Say It in Hebrew

“As easy as falling off a log.”

The two other Americans in my aisle on the flight from Frankfurt to Denver struck up an annoyingly chatty relationship before the plane left the gate. Next to me, a German-speaking guy looked at them, pulled his sweatshirt hood over his head, pulled the strings until only the tip of his nose was visible, and slouched down in his seat. I followed his lead and popped in my earplugs. International flights are not safe for introverts.

Ten hours later, arriving in the U.S. was a breeze. I had no culture shock at all, until my parents and I went by a new Whole Foods store in town, a couple of days later. Then I staggered around like someone in serious need of oxygen or medication:

IT WAS ALL IN ENGLISH!

Everything: shoppers, labels on cartons of milk, cheery-hyper-organic Whole Foods chefs persuading you to buy air-fed chicken. Everything was so big! And there was so much of it! And you could get practically anything imaginable! Red tortilla chips! Organic pine nut butter! Tofu marshmallows!

“Look, there’s shrimp!” I shrieked, scattering a crowd of well-heeled West Side shoppers.

“She was in the Middle East,” my dad explained by way of apology to a concerned Whole Foods fishmonger who moved protectively toward his crustaceans. Later, my mother had to pry me away from the giant cheddar-cheese display.

All of a sudden, since I no longer have to convert from shekels or crowns into dollars, everything seems cheap. Or, at least, more affordable than Over There.

Despite the burning desire of Over There to emulate Over Here in any possible way, everything Here is different from Over There: Here, checkers ask you how you’re doing and whether you found everything. Shock! Bafflement!

Here, waiters whisk your half-empty giant glass away and magically refill it. Customer service is something people Here take seriously. Bewilderment! Wonder!

Here, on the road, people stay in one lane for more than five seconds and then signal to change lanes! (Here, accellerating toward pedestrians is not a national sport.) It’s so civilized, it’s mad!

Here, you can go in a store, come out twenty minutes later, and the police are hauling away the guy in the car next to you for trying to hotwire that car.

Here, there’s a law about when you can light a fire in your fireplace.

Here, people drive Hum-Vees with “W. in ‘04″ bumper stickers.

Still, here is home: mountains, pine trees, snow crunching underfoot, strange wispy clouds overhead, and everything familiar and loved.

“Ka-MAH o-LEH ha-KEE-lo may-AL la-meesh-KAL ha-moo-TAHR?”
“How much per kilo for excess baggage?”

The shop owner of La Casa, a woman with wiry red hair and boxy glasses, glared at me as she helped a customer with a giant baby carriage back her baby 4×4 out of the store. As the new mother was leaving, I took the opportunity to plant one foot inside the door.

The owner smiled thinly, said something in Hebrew, and tried to shut the door on my foot. “I have to close,” she said in English.

“Please, please let me come in for five minutes,” I begged. All the cats in the store peered out from their hiding spots behind stacks of pillows and legs of antique furniture. “I know exactly what I need. I’m going to the U.S. tomorrow, and I wanted to take a couple of presents.” Her expression softened, so I rattled on. “I’ve told everyone how beautiful this place is!” (Well, now I have.)

“We close at two o’clock,” the woman said. “My dogs will be waiting for me at home.”

Ok, I started walking here at two, I thought. Shouldn’t that count? “But I didn’t know what time you closed, and it’s only two-ten; I only need a couple of things, really.” She looked at me more closely, and finally recognized me as a customer; not necessarily a frequent or wildly-spending customer, but someone who window-shopped with zest: every time J. and I go to the Saturday Night Cafe (which I think is really called “Alkali”), we detour past the new pet store (where the shavings in the hamster cage are bumping around in a rather naughty way) and come to a stop in front of La Casa. This is the most eye-catching part of Weizmann Street.

All right, it’s really a housewares store, but it’s enough to make even a hard-core feminist stop and gasp at the window displays, which the owners change every few weeks. At the moment, the windows, which look into the shop, are decorated in red and silver; there are long antique wooden tables draped with runners and candelabras, and everything matches: white beaded lights, white-etched hurricane lamps, little white wire SHEEP. Stop! I don’t know what’s more delirium-inducing: the design or how appealing I find it. J. usually has to drag me away from the place, and thank God it’s usually closed–except for today.

The owner looked at me sternly, but held the door open with a sigh. “You cannot really walk around,” she said. “Everything from outside is now inside.”

“Ze beseder,” I offered. “It’s fine.” I picked my way past a table with small candles, past a row of elegant giraffe statues, and found the wooden cabinet where The Gifts were. I picked four, and set them on the counter.

The owner had a more kindly look, now that I had performed the Hunt, Selection and Decision process in under two minutes. She rang up The Gifts, and bubble-wrapped them carefully, while I began to imagine her tiny dogs chewing chintz sofa pillows to smithereens. Would they bite her ankles off in spite, when she arrived home late? Would I be sued?

“Here you are,” the owner said pleasantly. “Have a nice trip.” I plastered a smile on my face, thanked her for staying open another few minutes, and fled with The Gifts.

I haven’t yet been able to shake the image of her dogs shimmying up elegant curtains and wreaking havoc on an apartment that is likely to be straight out of Elle Decor – Israel…

Off to the races!

“Beer-TSO-nee luh-hash-EER et ha-muh-kho-NEET sheh-LEE poh la-LIE-la.”
“I wish to leave my car here for the night.”

Last night, over a round of Guinness at Cafe Ma with Amy and Arieh, the subject of plastic cars came up. J. cited the East-German Trabant as an example of flying fatal clingwrap, when Arieh said, “True, but the Trabant didn’t get eaten by camels.”

I beg your pardon?

In the nineteen-sixties, Arieh said, the Israeli Sussita, made from fiberglass, was a common sight in the Sinai. (“That’s when we still had it,” he pointed out, meaning the Sinai Peninsula.) The camels of the Sinai spotted a tasty snack in the Sussita, and notoriously chewed to bits more than one of these cars.

Welcome to the Middle East!

Photo credit: http://www.austin-rover.co.uk/index.htm?awisraelf.htm

“A-nee moo-kha-NAH.”
“I am ready.”

If you think politicos in the U.S. have a hectic schedule, you should take a look at a country where the government can shake things up in a day, and call for new elections in four months. Things happen at a breakneck pace: the PM invents a new party, the man with the mustache pops up like a rabbit out of a hat to lead Labor, the man with the similar-sounding name migrates to the Other Side, and a journalist/MK causes massive controversy by joining the Other Side. Elections were announced a little over a week ago, and I’ve already seen one giant Shinui ad on the side of a bus.

Since my Hebrew is lousy, I have no idea what most people think about elections.

Not speaking the language is a severe drawback, and a mistake. Making a doctor’s appointment if you don’t speak Hebrew will require divine intervention, or about ten phone calls, nine of which end with an abrupt dial tone, followed by tears. I wanted to send flowers to the Russian-sounding woman who finally helped me get an appointment. Barring that, I did remember to say “Spasiba”.

The intensive Ulpan in town (five hours per day, five days a week) is about $100/month; the Institute’s (six hours a week) is $150 for six months. Aside from basically functioning, you need Hebrew in order to do anything in a community. The local branches of Rotary International and the Soroptimists clubs function solely in Hebrew. A women’s-studies class at the Institute functions solely in Hebrew (even though all the texts are in English). Right on, akhotiot sheli (my sisters).

As a tourist, you can get around Israel fine without knowing Hebrew; in addition, your general artistic and historical knowledge wouldn’t really suffer, either, since most sites have brochures and tours in English. Most of the well-travelled streets have street signs in English.

But if you want to do anything other than be a tourist–such as volunteer in the community–and have anything more than a passing acquaintance with the country’s art/history/peoples, you need to speak the language. Maybe I’ll join the Institute’s Ulpan in January. Heck, I already have the book from last year; I dropped the class when our fantastic teacher Sarah was replaced with a lousy teacher. However, the Institute evidently hired Sarah to teach, this year, with no interruptions. I’m a sucker for a great teacher.

# # #

To do list:

1) Pack.
2) Don’t get sick.

As a precautionary measure against one localized outbreak of the flu, I made a giant batch of flu-shot-in-a-bowl, or chicken stock. So, even though it was eighty degrees yesterday, we had soup. I think the curative (and, one hopes, preventative) qualities of chicken soup lie in the completely-pulverized chicken parts; what precise chicken parts contributed to these bits of goodness lurking in the center of a spoonful, however, I don’t want to know.

The household proclaims itself completely healthy, today, so now all I have left to do is line up a little sushi platter of vitamins and go to town.

And pack! And then…

Duty-free, here I come!