Why I fucking love this place

First of all, I’m reviving Country Music Shabbat.

Also, I have to tell you something about the enlistment center. So I was sitting at a soldier’s desk and he was trying to figure out for me if I were obligated to do service for two years, or if I were exempt because I didn’t make aliyah until I was 20 (even though I entered Israel as a tourist at 19). So he called some office, and meanwhile many of the other soldiers in the room had been watching our conversation take place, because apparently they had nothing better to do. Then the soldier gave me the answer in Hebrew: “You are obligated to do two years of service.” I thrust my hands into the air as if I had just won the Super Bowl and let out a “YES!!!!!” and every single soldier in the room that had been listening to the conversation started laughing, including the soldier who was helping me…. Hahaha…. I turned bright red and the soldier said to me in English, through his laughter, “Don’t be embarrassed, but normally people beg for exemptions and try everything to receive an exemption…you’re very refreshing though, that’s why we are laughing.”

Two years of free bus rides? HELL YES! Two years of integration into Israeli society that many immigrants do not get to experience? HELL YES! Two years of free Hebrew immersion? HELL YES! Two years of guaranteed employment? HELL YES!
Just a HELL YES to everything!

My roommate is French. I haven’t talked to her very much since she’s been gone for most of the day, but she speaks very little English. This is GREAT! I’m gonna improve my Hebrew and my French! She also seems like she’s very messy, so this is also going to be awesome for me.

I’m slightly concerned though cos last night at about 6 pm she said she was going to go shopping…a few minutes later both of us went our separate ways. At like 10 pm or so I came back, and she wasn’t there. She did not end up sleeping in our room, and as of 2 pm today she still has (at least to all appearances) not returned. I’m slightly concerned because it doesn’t look like she took any of her stuff, so I don’t think it was a planned sleepover somewhere like for Shabbat. At the same time though, maybe she had an impromptu one night stand or something (maybe I just say this cos she’s French?), so I don’t want to embarrass her by raising the alarm on her whereabouts. When do you think would be an appropriate time to speak up to someone about her disappearance? Maybe it seems paranoid to be concerned about someone’s less than 24 hour disappearance, but she DID just say that she was stepping out to do some shopping, and I feel like she would have said if she were planning to be going out and doing something, and she would have brought stuff with her….hmm…..

On a different note: Oh man. I think I’m going to love this place. I just had lunch with a girl from New York, a Frenchman, and an Italian girl. The Europeans were extremely nice, with the Italian talking in a very friendly and animated way as one would expect from an Italian. The French guy was a little more reserved, but laughed and smiled and was all-around pleasant. He was also extremely hot though, so I don’t know if that influenced my opinion or anything, hehe. The New Yorker….hahahahah, oh my goodness. Well, I’m sure I’ve written about this on my blog before, but in case you didn’t get the memo: I hate New York. I hate New Yorkers. I want to strangle people who wear “I Heart New York” shirts.

She talks like a thesis paper. Nothing is ever light or funny, everything is analytical analysis. For example, a crowd of English-speakers had gathered around the communal TV and were watching Fox News as it reported on the flight that crashed. A couple of us were saying that we were very thankful that no one died, and we were all having a laugh that birds actually downed a flight—something I thought was an urban legend, not something that could actually happen. And then out of the blue she said something about how she “doesn’t care for” TV news because it’s become overly sensationalized, to the point where it’s like a cinematic experience rather than actual journalism. Or some shit like that.

I would have forgiven it if it were a sort of angry, neurotic rant (like I do all the time), but she said it so calmly and with such a detached air that I wanted to strangle her. Don’t say you “don’t care for” something, say you hate it. Say it makes your life unbearable. FEEL something, people, FEEL it whether it’s hate or love. I used to hate those parents I knew growing up who wouldn’t let their kids say the word “hate.” Why? Because it breed boring people. I’m not saying you should hate people of different races or people of different religions, but you ARE entitled to hate things that annoy you. Now we have walking robots, like this girl. She’s not a human being giving an opinion to a group of peers, she’s a professor lecturing students.

Then at lunch she turned to the Frenchman and in a very academic way asked him about anti-Semitism in France. In her “introduction paragraph” she was sure to include examples that she had read in the newspapers. The conversation then turned into a sort of analysis of anti-semitism in the U.S. versus in Europe. I argued that there is plenty of anti-semitism in the U.S. it just isn’t (thank goodness!) as obvious as it is in Europe. And the New Yorker responded in a completely matter-of-fact way:

“Oh, well, there’s no anti-semitism in New York.”

REALLY??? REALLY??? All those millions of people, and not one of them has ever done ANYTHING against Jews? REALLY? I then said something like, “Well, I don’t know about in New York, but it can’t be too different from LA or Chicago, and we’ve had plenty of incidents there, including some wacko shooting up a Jewish center in LA.”
Her calm response?

“No, there can’t possibly be anti-semitism in LA because half of Hollywood is Jewish.”

I didn’t even know how to respond to that. Does she not know that the other half of Hollywood (as well as a huge chunk of LA’s liberal voters—which is like EVERYBODY minus my family) hates Israel and frequently by association hates the Jews? Does she also know that a lot of people resent Jews who have power? Does she also know that the Jew-run movie industry is only part of LA? This is why I hate people who talk like they know LA, because they never do. Dear East Coast People Who Have Never Even Been To LA, don’t talk to me about “Hollywood” or whatever. Why don’t you call it home for 20 years and THEN tell me about it.

Instead of getting into a nasty argument, which is really easy for me, I decided to take in a deep breath, look at the table of assembled Jews from all over the world, and say, “Ah well, that’s all behind us now anyway. We’re in Israel now!” And everyone smiled and said, “YES!”