sketch earlier today where Mr. Bean tries to trick other people waiting in line for the bus into moving so that he can stand at the head of the line.

Wow. When I was younger I was a huge anglophile, so I saw a lot of British films/TV…. I was well aware that the British stand in perfect, single file line while waiting for the bus, and I didn’t find it particularly odd from the perspective of an American. We aren’t nearly as neat and tidy in the U.S. and we don’t wait for the bus in a line, but there is at least some semblance of recognition of who got there first/second/last/whatever, and something of a tidy line almost always forms at the last second when the bus actually arrives.

After a month now of some intense bus-taking here in Israel….watching that sketch was bizarre.

Here in Israel, if you don’t aggressively shove people out of your way to get on the bus, the bus driver will yell at you in Hebrew, “WELL ARE YOU GONNA GET ON???”

Here in Israel, if you are reluctant to push the tiny old woman in front of you, a second tiny old woman behind you will grunt impatiently and shove you into the first tiny old woman.

Here in Israel, a tidy line doesn’t form in front of the door to the bus, but rather something resembling a riot mob forms. When I see people “waiting” to board the bus, I am reminded of that scene from “Beauty and the Beast” where the townspeople are holding torches and chanting, “KILL THE BEAST!”

“Kill the bus!”

To illustrate it using another Disney movie, being an American immigrant waiting to board a bus in Israel is a bit like being Simba during the wildebeest stampede in “The Lion King.”

Actually, it sort of resembles a nightclub, you know, where you’re stuck in this disgusting, sweaty mass of moving people. Party people might actually enjoy waiting to get on the bus if they close their eyes and pretend that they’re in a nightclub with no music, but unfortunately this won’t work for me since I hate nightclubs. Specifically, I hate the disgusting, sweaty mass of moving people aspect. I do like nightclub music though, so I think next time I know I’ll be boarding the bus at a crowded bus stop I’ll pack along a boom box and start blasting techno dance hits from the center of the riot mob. Or you know, start dancing along to “What Is Love” like the guys from Saturday Night Live. That’s one way to piss off the Haredim…

Milk

So my grandma’s sister added me on Facebook. Okay, technically she’s also my godmother, if that makes any difference…
Oh man though, I was a flower girl at this woman’s wedding. I was a kicking and screaming 5 year old when this woman was getting married (she got married at a relatively late age). And now she’s going to have access to inappropriate comments left on my wall by friends, or emo status updates, or pictures of me completely drunk. I don’t drink all that much but it seems like every single time I’ve been drunk it’s somehow been documented on Facebook, and now my great aunt is going to see that.
Yeah, I could always put on some sort of filter for her so that she can’t seem some of this stuff, but….well, we all know that I’m 100 percent inappropriate, so eventually no matter what I block, somehow I’m going to write/post/whatever something inappropriate that she’ll have access to. To be perfectly honest, I’d rather add a complete stranger as a facebook friend than someone I’m actually related to.

This is exactly why, even though I started this blog for the purposes of keeping my family updated, I have not actually given anyone in my family the address to this blog, nor have I dropped the slightest hint that it even exists, and I hope that they have not wised up. Because then I’d feel embarrassed to talk about gross things—I mean, hell, I believe yesterday there was a reference to stain looking like the “worst [menstrual] period ever,” and that’s probably not even the most disgusting or potentially embarrassing thing I’ve written on this blog.

Also, I’m convinced that my roommate is an agent of the 3% Milk Conspiracy.

Also, I’m watching a Mickey Mouse cartoon in Hebrew (reminder, Mickey Mouse sounds like a total pedophile in Hebrew), and I got frustrated that I couldn’t understand Donald Duck. And then I realized that I don’t understand Donald Duck in English either, and I felt a lot better.

As promised...

As promised, I’m attempting to learn the Thriller dance now that my roommate is gone for the weekend. I gotta say, it’s not going to well. When I was younger I had a short-lived stint in Irish dance, and “shockingly” this experience is not helping with Michael Jackson dance. In fact, I’m going to have to say that this attempt is going horribly, horribly wrong. I look like a complete tool.

Also, you know what I miss here in Israel? Debbie Friedman Shabbat services. Seriously. I hate them with a fiery passion back in the states, but here I miss them as a sort of comfortable and familiar reminder of my childhood.

ALSO: once i'm fluent in hebrew, i'm gonna go back to the U.S. and get a job in the rural south. And then I'll make up names of Jewish holidays left and right and demand days off, and they won't know any better cos I'll sound so convincing...

Shout Out to the Roomies!

Well, today I just accidentally reminded myself why I stopped wearing khaki pants.. See, in high school I did not own a single pair of jeans, but I owned several pairs of khaki pants. Eventually I figured out that I was too much of a klutz to pull off light colored pants, seeing as I frequently sat in puddles of paint, in gum, in pieces of cake abandoned on benches, etc etc etc. So I made the move to jeans since they tend to be more forgiving with dirt….

Today, however, I decided to wear a pair of khakis. And I was doing great until lunch when I decided that eating tomato soup would be a good idea.

And then I totally spilled all over myself. Or rather, all over my lap. It looked like (excuse my language) I had just had the worst period of my life, or as if I had just given birth and immediately afterwards pulled on a pair of khakis.

Okay, actually it wasn’t all that bad. It was literally like one drop. But it was still really embarrassing. My family has this weird problem, like we always spill on ourselves during meals. I don’t know what it is, because we don’t eat like animals, we don’t eat any more quickly than the next person, we don’t eat particularly messy foods…but somehow we always manage to spill on ourselves at every meal. So, a question: is this a genetic condition? And is it curable? Maybe it’s just because my family is clumsy in general, and should probably avoid employment in nuclear facilities.

And, surprise surprise, this presents another thing for me to be worried about for the army: the uniform. If I get put into the army then I get to wear dark green, and I’ll be safe. But what if I get assigned to the air force or navy? Then I would have to wear khaki uniforms. And I know for sure that if you put me in a khaki uniform, Day One I’m gonna sit on something filthy. Without fail. Great, as if there weren’t enough things to be concerned about concerning enlistment…..


Also, can someone explain to me why when I leave a message at the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption IN ENGLISH, they call me back in Hebrew and then act all frazzled when I respond in English? I’m certainly not the only English speaking immigrant in Israel, and even the answering machine I left a message on had an English-speaking welcome message.


Lastly….. last night I woke up in the middle of the night and I heard my roommate babbling incoherently. Like, it wasn’t French, it was clearly the language of “I’m asleep and talking in my dream.” I smiled to myself, thankful that she wasn’t yelling in French, and then rolled back over to fall back asleep. And then a couple minutes later I heard quite a ruckus coming from the direction of the window.

Yes, dear readers, my roommate had gotten out of bed, STILL ASLEEP, and still babbling incoherently to herself, and had gone to our window. She was making a lot of noise because with her eyes shut I guess it was hard for her to find the cord to pull to lower the shades. But after a couple seconds of banging around ….

SHE CLOSED THE FUCKING SHADES IN HER SLEEP!


It was maybe the finest thing I’ve ever witnessed. It was one of those incredible, unbelievable, life-changing moments that I would put on-par with the moment when I arrived in Israel as an immigrant. “Is this REALLY happening? Can something so wonderful possibly happen to ME?” Yes, dear readers, miracles do happen even to horrible people like me, and I got to witness a girl who was completely asleep close window blinds in her sleep.

It was thrilling. I swear, if my life had a soundtrack at that moment “Awesome G-d” would have blasted, or some other Jesus-related song would have come blaring out. It was seriously an inspirational moment.

Once she finally got the shades down, she kept pulling on the cord because obviously in her dream she couldn’t tell that she had closed it all the way. Then, satisfied that she had closed the shades in her dream, she turned back towards her bed—and I could clearly see that her eyes were peacefully shut, and she was still saying sleepy nonsense.

I’d like to take this opportunity to express gratitude to G-d for all the roommates I’ve had over the years, from the one who screams in French and closes the shades in her sleep, to the Australian (who actually, by my roommate standards, was pretty normal), to the girl from Chile who would regularly scream, “AT ROTZAH SEX-O?” and could drink vodka like it was her job, to the girl whose laundry mountain I had to climb to get to bed and with whom I maybe exchanged a grand total of 5 sentences over the course of 6 months, to the girl who collected her poop in a jar and sent an old woman to the hospital when she whacked her with a revolving door, to the girl who lost a pizza in our room. Yes, dear roommates past and present, this is my celebration of you.

exit polls.

Continuation of Roommate Weirdness:

She smokes in the room: in our shared bedroom, in the kitchen, and even in our bathroom. I actually don't really mind the smell of smoke, so I've been reluctant to say anything, but the problem is that I actually have some funky lung/blood problems that a lot of exposure to smoke can really do bad things for me. (Okay, plus smoke is not healthy for ANYBODY.) So I was hoping to find a nice way of asking her not to smoke in the apartment, or at the very least not in our bedroom.

And, lucky me! Today she said in French, "Oh, by the way, does the smell of the smoke bother you?"

And I said in French, "Well...actually I do smell it in the bedroom and it really bothers me...but I don't have a problem if you want to smoke in the kitchen or bathroom."

We exchanged friendly glances, and satisfied that I had made a fair request I then went into the kitchen to get a snack. I came back into the bedroom to grab my bag before leaving--and saw that my roommate had lit up and was smoking. In the bedroom. Immediately after asking my opinion on it and immediately after I told her that I didn't give a shit where she smoked in our apartment as long as it wasn't the bedroom.

I tried to rethink what I said in French, and that maybe I had been vague or I had said something incorrectly, but...I hadn't. So basically this girl just doesn't give a shit.

So wait, why did she bother asking? Was she just taking a survey? Like a public opinion poll or exit poll? What the hell??

Party of the Proof

Dear Readers:

First of all, this weekend I really want to learn the Thriller dance. I feel like I say that every weekend, but this weekend I am going to make a serious commitment.

ALSO:

My roommate scares the shit out of me. Granted, she’s a very sweet girl, very concerned with my well-being, and has a very charming sense of humor.

When she’s asleep, however, she turns into a French Demon.

So last night I had a particularly disturbing dream that I was visiting my Catholic brother—or actually his grave—at Har Herzl.* And so sometime in the wee hours of the morning when it was still very dark out I woke up from this dream and had the typical reaction, you know, where you stare bug-eyed at the ceiling and hope desperately to G-d that you fall back asleep quickly so that you can dream about something else and forget the unpleasantness, but at the same time you’re afraid to go back asleep in case the dream picks up where it left off.

*Which, for those of you who don’t know, is a military cemetery here in Jerusalem.

Anyway, I’m lying there in this state of uneasiness, alone in the dark feeling a tad creeped out when all of the sudden I hear someone calling out—no, YELLING—in French:

“YEAH, WELL, WHY DON’T YOU ASK HER WHAT SHE DID!”

The volume was incredible. The Arabs in the neighborhoods around this building were probably roused from their sleep, then probably screamed something back, but we didn’t hear it because even Arabs don’t have the same kind of projection that my roommate has.

Needless to say, when you’re awake in the middle of the night after a particularly unpleasant dream, someone suddenly screaming in French is enough to completely make your heart stop. So then instead of just being freaked out by a dream about my Catholic brother being dead (and buried in an Israeli military cemetery no less!), now I’m freaked out because my roommate is HEATED about something. I didn’t know if she was angry at me or if she was angry at someone else, and so I sat there stewing in my panic for another few seconds when suddenly an even louder explosion of French came spewing out of my roommate:

“MOM, YOU ALWAYS HELP *HER*.”

I then realized that she was talking to her mom. I thought maybe she was on the phone in bed, but it would also be ridiculously late/early in France, where her mom was.

The screaming continued, and she was basically yelling at her mom about child-favoritism issues and whatnot (stuff that she’s brought up with me before…when she wasn’t in bed, and when she wasn’t screaming though).

It was really dark so I couldn’t see too well, but I realized that she wasn’t really moving. Normally when my roommate is on the phone and yelling at someone, she moves A LOT. Like, she paces and throws her arms and whatever. But here she was almost perfectly still.

Curious, I turned on my cell phone light and shone it in the direction of my roommate: her eyes were completely shut and her cell phone was on the ground next to her bed, completely shut-off.

Yes, dear readers, my roommate until June screams angrily in perfect, clear, understandable French IN HER SLEEP!

This isn’t the first time she’s done it, but this is the first time I could actually understand it perfectly and that she didn’t sound partially asleep. This time she sounded perfectly awake, which makes it even creepier.



On a completely different thought: I feel like I need to address the issue of elections. Look, I love Israel dearly, but this whole system of electing a government is the most fucked up thing I’ve ever witnessed. Like, sure I’m sad Obama won since I’m a Republican, but there was something comforting about knowing by 10 pm on election day who the next leader of my country would be, whether I liked the answer or not. Like, BAM, DONE, CASE CLOSED. Let’s move on to something more interesting.

In this country however? They can’t even publish the exit poll results until 10 pm. That is the law (at least for this election). So basically for most of the day you have no idea what’s going on. And then finally the exit poll results come out, and then they say that the leader of the party that got the most votes (Kadima, led by Tzipi Livni) might not even end up being Prime Minister cos she has to form a coalition, whatever the fuck that means. So it might turn out that the party leader who came in second (Netanyahu, leading Likud) will be Prime Minister, but that’s on the assumption that he can form a coalition. So here it is, the afternoon AFTER election day, and I’m no more sure about who’s going to be the next leader of this country than I was about who’ll be the next president the day BEFORE election day in the U.S.

And I still haven’t figured out what the President of Israel does. Is he kind of like the Queen of England, except for Israel? Is his job just to look nice and clean at state functions?

Also, I can’t figure out the ballot system. My understanding is that here instead of a ballot they have these slips of paper that you put into an envelope, and each party has like 1, 2 or 3 Hebrew letters that symbolize their party and these are printed on ballot slips. When you go to vote you put a slip of paper from the party you want into an envelope. And fine, if you don’t want a paper ballot that you punch holes in, whatever, but I don’t understand why you couldn’t just put in slips of paper that say your party’s name. I’m not sure what מחל has to do with Likud or what כן has to do with Kadima. I find that system so confusing, because then not only does the party feel the need to publicize its name and its leader’s name, but it also has to waste time reminding people what its letters are. Why can’t they just have slips of paper that say simply “Likud” or “Kadima” on them (except in Hebrew obviously)? Cos if you can’t read your party’s name in Hebrew, maybe you shouldn’t be voting at all.

Then there’s the whole issue of the fact that they actually let anti-Zionist parties and anti-Israel parties into our parliament…like, can you imagine that shit flying in the U.S. for even just one second? …… but that’s a rant that warrants a book all on its own….

Also, I’m starting my own political party:
Mifleget HaHokhakhah (Party of the Proof).



Fuck. Fuck. We just had a talk from people from the Lishkat Giyus. They talked a lot about how you get assigned to your job/unit/whatever, which is good because I had no idea how that works. Now I’m all freaked out about doing my last medical exam there and then getting told which things would be open to me….and getting a draft date. Fuck I hope it’s sooner rather than later, because I don’t want to have to go out into the Israeli working world yet…

I’m scared of being told about what jobs would be open to me, because I’m afraid that being my ill-informed self I’ll unintentionally make the worst possible choice. But I’m even more afraid that they’re only going to give me a tiny list of choices, all of which I hate. I don’t know what would be worse, finding out later that you accidentally fucked yourself over when you unknowingly chose a shit job over a good job, or getting fucked over by someone else by only being offered shit jobs.

And then part of me is kind of glad that I didn’t grow up here and that I don’t know what’s “better” than other things or what’s “worse” than other jobs. For example, it would not have occurred to me that “everyone hates the military police” had not several people told me. Maybe I’ll end up joining a unit that supposedly sucks or everyone hates or whatever, and I’ll end up completely enjoying it because it never occurred to me that it was SUPPOSED to suck.

Election Day

Oh. My. G-d.

I just realized that my life is “The Little Mermaid.”

Basically I spent a long time thinking about how great it must be to live in this other place, and in return for finally getting the chance to live there I had to give up my voice. Okay, not literally, cos I can still speak English just fine, but you get my point…




Henyways, today is election day here ba’aretz, and thus we do not have class. What a fucking amazing country this is—no class on election day? I mean, heck, that’s pretty awesome. What can I do with a whole day to myself? I could go to Tel Aviv today, go to the beach…but I hate Tel Aviv, and I hate the beach. But the idea that I CAN is awesome. “Yes we can!”

So far my election day vacay has consisted of sleeping in, then watching “Billy Elliot.”

I feel like I should be out doing something patriotic and celebrating democracy in the Middle East…but I actually can’t help feeling a bit bitter. Immigrants can’t vote unless they’ve been on the register at the Ministry of Interior for at least three months, and I’ve only been registered for a couple weeks (since I got my ID card).

And at first this totally didn’t bother me, and I figured Israel was still being very generous. But this weekend I just got so frustrated. I met this Canadian girl who is technically an Israeli citizen. Her grandparents or something were Israeli, and despite the fact that her parents and she have never actually lived in Israel, this girl is an Israeli citizen. She’s in Israel for the semester to study abroad but is planning to return to Canada and live her life there after the program is over. She does not have an obligation to the Israeli army.

And she gets to vote.

This *tourist* (yes, I call her a tourist even though she’s a citizen because she doesn’t plan to actually live here) gets to pick the government that will be leading the country well after she’s already run back home to Canada in June, whereas I don’t get to pick the government that will be leading the army that I’LL be serving in for two years in the not so distant future.

How the fuck is that fair?

I’m not saying that this means that I, too, deserve to vote. I actually think neither of us deserves to vote, since neither of us has been here for very long. But I’m still pissed off.

Actually, I take that back: I think I do fucking deserve to vote. If I’m enough of a citizen that the army tells me that I have to do two years of obligatory service, then I’m enough of a citizen to vote in the fucking elections.

Oh well….just another thing I’ll have to take care of when I’m Prime Minister. Well, that and ordering an air strike on the kibbutz laundry room.

Happy fucking election day, Israel.

EDIT: Yigal Amir can vote. And I can't.

Cheeseburger Bar Mitzvahs.

Okay, before I saw anything, I have to say that there is a guy in my class that wears a yarmulke. Okay, whatever, this is Israel, a lot of people wear yarmulkes. But this is seriously the smallest yarmulke I’ve ever seen. Like it’d even be too small for a baby. Seriously, I don’t even know why bother if you’re just going to wear such a tiny yarmulke, and I’ve developed this bizarre and completely irrational hatred of it. Every single time I look at this guy during class, I want to be like, “Look, if money is the issue, I will BUY you a larger yarmulke.” Or, “Do you realize you are wearing a Ritz Cracker on your head???”


We had a Tu Bshvat seder last night, and I couldn’t stop thinking about religious school. The seder was actually ridiculously fun, with singing and clapping and whatnot, and I tasted a pomegranate and a fig for the first time in my life. A friend from Belgium managed to get a particularly fantastic photo of me reacting to the taste of something nasty, and I hope to eventually upload it to this blog.

Anyway, about religious school. Maybe it was because of the fact that (being a liberal, LA group) we talked about Tu Bshvat a lot, probably a lot more than its importance would warrant. Or maybe it was because the guy on the guitar reminded me of the part in Hebrew School where we’d have to sing songs in Hebrew, and especially maybe because last night I sang “David Melech Yisrael” *WITH APPROPRIATE HAND MOTIONS* for the first time in my adult life…. But celebrating Tu Bshvat here in Israel keeps making me think of religious school. I just can’t help but think how weird it is that of all the people that I grew up with in religious school, I am the one that ended up in Israel.

Why is this weird? Because there’s very few things I actually remember liking about religious school, which was pretty much the only place I ever did anything remotely Jewish. What did I like about religious school? I liked snack time. I liked when we finally get to take a bite of challah after waiting for what seemed like hours as pieces were handed out, and everyone got settled, and then the Hamotzi was said. I liked when we would sing “Miriam’s Song” and we got to the part that said, “We’ve just lived through a miracle, we’re gonna dance tonight!” I liked learning how to read Hebrew. I liked learning about Haifa. I liked giving tzedaka for Magen David Adom, and I liked watching movies with about Israel’s wars and military operations.

But for the most part….I hated religious school. It was boring, we didn’t actually learn Hebrew, and we had to do these Gad-awful art projects led by this bizarre woman who (as it would turn out) looks exactly like one of the Women of the Wash. I hated Israeli dance lessons, and I hated learning Torah trope. I used to get called “The Mouse” because I was so quiet that I would even lip-sync the prayers. And starting in 4th grade things became even more miserable, because we started Hebrew School, which meant that we would have class immediately after secular school instead of on Sundays. And I was the only kid in my class to go to a private school, so I would be the only one who would have to show up to Hebrew School in my school uniform, and everyone would make fun of me in my stupid skirt.

It’s just weird to me that there were probably hundreds of kids that have gone through my religious school over the years who were infinitely happier than me in religious school, and who were infinitely “more Jewish” than me, and who were infinitely more connected to the Jewish community than me, and who ate far less ham and cheese sandwiches than me, and who made far fewer references to Jesus than me. And yet, I’m the one who fulfilled the mitzvah of aliyah. I’m the one who lives just a couple minutes from the Western Wall. I’m the one speaking Hebrew every day.

A couple weeks ago some close family friends from LA were in Israel, so they took me out to dinner. And these were the people that, growing up, I considered JEWISH. Their daughter, who was in the year below me at school, was the one who taught me what kosher is—at an age when I definitely should have known. My family maybe waltzed into synagogue once a year (ridiculously late, no less), whereas these people would be sitting front row center every Friday/Saturday. Their whole family would be outfitted with personalized or monogrammed or whatever yarmulkes or tallises or sidurim, and sit together looking more coordinated and serious than the LA Philharmonic, whereas each of my brothers would usually just grab one of those douchebag-yarmulkes (you know, the ones that don’t lie flat at all) that are by the sanctuary entrances as he was hastily adjusting his crooked tie on his way to find a seat, and while I fidgeted awkwardly with my skirt that was riding up, picked a tights-wedgie, and tripped over my fancy shoes. Then during the course of the service one of my brothers would realize that his douchebag-yarmulke had fallen off, and they’d end up on the floor looking for it, causing a total disturbance, most likely during the mourners kaddish.

So anyway, having dinner with this family now that I’m in Israel….was beyond weird. Here I am, secular, product of a religiously dysfunctional family, half-Jew Sam, now a citizen of Israel, with an Israeli ID card, Israeli health insurance, and a draft notice from the Israeli army. And these “good Jews” are going to go back to the U.S. in a week, with only souvenirs from Israel. The “good Jews” chose to cast their lots with a Christian nation, whereas the bad Jew is jumping off a cliff with the Jewish State.


And I ain’t gonna lie…I feel pretty damn smug about it!

BEST. YOM. RISHON. EVER!

A quote from the class:
Teacher: “Use ‘military police’ in a sentence.”
Student: “Everyone hates the military police.”

Most importantly: If the front cover of Yedioth Ahronoth is any way of judging, Tzipi Livni needs to learn how to hold babies. She looks like she is smothering some poor little thing with her arms/death traps of steel and, amazingly, she also looks like she is about to drop the baby at the same time.

Oh my goodness. I just finished class for the day, and wow…..the first half of class I felt normal and whatever, but when I got back from break. Holy Fuck. I felt like a genius. I was speaking Hebrew without thinking and just…..oh man. I actually had a hopeful moment where I felt like sometime in the NEAR future I’ll actually be able to spend entire days in Hebrew-mode. Like, I was responding to something the teacher said and explaining my opinion on something, and normally this is REALLY difficult for me in Hebrew…..but this time, the words just came, and even the teacher looked surprised when I had finished. And I was like, HOLY SHIT, I can actually speak Hebrew in a fluid way, although not fluently. And it was seriously one of the greatest moments of my life. If my life had a soundtrack, this moment would be “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” as loud as possible. In fact, I’ve just now put on that song as loud as possible on my computer, and I’ve opened the windows to let all of Jerusalem know.

Yeah, I know full well that tomorrow I might sound completely retarded again, but the fact that I just had this brief moment of success, just this one, means that it can happen again. Yes, dear readers, I believe in miracles.

Can I also just say that I love elections here? Not only is there a political rabbi blessing me from posters on like EVERY single bus here in Jerusalem, but then in the news that same rabbi says that to vote for a certain other political party is to vote for Satan.

And now a question of protocol: this girl in my building added me as a friend on Facebook before we even got to Israel. I recognize her when I see her around the building, but we have never once exchanged words and we have not actually met in the real world. I have seen her a million times in my building, and not once has my existence or the existence of our Facebook friendship been acknowledged.

See, this is why I hate people who add people on Facebook before they’ve actually met. I already learned from experience in college that you don’t do that (Facebook was very new to me and to the people in my year at the time), because then when you actually meet your neighbor who you added as a friend on Facebook like 2 months before your freshman year started, you already know a bunch of random trivia about them. Yeah, this might be the first conversation we’ve ever had, but we both know which movies the other likes and whatnot.

So anyway, today I got into the elevator to grab a newspaper from the lobby, and this girl that added me on Facebook back in December walked into the same elevator. And she is sobbing. A complete and total wreck. And here we are, in this tiny elevator together. I keep panicking silently, thinking, “Well, should I say something comforting?” I mean, I know her name. I know where she’s from. I know quite a few things about her. But I’ve never actually met her. See, Facebook just creates these situations where social protocol is ambiguous.

In the end, I figured that since she added me, it should have been her obligation to introduce herself in person, so it’s her own damn fault that technically speaking I don’t actually know her, and so it’s also her own damn fault that it is not socially appropriate for me to say anything to her when she’s sobbing in the same tiny elevator that I’m in. I figured my best bet was to just hope that the ride would be a short one.

So instead we just rode down together in the elevator, less than a foot apart, her sobbing the entire way down and me intensely praying to G-d that the elevator wouldn’t break.

Gonna be in the north until Saturday.....blog's on hold until then (Just didn't want you to get concerned when you don't get the Complete Works of Proust for a few days). See ya on Sunday!

vending machines of the Lord

Before I say anything else, I have to say I love this country. Today in the central bus station I saw a vending machine that vends religious texts. I seriously don’t even know what to say to that, except for I’M SO GLAD I MADE ALIYAH.

Also, today at the bank I had THE most encouraging experience ever. The teller saw on my ID card that I was an immigrant, and he asked me about my aliyah, and what ulpan I was studying in. I told him, and he said, “Oh, I know that one!” And I just assumed that he had simply heard of my ulpan….but then it turned out that he himself was an immigrant, and that he himself had studied in the exact same ulpan! I couldn’t tell he was an immigrant (from France, he said), because he sounded so good in Hebrew, and was chatting with another teller in really quick Hebrew. And not only did he do my same ulpan, but he was in the same level as me and he had the exact same teachers. This was all really encouraging because here’s a guy who did exactly what I’m doing, and a year and a half later his Hebrew is good enough that he’s working in a bank, not a t-shirt store or whatever. This is really, really encouraging. I thought I was going to have to wait decades before I stop sounding like an idiot, but unless this guy happens to be a friggin genius then maybe I’ll stop sounding like an idiot in less than a year and a half. Oh man, I really needed this boost in encouragement and confidence.

Okay, now it’s time for a complaint: I really need a new pair of pants, but I can’t figure out the sizes here. I walked into a store at the mall today, and picked up a pair of pants I liked to see what size it was….and saw like 38 or something. And I was like, “Well what the fuck is that?”
Are pant sizes in Israel in Celsius or something?
I looked around at the crowded store and saw all the Israelis looking like pros, and I didn’t want to stand out as an idiot and ask how sizes work, so I walked out of the store and whipped out the ol’ cell phone and did a google search on pant conversions. Eventually I found an online chart that was like, “Size 8 is Size ___ in European, or Size 10 is Size ____ in European” etc etc, and I found my European size and confidently walked back into the store. I then picked up a different pair of pants, and checked the size. And this time it had TWO numbers, both of them different.
Well, now I’m just confused and frustrated. I think maybe I’ll never be able to buy pants here, and I’ll just have to wander the streets in my slowly disintegrating old pants until I eventually am forced to walk the streets in my underpants.

I should probably figure this out before I start the army (if I ever do start the army…), because if they ask you what size you need for your pants, I’m not gonna know what to tell them, and then for two years I’m either going to have to wear skintight hot-pants or Mr. T parachute pants. Should also probably figure out Euro shoe sizes before then as well, cos I don’t think I want to look like the boots-equivalent of a little girl walking around in her mother’s high heels.

EDIT: Someone told me yesterday that the water heaters in our bathrooms can explode if you leave them on too long. Christ, is there ANYTHING in the Middle East that does not explode?

Spotless

My roommate is in one of those cleaning moods. You know, where suddenly you’re furious at the sight of mess, and you have to clean your room top to bottom and blahblah. I rarely get in these moods, being the disgusting bitch that I am, but I definitely know the feeling. The problem is when your roommate (or you) are in one of those moods, but you (or your roommate) are not. That’s basically my life right now. I tried to cooperate and shift a couple things around and whatnot to appease her, but she seemed to be in such a cleaning trance that she wanted to do everything by herself. So now I’m hiding in the laundry room of this building….

I gotta say, I like my roommate. In order for me to really like person they have to 1) eat breakfast, 2) like Brigadoon, and 3) respect Little House on the Prairie. I don’t know if she’s heard the Gospel of Brigadoon, but I can say that she eats breakfast regularly and, like me, would probably eat breakfast for all three meals of the day if it were socially acceptable. And also when she saw that I had one of the Little House books with me, she picked it up and exclaimed in French with pure happiness and excitement, “Ah! THE LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE!” So even if she’s in a psychotic cleaning trance, I’m still glad I’m living with her.

Also, it’s probably good for me to be living with a person who makes me kind of ashamed of my mess, because whenever I live with like-minded people (i.e. geniuses!) it usually gets pretty narsty. I remember one summer I shared a tiny room with an equally messy girl, and we managed to lose a pizza in our room. Yes, a full pizza, in a box. Freshman year of college I lived another equally gross girl and our room had legendary mess. Towards the end of the year (almost 9 months later) we decided we should probably vacuum, so we borrowed a vacuum from a neighbor. Then we realized that there was nothing to vacuum, since the floor was covered in our shit. We couldn’t be bothered to move our stuff, so we just sort of let the vacuum sit in our corner for weeks, and eventually it became like our version of a coat rack until eventually our neighbor asked for her vacuum back. Sophomore year of college I lived with another messy girl, and while the mess wasn’t as epic as the year before, I do remember having to literally climb a pile of laundry to get to my bed on the top bunk. This girl’s laundry was my ladder.

So, by my standards, I am living in a spotless palace nowadays.

and now everyone in my family is up to speed....minus my oldest brother....but he's always on a different planet anyway

So my parents now know that I have to do the army. Last night was pretty horrible, talking to my mom on the phone:
I said that I have to get my eyes checked for the army. I lied wildly that I don’t actually have to enlist, but for some strange reason the State of Israel needs to have EVERYONE register with the army and do all the tests even if they aren’t eligible for army service. I told her that I was considering volunteering, hoping that when I eventually broke the news that I had no choice, she’d at least be prepared. She was surprisingly calm….

Oh fuck. After we hung up she called back a few minutes later and was like, “You know, I changed my mind. There’s about to be a war, you shouldn’t volunteer for the army.”

“Um…Mom? Actually…I….I….don’t really have a choice. It turns out I HAVE to do the army, unless they find that I’m like unhealthy or completely unnecessary or something.”

What followed was complete hysteria. I got a lecture about how we’re all going to get nuked over here, and how I should flee the country while I still can. After about 10 minutes, she calmed down and kept saying, “Okay, well, it’s no big deal, just don’t sign anything.”

“Mom, what do you mean?”

“Like, just don’t promise the army that you’ll join, don’t sign up or anything.”

“Mom…I’m not really sure I have a choice unless I leave the country…which I really don’t want to do.”

“Sure, but just don’t commit to doing the army until you’ve talked to Dad.”


Then today my dad just called me and very calmly asked if I actually WANTED to do the army or if I would only do it if I absolutely had to. I said I wanted to and would actually have tried to volunteer anyway. He seemed content, only requested that I try to be an officer or something, and now all seems well and calm.



Oh man, I’ve probably said this before, but I totally have to repeat it: I love children olim. That is, small children who have been dragged from their native lands by their parents in order to move with them to Israel. They are so much fun to talk to in Hebrew, because they know quite a bit (kids pick it up so quickly…lucky bastards!), but they don’t speak quite as fast or use as difficult words as regular Israelis do. So while I keep my mouth shut during class or in front of older, native Israelis, with the little immigrant kids in this building I don’t ever want to shut up in Hebrew. One of the little girls decided that we’re friends, so whenever she sees me she gets all excited and says that she hasn’t seen me in so long, and I feel like I’m the coolest person on the planet. And I get to ask her questions about school or crack jokes or whatever—IN HEBREW! And every time I see another little girl, who lives at the bottom of the first flight of stairs I have to walk down every morning, she smiles and then runs to try to block my way on the stairs. We’ve made a little game of me trying to outsmart her or outmaneuver her in a different way every time.

Every time that I see signs that one of the kids in my building has adapted to Israeliness, either by saying something in Hebrew or by making the “wait” gesture or by whatever, I get so proud of them, and a little bit jealous because I think that maybe in the very near future they’ll blend right in with their native Israeli classmates and you’ll never be able to tell that they hadn’t been born here.

It must suck for their parents though. I mean, at some point the native language of their children is going to switch to Hebrew. Yeah, they’ll still understand English or Farsi or Russian or whatever they came to Israel speaking, but the language they think in and feel most comfortable in and all that is going to be Hebrew eventually, since these kids are so young. I don’t know, it must be weird to have your kid be a mini-you who talks just like you for the first five or so years of their life, and then after a couple years in Israel linguistically you’re so different from your kid. Like, when you came to Israel your little girl spoke with English with the, say, Australian accent that you both have, but then over time your little girl starts speaking English with a slight Israeli accent—not a strong one, not like what most Israelis have when they speak English, but an accent nonetheless. And then meanwhile you’re still speaking both English AND Hebrew with an Australian accent. I don’t know, maybe whoever is reading this will think I’m making a bigger deal out of this than it has to be, but I just feel like it’d be very alienating, you know, the idea of your own kid having a foreign accent.

Some bus tickets and an eye test.

Yayyyyyyy! I got a letter from the army enlistment place! All it says is that I need to come in for an eye test (which, as you might remember, I already knew I had to do), but I feel like a badass all the same.



I can’t wait to use the bus tickets they gave me. I feel like making a huge display of handing the tickets over to the driver when I get on the bus, and then giving a haughty laugh to everyone else on the bus, and saying in a posh British accent, “Oh yes, that’s right, the army (ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-me) is paying for my fare.”

Knowing my luck however, I can already imagine how the scene is going to actually play out: I hand the driver the tickets, he tells me he doesn’t recognize them, then I have to say that I’m going to the lishkat giyus, an argument ensues, and in the end I end up paying full bus fare out of my pocket.


As usual though, I got loads of sympathy from the girls in my class, the majority of whom are orthodox. “You poor dear!” says the English girl who is married, yet only a couple years older than me. “I’d be so upset if I had to do the army for two years!”

No, I try to explain, I’m actually kind of excited. My concerns at the moment are only 1) telling my parents and 2) that the army will be like, “Actually, we decided we don’t want you.” (Well, then I’m also afraid that everyone in my unit or whatever the correct army term is will think I’m retarded because I can’t speak Hebrew well enough. I can just imagine it now: being surrounded by a bunch of Israelis talking to me in loud, deliberate voices, saying things like, “DO. YOU. NEED. TO. GO. TOILET? ARE. YOU. SURE?”)

Another girl in a long skirt from some accented English country (South Africa? Australia? Beats me….) asks me, “Ah, so you are volunteering?”

Well, no….when I did all the army tests when I was here on a tourist visa, I was a volunteer. But now I actually don’t have a choice because I’m a citizen.

Panic then ensued among the orthodox girls.

Girl in skirt: “Are they going to make ME enlist now that I’m a citizen too???”
Me: “No, cause you’re married.”
Different girl in different skirt: “WHAT ABOUT ME?! I’M NOT MARRIED!!!!!!!”
Me: “No, cause you’re 28.”

Frankly I’m not sure I see what the big deal is, I mean for girls at least. They ain’t sendin us girls to Gaza anytime soon. Unless I’m terribly mistaken, I’ll most likely be working behind a desk somewhere. Granted, the army doesn’t sound like the equivalent of going to Disneyland every single day, but I can’t imagine that it’s as horrible, soul-destroying and panic-worthy as these orthodox girls are making it sound. I’m actually starting to get a little anxious because I keep thinking, “Wait, is there something I’m missing?” But for the most part I think the pros of doing the army far outweigh the cons, especially for immigrants.

If an Israeli were reading this (Abraham, if you were Israeli I’d totally put a “Hey Abraham!” here…..because unfortunately I don’t have an Israeli equivalent of you for this blog), maybe they’d tell me that I’m actually horribly misled, and that the army is actually the most horrible part of your life and it’s like pure torture, like getting your fingernails ripped out on a daily basis or something. Whatevs. I guess I’ll find out for myself sometime in the future anyway, or (if my fears of the army telling me that they no longer want me are realized) maybe I never will find out. No use getting worked up over it anyway, since it’s not like I have much of a choice at this point.