DancesWithCamels

August 1 marked my two year anniversary of living in Israel and so I’d like to dedicate this post to some random musings about the place and my time here. Tel Aviv is where I’ve spent the brunt of my time and over the years and the city has offered me some real life knowledge from her streets, it has cradled me in her bosom and I have sought to suckle nourishment from her tit. My first lesson was the most important and has guided me throughout my stay here. It came from an excessively exuberant falafel man who yelled at me with a rough Israeli accent in English “You want onions man?! Onions are good for your dick!” What salesmanship, I thought to myself, “pile ‘em on buddy,” I replied while wondering if this wise man of Israel had any other natural male enhancement products splayed out in the serving bar of his falafel stand. Luckily, I had learned this lesson in my initial weeks here so I was off to a grand beginning.

Next, the streets taught me about Israeli stoicism, grit and determination in the face of danger. I watched a lone man hold his ground in the face of tens of halted, honking and ferocious Israeli motorists in the middle of a crosswalk that was red. He wasn’t supposed to be walking on a red, but then again many believed the Jews weren’t even supposed to have founded a state and built Tel Aviv to begin with. As the man gestured his hand to his ear, the sound of the horns swelled, he wanted more, more baby, more. Inspiring. He stood there for about two minutes, the motorists laying on their horns the entire time. For the grand finale, this man of men finished with a big middle finger and went on his way, a hero in my eyes. “That was one bad-ass dude,” I thought out loud. “He was a bad-ass,” a smoking cab driver with his window down said in agreement.

While Western in many ways Tel Aviv and Israel in general still doesn’t fit the bill entirely. When gauging the ‘Westerness’ of a country, one can typically tell a lot by the smoking culture and the laws in place to curb the barbaric practice. 14 year olds in Israel still have adequate access to obscurely placed cigarette machines and while a smoking ban has ‘officially’ taken affect, the notices typically garner the same response that they would receive in a college dorm room. Keep blowing smoke in ‘the man’s’ face Israel, it gives me Obama-like hope.

One often hears of the schism in Israeli society between the religious and the secular. I experienced this first hand while volunteering at Kibbutz Yotvata in the Negev. I was relegated to ‘dish wash bitch’ in the maznon, the Israeli version of a gas and go mini market fully equipped with a crappy restaurant. The Rabbi explained to me that I had to wash the dishes in a kosher manner. He then explained to me the time consuming process in which I was to carry out this religious duty. Then, like a T.V. sitcom, the secular kibbutznik maznon manager came in ten seconds after the Rabbi left room and told me to disregard what the Rabbi had said and to do things as quickly as possible, which amounted to a non-kosher method. So when the Rabbi entered one day and saw me making some un-kosher dishes he gave it to me. I just nodded my head, put down my dishes and left the wash room. “I’m not even Jewish man,” I told him on the way out, “don’t involve me in your inter-faith disputes. It doesn’t bother me one way or another. I just want some finality on the issue.” That job was lame anyway I was happy to walk away. My friend, who was Polish, had a better gig than me, and for a good self-respecting American that’s just degrading no matter the humility imbued in me.

So, I’m almost two years as an expatriate in Israel. For me, Israel was a new place. I had never visited before I came, never had exposure to the Hebrew language, or Jews for that matter, and my travel experience was limited to ‘Western countries.’ Two years as an expatriate. In terms of experiences, I suppose that equals about five years as a non-émigré. Living abroad you get wise a little quicker, live a little faster and learn some hard knocks about life a little more often. I’ve started to accumulate the sort of memories that one is reminded of when rummaging through an old attic, somewhat hazy, but stimulating, as if capable of providing a window to glance back at another part of your life when you would have hardly recognized yourself. I knew I was a seasoned ex-pat when I began despising tourists because they simply annoyed me, because they read the travel page in the New York Times before they came and think they know all the hot-spots in Tel Aviv. As if some columnist with a whole weeks-worth of experience in the city and an Israeli friend could really know anything about the place. Then, I began despising Israelis who took me for a tourist. I understand Israelis encounter Americans quite often but just because I speak shitty Hebrew with an American mivta (accent) does not mean I went to Jew school for eight years in New York and am now here for a visit with birthright. Maybe it’s a personal issue but Eich Omrim Traveler Beivrit (How do you say traveler in Hebrew) because that’s what I am and there is a huge unbridgeable gap between a tourist and a traveler. But, I must say, an interesting phenomenon exists in Israel. Whereas typically one would assume that if you make an effort to learn the language in another country you would be treated with more respect by the locals, in Israel this logic is flawed. Sometimes, I prefer English, my blessed mother tongue, so that I receive prompt and pleasant service with a smile. Furthermore, it seems that Israelis are often more precise in English than they are in Hebrew when providing assistance. I’m sorry but yashar, yashar, yamina, az smolah (straight, straight, right then left) tells me nothing about finding my target destination, maybe its slang. I also prefer to use English when speaking with police officers, “I’m sorry I didn’t understand the sign,” it said ‘Don’t walk on red, crosswalk being monitored, violators will be fined,’” as long as you keep on with English they give up and move on.

But nothing draws my ire like moral self-righteous Westerners who come here thinking they even have an opinion about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. My anger springs from the fact that they remind me of myself when I first got here. They have a little bit of knowledge and a strong opinion, the worst of combinations. They feel like the conflict genuinely concerns them, like it’s a burden on the world’s conscience and they are the frontline warriors for truth and justice. I have studied the conflict and have experienced it in some ways just by living and traveling here and the more knowledge I have the more I see the conflict as intractable, as a battle that isn’t really mine to fight. But maybe my apathy stems from the fact that I lack the kind of faith that requires me to give a shit about who controls any of Jerusalem’s holy sites. There is no use making it rocket science, at the core of the conflict is a struggle between two national movements over the same territory, a struggle that is infused with a strong religious dimension that only adds to the intractability. I realized some time ago that both sides are right—morally, intellectually and actually—in their own minds and that no 1000 page study will ever change or clarify that ‘fact’ for either side. Polemics in the guise of scholarship on the issue are merely intended to lend another level of legitimacy to one or the other political cause (That’s not to say that there isn’t good scholarship on the conflict out there, it is just to say that a good portion of it is political trash).

Sorry for that tirade but if living in this place for two years has taught me anything it’s that sometimes you just have to let it out.