They're sooooo Jewish, but don't let that bother you.

Just had an eventful couple of minutes. Within a few seconds of writing the last post, I went to get my dogs ready to take them on a short walk. I bent down to give of the dogs a pat on the head, and she jumped up to lick my face--and ended up smacking her head against my nose. Which opened up the floodgates. I had blood simply pouring out of my nose and onto my shirt, pure chaos. So I quickly changed my shirt and shoved toilet paper up my nose, and then took the dogs out again.

So I get outside, toilet paper still up my nose, and I see a neighbor across the street. She hasn't seen me since I left in April, and she's known me since I was 5 (when I moved to this neighborhood), and she's a chitchatty grandma-type so I know she's going to try to talk to me. I quickly pull the toilet paper out of my nose (my nose stopped bleeding by this point) and waited for her.

She's pretty anti-zionist, so she was against me going to Israel at all. (Actually, there's a couple people who have known me since I was a baby who are shunning me because I went to Israel.) But she comes up to me and starts talking about what a shit place Israel is, in a tone that suggests that we are in total agreement. And I said that just the kibbutz was bad, but Israel itself is a wonderful place.

We start talking about me going back to school next week, and she makes a reference to this family her family knows in Chicago. I've already heard a lot about this family. I've been instructed by basically everyone to call this family once I get back to Chicago since they're Jewish and we can do Shabbat and shit like that.

So this woman starts talking about this family, and it's clear she doesn't think too highly of them. She's like, "Oh, they're this, and they're that, and blah blah blah." And after going on and on and on about all their bizarre traits, though she points out that they're nice people, finally she goes, "And they're sooooo Jewish, but don't let that bother you." She continues talking for a second or so, but then she quickly realizes that she said something a little bit crappy about Jews. In front of a Jew. So she stopped very abruptly and there was this horrible, awkward silence.

So I cleared my throat and said in the friendliest voice I could muster, "Yeah, I was just in Israel for five months...so.......I don't think I'm gonna be bothered by other Jews' Jewishness....."

There was another uncomfortable silence, and then we started talking in a friendly way, like nothing happened, about school and life and blahblahblah. The conversation ended with, "See you at Christmas!" (I've spent every Christmas Eve at that family's house except for last year when I was in Israel, and every Christmas morning I go across the street and my friend shows me what she got.) And we parted ways.

I understand that in the grand scheme of things, this is hardly a big deal. And I understand that when your'e an old lady, you don't always censor yourself, and I don't think she really meant it in a bad way, but jeeez.....it made me feel so weird.
It just made me feel like shit. I mean, I basically grew up at this woman's house. She lives with her daughter and daughter's kids, and I went to school with the kids. I had dinner more times with this family than I did with my own. I spent weekends at this house, I went on trips with them, I named two of their four dogs.... I don't know. It just makes me feel weird. It makes me really want to hurry back to Israel.