Shabbat in Tel Aviv

Erev Shabbat in Tel Aviv, and what did I choose to do? Go sit by the beach? Go to services? Um. No. How did I mark the weekly holiday that is said to have kept the Jews? On Shabbat here in Israel, I chose to watch a delayed showing of “American Idol.” No, I don’t mean Israel’s version of American Idol (Cochav Nolad, I think it’s called), which would have been slightly excusable. I mean literally “American Idol.” With Ryan Seacrest. With Simon, Paula and Randy. Now, before you criticize me, just consider that I’m all alone in a foreign country, 5000 miles from my nearest relative or friend and 8000 miles from my parents, and well, I found the familiarity of Paula Abdul’s drunkenness to be comforting. So forgive me. But it was awesome because there were no commercials since it was not live. Oh Americans, you don’t know how much it’s worth to not have to watch all those commercials, even if it means you can’t vote for your favorite singer.

Last night I had a dream in Hebrew (or at least my sub-conscious interpretation of Hebrew). Basically it was a bunch of people yelling at me in Hebrew that I didn’t understand. So pretty much it was the most realistic dream I’ve ever had.

I also want to say something I love about Hebrew. I love that for many, if not most, verb forms, you reference either your own masculinity or femininity or your addressee’s masculinity or femininity. It’s kind of exciting. It’s not like English where the only gender speaking issues are saying She rather than He. But even then, we don’t use a different form for a verb following She. So good job, Hebrew!
Sometimes when I can actually understand the conversation enough to be able to pick verbs out, I like to translate words in a way that would express the same kind of thing in English. Examples? For “ani lo mevin” I decided we should say, “I, a man, don’t understand!” For “ani lo mevinah” we should say, “I, a woman, don’t understand!” It’s kind of a very Ms. Bali-way of translating, where you get almost the exact meaning but end up with something kind of ridiculous and unnatural in English. It was kind of like when we were translating “The Aeneid” and we had to keep using the word “to gird” even though none of us had heard that word before, and each time we had to translate ablative absolutes as “the blank having been blanked”….which my brother now actually does in his spoken English, thanks to Latin class. (For those of you who don’t know Ms. Bali, 1) I pity you and 2) she was my Latin teacher of 5 years in high school.)

Oh Jesus! I just saw Mickey Mouse in Hebrew! His voice is even creepier and more pedophile like in Hebrew! Gaaaaa!!! Thank goodness, Donald Duck is still incomprehensible.