Say It in Hebrew

“Neh-LEKH luh-mees-KHAK ka-doo-REH-gel.”
“Let’s go to the soccer game.”

My first encounter with Israeli soccer was in the Dublin Irish Pub, last Saturday, to watch the televised match between Israel and Ireland, taking place that night in Tel Aviv. We arrived after halftime, when the Israeli team was down by one point; between the oak-and-stucco walls were crammed hundreds of brown-eyed, olive-skinned Israelis, drinking Guinness with no apparent conflict of interest. On the way in, we bumped into an Israeli from my husband’s department, who was watching the game with a glum expression.

For the rest of the half, the crowd followed the progress of the game on the pub’s two flat tv screens, which hang on opposite walls. From the faces of fans turned toward you, you could pretty much guess what was going on, on the field. People frowned and grinned excitedly as their team chased the Irish up and down the field. In the ninety-first minute of the game, though, after regulation time had ended, the Israelis scored a goal to tie the game, and the whole place levitated: the crowd–as the saying goes–went nuts, screaming, applauding, jumping, waving flags, and pounding each other on the back. The bartender gleefully rang a cowbell.

Last night, we had tickets to the second of these World Cup Qualifying matches held in Tel Aviv: Israel versus France. Many of the fans we followed from Tel Aviv to the stadium in Ramat Gan were wearing blue and white, had Israeli flags painted on their faces–and were speaking French. A gang of high school girls we ran into–all wearing denim skirts and white tops, no doubt the result of a major teenaged phone-tree operation–swarmed around their chaperone (someone’s much-taller brother) and chattered in French and Hebrew. I thought the language part of my brain was going to overheat, but these girls switched easily between languages, sentence by sentence.

Outside the stadium, three hours before the match, vendors had set up scarf stands, bagel stands, and shishkebab stands on the sidewalk, yelling “Bagelim! Bagelim! Shneim shekel va rezi!” If you didn’t like the price, they yelled back a lower one, but we opted to head for the mall next to the stadium, to find dinner.

The mall, of course, was overrun with fans. The only place not completely packed with hungry spectators was the “Cherry Cafe”, which was relatively empty, and seemed like a good option. I reasoned that, with its calm decor and cloth napkins, it didn’t exactly cater to the soccer crowd. My husband reasoned that if it was empty, the food must be bad. I found this to be rather extreme logic, but my argument that it was exactly the kind of place I would take my mom to, if my mom were here, failed to illuminate my perspective. We ended up in Pizza Hut. At the table next to us, two men speaking French talked between mouthfuls of pizza; one of the men carefully removed his blue “Batman” yarmulke and placed it out of the path of mozzarella strings.

As we left, I noted that the “Cherry Cafe” had filled up. Then we agreed, for the sake of the marriage, to abandon the subject.

We arrived at the gates of the stadium an hour before kickoff. Our tickets said Gate 11, but, when we tried to join the mass of people struggling to be the next in line for the security search, a pale, bearded man wearing a security vest and a kippa (the woven yarmulkes of nationalists) waved us away. Then he pointed at me.

“Me?” I asked, looking around. “What did I do?” The man motioned for us to come around to the side, and began speaking to me in Hebrew.

“What?” I said, in English, bewildered.

“You have to go to the other gate. This line is only for men.”

For a moment, I thought I had encountered some strange Orthodox rule, and steamed off. It hadn’t occurred to me that he was pointing at me because I was the only woman in line, there–but the issue wasn’t political or religious. It was security. The simple truth was, apparently, that, here, only female security guards are allowed to frisk women; so we both walked over to the other line, where a bored-looking woman was patting down a handful of female fans, as her male colleagues frisked male fans.

The security presence–stadium security, police, and military–at the gates to the stadium is about as close as I ever want to get to an encounter with the law, here. Law, yes; order, no. Dozens of people packed into a mass in front of the two army officers letting fans in, pushing and shoving to get inside. “People!” I thought. “This isn’t the last helicopter out of Hanoi!” But it was a strange experience. I had to stop and remember that queuing is not the national pasttime, here, as it is in England and the U.S.

The officers grabbed male fans and roughly passed them off to other officers, who frisked the men and inspected their bags. They treated the women slightly better. However, anyone who caused a problem was promptly picked up and moved out of the security line by the military–and I don’t mean “escorted.” I mean, “picked up by both arms and hauled off.” Standing on railings above everyone struggling to get into the security line were other officers, with their hands calmly on their machine guns. The police and army officers yelled at the mob for being disorderly, yelled at anyone who tried to climb over the railings, and seemed to yell solely for the purpose of intimidation. It seems like a lot to put up with to go to a soccer game, but it’s only an extreme version of what you encounter at the supermarket door.

Someone, however, ought to tell the Israelis about the “Disney line”.

Inside, eighty thousand fans had packed the stadium and were on their feet. We found seats about ten rows up from the field. Not bad! (Unfortunately, this particular section chose to stand for the entire ninety-plus minutes of the game.) The only strange thing about the stadium was that the sections were fenced off from each other. Imagine a baseball stadium in the U.S. with a twelve-foot-tall steel wire fence separating Section A from B, and B from C, etc., running from the very top of the rows down to the first row. Difficult to envision, no? We reasoned that maybe this is to prevent riots from spreading through the stadium…. but, to me, it struck me as undemocratic, as though democracy fundamentally stipulates that, even if one is sitting in section A, one has the right to buy a hot dog in section B. You couldn’t do this, in Ramat Gan Stadium: if your ticket said Gate 11, then you were staying in Section 11. (Well, you probably couldn’t buy a hot dog, either, but that’s beside the point.)

A week ago, the French goalkeeper, Barthez, had made an inflammatory comment to the press about how he didn’t think it was safe to play in Israel and didn’t want to come. Bad move. Israeli fans were incensed. On the day of the game, sports editorials cautioned against booing the French national anthem; it was all right to boo Barthez, the sports writers implied, but booing the anthem was an unsophisticated display of unsportsmanship. (Since Israel is in the FIFA football organization’s “Southern European” (which seems to be stretching things a bit), no one wants to look unsophisticated.) Many Israeli fans chose to ignore the distinction, and greeted the French anthem with overwhelming noise. In front of us, two high school boys (devoted, flag-wearing fans) cringed, and clutched at their hair in horror, as they heard other fans behind us boo the Marseillaise, and shouted at the offending fans to stop. The boys eventually gave up and stood there in ashamed silence, with many other silent fans. The boys had, however, devised an ingenious chant against Barthez, which they happily led, whenever Barthez had the ball.

The French made a goal in the first half, but Israel scored a point during the second half. The ensuing pandemonium in the stadium made the televised-goal-scene in the pub look like a museum tour.

The result was a tie. Much of the coverage in Ha’aretz today dealt with the fans’ response to Barthez, among others. “Why Do We Love to Hate the French?” read one headline.

By the time we walked back to Tel Aviv, it was midnight, and we caught a taxi back to Rehovot. The driver, a soccer fan, talked to my husband with excitement about the match; meanwhile, he treated lane markings on the highway (and, indeed, other cars) as though they were invisible.

“Did you hear the outcome of the Czech match?” my husband asked the driver. “They were playing Andorra.”

“Andorra!” the driver snorted, and punctuated his disdain by zooming to 120 kilometers per hour. “The Czechs will win by eight points!” The driver knew both the first and last name of the star Czech player, which impressed my husband. I was concerned about returning to Rehovot alive. All I said was, “This is the kind of driver I ever want if I have to take a taxi to the hospital, pregnant.” We made it from Tel Aviv to Rehovot in twenty-five minutes. Five of those, we spent waiting at a railroad crossing.

“Ha-EEM yesh po ko-MAR ha-do-VAYR ang-LEET?”
“Is there an English-speaking priest here?”

The taxi arrived outside our apartment at 7:40 am, yesterday morning, Easter Sunday. I opened the door, poked my head in, and asked, “To Mifratz Shlomo, in Yafo, it’s ninety shekels, right?” The driver, a balding man, nodded. I hopped in.

“Mifratz Shlomo,” the driver mused, rolling out of the parking lot. “To church?” he guessed.

“Yes,” I said.

“A church? How about a synagogue?” He waved his hand in an expansive gesture. “I could take you to a synagogue,” he offered cheerfully. “We have lots of those!”

I declined as politely as I knew how, and clarified, a little nervously. “It’s St. Peter’s Church, near Kedumim Square.”

We threaded through early-morning traffic in Nes Ziyyona and Rishon LeZiyon, and finally wound up through the streets of old Jafo. The driver insisted on pulling up in front of the church, even though I said I could walk from the Clock Tower Square, about a block away.

There were still about forty-five minutes before Mass was scheduled to start; two dozen or so well-dressed people stood outside of St. Peter’s, but the main church door was locked. I was glad I had arrived early.

A few minutes later, a tour bus stopped in front of the church, and nearly all of the people I had thought were dutiful Catholics boarded the bus and vanished.

To the right of the main church doors, a door marked “Private” was open slightly, and two women speaking Russian, intrigued by the sounds of a choir, stepped inside. The choir, all women, were singing in English, and when I went inside, too, I could see the choir: about thirty Thai women, sitting in a small classroom, listening to the priest, who was apparently the man wearing a flannel shirt, glasses, and a guitar.

“It’s my birthday,” the priest was saying bashfully, which caused a frenzy of applause and laughter to run through the choir. The Russian-speaking women and I backed awkwardly out of the little door, as though we’d intruded on a class.

The priest opened the main gates at 9:00 am, and greeted those of us who were sitting outside. From in front of the church, you could see an old mosque tower, just below on the hillside, and, to the north, the coastline stretching up to the northernmost part of Tel Aviv.

Inside St. Peter’s, it was cool and dim. When someone turned on the lights, the whole interior of the church gleamed with pink and white marble, and gilded candelabras. One of the Russian-speaking women set a basket of eggs partly covered with lace on the pew in front of me, and knelt to pray. Gradually, the church began to fill up. Three nuns, also Thai, arrived and hugged members of the choir, then sat quietly together in a pew.

The Thai choir, singing a get-up-and-clap-your-hands-style song in English, welcomed the processional. One of the women, in charge of the overhead projector, displayed the lyrics on a screen to the right of the altar…just as in any number of Catholic churches in the U.S.

However, any resemblance to the average American Mass disappeared midway through the homily, when another priest began to recite something in Russian. A significant portion of the congregation replied in Russian, including two jean-wearing brothers next to me, and their parents in the pew behind us. Mass turned into a dual-language ceremony, with the English-speaking priest and English-speaking Thai lectors alternating with the Russian-speaking priest and the Russian-speaking crowd.

What I thought was the universal practice of lining up for Communion, row by row, turns out to be specific to a limited number of countries. Israel isn’t one of them. I watched, fascinated, as people practically dashed up the aisle from the back of the church, until I realized that I, too, had to join the silent free-for-all in the aisle.

The homily was bewilderingly…simple, perhaps, I wondered, for the benefit (?) of non-native-English speakers. I listened to the priest absently, and looked around the church, until I heard him say, “And in Mel Gibson’s film, we have this wonderful scene where…”

Surely there’s more to the Franciscans than this?

After the homily, the English-speaking priest leaned in to the microphone and made a request.

“Would the Polish people please stay at the end of Mass, and Father Brinslov will give your homily in Polish? Thank you.” Father Brinslov repeated the request in Polish.

The Thai choir led the recessional, and were delighted to give the last two verses of the song in Thai (written on the overhead in English lettering, just in case any one else wanted to attempt it). They ended with a loud cheer.

I staggered out of Mass rather baffled, frankly. For one, I had a hard time finding the familiar parts among the multilingual aspects of Mass (even the Apostle’s Creed was simplified); and two, I was pretty disappointed in myself for wondering, “Who are these people?!” In other words, I didn’t think, initially, “Wow, this is fantastic! Everyone here is Catholic, and look at how diverse the group is.”

Instead, I thought, in a very small voice, “Wow, I am not in the U.S. anymore.”

Matters of language, faith, and identity should not be grappled with on an empty stomach. After tracking down the famed Arab bakery, Abu el-Afiya, a block away from St. Peter’s, I decided I was better equipped with an almond and chocolate croissant, and spent the rest of the morning sitting on the promenade, just above the beach, watching the waves come in.

And, for me, that was Easter in Israel.

“Ta-YIM me-OD.”
“Delicious.”

I never bothered looking at the English menu at the Saturday night cafe until last night, when I discovered that we’ve missed out on an entire range of tasty alternatives to the standard cappuccino. Is twelve shekels too much to pay for paradise in a cup? I think not. Three words: Godiva Caramel Cappuccino. It makes Starbucks’s Caramel Latte taste like melted Legos.

Plans are developing for a trip to Haifa and Acco (or Acre). Overnight housing in Haifa is taken care of, but my husband said, “Perhaps I’ll ask the department secretary to arrange lodgings in Acco.”

“No!” I shrieked, and then collected myself. “I mean, no, that’s ok. This is the same person who set up lodgings in Safed, right? Where we had no soap and no heating? Why don’t you let me take care of finding us a place to stay in Acco?”

“Ok,” he said calmly.

Whew. That was close.

Nevertheless, there are evidently only two hotels in Acco, both of which sit a mile south of town. In town, there are two hostels, offering both dorms and rooms.

Soap and heat! That’s all I ask! We’ll bring our own sheets…

“Snap-IR.”
“Flipper.”

Beings even more confused than I was, today. (Link.)

“Ani havina she atta bo-KER.”
“I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy.”

To an outsider, the frenzied build-up to Purim must seem as baffling as Halloween. In the last two weeks, nearly every trinket shop in town has added feather boas, feathered hats, packaged costumes, and poofy dress-up gowns to its offerings. It’s like Mardi Gras and Halloween, combined. Frankly, I’m a little worried that kids are going to show up on our doorstep, Saturday night, and chorus the Hebrew equivalent of “Trick or treat!”

Technically, Purim doesn’t start until Saturday, but things have been growing increasingly more bizarre all week long: Tuesday, for example, was Pajama Day. Every preeschooler and elementary-school-aged kid in town was scuffing around in battered animal slippers and patterned pajamas. On Wednesday night (when one of us decided to watch “Kill Bill,” and the other one opted to take a ninety-minute promenade around the mall), the shops on Herzl Street were full of parents and children elbowing each other to get the last cowboy or Indian costume.

Given the scene today, there’s no telling what tomorrow will look like. Today, when school let out around noon, all of a sudden the streets were packed with high schoolers flaunting their costumes: girls, especially, pranced down the street wearing short white skirts, white wings, and white headband-halos. The girls’ costumes were depressingly short, skimpy, low-cut, and generally hair-raising. Either Israeli feminism isn’t trickling down into the classroom, or there’s a glut of entirely-unholy “angel” costumes on the market. The more alarming question I wanted to ask was, Who let you out of the house looking like that? And, Who let you into school looking like that?!

Other revelers had more down-to-earth approaches: a boy dressed as a ketchup bottle waited at a stoplight. In the grocery store, an older man wearing a skeleton costume inspected some leeks. The strangest costume of all, however, had to be the kid standing in line at a schwarma stand, dressed as Santa Claus.

Other visitors are likely to be as baffled by the weather as they are by Purim. Irish fans arriving in anticipation of the Israel-Ireland World Cup Qualifying Game on Saturday will wonder if they’re still in Dublin: blustery winds kicked up today, and occasional rain sent the feathery-mask-wearers ducking into cafes and falafel stands. Well, no one’s going to notice any neon feathers that molt into the neon hot-pepper-salad in the falafel joints, I guess.