Sarah: Does the yoghurt in your diaper feel good, or bad?
David: Bad! And babble babble Ima change diapah
Sarah: Now your Ima will give you a new diaper?
David: Yeah! Bye!
It occurs to me that cell phones and VOIP have completely changed the nature of knowledge one continues to have about one's family after one moves abroad.
Sunday, September 07, 2008
CONFLICTING FEELINGS
Last week, as part of a reporting assignment, I went on a visit to Ein Tzurim, where many families who were expelled from Gush Katif have (very temporarily) resettled, while they wait to finish getting through all the governmental red tape they need to cut in order to establish permanent new communities somewhere else.
We met with Anita Tucker, an American immigrant who lived in Gaza for many years and acted as the community’s English-language spokesperson during the pullout. She now devotes an enormous amount of time and energy to helping her fellow evacuees lead as normal lives as possible, even while they still – three years later – are living in temporary homes and suffer from mass unemployment.
I supported the pullout from Gaza, but I said all along that it’s imperative that the Israeli government treat the settlers there like kings and queens, giving them extremely generous compensation and making it as easy as possible for them to rebuild their lives.I believe, and have always believed, that they should be treated generously, for two reasons: First, because they are law-abiding, productive, patriotic citizens who moved to Gaza under the encouragement of the government, and therefore the government should treat them well when “encouraging” them to move out, and Second, because if the Gaza evacuees are not treated well –if, as is the case, the government gives them a run-around and is extremely slow to fulfill its promises to them – then the next time the State wants to encourage settlers to leave their homes, there ain’t gonna be any reason for any normal person to cooperate.
During the visit, I felt the following conflicting emotions:
1-Deep sympathy for these poor people whose lives were turned upside down, and who, at best, are living with the unsettled feeling of not knowing where one will live a year from now, or where to register one’s kids for school, or whether it’s worth it to unpack. And it’s by far not “at best” – many families are dealing with unemployment, heart attacks, divorce, pediatric psychological problems, etc because of all the stress.
2-Deep anger at the government for not doing whatever it takes to help them turn their lives right side up again, as quickly as possible.
3-Anger at Jewish media abroad, who are not adequately publicizing the ongoing struggles of the Gaza evacuees. I “get” why the general media doesn’t give a damn – it’s wrong that they don’t, but there it is – but these people have been abandoned by Jewish media as well. A friend of mine who is trying to publicize the situation was told by the editor of a Jewish paper in the States “the Gaza evacuees are just not on the agenda of the American Jewish community. It is not on our radar, and it will not get onto our radar.” Well, why the hell not?
4-Anger and frustration at two other people in our group (not settlers, visitors), who compared the Israeli government to the Nazis and the Gaza evacuees to Holocaust survivors. Not the same thing, people. Not. The. Same. One said “here it’s worse because they were betrayed by their own people.” Betrayed, yes. But for all that they are terribly unsettled and have not been given what they were promised, they are still living in air-conditioned caravillas and have food, education, and a playground that was donated by other Jews. They are NOT refugees, they are displaced people. Not good, but Not. The. Same. Let us not play the Nazi card, people, because that is just so wrong.
5-Frustration with Anita Tucker for suggesting that newspaper editors the world over are essentially being bribed by PR companies to bury the story of the Gaza evacuees. I tried explaining that the most wide-spread flaw of journalists is not that they are unethical, it is that they are lazy. Not good, but Not. The. Same. Also, it is ludicrous to suggest (as she did)that the government of Israel makes it “difficult” for newspapers here to criticize the government. Israel has one of the most free, robust press machineries in the world. There are few countries where so many newspapers not only can but do criticize their own government with as much vitriol as the Israeli ones do every day. Even international media watchdog groups that criticize Israel for blocking media access to the disputed territories freely admit that when it comes to criticizing the government, few can match the Israeli press. This isn’t China. Though the government, PR companies, and the media have a tense and somewhat symbiotic relationship in many ways, if anyone is “controlling” media and burying stories it is not the government here or in America, or the big PR companies, but the advertisers, and by extension, the readers. The Gaza story is buried because editors, for whatever reason, think that readers don’t want to hear it. Perhaps they are out of touch, perhaps they underestimate how many of their readers care, perhaps they are too lazy to find out – all of which is ridiculous, unprofessional, and leading to lackluster journalism, but it’s not unethical.
6-Frustration at not feeling free to voice some of my opinions about the settler movement because I felt outnumbered and because I was there to observe, not as much to participate. And because, given the lack of time I would have had to explain my thoughts properly, they would have been misunderstood. Just as many people on the Left assume erroneously that if you support the settler movement, you must hate Arabs, so too many people on the Right assume erroneously that if you have a nuanced and challenging stance on the settler movement, you must hate settlers, or be a self-hating Jew, or be naïve about what Arabs really want. ::sigh:: Usually, it’s not worth it to get into it. I let people talk and don’t say much when I think they are wrong (either way), because I’m just so tired of it.
Do you see how different numbers 1, 2, and 3 are from 4-6?
It was a tiring day.
Caring about Israel is just so exhausting, sometimes.
*** UPDATE: The comments to this post are fascinating and enlightening on many levels. After 77 comments, I'm asking (in comment 78) that we close this thread. Please do not add any more comments to this post. Thank you.***
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Yay, She's Back!
My roommate was in the States for three weeks, enjoying a family vacation in the British Virgin Islands, poor thing.
I enjoyed having the use of her room for guests (just as she had the use of mine when I was away), but must admit that it was lonely here without her. If I'd wanted to live alone, I could have stayed in my old studio apartment. Besides, there was no one else here to make me hot cereal and coffee in the mornings. :-(
But now she's back, and so once again I have someone to talk to, and there are beads and sewing pins 'n' things all over the dining room table, and I ate breakfast this morning.
I made a sign for the front door before she came. It says "Welcome back, Liza" on it and I glued lots of red, white and blue stars all over it (her dad is a general in the American military, and Liza used to be in ROTC, and her brother recently returned from Iraq). Unfortunately, the only magnets I had with which to stick the sign to our (metal) door were the ones I brought back from London last spring, with Shakespearean insults on them. So the sign says "Welcome back, Liza" but the magnets say "Thou cream-faced loon," and "I was searching for a fool when I found you," etc. Oh, well. Luckily Liza has a good sense of humor.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
FYI
Someone in my quiet but definitely city-ish (with apartment buildings everywhere, and close to the Emek Refaim Street business center) bought a . . .
rooster.
Guess how I know?
**
Did you know that roosters crow at all hours of the day and night?
I do.
Reasons and non-reasons
Reasons not to support Sarah Palin's VP candidacy, which are sound reasons or at least consistent:
You disagree with her policies on issues that are important to you.
You think she's way too inexperienced to perform the job of American VP effectively.
You have some criterion, personal to yourself, that is important to you and that you apply consistently to all candidates for high political offices (for example, "I don't vote for any candidate of any party who has small kids at home. People with small kids should be available to be at home for their families, and the VP job is too much for someone to be a good VP and a good parent.")
Reasons not to support Sarah Palin's VP candidacy, which are unsound reasons:
You think she should be home with her small kids, and you don't apply that criterion evenly. Can you imagine this article being written about a male candidate? The fact is, being a successful politician requires a high level of ambition, and people who are ambitious and powerful and hold high political offices such as a governorship do things like go to work three days after their baby is born and entrust the care of their children to others -- usually to some combination of the children's other parent, nannies, or both. How many of the fathers in governor's seats or in Washington spend much time with their kids? Not too many, I'd wager. If normally that isn't an issue for you, when the candidate is man, it shouldn't be an issue for you when it concerns Sarah Palin.
Her unmarried, teenage daughter is pregnant. Perhaps you think this proves she's an inattentive mom who should be home (see above). Or perhaps it gets you thinking that her abstinence-education-only policy isn't really so effective (duh! You needed Bristol Palin to prove that?). Or perhaps you think it just goes to show that Sarah Palin isn't as religious as she claims, or doesn't have a firm hand at home, or or or . . . to which I respond: there are thousands -- hundreds of thousands -- of loving, firm, attentive, rule-laying, warm, inspiring parents all over America whose 17-year-old kids do stupid, life-altering (or endangering) things. Bristol is not the first 17-year-old child of (we hope) stable, loving people to get pregant, and she won't be the last.
Look, I'm not a fan of Sarah Palin. I disagree with most of her policies and her skimpy resume makes me really nervous. But let's stick to the issues, folks. There's no reason to dump on the woman, just because she's a . . . woman.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Echoes of Jake Ryan
A while ago -- five months ago, to be exact -- I gathered up my courage and contacted a gentleman whose profile on Dosidate I'd been admiring. Let's call him Jonathan, because that is not his name. He's my age, is a native Israeli, lives north of me, and, from various things he wrote in his profile which I won't share here to protect his identity, I could tell (as far as one can tell these things from an internet profile) that he's relatively sincere and non-game playing. He also writes really well (in Hebrew), which gives me a warm feeling inside because, you know, I'm a writer!
To keep a long story short, we ended up exchanging several emails over the course of a week or two, and the more he wrote to me, the more impressed I became with his sincerity, values, and -- be still my beating heart -- beautiful writing.
The ironic problem was that in his sincere, non-game-playing way, he told me straight out, up front -- before I kept writing to him to try to change his mind -- that there is no way he's going to date someone who lives in Jerusalem at this point in his life. Turns out that one of his parents had died just a few months before, and before the death, Jonathan had spent almost a year driving long distances to visit this parent in the hospital every single day. He was sick of driving and was hoping to meet a woman who lived closer to his city. And he didn't want a phone relationship, or to put the onus of traveling on the woman; the first situation isn't conducive to building something genuine, he feels, and the latter isn't fair to the woman.
There was no way I could argue with that. I knew better than to take it personally -- we'd never even spoken on the phone, so it's not like he was rejecting me - on the contrary, he had plenty of wonderful things to say about me -- and I believed him when he said that as soon as he feels up to doing the driving thing again, he would definitely contact me. We put our emailing on hold very amicably, with the understanding that we were mutually impressed with each other and we'd meet when the time was right.
Everything had been put on the table, I knew where I stood . . . and I proceeded to think about him every day for the next five months . . . probably because there wasn't anyone else in my dating life to think about instead. In the absence of anyone else who came remotely close to giving me any warm, fuzzy, feelings, Jonathan filled the "fantasy boyfriend" role quite nicely, indeed. It's not like I was sitting around waiting for him; I went on dates with other people, but nothing was working out.
Anyhow, because of something he'd said in an email back then, I knew that in the fall Jonathan would be starting a new phase of his career (again, details withheld to protect the innocent), so, in as non-pushy a way as I could, I recently decided to remind him that I'm alive. I sent him a breezy email wishing him luck and a meaningful month of Elul.
He wrote back almost immediately. Translation below:
"Sarah, it's so nice to hear from you. Thank you for your kind wishes. Much has transpired in the months since we corresponded, and a month ago I got married (yes, it was very quick; we got married within 4 months of meeting, thank God). I really appreciate that you wrote to me, and wish you all the best. I hope that you soon find a beloved partner, who I'm sure will be a special person. Sincerely, Jonathan."
To say that I was surprised and somewhat perplexed as to the appropriate reaction would be an understatement. To say I was disappointed would be a bigger understatement. What I did was send back an email wishing him "Mazal tov and all the best." What I have been thinking ever since, what has been running through my mind on a loop, is this scene from Sixteen Candles:
I feel . . . stymied.
Monday, September 01, 2008
METROPOLITAN DIARY
Heard recently at the weekly crafts fair at the Bet Adam School on Emek Refaim Street:
Friend of Chayyei Sarah: I just love looking at all this jewelry. Isn’t this gorgeous? Ooooh, look at this table over here!
CS [slightly bored]: mmmm hm. Very nice.
FOCS: Are you going to buy anything?
CS: I don’t think so. I don’t need any more new clothes or jewelry. I just did a lot of shopping when I was in the States . . . Oh! Look! The used books table! They’ve always got lots of English books! Meet me over there, OK?
CS: You are so East Side, and I am so West Side. *
FOCS: I’m going back to the jewelry. Find me when you’re done, OK?
We both left the fair happy with our purchases: She with a beaded necklace in a trillion colors, and me with my books by Emily Bronte and Tracy Chevalier. And we’re still friends.
--
* A few years ago, in the now-defunct “Metropolitan Diary” section of the New York Times, was a little vignette about a woman who was moving from the Upper West Side of Manhattan to the Upper East Side.
“Lady, you ain’t gonna like it on the East Side,” her mover said as he was carrying boxes to the truck.
Appalled, she asked how he could possibly predict such a thing without knowing her.
“I move a lot of people,” the mover said. “People on the East Side have more clothes than books. People on the West Side have more books than clothes. You’ve got a lot of books, lady. You ain’t gonna like it on the East Side.”
A year later, the woman wrote, she was back on the West Side.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
What to do?
I don't know who I'll vote for in November.
When it comes to domestic American politics, I'm a Democrat.
But Obama is . . . scary. It's not so much the inexperience that bothers me -- although that's a problem, too -- it's his followers who scare me . . . He's so charismatic, he's got all these people wrapped around his little finger, over what? He could do anything and all these people who love him would just keep wagging their tongues and talking about how wonderful he is. He could stab someone in the back and his supporters would keep saying "but he's so GREAT." No, he's not so great. He's just really, really charismatic.
And yet . . . if his policies are more or less in line with mine, I suppose it doesn't matter what the masses do, what matters is what I want the president to do. But . . . but . . . there are alllll these people telling me, with complete confidence, that Obama would be terrible for Israel. And if I voted for him and that turned out to be true, I'd feel like such a heel.
And . . . when it comes to Iraq, I'm more right-leaning than left-leaning, though it's a complicated situation and I wish the Republicans would show a little less hubris and a little more reflective thinking. And seriously, when you look at where the candidates are right now with their plans for Iraq, how much of a practical difference is there? I don't see so much, even when I squint at it. "We'll be there for a long time, assessing the situation as we go, it's really important not to create a power vaccuum, blah blah blabbity blah blah blah." What it really means is "neither of us has any clue what to do with this mess. Who really can say what will be?"
And . . . I don't think anyone who says "this candidate is better for Israel" or "that candidate is better for Israel" truly has a crystal ball. Almost everyone I know who is a right-wing Jew vis-a-vis American politics is still saying that Dubya is "so great for Israel," forgetting that the very Gaza disengagement they think was horrible happened under W's watch. Israel will do what it wants, when it wants, and America will exert pressure this way or that no matter who is in the Oval Office, because --I really believe this -- God has more control over the situation than the President of the United States. You seriously never know what will happen once someone is actually in office . . . just look at Ariel Sharon.
And . . . a disturbingly high number of people who are telling me that Obama would be bad for Israel actually still think he's a Muslim. Hello, people! He is not Muslim, he's Christian, and your ignorance of that fact is not raising my confidence in your opinions.Not that his pastor is anyone to write home about, either, but let's at least get the religions straight.
And . . . how could I vote for McCain? He stands for just about everything I hate, except -- if my Republican friends are to be believed -- for his alleged support of Israel. See above.I do not put my faith in John McCain. I put it in God, and in ourselves, and simply hope and pray that America will continue its friendship of us. The practical difference, vis-a-vis Israel, between Democrats and Republicans is much smaller than most Israel-supporters really care to admit. And that difference can be erased completely, on the practical level, when Israel decides to do whatever the hell it wants, which it often does(and I'm glad of that, at least philosophically).
And now he picks Sarah Palin as his running mate. Do I really want someone in the Vice President's seat whose total experience in governance includes a few years as the mayor of a town whose population is roughly equal to that of the undergraduate population at Columbia University, and 2 years as governor of a state whose population is roughly equal to that of Fort Worth, Texas? Do I want such a person to serve as President of the Senate, and to be first in line for succession to the Oval Office? Especially if that person is fervently anti-abortion choice?
No.
I've seriously considered not voting at all, but I don't want everyone else to be picking from between the two terrible choices. I should let my voice be heard, etc etc. But I just know that whether I vote for McCain or Obama, I'll come back from the post office feeling dirty, like I need a good long shower.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
WHAT A WEEK
I know that many of you think I lead a glamorous life, working in cafes and getting to do fun stuff for free. I want you all to know that such “glamour” has a flip side – and I’m not talking about the fact that my income goes up and down like a yo-yo.
A certain publication for which I write often is coming out with an issue soon on “Israel Travel,” and I have the good fortune of having been assigned several stories for it, which is how it came to be that last week I went to Tiberias for three days on someone else’s tab.
I love Tiberias. I try to go there once a year to sit on the banks of the Kinneret and swim in its cool, sweet water, and generally enjoy the change of scenery. The North of Israel is just gorgeous!
I usually go to Tiberias in September, after the busy summer season is over. But for this work assignment, I had to go last week while certain tourist attractions were still open.
To fully appreciate how much I did not feel like going, you have to understand that last Shabbat I was sick, so sick that I cancelled my weekend plans with Sparky, and lay in bed drinking plain chicken broth from my crockpot. On Sunday, still suffering from, uh, gastrointestinal difficulties, I forced myself to pack, haul myself into a taxi and then onto a 3-hour bus ride to Tiberias, sweating the whole way and wishing I was dead.
And then there was Tiberias itself. If you read Treppenwitz, you may have guessed that last week everyone in Israel – everyone – had taken their families out on vacation. It was the infamous week after camps have ended and before school has started.
The town was crawling with Israelis, as if the city were a pile of lunch leftovers and the Israelis were ants. The restaurants were all crowded, the beaches were crowded, the boardwalk was crowded, and I had to get everywhere by foot or by taxi, in the 40-degree (Celsius) heat, because I had not been given a budget for a car rental.
I learned a few important things about Tiberias, things which will not make it into my article because I know from experience that the rest of the year Tiberias is a great place to visit, though I may recommend that readers avoid the city during high tourist season:
1-You know how Tiberias has lots of religiously important people buried there? And people do pilgrimages to pray at the burial sites of these important and inspiring people? And each memorial site has its own character? Well, I do not know what Rabbi Meir ba’al HaNess did to deserve such a thing, but the entire area around his grave smells like the dark underbelly of an ill-regulated shuk. Perhaps this is because it is a shuk, with a line of food and souveneir shops leading to the actual sanctuary, and a row of picnic tables where families were picnicking – and leaving their leftovers behind in the heat. Seriously, haven’t these people heard of garbage bins? I mean, it’s nice that Rabbi Meir ba’al HaNess’ grave has such a festive atmosphere, with music blaring and vendors yelling how cheap their passionfruit ices are, but seriously. It smells disgusting.
2-When a taxi driver in Tiberias says “sure, I’ll be there in 5 minutes,” what he means is “I will keep you waiting outside in the blazing sun for 40 minutes.”
3-When someone in Tiberias says “Where did you say you are going? Oh, you don’t need a taxi. It’s right up the road. You can walk there in 5 minutes,” what they actually mean is “If you had a car it would take you five minutes. On foot it will take 25 minutes, in the heat, and we’ll forget about the fact that you are in a hurry because you are seeing 8 tourist sites in one day, OK?”
Toward the end of my last day, I called my friend Beth and nearly burst into tears on the phone.
“Now I know why people hate Jews and Israel,” I said. “I hate us, too. We smell. We are a nation of smelly, rude people who leave their garbage behind to rot in the sun. It is too hot, and we smell gross. Tiberias is disgusting and I never want to come back here again.”
Thank God, Beth knows when to argue and when to just let me talk because I don’t really mean it (or she thinks I don’t).
“If it makes you feel any better,” she said, “the whole country is like that right now. The entire country really needs the kids to go back to school. We are all just waiting for school to start.”
From now on, Tiberias waits until September, and I insist on a car rental.
