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.