ISRAEL VS GREECE TONIGHT!
WOOOOOORD!
9.03-- Just saw the empty reserved seat for Gilad Shalit and my heart just broke a little bit.
9.04-- We're both blue and white...who the hell is who??
9.06-- still have no idea which color we are and am too embarrassed to ask the Russians I'm surrounded by. Tried looking at players' appearances for clues, but apparently everyone looks Mediterranean.
9.07-- WE'RE BLUE.
9.09-- I just got really depressed because I realized that even if Israel does make it to the World Cup 2010 (this game is a qualifier), I won't be able to go to South Africa as I had planned (college graduation trip) because I'll be in the army.
9.13-- Apparently one of the player's name is something like "Dudu" followed by some last name that sounded like "Wawa" or some crazy shit like that. I started laughing, and this guy says to me in Hebrew, "What's funny?" And I said that the name "Dudu" is funny, and he said, "No it's not."
Oh yes it is!!!
(Also, I'm five years old.)
9.27-- Dear Residents of this building: I hope you're comfortable standing outside the gates in the cold, because the guard is sitting in this room watching TV and is ignoring your buzzing to be let in.
9.58-- Halftime. There's a commercial with people just singing the letter "Y." How do I know it's "Y" and not "Why?" ? Because there are subtitles.
Also, the best part about the goal that Greece scored? Every single immigrant in the room (that's everyone in the room!) screamed the equivalent of "Ah hell no!" or "Shit!" or "Noooo!" in their native tongue.
10.16-- GOOOOAAAAAAALLLLLL!!!!
the guy who scored put his hand up gesturing "One!" Does that mean that's his first goal? Or that Israel is number one? Or that G-d is one?
(The other day I was wearing a shirt that said "ONE" on the front, and the N looked a bit like an alef. And some American religious tourist asked me if it was a reference to the Shema, and I didn't have the heart to tell them that it was actually just a promotional t-shirt for my university's football program.)
10.22-- Just dawned on me that I can read newspapers in Hebrew and know some pretty high and mighty words and grammar...but I have no fucking clue what the people in the stands are chanting in Hebrew. "Israel...SOMETHING!" but the something is one syllable. is that it?
10.37-- Someone's down. I believe it's Yossi Benayoun. Oh fuck, they're bringing out the stretcher? Where is that magic spray that you always see at sporting games? You know, where there's a guy writhing in agny on the field and then the medical team runs out, sprays the guy (usually in the groin area), and then the guy magically recovers? Ahhhh fuck, he's now off the field in a stretcher.
10.47-- Sometimes I really don't understand this country. I don't understand how we can win a goddamn war in 6 days, yet we have trouble winning soccer game.
10.54-- Have you ever noticed how soccer resembles ping pong? Not as much as basketball, but....yeah....
10.55-- Annnnnd....it's over. That's it. 1-1. Real fucking exciting.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Whine Whine Whine
Mopey Reflections from Last Night
Last night I ended up pacing my room for a solid hour wondering if I’m normal. My conclusion? No.
You know what life feels like? Maybe this will be a weird metaphor, but stay with me.
Life feels like my oldest brother’s Bar Mitzvah party.
I remember being 8 years old, in some uncomfortable party dress, in some uncomfortable fancy hair-do that keeps pulling at my scalp, without my glasses, wearing wearing-inducing tights, surrounded by old and strange-smelling relatives that I’ve never met who keep trying to hug me but can’t remember my name….and then when I feel like I can’t get any more uncomfortable, all the adults start doing The Electric Slide, which I had never even heard of before, and they all try to drag me into it.
Basically what I’m saying is that my life on a regular basis feels like that experience all those years ago, that experience of feeling so uncomfortable and out of place and foreign and frightened of people that you just want to go lock yourself in your room and hide underneath your bed.
You’ll notice that in the last paragraph I used the word “foreign.” I feel like I have to clarify that this foreignness has absolutely nothing to do with being an immigrant. Let me make this absolutely clear: Yes, I feel like a foreigner in Israel, but I also feel like a foreigner in the neighborhood of Los Angeles that I lived in full-time from birth until I was 18. It has nothing to do with nationality or religion or whatever. I’m just a weirdo.
Also, I feel like the Phantom of the Opera. In two senses. In one sense, I feel like some masked loner/weirdo. And in another sense, I feel like the production itself of “The Phantom of the Opera”—overly-dramatic, obnoxious, and embarrassingly bad.
Oh G-d. It just dawned on me that it’s Friday evening and instead hanging around after Shabbos dinner to socialize with people, I actually chose to come upstairs to my room to listen to show tunes by myself. As I write this, I am listening to the score of South Pacific.
Oh G-d, I’m embarrassed by what a dweeb I am.
I’m thinking of just no longer opening my mouth around people because every single time I get a reaction from someone on something I’ve said (except when it’s just a straightforward exchange of information) it just makes me feel more alienated.
Last night I ended up pacing my room for a solid hour wondering if I’m normal. My conclusion? No.
You know what life feels like? Maybe this will be a weird metaphor, but stay with me.
Life feels like my oldest brother’s Bar Mitzvah party.
I remember being 8 years old, in some uncomfortable party dress, in some uncomfortable fancy hair-do that keeps pulling at my scalp, without my glasses, wearing wearing-inducing tights, surrounded by old and strange-smelling relatives that I’ve never met who keep trying to hug me but can’t remember my name….and then when I feel like I can’t get any more uncomfortable, all the adults start doing The Electric Slide, which I had never even heard of before, and they all try to drag me into it.
Basically what I’m saying is that my life on a regular basis feels like that experience all those years ago, that experience of feeling so uncomfortable and out of place and foreign and frightened of people that you just want to go lock yourself in your room and hide underneath your bed.
You’ll notice that in the last paragraph I used the word “foreign.” I feel like I have to clarify that this foreignness has absolutely nothing to do with being an immigrant. Let me make this absolutely clear: Yes, I feel like a foreigner in Israel, but I also feel like a foreigner in the neighborhood of Los Angeles that I lived in full-time from birth until I was 18. It has nothing to do with nationality or religion or whatever. I’m just a weirdo.
Also, I feel like the Phantom of the Opera. In two senses. In one sense, I feel like some masked loner/weirdo. And in another sense, I feel like the production itself of “The Phantom of the Opera”—overly-dramatic, obnoxious, and embarrassingly bad.
Oh G-d. It just dawned on me that it’s Friday evening and instead hanging around after Shabbos dinner to socialize with people, I actually chose to come upstairs to my room to listen to show tunes by myself. As I write this, I am listening to the score of South Pacific.
Oh G-d, I’m embarrassed by what a dweeb I am.
I’m thinking of just no longer opening my mouth around people because every single time I get a reaction from someone on something I’ve said (except when it’s just a straightforward exchange of information) it just makes me feel more alienated.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Jews In Space
First of all, let me say that it’s so cold that I’m considering snuggling up to my computer for warmth.
Okay, moving on.
Well folks, Passover is approaching here in Israel. And everywhere in the world, for that matter. Already the supermarkets have removed the normal cereal from their shelves and have replaced it with kosher for Passover products. Yesterday I tried to get Cheerios since I was out, and instead found that all the boxes of cereal had simply vanished. At first it didn’t dawn on me that this was because of Passover, so I had this very sad and desperate search through the supermarket thinking that some kind of horrible trick was being played on me. And today….I can’t even say it……today….
….today I didn’t have breakfast.
As I’ve mentioned on this blog, I consider breakfast to be not only the most important part of my day, but my favorite part. I used to lecture my Australian roommate on why she needs to eat breakfast. When I (G-d willing!) have children of my own (All named Hank Avi Rumpelstiltskin III), family dinner will be optional, but family breakfast will be compulsory. This is just how I feel about breakfast.
Anyway, so today I walked up to a mini market to see if they had Cheerios. I was thrilled to find that they have cereal in general, though not Cheerios. But then I saw the words “KOSHER FOR PASSOVER!” on the boxes in Hebrew, which made me think, “What the hell is kosher for Passover cereal?” Is that like matza crumbs that you put in a bowl of milk?
So I ended up getting this piece of shit cereal and walking back to the apartment. In the apartment I’m confronted by my roommate who starts talking about how we have to get rid of all our bread products and how we have to sell xyz to Christians over Passover and blablablah halakha. She pointed to my newly purchased box of kosher for Passover cereal and said I had to finish it before Passover or we would have to sell it. Knowing how much I like cereal, that shouldn’t be a problem. Actually, making it last through the weekend is a more likely problem. But anyway, I said, “Oh no, don’t worry, it’s kosher for Passover,” pointing at the label on the box. She then said that because it was open before Passover when we still have bread in the house, it was now NOT kosher for Passover so we can’t have it in the house during Passover.
I don’t know…times like this, I feel like how I imagine my dad must feel all the time, who since 1980 (when my parents married) has been living among people of a bizarre and different religion, and he has to keep a straight face and pretend that it’s not all a load of total bullshit.
Obviously though I don’t want my roommate to feel like she’s breaking any religious rules, and I don’t want her to be ill at ease in our apartment, so obviously I’ll cooperate to the best of my ability.
All lot of this though is, unfortunately, a foreign topic for me. The idea of selling or burning hametz was completely unknown to me until I got to college. In my family, if we felt like keeping Passover that year, we simply didn’t eat the cereal in the pantry. It never occurred to us to sell it or get rid of it, which would be a ridiculous waste of time. My family is a pretty logical and practical family, so our response to someone telling us that we HAVE to sell our non-kosher cereal (as my Jewish brother will probably do this year…) because we can’t eat bread products over Passover would be something like, “How come we can’t just…oh, I don’t know…not eat it?”
And of course, we didn’t always avoid bread on Passover. And during the random years that we kept Passover, I clearly remember eating a ham and cheese sandwich on matza, so obviously you can see how Jewish my family is…
Sometimes though when I hear about Jewish law and about how one lives Jewishly, I feel almost like how I felt when I went to Catholic mass on Christmas Eve in downtown LA, which can only be described as like watching particularly amusing and bizarrely-dressed extraterrestrials moving a large candle around a table. Except when it’s Jewish law instead of a Catholic mass, there’s no Christmas music and it’s a bit like if at the end the extraterrestrials were to tell you that you’re one of them.
Sigh….this is the part where, if I were at home, my dad and I would shake our heads and exchange knowing looks, and he’d sing (either loudly or under his breath, depending on the situation), “TRADITIOOOOOOOON!”
.....
Okay, moving on.
Well folks, Passover is approaching here in Israel. And everywhere in the world, for that matter. Already the supermarkets have removed the normal cereal from their shelves and have replaced it with kosher for Passover products. Yesterday I tried to get Cheerios since I was out, and instead found that all the boxes of cereal had simply vanished. At first it didn’t dawn on me that this was because of Passover, so I had this very sad and desperate search through the supermarket thinking that some kind of horrible trick was being played on me. And today….I can’t even say it……today….
….today I didn’t have breakfast.
As I’ve mentioned on this blog, I consider breakfast to be not only the most important part of my day, but my favorite part. I used to lecture my Australian roommate on why she needs to eat breakfast. When I (G-d willing!) have children of my own (All named Hank Avi Rumpelstiltskin III), family dinner will be optional, but family breakfast will be compulsory. This is just how I feel about breakfast.
Anyway, so today I walked up to a mini market to see if they had Cheerios. I was thrilled to find that they have cereal in general, though not Cheerios. But then I saw the words “KOSHER FOR PASSOVER!” on the boxes in Hebrew, which made me think, “What the hell is kosher for Passover cereal?” Is that like matza crumbs that you put in a bowl of milk?
So I ended up getting this piece of shit cereal and walking back to the apartment. In the apartment I’m confronted by my roommate who starts talking about how we have to get rid of all our bread products and how we have to sell xyz to Christians over Passover and blablablah halakha. She pointed to my newly purchased box of kosher for Passover cereal and said I had to finish it before Passover or we would have to sell it. Knowing how much I like cereal, that shouldn’t be a problem. Actually, making it last through the weekend is a more likely problem. But anyway, I said, “Oh no, don’t worry, it’s kosher for Passover,” pointing at the label on the box. She then said that because it was open before Passover when we still have bread in the house, it was now NOT kosher for Passover so we can’t have it in the house during Passover.
I don’t know…times like this, I feel like how I imagine my dad must feel all the time, who since 1980 (when my parents married) has been living among people of a bizarre and different religion, and he has to keep a straight face and pretend that it’s not all a load of total bullshit.
Obviously though I don’t want my roommate to feel like she’s breaking any religious rules, and I don’t want her to be ill at ease in our apartment, so obviously I’ll cooperate to the best of my ability.
All lot of this though is, unfortunately, a foreign topic for me. The idea of selling or burning hametz was completely unknown to me until I got to college. In my family, if we felt like keeping Passover that year, we simply didn’t eat the cereal in the pantry. It never occurred to us to sell it or get rid of it, which would be a ridiculous waste of time. My family is a pretty logical and practical family, so our response to someone telling us that we HAVE to sell our non-kosher cereal (as my Jewish brother will probably do this year…) because we can’t eat bread products over Passover would be something like, “How come we can’t just…oh, I don’t know…not eat it?”
And of course, we didn’t always avoid bread on Passover. And during the random years that we kept Passover, I clearly remember eating a ham and cheese sandwich on matza, so obviously you can see how Jewish my family is…
Sometimes though when I hear about Jewish law and about how one lives Jewishly, I feel almost like how I felt when I went to Catholic mass on Christmas Eve in downtown LA, which can only be described as like watching particularly amusing and bizarrely-dressed extraterrestrials moving a large candle around a table. Except when it’s Jewish law instead of a Catholic mass, there’s no Christmas music and it’s a bit like if at the end the extraterrestrials were to tell you that you’re one of them.
Sigh….this is the part where, if I were at home, my dad and I would shake our heads and exchange knowing looks, and he’d sing (either loudly or under his breath, depending on the situation), “TRADITIOOOOOOOON!”
.....
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
draft evasion and relatives and more
Well, finally. I finally have a piece of paper from the army that says, “You’ll be one of us come this July.”
Okay, so the letter was a little more official sounding than that.
To put it mildly, I’m pretty fucking excited. Only 4 more months of having to pay for bus fare, bitches!
I also though have to admit that now I know I’m going to have issues with certain patriotic family members (not immediate family), or certain friends with anti-Zionist tendencies…and it’s kind of upsetting. Also I think of all the “American Appreciation Day” concerts we did in elementary school, and I imagine my kindergarten teacher grabbing my red, white and blue-clad kindergarten self and yelling, “ARE THE SONGS YOU ARE SINGING AT AGE FIVE ALL LIES???” I can imagine an angry Toby Keith writing a song about me, or someone else like me who is joining a foreign army, and the song would be more aggressive than his post-9/11 “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue.”
Also, at some point in the army induction process I believe there is some kind of loyalty-swearing ceremony…and it’ll be weird to pledge loyalty to a country other than the US after going to an elementary school that had us regularly recite the Pledge of Allegiance. My Christian grandparents, both of whom worked for the US government in some sort of security role, would probably be appalled.
But again, let me emphasize that I’m excited. I’m happy that I’m going to be in a Jewish army—what a foreign notion! This is genuinely something I WANT to do. All I’m saying is that I know it’s going to permanently complicate my relationship with the U.S, or maybe just complicate how some people in the US will perceive my relationship with it.
On a completely positive note….I am so looking forward to putting in an alumni note the next time my high school prints the alumni magazine. Most people from my year will put in something like, “This year Amy graduated with honors from Extremely Difficult College A YEAR EARLY!” or “Charles is having a great time at University of Prestige and hopes to apply to law school.” Or “Kathleen is currently spending a year abroad in Canada, having a great time!!!”
And then they’ll put in my name. “This year Sam dropped out of college (for the second time), acquired foreign citizenship, became proficient in a foreign language, and got drafted into a foreign army. Sure, she may have been the nerd playing around with theater lights back in high school, but nowadays she walks around Jerusalem with an assault rifle and can kick any football player’s ass.”
(Okay, so the chances of me ever carrying an assault rifle around town and being able to kick anyone’s ass are extremely slim…but a girl can dream/exaggerate, can’t she?)
After writing what you’ve already read, I’ve received a facebook wall post from an older relative. I’m not really sure what people older than my parents are doing on facebook (and actually can’t even imagine what my parents would be doing on facebook), but that’s a whole ‘nother story. Anyway, this person who does not know me very well at all, maybe sees me twice a year, had the nerve to comment negatively on my upcoming draft, and she encouraged me to try to get out of it. She has no problem with me staying in Israel, but just doesn’t agree with the army commitment.
Which kind of disgusts me. Trying to argue my way out of getting drafted strikes me as kind of…elitist. That somehow mandatory army enlistment is fitting for everyone else except for me, that I’m too good for it. What’s especially frustrating is that this person is so liberal, constantly ranting against what she perceives as elitism, and yet here she is suggesting that I do something extremely elitist. Her argument is that I’m a “free-thinker” or whatever, and that it’ll be tough for me to be in an environment where I’m constantly told what to do. Therefore I should try to weasel my way out of getting drafted. She’s right, I don’t like being told what to do.
But does ANYONE in Israel like being told what to do? And for that matter, does anyone in the world like being told what to do? Am I somehow more of a rebel/free-thinker than every single person who has ever served in the IDF that I should argue to be exempted from service because of my “unique” preference to do what I please?
Yeah, I’m excited about the army because I’ll improve in Hebrew and I’ll (hopefully!) make friends, and do something kind of weird/different with my life, but all that stuff aside, I feel like I HAVE to do the army just so I can look at myself in the mirror…..I don’t know if I could feel comfortable living in a country where almost EVERYONE else had to do the army for two/three years, whereas I waltzed in and bitched my way out of it. Especially since the state gives new immigrants like me so much.
See, I see the army as kind of a bizarre form of tax. It’s a necessary price Jews in Israel have to pay for living in a protected Jewish State, only this tax is paid in time rather than money. So for me to say that I don’t want to do the army is kind of like saying, “I don’t want to pay taxes, but I still want to reap all the benefits of taxes. So I’ll just let everyone else pay taxes.”
And, well, frankly only a total shithead would do that.
Okay, so the letter was a little more official sounding than that.
To put it mildly, I’m pretty fucking excited. Only 4 more months of having to pay for bus fare, bitches!
I also though have to admit that now I know I’m going to have issues with certain patriotic family members (not immediate family), or certain friends with anti-Zionist tendencies…and it’s kind of upsetting. Also I think of all the “American Appreciation Day” concerts we did in elementary school, and I imagine my kindergarten teacher grabbing my red, white and blue-clad kindergarten self and yelling, “ARE THE SONGS YOU ARE SINGING AT AGE FIVE ALL LIES???” I can imagine an angry Toby Keith writing a song about me, or someone else like me who is joining a foreign army, and the song would be more aggressive than his post-9/11 “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue.”
Also, at some point in the army induction process I believe there is some kind of loyalty-swearing ceremony…and it’ll be weird to pledge loyalty to a country other than the US after going to an elementary school that had us regularly recite the Pledge of Allegiance. My Christian grandparents, both of whom worked for the US government in some sort of security role, would probably be appalled.
But again, let me emphasize that I’m excited. I’m happy that I’m going to be in a Jewish army—what a foreign notion! This is genuinely something I WANT to do. All I’m saying is that I know it’s going to permanently complicate my relationship with the U.S, or maybe just complicate how some people in the US will perceive my relationship with it.
On a completely positive note….I am so looking forward to putting in an alumni note the next time my high school prints the alumni magazine. Most people from my year will put in something like, “This year Amy graduated with honors from Extremely Difficult College A YEAR EARLY!” or “Charles is having a great time at University of Prestige and hopes to apply to law school.” Or “Kathleen is currently spending a year abroad in Canada, having a great time!!!”
And then they’ll put in my name. “This year Sam dropped out of college (for the second time), acquired foreign citizenship, became proficient in a foreign language, and got drafted into a foreign army. Sure, she may have been the nerd playing around with theater lights back in high school, but nowadays she walks around Jerusalem with an assault rifle and can kick any football player’s ass.”
(Okay, so the chances of me ever carrying an assault rifle around town and being able to kick anyone’s ass are extremely slim…but a girl can dream/exaggerate, can’t she?)
After writing what you’ve already read, I’ve received a facebook wall post from an older relative. I’m not really sure what people older than my parents are doing on facebook (and actually can’t even imagine what my parents would be doing on facebook), but that’s a whole ‘nother story. Anyway, this person who does not know me very well at all, maybe sees me twice a year, had the nerve to comment negatively on my upcoming draft, and she encouraged me to try to get out of it. She has no problem with me staying in Israel, but just doesn’t agree with the army commitment.
Which kind of disgusts me. Trying to argue my way out of getting drafted strikes me as kind of…elitist. That somehow mandatory army enlistment is fitting for everyone else except for me, that I’m too good for it. What’s especially frustrating is that this person is so liberal, constantly ranting against what she perceives as elitism, and yet here she is suggesting that I do something extremely elitist. Her argument is that I’m a “free-thinker” or whatever, and that it’ll be tough for me to be in an environment where I’m constantly told what to do. Therefore I should try to weasel my way out of getting drafted. She’s right, I don’t like being told what to do.
But does ANYONE in Israel like being told what to do? And for that matter, does anyone in the world like being told what to do? Am I somehow more of a rebel/free-thinker than every single person who has ever served in the IDF that I should argue to be exempted from service because of my “unique” preference to do what I please?
Yeah, I’m excited about the army because I’ll improve in Hebrew and I’ll (hopefully!) make friends, and do something kind of weird/different with my life, but all that stuff aside, I feel like I HAVE to do the army just so I can look at myself in the mirror…..I don’t know if I could feel comfortable living in a country where almost EVERYONE else had to do the army for two/three years, whereas I waltzed in and bitched my way out of it. Especially since the state gives new immigrants like me so much.
See, I see the army as kind of a bizarre form of tax. It’s a necessary price Jews in Israel have to pay for living in a protected Jewish State, only this tax is paid in time rather than money. So for me to say that I don’t want to do the army is kind of like saying, “I don’t want to pay taxes, but I still want to reap all the benefits of taxes. So I’ll just let everyone else pay taxes.”
And, well, frankly only a total shithead would do that.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
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