The 700 Club

I just had the saddest experience ever: I just sat down in the hotel lobby to load this post onto the blog when I saw that tonight’s Shabbat entertainment was setting up. “Holy shit!” I thought to myself. “Holy shit! I look just like the band members! Finally I’ve found some Israelis that I actually resemble!”

Um…..so it turns out they’re Irish. Not Israeli. Ummmmmmm…..

I just smelled the cleaning solution that they use in some hotels here, and it reminded me of Israel. Like, how I actually LIKE Israel. I associate this smell with my first night in Israel because we got to the hotel and that’s what it smelled like. So now whenever I smell this smell, as I do from time to time, I feel a little bit better and I feel happier to be here.

Sorry about the ridiculousness of some of the parts of my last post. Well, EVERYTHING I write is ridiculous.

What I mean is this: I just woke up from a long nap, but before I fell asleep I was watching TV. And I was watching some show in Hebrew…and I realized, Holy fuck I actually understand this! Well, of course not everything, but it was enough to be a huge confidence booster. I mean, before I got in bed to take a nap, I was researching options for what I could do if I were to go back to the U.S. And now that I’ve woken up I feel a lot more confident about this whole being in Israel thing.

I think I just have to accept that it’s going to be total shit at times having to deal with paperwork/Misrad Hapnim, and it’s going to be shit that I’ll probably be mistaken for a tourist well after I’ve become fluent in Hebrew (I KNOW that one day I’ll be fluent in Hebrew….just that today is not that day) and well after I finally get my oleh certificate/teudat zehut/whatever whatever. And it’s going to be shit not having any family here, and whatever. I accept that there’s a lot of shit ahead of me. But you know, I’m feeling a lot like my usual hopeful self. I don’t think it’s ridiculously hopeful of me to say that all these things can only get better. One day I’ll get my paperwork done. I don’t know when, but one day it’ll happen. One day I’ll be mistaken for a tourist less, and if someone tries to speak to me in English immediately, one day I’ll be able to respond with something witty or sarcastic in perfect Hebrew. One day I’ll be a little more comfortable with the fact that I have no family here—I’ll never get used to it, because sometimes no matter how old you are you just want your mom, but I know one day I’ll just come to terms with it and won’t feel as bad because hopefully I’ll eventually have a nice base of close friends.

So far what has happened supports that belief: I have gotten used to things that I didn’t think I would get used to. For one thing, the Muslim crooning doesn’t scare me anymore. I know how to use the buses now, and I know to wait for my odef and to wait for my ticket. And having to get a ticket doesn’t piss me off anymore like it used to. And heck, the other day I was on a bus and I was like, “Wow, I haven’t thought of buses blowing up in a really long time.” Which I realize is kind of a sick thing to be thinking about, but I mean, let’s face it….it’s definitely something I used to think about a lot, and I’m definitely not the only person who’s thought about it. The other day we cleaned our floor in the Israeli style, and I actually sort of knew what I was doing this time.

Of course there’s pudding at breakfast! Of course I hear the name Avi everywhere! Fine, I’ll buy my Aspirin at the pharmacy instead of just at some random little minimart, and fine, there’s an 18 year old with an enormous gun sitting next to me on the bus. Yes, I have to wait for-fucking-ever at the bank, and yes, on the average day off the kibbutz I have to go through a metal detector at least a few times. Little stuff like this now seems very natural to me, and I’ve only been here for a month and a half. Things are only going to get better.

All right. I feel better right now. I feel pumped up!


I’m watching the English TV channel right now. They do an Israeli news broadcast and they use the word “moreover” like it’s going to disappear if they don’t use it every five seconds. I don’t think I’ve ever heard “moreover” on the U.S. news even once…..
Now that Shabbat is starting, the programming on the station is religious Christian. Saturday morning, if it’s anything like last Saturday morning, there’s going to be one of those Bible guys trying to get you to turn to Jesus and there’ll be some toll-free number to call. It’s kind of weird that this happens in Israel on Shabbat...
Hahahaha, the 700 Club just came on.
Oh my goodness. This is bizarrely making me feel less homesick. That show is the bane of my mother’s existence because last year my grandma had to be in the hospital, and the local hospital was a Christian hospital. So they left The 700 Club on all day on the TV in my grandma’s room, and my mother used to be like, “They’re doing this because they know my mom is Jewish!” And I’m like, “No Mom, they’re doing this because grandma’s in a CHRISTIAN hospital!” I mean, it didn’t bother her that there was a huge figure of St Jude at the door, and it didn’t bother her that they had pictures and whatnot of Jesus everywhere, like it was Laura Ashley wallpaper. No no no, according to my mom they must be intentionally putting on the 700 Club in my Jewish grandma’s room, because a place with St. Jude and Jesus everywhere definitely wouldn’t naturally put The 700 Club on in everyone’s room….

Oh, I have to rip off a story from a friend. My friend said his cousin who lives in the West Bank learned that the nearest local mosque, which was somewhere near or in Hebron, didn’t use an actual guy to call people to prayer. They used a recording on tape and just played it at given times. So my friend’s cousin (I don’t know if this is true or not, but I have no reason to not believe it) broke into the mosque with a bunch of his fellow Nachman followers and they swapped the Muslim tape with one of their own.
So at the next call to prayer, instead of the traditional Muslim calls, the mosque started BLASTING some Hasidic “Greatest Hits” tape all across the area.
Oh man….that’s fucking hilarious.