How to host Thanksgiving like an Israeli...

(From http://simplyrecipes.com/photos/pumpkin-pie.jpg)

Ok, so if you really want to host Thanksgiving like an Israeli, don't host it at all. (Yeah, that whole "It's an American holiday" thing.) But unlike Easter, Christmas, Halloween, New Year's Eve, and Valentine's day-- also holidays not really celebrated here-- I feel Thanksgiving is worth keeping, in a nostalgic and let's-force-Israeli-friends-to-eat-American-food kind of way.

The problem is that celebrating Thanksgiving in Israel is a lot like celebrating Jewish holidays in America-- this country really isn't set up to take Thanksgiving into account. So here's a way around a lot of the problems you might encounter if you try to host Thanksgiving dinner in Israel.

1. Be flexible about dates. Thursday night is a great night to have people over, because it's right before the weekend (Friday to Saturday). However, chances are, something else will already be scheduled for that night, even if you're doing something with the English-speaking community. (Those Brits just don't seem to understand the importance of gorging oneself with Turkey in solidarity with Pilgrim forefathers.) I have a memorial service to attend this Thursday night, so we're doing our Thanksgiving dinner on Friday night.

2. To buy a turkey, go to a butcher shop. Preferably one that specializes in turkey and poultry. And you'll need to order it in advance and probably pluck a few final feathers when you get it. Sadly, no, turkeys don't go on uber-cheap sale around the holiday-- I'll pay 25 shekels a kilo for mine. But you can shock all of your Israeli friends with the size of a full turkey! And, er, don't forget to specify-- several times, in as many languages as possible-- that you want a whole turkey in one piece.

By the way, last year the butcher thought I was crazy. This year he invited himself over for Thanksgiving dinner. Progress?

3. To find cranberries, look for Russians. And then follow them until you figure out where they shop. This year I bought my frozen cranberries at a little Russian macolet (mini-market), and while they appear to be manufactured in Israel (and are kosher parve and everything), the writing on the clear plastic container is Russian, not Hebrew. You can find dried cranberries in almost any supermarket.

4. If you need sausage for your stuffing, buy chorisos. Last year I went on an epic sausage-finding mission in which I ended up using pieces of kabobs, kabanos and kishkes in my stuffing. It tasted fine (it's pretty hard to mess up stuffing), but later this year I realized that choriso sausages-- available in the frozen food aisle-- actually have the right taste. Israelis don't do breakfast sausage or turkey sausage, so you need to be a bit creative.

5. Find sage fresh, not dried. Sage is another one of those crucial "Thanksgiving" flavors, but for some reason you'll find it more readily in the fresh leaves section (or even in a greenhouse) than in a bottle, dried.

6. Make your pumpkin pie from scratch! You will not find pre-prepared crust, canned pumpkin, or pumpkin pie spice in any ordinary Israeli supermarket. You will, however, find large chunks of ginormous pumpkins (wrapped in seran wrap, in the fresh foods section), butter, flour, and every spice that goes into pumpkin pie spice. While our pumpkin isn't technically sugar pumpkin, I've found it makes a mean pie filling. Just steam it and then (this step is important) puree it in your food processor... the texture of our pumpkin is stringier than a sugar pumpkin. Last year I used this recipe for my pumpkin pie, and it was delicious. Oh, and two things-- 1) if you use an Israeli-size pie pan, double the recipe for filling and crust... those pans are huge. 2) Don't expect actually Israelis to like your pumpkin pie. To them it's a little bit like eating, say, a sweet broccoli custard. They don't get it.

7. Make sure your turkey actually fits in your oven. You have an Israeli-size oven. This is an American-size bird. Make sure you do the math. :) Also, you won't have any automatic timer to tell you when the bird is ready, so make sure you know how long it will take to cook.

Now if anyone can help me find real apple cider in this country, I'll be eternally grateful!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. :) Is anyone else hosting a Thanksgiving in Israel or for Israelis?

On going home again...

This is the home of some other rich Jews (ya know, the one 

designed by Frank Lloyd Wright), not my home, but I visited 

it when I was back in the US. Because I get to be a tourist now!

And that's my beautiful niece, Sarah.

This past August I went back to the US for the first time since I made aliyah in the spring of 2008. I honestly didn't know what to expect. Would buildings and cars in America suddenly seem gargantuan? Would the green scare me? Or (and this was honestly the most frightening possibility) would I go back to the US and feel so comfortable that I wouldn't want to return to Israel?

The culture shock started for me on the flight to the US. I was sitting next to an Israeli couple, and before the fasten-seatbelts signs on our Continental flight turned off, I found myself as the one better at communicating. I was the one explaining what "ginger ale" means and translating their requests for "no ice" to the stressed-out American flight attendants. Yet I felt relieved, for some reason, that I was sitting next to Israelis. I eyed the American couple in front of me-- an overweight family in sweats and t-shirts, squabbling with each other about things that seemed so trivial. The Israeli couple next to me talked with me about their feelings about religion, about aliyah, about cultural differences between Israel and America, about already missing the people we had left behind in Israel. To my surprise, I didn't want to stop speaking in Hebrew just yet. Interacting with the flight attendants in English seemed so... easy. Mechanical. They were polite but not kind; they smiled but seemed annoyed. Huh. Maybe this whole "Americans are nice" thing won't be so compelling after all.

As I waited for my transfer flight in Newark, I got a taste of what it means to be "Israeli" in the US. The former homeschooling mom (who reminded me of my own) with the blue T-Shirt LOVED Israel, in fact they celebrated the Holiday of Booths with their church! She looked at me expectantly: I was from the Holy Land. I felt like she wanted something from me, but I wasn't sure what. The reality of living in Israel feels so different from the idealized version that American Christians and even American Jews believe in. I felt like my own country, my own Israel was already being traded for the Promised Land, for some shiny myth rather than the complicated, vibrant, hilarious reality I had left behind.

On my transfer flight to my destination, I found myself (by complete coincidence) sitting next to an Israeli girl. She felt that she didn't belong in Israel and was about to end three years in the city where I grew up to travel to the Netherlands. Yet there was a kind of... commonality in our conversation, an ease of expectations, an honesty. For the next three weeks, this would be the last time I would speak Hebrew to a stranger.

During my time back in the US, I discovered a few things.

1. It was wonderful to see my family and friends. At the same time, being away from them for two years didn't matter as much as I worried it would. I was most worried about what it would be like to see my nieces and nephew-- two years in the life of a one, five, seven, and nine-year-old is a very long time. But after a bit of initial shyness, they were inviting me to go pick flowers, have tea parties, watch movies, run around, and play dress-up as much as ever before. And my one-year-old niece was just getting to know everyone, so I seemed no stranger to her than her grandfather or the dog. (Ok, so she did like the dog better.)

 The pinkies in the air make it fancy. The expression on my face makes it creepy.

2. American service people ARE nice, though their niceness feels impersonal. One of my favorite I'm-not-in-Israel-anymore moments went something like this...

BARNES AND NOBLE CHECKOUT GIRL: You're paying by credit card? Ok, let me just see some photo ID.
ME (searching in my wallet): Oh, crap... The only ID I have in English is my Israeli driver's license... and I changed my name completely when I moved to Israel, so it doesn't match any of the names on my American credit card...
BARNES AND NOBLE CHECKOUT GIRL: Oh, that's ok. I just needed to see your photo.
ME (trying to figure out this logic): Ok.... um, great! *Shows her my photo while privately thinking, freyerit!*

To be fair, the American checkout girl was simply following procedure. I used my visa, so she had to see a photo ID. Never mind that the name on the visa and the ID didn't match up. An Israeli, on the other hand, would have been very suspicious of my credit card but then would probably have lent me enough change to pay in cash. Or maybe the innocent face that gets me through mall security with barely a swipe of the metal detecting wand also works in the US.

Oh, and a word to the wise: never try to give extra change to American checkout people so that they can give you fewer coins in return.  In Israel, if I give 20 shekels to pay for something that costs, say, NIS 15.60, the checkout person is likely to ask if I have 10 agurot so that I can get one coins in change rather than four. (Israeli checkout people take great pride in conserving spare change.) Don't try this in the US. Unless American checkout people can enter in the total amount of money you give them into their cash machine, they get very confused.


3. The US is saturated in green, and what Americans (in the Northeastern US, at least) think of as "hot" Israelis think of as "early winter." I had to buy a jacket. But while I absolutely love the greenery of the US, I found myself missing the rockiness of Israel.

4. Things in the US are cheap. (It also helps that dollars are worth more than shekels... something that costs one dollar will always seem cheaper than something that costs 3.70 shekels.) Walmart and Target are amazing stores. Sam's Club is a little overwhelming. And it's really nice to be able to find size 9.5 women's shoes in any shoe store.

5. Teenagers in the rural US and teenagers in rural Israel have basically the same reaction when they learn you come from far away: man, I really want to get out of here.

6. A Cafe Latte is nowhere near as good as a Cafe Hafuch. 

7. Those people who sell carved wooden animals "from Israel" in American craft fairs actually see themselves as being "from Palestine."

8. Wearing 3D glasses and going to see Step-Up-3 in 3D makes you cool. I don't care what anyone else says.

My sister and I in the packed movie theater on Step-Up 3, 3D's opening day.

9. If you want to buy second-hand bonnets off of old-order Amish women, it helps a lot to be able to say you come from the land of Israel.

10. No matter where I go from now on, I'll miss somebody and something. In Israel I'll feel American, but in America I'll feel Israeli. I guess that's a sign of progress?

A lot of other things I learned while in the US are harder to pin down in words. I realized that knowledge I now take for granted in my life-- the spices I use to cook, the Hebrew I read effortlessly, the Israeli cities I now have mapped in my mind-- isn't at all obvious to most Americans. I'm so used to thinking of my Hebrew as "not very good" that it was bizarre to me to realize that my brothers couldn't read the label on the halva I brought back as a gift (and, in fact, had never tasted halva before). Something about being in America made my Hebrew seem totally fluent... I got a little charge from speaking to my mother-in-law in Hebrew on the phone and knowing that nobody around me knew what I was saying.

Three weeks and two flight transfers later, I was back in Israel. My husband met me at the airport. And as we were driving back from Natbag through dry, brown, beautiful rocky hills, I felt like my mind was coming back to life, as if it craved the challenge of deciphering Hebrew. (I admit that I'm a bit of a masochist.) I missed the smells. The landscape. The sense of deep, long history. The sense of reality. I found myself laughing. I turned to my husband. "I get to live here!"

While it's nice to go on vacation, nothing quite compares to going home again... to Israel. 

How does your perspective on the US change when you visit it from Israel?

The remarkable inconsistency of Israeli telephone numbers

Maybe I've just been thinking about phone numbers lately after, er, my own cell phone spent a night in the toilet (I have a new one now) but this is also one of those little things that struck me a lot after I moved to Israel.

In the US, telephone numbers have a very, very set format: (XXX) XXX-XXXX. This format is so rigid that US phone number forms can't handle an Israeli number. (In general, Americans seem confused by the concept of life outside the US.) When you tell someone your number in the US, you always pause after the first three digits and then say the final four. If my number were 123-4567, for example, I'd never dream of telling someone it was "twelve thirty-four five sixty seven."

In Israel, on the other hand, the number of digits in a phone number is in a state of basic flux. Most area codes are only one digit long, because, let's face it, we're pretty unlikely to ever need more than 9 major area codes in a country that could fit comfortably inside New Jersey. On the other hand, cell phones (somewhat inexplicably) come with their own two-digit area codes. In addition, certain phone providers come with two-digit area codes-- we originally got our phone number through HOT cable, so our home phone area code is "77" even though most landlines in our area start with "4." (When you dial area codes from within Israel, you always add a "0" at the start of the number.)

In theory, though, most phone numbers after the area code are seven digits long. (I say "in theory" because I'm pretty sure I've seen numbers of other lengths... eh, yiyeh beseder.) Israelis, though, never got the memo about three digits followed by four. I've seen numbers written like this: XXXXXXX, like this: XX-XX-XX-X, like this: XX-XXXXX, and in basically every other combination of clumps of letters. This really confused me at first, because Israelis WILL say their number as "twelve thirty-four five sixty seven," a possibility that boggled my American mind.

So anyway, if you need to ask your friend's telefone nayad (cell phone) number, be prepared. Oh, and if I had your telephone number, um... give me a call. Most of the numbers in my phone sank into the depths of our asla.

Btw, some useful Israeli phone etiquette:

To answer the phone, say "allo." If you don't pronounce the "h," "allo" is transformed into Hebrish. Nobody (that I know, at least) outside of a formal office says "shalom" when they pick up or hang up their phones. If the person on the other end of the line asks you who is speaking, do not answer the question. This would be Giving Away Information. Instead, play a game of Israeli phone etiquette chicken in both you and the person on the other end of the line ask who is speaking, eventually negotiating release of first names (never last names!) and reasons for calling. The proper way to say goodbye is "yallah bye," followed by more conversation, followed by insistence that you really have to go, followed by a little gossip, and finally closed with a resounding "yallah bye."

Oh, and all of the paragraph above is basically useless, because Israelis communicate primarily through text messaging-- "ess-em-ess-im"-- anyway.


Was anyone else surprised by Israeli phone etiquette? What did I miss? 

Things *NOT* to do if you want to seem Israeli

Here's a list of things I've noticed Americans doing that they (ok, we) tend to think makes us look Israeli... but that actually make us look like fresh-off-the-Nefesh-b-Nefesh-flight olim, or worse: here-for-a-year-on-a-gap-year-program Americans.

Disclaimer: these are great things to do if you want to seem Israeli when you're in America. Just not in Israel.

1. Wear wrap-around pants. 

 Yes, these pants are comfy, cool and only cost about 15 shekels in the shuk. But unless you're either A) cleaning your house with bleach on a Friday morning or B) Idan Raichel, don't wear these pants in Israel anytime someone else can see you.

2. Call the New Israeli Shekel a "shek." 

This seems to be slang popular among the Jerusalem English-speaking crowd, but I've never heard it from Israelis. The formal term for the shekel is "shach," short for "shekel chadash," which could be the source of this bit of Anglo slang, but "shach" is only used by newscaster-types. Say it with me, folks: they're called are sh'kalim.

2. Wear tzahal clothing when you aren't in the army.

Source: http://www.ioffer.com/si/military+hebrew

Yes, I'll admit that I went on Birthright when I was 18 and bought the requisite army shirt. (Hey, it matches my eyes!) But in Israel, wearing army clothing means you're actually serving in the army. In fact, Israelis get so sick of wearing army clothes while they actually serve in the army that you would be hard-pressed to find any olive green in an Israeli wardrobe. So save that tzahal shirt as a gift for your friends back in the US.  In fact, wearing basically any shirt with Hebrew writing on it, in Israel, is a decent indication that you aren't Israeli (unless that shirt has a cut-out neck and says "madrich"-- counselor-- on it somewhere).

4. Wear a kippa when you aren't orthodox.

My parents are very active members of a reform congregation in the US, but dress my ex-hippie dad up in the right clothing and he could pass as a chasid. I have literally never seen his chin. When they came to visit me in Israel last year, my dad decided to celebrate being in the Jewish state by wearing a kippa (yarmulke) all the time. Problem is, like a tzahal uniform, a kippa has a specific meaning in Israel. At the very least, it means that you are either on your way to a synagogue or shomer shabbat and shomer kashrut, so for my dad to wear a kippa while touring the country on shabbat... confusing.

5. Say "shalom!" to strangers.

My husband and I were recently in a national park when a couple walked past us, smiled brightly, and said "shalom aleichem!" We were not at all surprised when they turned out to be German Christian tourists... we would have been shocked had they turned out to be native-born Israelis.  On the other hand, feel free to strike up a conversation with any shop owner, bus driver, or waiter that you see, and say "shabbat shalom" anytime to say goodbye to any Israeli you meet any time past Thursday morning. By Israeli standards, anyone you actually interact with for more than 30 seconds is no longer a stranger, so it's fine to greet them/share your life story.

6. Be loud, angry and combative.

"What??" you're saying. "Israelis are loud, angry and combative!" But here's the thing: Israelis are loud and combative, but they aren't usually angry. To Israelis, being loud and combative is all part of normal social interaction, and it's usually followed up with "shabbat shalom" and "tell Moshe I say hi." When Americans are loud and combative, on the other hand, we get angry, and we tend to leave in a huff with red faces and resolutions to never buy sandals in Israel again. As I said in another post, Americans are ruder (by Israeli standards) than we realize. If you want to seem Israeli, a better bet is to attempt to connect personally with whoever you meet. Being loud and combative is a higher level of Israeli-ness that we usually can't pull off.

I feel like there's more I should add to this list. Have you ever seen people on the street and just KNOWN they're not native Israelis? How did you know?

Then again, we American olim ALWAYS seem Israeli in America and American in Israel, so maybe we should just embrace it...

How to tip like an Israeli

 Yeah, your ulpan teacher may have told you that the 

Hebrew for "tip" is "tesher," but it's not: it's "teep."

This is one of those random topics that seems inconsequential, but it's what visiting friends tend to ask about the most. So, here's a quick and easy guide to tipping like an Israeli. Hint: it involves exact change!

1. Most Israelis tip between 10-15 percent. This is something I'm still uncomfortable with... I get flashbacks to my college friends working in Chinese restaurants for 2 bucks an hour, plus tips and assorted leftover boxes of beef broccoli, and I almost always leave 15 - 20 percent as my tip. In my experience, though, most Israelis tip less.

2. Guard your tip with your life. When some of my Israeli friends leave tips, they cover their assorted shekels with their hands, flag over the waiter, point at the money, and in general operate with covert prowess. I guess the thought is that someone else might walk along and scoop up the ten shekels if you aren't careful. I don't worry about this one much either, but it's worth mentioning.

3. Most important of all... that little line below your total on your restaurant credit card receipt? It's not for your tip. I always wonder how many Americans shortchange their servers out of blissful ignorance this way. Yes, in the US this line usually lets you add in a tip to your credit card total, but here this line on your credit card receipt is for your telephone number. Which, by the way, you should never write down on any receipt unless someone insists... that would be giving away information. I've never found a way to tip using my credit card in an Israeli restaurant, so bring cash.

4. Aside from restaurants, you're expected to tip workers in a number of other random transactions. Honestly, I still haven't figured this one out, so your best bet is just to ask the person recommending something to you whether you should tip. For example, we paid our movers 700 shekels and then tipped each worker and the driver 50 shekels each-- another 150 shekels. (They were worth their weight in shekels, btw... hiring movers was one of our best decisions. Aleks could lug 20 boxes up two flights of stairs in one trip like nobody's business.) Other transactions, such as getting our washing machine fixed or receiving a mattress delivery, didn't involve tipping. Remember, though, even if you don't plan to give a service person a tip, make sure you offer them coffee... failing to do so would be simply inhumane.

Ok, this appears to be a very simple topic. Is there anything I left out? How much do you usually tip in Israel?

Foods surprisingly hard to find in Israel (and foods to try instead!)

One reason that I use a lot of Israeli cook books (in addition to the fact that they help me learn words like "diced," "sauteed," and "minced garlic" in Hebrew) is that some common ingredients in the US are hard to find in Israel... and some common ingredients in Israel are really hard to find in the US. Here are a few foods I was surprised to have trouble finding here, along with suggestions of Israeli foods you could eat instead.

Caveat: you usually can find these foods, especially if you go to a big grocery chain specializing in imports, like Tiv Ta'am. But it's harder, so why not adjust to Israeli supermarkets??

Hard to find: bagels & lox

This one took me by surprise when I made aliyah, because in US bagels and lox seemed like the most Jewish food in existence (after, maybe, matzo ball soup). Here, bagels themselves are almost impossible to find! Jewish state, indeed.

Instead, try: ikra! (Hebrew: איקרה)

I first ate ikra on Yom HaAtzmaut, at a barbecue with a bunch of Romanian Israelis. It's a salad made from fish eggs, cream, lemon juice, and a few other ingredients-- here's a recipe (in Hebrew) from Yediot Ahronot. The Romanians called it "poor man's caviar," but I'd say the taste is actually very cream cheese-and-lox-esque! You can find ikra in the salads section of any supermarket-- in our local super, ikra is behind the deli counter, next to the cheese and smoked fish. Good luck finding a bagel to eat it with.

Hard to find: molasses

I've actually never been able to find molasses in Israel (though I haven't looked all that hard in Tiv Ta'am, and my ginger snap cookie recipe has had to slum it with dark brown sugar instead. I guess Israeli grandmothers don't go for this "surprise" natural sweetener-- whatever that means. 

Instead, try: silan! (Hebrew: סילאן)

 

Silan is date honey, and while it's a common ingredient in Israeli recipes (particularly savory recipes that need just a bit of sweetness), I never knew it existed before I made aliyah. It has a milder flavor than molasses or even honey, so I'm not suggesting it as a molasses substitute, but it's awesome on yogurt, in meat dishes, in desserts. Try to get 100% silan rather than a mixture of silan and sugar-- for some reason, I am able to find pure silan in our super around passover, but not at any other time.

Hard to find: grated mozzarella (forget about fat free!) 

 It's actually pretty difficult to find any kind of fat free dairy products in Israel. 1% milk, yes-- you can even buy it in plastic bags! Skim milk, what? You can find fat free yogurt, but you're much more likely to find 1.5% or 3.5% yogurt. Fat free cottage cheese is unheard of, though 5% is very common. I guess Israelis just aren't willing to sacrifice that much taste. Add to this the fact that mozzarella cheese isn't very common here, and you'll need to find a substitute for all your diet recipes that call for low fat mozzarella. Never fear!

Instead, try: crumbled emek! (Hebrew: פתיתי עמק)

Emek is more flavorful than mozzarella, and I'd say it's one of the major reasons why Israeli pizza is so delicious. Emek packages are marked with the percent of fat in the cheese, and the lowest-fat good-tasting variety is 22% fat. (Stay away from 9% emek. I think it's mostly plastic.) 22% fat sounds scary, but it's actually fairly equivalent to part-skim mozzarella-- according to nutritiondata.com, 100 grams of part-skim low-moisture mozzarella is 302 calories and 100 grams of regular part-skim mozzarella is 254 calories, while 100 grams of 22% emek is 299 cals. And did I mention that Emek tastes much better? On the other hand, if you want cheddar cheese or (chas ve'shalom) processed American cheese food, perhaps aliyah is not for you.

Hard to find: chili powder

I've actually made my own chili powder spice mix-- you can easily find recipes for chili powder online. But you won't find anything exactly like American chili powder on our shelves.

Instead, try:  Tunisian Harissa Seasoning! (Hebrew: תערובת לאריסה תוניסאית)

Tunisian Harissa (in Hebrew, "Larisa Tunisait") is a chili pepper spice mix pretty similar to chili powder, but (big surprise!) more flavorful. Use it on fish, in soups, anywhere you want a bit of a kick.

Hard to find: fresh pineapple

We buy canned pineapple all the time, so you certainly don't need to go without pineapple in your salat peirot here, but you probably won't find fresh pineapples at your local veggie shop. Pineapple grows in hot, moist climates, while Israel has a hot, dry climate. So your oranges, avocados and bananas were probably picked yesterday at a farm an hour away from your veggie shop, but you won't find pineapples. I mention this because pineapples are just about the only fruit I don't find here, with the exception of more delicate berries like raspberries. Have I mentioned that I LOVE Israeli fruits and veggies?

Instead try: fresh shesek! (Hebrew: שסק)

In English, shesekim are actually called loquats, but you didn't know that anyway, did you? These taste nothing like pineapples, but they're absolutely amazing little fruits with a taste like a slightly tart, extra juicy apricot. Here's a gushy article about the loquat from NPR's foodie show, The Splendid Table, which makes them sound all exotic and rare. I bought a kilo of loquats from a fruit stand by the side of the road. They're slightly messy to eat because you pull out the seeds and the ends before popping them into your mouth, but they're delicious. Other fruits to try in Israel: persimmons, pomegranates, sabra fruit, passion fruit, and those big stinky wrinkly fruits that you should avoid storing in a close space...

Hard to find in Israel: corn chips.

My husband and I don't buy much snack food, but we once tried to find tortilla chips to serve with dip for a party. Eventually we realized that while supermarkets in this country sell dozens of varieties of potato chips, corn chips are basically nonexistent. Sorry. 


Instead, try: bissli! (Hebrew: ביסלי, meaning "my bite")

Bisli are traditional Israeli snacks that started out as deep fried, spiced pasta back in the days when Israel really didn't import food from abroad. Each flavor has a different shape, and they're all delicious. Oddly enough, even though chips and salsa (let alone tacos) are pretty much unheard of here, you can find taco-flavored bisli. If you want to get the full Israeli experience, on the other hand, try the falofel flavored bisli. Just don't plan to breathe on anyone for a while afterward.

Hard to find in Israel: M&Ms, peanut butter cups, peppermint paddies, snickers bars...

If you're considering aliyah, take a deep breath, look at the picture above, and ask yourself if you can live without everything in it. Now stop hyperventilating. Breathe into a bag! In! Out! In! Out! I've never found M&Ms, Hershey's kisses, or anything combining mint and chocolate in a regular Israeli supermarket. However, never fear...

Instead, try: Israeli chocolates! (Hebrew:  שוקולד)

I grew up a few hours from Hershey, PA, so I feel a little disloyal for saying this, but Elite brand Israeli chocolates can definitely give Hershey a run for its money. If you want peaunut-chocolatey goodness (along the lines of a snickers bar), try a pesek-zman bar. If you want a kit-kat, try a kif-kef. Personally, I love the 60% dark chocolate bars... I almost always have some in the house. But if you want an M&M or a Hershey's kiss, well, you're still out of luck. But did I mention that we have chocolate spread?

I could go on. For example, it's not easy to find drip coffee here, although we have some pretty good instant coffee-- I highly recommend Jacobs brand (the green lid, not the gold). You won't find "Italian Seasoning" on our shelves, but you can always mix together basil, oregano, and paprika... or go for a middle eastern spice blend, zatar. You won't find tylenol, but we have acamol. You won't find graham crackers, but Israeli tea bisvitim usually do the trick. For everything American you can't find in this country, you'll find three other products that Israelis can't find in the US... as I found when I translated an Israeli article this old blog post, What's Missing in America.  A lot of the fun of living in Israel is discovering the local flavors that are "gourmet" in America and available in any corner macolet here.

What foods would you add to this list?

Be'tei avon! (Bon appetit!)

How to run a race like an Israeli

I started running 5ks when I was ten or eleven, and in my early 20s (just a few years ago) I ran three marathons. But since moving to Israel, I've run two 10ks and, er, a 5.7k and a 4.9k, and I've come to realize that road running in Israel is in some ways completely different. So here's a quick and easy guide to running a race like an Israeli:

1. Go to shvoong.co.il to find races and registration info. The racing season in Israel runs from September to May, without many races in the very hot summer months. It seems more common for races to start in the afternoon or evening in Israel than in the US, so read starting times carefully. You'll see a lot of 10Ks and some other distances-- serious runners usually compete in the 10Ks. "Amami" means a fun run, "tachruti" means a competitive run.

2. Be prepared for any race info to be posted only a month or two before a race and for it to be changed at the last minute. Apparently, Israelis see posting definitive times and dates for a race as like putting on your turn signal-- it's better to do this at the last minute so that nobody else can speed up and cut you off. Kiryat Motzkin and Kiryat Bialik both posted 5Ks taking place around the same time, and after a little bit of chicken, Motzkin moved its date up a few weeks and Bialik moved its race back a few months. The brand new Tel Aviv marathon changed its date about a month before it happened, as as someone familiar with marathon training plans, that really, really isn't beseder. I can only imagine the runners who made it all the way up to their 20 mile long runs and prepared to start the taper in training before the big race... only to discover that they actually had to extend their training by four weeks. If you want a reliable marathon in Israel, go for the Tiberias marathon-- it's been going for years and draws international runners. Last year, I got to see a spidery Ethiopian runner cross the finish line in not much over two hours. The Tel Aviv marathon should be awesome when it gets its act together, but I want to wait and see.

3. Arriving at a race in the morning and picking up your race packet is basically the same as at any road race in the US, except that you might see this while you wait in line at the port-a-potties:

Yes, he brought his own toilet paper. Oh, and an uzzi M-16.

In all fairness, though, I only saw lots of machine guns at the race in the picture above because it was the army championship, so lots of Tzahal divisions bussed in to compete. I really wanted a picture of the girl in short shorts, pink shirt, and machine gun, but the guy above will have to do.

4. Israelis tend to take a pretty relaxed attitude towards the starting line (kav hazinuk). Why be a fryer and wait behind the line? At the most recent 5Ks that I've attended, most of the group started a good couple of steps in front of the line. Yiyeh beseder.

5. Race t-shirts in Israel tend to be pretty awesome. So far I've received three micro-fiber shirts (one that was Adidas brand) out of four races... the only lousy shirt was from the 10K at the Tiberias marathon, because it's one of those prestigious races that doesn't need to lure runners with nice shirts.

6. "Field races" mean that you will literally be running through fields. And trampling corn stalks.

7. Aside from blips like the Krayot (where I live in and train), Israel is very, very hilly. I don't think I'd be brave enough to run the Jerusalem half-marathon, and the Haifa 10K was intense. Check the elevation of the races you choose to run.

8. Israeli races have a slightly casual attitude towards actual distances run. The Tavor race was supposed to be a 5.5K (who knows why!) but it turned out to be a 5.7K. The Motzkin race was supposed to be a 5 K, but due to traffic re-routing, it turned out to be 50 meters short. Yiyeh beseder.

9. There are relatively few female runners in Israeli races, so sometimes our division gets awarded fewer prizes and less prize money, but that seems to be improving even in just the last few years. In the Har Tavor 5.7K, I won a trophy for second place in my age-category... wahoo!

10. The feeling of crossing a finish line is just as sweet on any continent. Enjoy!

 Me getting REALLY excited to finally pass the guy right behind me 

as my friend and I cross the finish line in Kiryat Motzkin's 5K

Have you ever participated in any road races in Israel? How about triathlons or field races? How was your experience?

If you want to understand Israelis, read this book...

We have an amazing library just down the street, housed in an old building from the Turkish period. It's just a few aisles of (mostly) paperback books, in Hebrew, English, and Russian (with a new Spanish section), and browsing its stacks is like looking through a friend's bookshelf. I get overwhelmed when I have to choose between all the many categories in a major library-- in our library, on the other hand, I always find a few books that I want (and have discovered the wonder of British chick lit). There's nothing fancy about our library, but that's part of why I love it: my library card consists of a number scrawled on a bookmark, and I've never been charged a late fee, even when I was pretty sure I was returning a few books a month late. I have to admit that I stick to the English books, but I often see translations written in spidery Hebrew above tricky words.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I borrowed Ask for a Convertible by Danit Brown from the library, and I've been meaning to recommend it to everyone I know ever since. In a series of beautifully-written (and funny) short stories about the same set of characters-- primarily a family who makes "yaridah" (moving out of Israel, the opposite of aliyah)-- Brown conveys the Israeli mentality better than any book I've read. Danit Brown (not to be confused with Dan Brown) is a close observer of both American and Israeli culture. I like to think that this book is what my blog would be if it became hyper-intelligent, self-aware, and moved back to the US. :)

The main character in the short stories is named Osnat, which is one of the names my husband and I joke we'll name our hypothetical future children so that they will never move to America. (As someone in the stories says, "What is it with Israelis being named after bodily fluids?") Osnat is transplanted from sun-baked Tel Aviv to cloudy Michigan at age 12. Through the course of the stories, she attempts to figure out where she belongs, even moving back to Tel Aviv as a young woman.

One of my favorite aspects of this book was the way Brown gets details right. She shows Osnat's mother attempting to find self-rising flour in Michigan-- I remember seeing self-rising flour on my post-yaridah Israeli mother-in-law's shelves, and now I realize this is what most Israelis use rather than plain flour and baking powder.  Brown conveys the gulf between the ways Americans and Israelis see Judaism and Israel. In one story, a burned-out driving instructor moves to an American small town and meets the town's one Jew and a staunch Christian. They end up in a coffee shop, and the Americans want to know what it's like in the Israeli army. The Israeli starts to tell them his arsenal of funny, raunchy stories about his time in the army, and the Americans grow increasingly confused and shocked at this image of the "holy land." Yet the Israeli is also burying the pain of a family member dying in a terrorist attack; this isn't the kind of thing he talks about, even though perhaps it's what the Americans would rather hear. I could also relate to the emotional strain of moving to a new country, whether that country is America or Israel. I have felt the plunge in IQ that comes with not being able to remember the word for "pants" in a clothing store and the slow process of finding friends and the different sound of Israeli apartments compared to American wood-frame houses.

One of the most thought-provoking stories was called "Your Own Private America." In it, Osnat struggles to be Israeli while all of the Israelis around her are looking for an idealized version of America. Here's an excerpt:

There was something about the way her aunt was always urging her to buy, buy, buy that made Osnat feel like the fat girl whose skinny friend kept encouraging her to eat and eat. "That's just how much stuff costs here," her aunt liked to say. Or, "Surely your parents can help you pay." It didn't matter that she had the same number of televisions and drove the same kind of car as Osnat's parents. There was simply no arguing with the spacious homes and glitzy automobiles you saw on TV. It was easier to believe in those than in the pasty, blubbery people who lived in trailer parks and sometimes came to blows on American talk shows. If one of these realities had to be rigged, then let it be the poor one.

I see this attitude so often in Israel. Israelis yearn for their "private Americas," despite the fact that most of my Israeli friends vacation in resorts while almost none of my American friends did. Israelis constantly use "cmo b'chul"-- like outside Israel-- as a sign something is truly nice, and they find it hard to believe that I honestly think quality of life is better here. Yet life is noisy and stressful in Israel, and as Osnat says, "America was nice, with its air conditioners and manicured lawns." This book put my fuzzy, conflicted feelings about the emotional distance between America and Israel into focus like no other book I've read.

One small disclaimer-- if you're easily offended by language or sexual content, you might not like this book, although to me it seemed pretty mild.  Also, this book risks keeping you up at night. I don't usually like short story collections, but this one pulled me through to the end.

Have you read Ask for a Convertible? Do you think you can relate?

P.S. I'll probably mess up the formula for choosing the links that appear below this post by writing this, but it strikes me that Danit Brown wrote about every one of the topics that appears below this post for me: getting an Israeli driver's license (and failing the test the first time, as an American), running into celebrities on the Israeli streets, and even experiencing a chamsin. No wonder I loved this book!

How to Wait in Line Like an Israeli

Contrary to popular opinion, Israelis do wait in line.  We do have, shall we say, a different line-waiting etiquette, as my sister discovered when she returned to NYC after a year in Israel, shoved her way onto a bus (elbows flying)... then realized that all the other passengers were staring at her from the pavement where they stood in a polite queue.  So here's a guide to how to wait in line like an Israeli.

1. Ask "mi ha'aharon"? (Who's the last?) When you come to a meat counter or post office line in Israel, ask who is last in line. It often won't be the person who is actually standing in front of you-- it may be the person off in the corner getting stamps out of a vending machine or feeding a baby. This is probably why a lot of Americans get really upset when they wait in line, because they think Israelis are cutting in front of them when, really, Israelis simply have a more casual attitude about what "standing in line" actually means. 

2. If you need to step out of line, remind the person in front of you where your spot is. This was a little odd to me at first. For example, if I were in a grocery store check-out line in the US and realized I had to grab one thing off a nearby shelf, I would ask the person behind me in line if they could save my space-- the reason being that they're the person who would be disrupted when I came back. But for the exact same reason, Israelis rely on the person in front of them to save their spots. After all, why would the person behind you ever give your spot back?? That would be being a freyer! The person in front of you, on the other hand, will defend you if the person behind you complains, and Israelis do have a strongly-ingrained sense of line-standing ethics.

3. Stand really close to the person in front of you. Honestly, I'm not even sure if Israelis do this... my sense of personal space has shifted since coming here so that now I feel no compunction about nudging my shopping card actually into someone else when I try to make it down a narrow aisle in the Super. (Israelis look at me like I'm crazy if I apologize for something like that!) So the fact that Israelis don't actually touch each other in line or (mostly) breathe on each others' necks seems like plenty of space for me. But if you're an American from one of the northeastern regions, you may need to take a few steps forward. If you leave too much space in front of you, you aren't asserting your spot in line and someone may cut. (Watch out for spots in which you might think you're waiting in one line for multiple cash registers-- your body language has to be assertive for people not to cut in front of you then!)

4. Let someone else cut in front of you if you decide to, and be ready to wait for a while. Israelis are generally pretty rushed and stressed out, but for some reason they have a more relaxed attitude towards line-waiting than most Americans. If you come to a supermarket line with just a few items, Israelis with lots of items in their carts will almost always allow you to cut in front of them. Cashiers will wait for five minutes while you go back to get the third bag of shnitzel that will round out your 2 + 1 free deal. The bank teller will make four phone calls about the missing card for the guy in front of you before she looks for your checkbook. Any you know what? I actually think this is kind of nice. I like that when my time comes, the cashier will give me her full attention and let me take the time I need. So what if I wait a few extra minutes in the process. (Or, ok, a few extra hours back when we were applying for our mortgage... waiting in lines in banks is basically an all-day affair.) And definitely, complain loudly if you feel someone is taking advantage of a situation.

5. In some spots (bus stops, train stations, traffic circles, mortgage brokerages) there is no clearly-defined line, so instead you need to push your way to the front. This is where marpekim, elbows, are essential. Push your way up there!

Did I leave anything out? What have you while waiting experienced in Israeli lines?

Have exact change

 

My actual hands, and my actual change. As captured by my web cam, as I couldn't find my camera. Also, I think I need to moisturize. 

This is probably not one of my weightier posts, but it just might make a difference on your next trip to the shuk or even the super. If you want to be Israeli, plan on having exact change.

This is not because vendors run out of change. This is because vendors (from cashiers to department stores) see themselves as professional authorities, and it is their job to make sure that you don't disturb the balance of agurot to shekels in their change drawers. So what if this inconveniences you, the customer. In Israel, the sales person is always right!

Here's an example: today I went to Eden, which is essentially the Israeli Whole Foods. My total purchases came out to something like 90.23, and I paid with a 100 shekel bill. The checkout girl took my money-- something she might not have done if I had tried to pay with a 200 shekel bill. Then I would have heard the classic question, ein lach kesef katan? Don't you have smaller money (i.e. smaller denominations of money)? It's sometimes actually difficult to get rid of a 200 shekel bill... don't even think of using it to buy a 14 shekel felofel serving!

Back in the US, this is where our transaction would have stopped. The checkout girl would have entered in the money I gave her into the cash register and dutifully returned to me a five-shekel coin,  two two-shekel coins, one one-shekel coin, one half-shekel coin, and three ten-agurah coins. (There are technically 100 agurot to a shekel, but they abolished the one agurah coin a while ago, so the smallest denomination in our money is 10 agurot. This means that the price of my wasabi beans and organic pitot gets rounded to the nearest 10 agurot, which always makes me feel special when I get a three-agura discount.) And, ok, technically a checkout girl in the US would not give me my change in shekels, but you get my point. American checkout people believe the customer and the computer are always right, so they don't like to do any hard math of their own.

Instead, the checkout girl looked at my money, looked at the total, and asked me if I had 20 agurot. I fished in my purse, found 20 agurot, and received back one ten shekel coin.

This is a really small example, but I can't tell you how many times this has happened to me in Israel. I'm always getting asked if I have fifty agurot, kesef katan, or smaller bills. Israelis will stand at their cash registers for 10 minutes while you find and solicit exact change from your spouse in the next store rather than give you a lot of extra change.

By the way, if you really don't have exact change, just tell the checkout person that and act really apologetic. They will take pity on you and dip into their stores of change in dire emergencies. Unless you're trying to buy falofel with a 200-shekel bill... then you might starve. What do you think they are, in the business of accepting and returning money from customers? Oh. Well.... still. You'll starve.

Have you noticed the Israeli mania for exact change? Has anyone ever actually refused to take your money because you couldn't pay in kesef katan?

Israelis: just not as obsessed by the Arab-Israeli conflict as the rest of the world

First, today is my one-year blogaversary! I started this blog one year ago on February 22nd with a post about voting in the most fraught mayoral elections ever, and I'm happy to report that a year out Kiryat Bialik is still busily attempting to transform itself into Kiryat Motzkin. (Apparently, we're trying to do that by painting the large rocks that lie around our town in bright primary colors. Seriously. It's pretty hideous.)

If you want to make me really happy, go read some of my first few posts, including classics such as "This is a mop" and "Election Ads: Apply Directly to the Forehead." My second post ever-- how to make Israeli Salad-- is still one of the most visited posts on this site, thanks to all of the random people googling to impress their Israeli boyfriends (at least, that's my theory). When I google "Israeli Salad," I get my own blog as the second hit, which means that I now officially consider myself the world's second-most leading expert on the preparation of Israeli salad and, hence, by logical extension, on all things Israeli. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Hehe. Or maybe all this "I actually kept a blog going (more or less) for one year" euphoria is going to my head. (Plus, my husband says I come in fourth when he searches for "Israeli salad," which is just outside the medals. Darn it.)

Anyway, today I want to post about a phenomenon I've noticed since moving to Israel: Israelis are a lot less obsessed by every little shift in Israeli-Arab relations than the rest of the world. I mean, obviously Israelis care about "foreign policy" on a different level: if we go to war with Iran, nukes fall in our backyards. Hamas shoots missiles at Sderot and they land in our cousin's daughter's kindergarten. We launch a massive invasion into Gaza and that's our brothers, sisters, and children there on the front lines. Israelis have passionate (and polarized) opinions about politics and about the way Israel should navigate its relations with Arab nations and the Palestinians.

But so often, I see blaring headlines in American media about Israel and run to Israeli newspapers to find out the rest of the story.... only to discover that the lead news story in Israel is the finale of cochav nolad. For example, foreign media is currently obsessed by the assassination of a Hamas leader in Dubai. Israeli media has certainly covered this story, but ultimately it doesn't surprise most Israelis very much. The reaction of any Israeli I've asked can be summed up as "If the Mosad did it, it should have been done much more quietly." Or, for example, while Iran is a big news story here, Israelis are certain that Iran is developing nukes, so all of this breathless are-they-or-aren't-they speculation loved by NPR is passed over here. Israelis also tend to be quite cynical about the future of Israeli-Arab relations; they've seen every headline before, so they don't get all excited over each new possible development. And, frankly, daily life goes on.

To show you what I mean, consider the English and Hebrew websites of Yediot Ahronot, one of Israel's leading newspapers. Yesterday, this was the front page of the English edition, www.ynetnews.com (click any image to see a larger version):

 

Basically all of the stories are about Israeli-Arab relations, which I guess makes sense: that's all that people outside of Israel tend to see (or care about) in terms of our little country. 

But here was the front page of the Israeli version, www.ynet.co.il:

 

Here's a translation (thanks to the creative word choices of Google translate):

I kind of feel badly that Tamar (whoever she is) is getting drilled, but what strikes me most about the Hebrew headlines is just how ordinary life within Israel feels when you're here. The top story was about a major traffic jam on "kvish hachof," one of our main highways. The article on the bottom of the screen that gets translated as "Occupation"? It's not referring to occupation of Palestinian lands, but to occupation for your hands as you make homemade Purim goodies. (It's actually a pun-- "mishloach yad" means this kind of occupation, while "mishloach manot" are the gifts we send on Purim.) The second story, which Google elegantly translates as "What do Csbdihh can not" is not an essay on what to do when UN inspections fail. Its title is actually "Ma osim ceshehabedicha lo matzliach," or "What to do when a joke falls flat," and it features an interview with two young people with special needs.

And, in a sense, this is what I've tried to convey through this blog. How ridiculous, beautiful, and ordinary life in Israel can be. How Israelis are stubborn, loud, quirky, and kind. How the question of "what do you use to mop a floor" can be more important to the daily life of a new olah than "what do you think about granting the right of return to Palestinian refugees." Certainly, the second question could impact my daily life even more than dirt on my floors, but life in Israel is so much more funny and full than NPR headlines would have you believe.

Here's to another year of being Israeli! Thanks so much for reading. Comments and links make me warm and fuzzy inside every time.

P.S. If you want to read good coverage of the Hamas assassination controversy, I highly recommend the daily updates being posted by www.israellycool.com. Also, Ruti Mizrachi posted a really beautiful edition of the Jewish blog carnival, Haveil Havelim, over at Ki Yachol Nuchal. Check it out!

Celebrate Sylvester! (Or don't. Nobody really cares.)

No, not this Sylvester. (Source: http://www.swapmeetdave.com/Humor/Cats/Sylvester.htm)

New Years Eve was actually the first "holiday" I ever experienced in Israel, on my Birthright Israel trip as a sophomore in college. (I went to Israel just because it was a free trip and I liked to travel... I didn't expect it to change my life so drastically and ultimately send me here!) On December 31, 2001, our group was staying in a hotel in Jerusalem. The Chabad rabbis leading our trip bought us fairly massive amounts of alcohol, and at midnight we stood on the balconies of a party hall near the top of the hotel, sipping vodka and orange juice screwdrivers, and waiting for the fireworks to mark the start of 2002.

They didn't come.

We finally saw a few little pops and fizzles way off in the direction of Bethlehem.

This was perhaps my first introduction to the vast differences between Israeli and American culture. I wasn't surprised by the lack of Christmas decorations in Israel, but no celebration of New Year's Eve?? 

To Israelis, New Year's Eve isn't really our holiday. Yes, we might think about going to a pub (especially in Tel Aviv, den of heathens that it is), or we might go for a late meal at a restaurant, but if January 1st falls on a weekday, we'll be working. In fact, the very name by which Israelis call New Year's Eve implies that it's a Christian holiday: "Sylvester," which refers to the anti-Semitic pope whose saint's day falls on New Years Eve. (To boot, "Silvester" is the term used by Germans for New Year's Eve. Nothing like the dual connotation of Nazis and Jew-hating Popes to dampen celebration!)

Because most Israelis are off on Friday, more Israelis are going out to celebrate Sylvester this year than normal. However, when one of my friends posted a call for Sylvester plans on Facebook, she got back the following  suggestions: prepare cholent, clean the house, go to sleep early. (And for the record, my friend is about as secular as they get!) There may have been a banner wishing Kiryat Bialik a Sweet New Year and "only good things" in September, but the only sign of Sylvester here was a sale on sparkling white wine at the Super, and that could be coincidence.

So, celebrate Sylvester tonight. Or don't. Either way. Shabbat Shalom, and oh, what it is those Americans say? Eppy New Year?

P.S. My husband and I are going to stay up and celebrate with strawberries and champagne... what can we say, we'll always be American. :)

P.P.S. Heh... I just caught a typo in the version of this message that I posted originally. For the record, we were not partying on top of a hotel in Jerusalem on January 31, 2001, although that would certainly have explained the lack of fireworks... 

Work doesn't stop at the end of December!

In the US (and in the blogosphere), almost everything comes to a halt between Christmas and New Year's day. Even all my Jewish family and friends in the US are on vacation. It's the US equivalent of the "achrei hachagim" phenomenon that sweeps Israel every fall and spring.

Here in Israel, though, Dec. 25 is just another day. My husband and I went out for (amazing) sushi for lunch on Friday not because only Asian restaurants were open, but because we felt like soy sauce and wasabi with a little raw fish on the side. (Or maybe that was just me.) I went fabric shopping and got a great deal on Ultrasuede to reupholster my sofa. Our only rush was to get all our errands done before Shabbat, because everything shuts down from Friday night to Saturday night in Israel-- it was only part way through the day that I realized Americans were celebrating.

By the way, here's one of my favorite ways to identify true Sabras: ask them when "Chag HaMolad" (Holiday of the Birth, aka Christmas) happens. If they guess the wrong day in December, you know they're the real deal. The one possible exception might be the armies of young Israelis hawking Dead Sea products in US malls-- believe me, they understand the concept of a "holiday season."

My husband is back at work, so I've been using this time to catch up on my own rather intense backload of work for my day job. And, oh yes, Sunday's a work day. If you're an American coming to Israel, prepare for your internal clock to get confused.

There are, though, signs that Christmas happened here. Russian grocery stores send out advertising circulars covered in Christmas trees, which makes me kind of sad. I mean, yes, I know that the communists did a good job of convincing Russian Jews that these are secular New Year's Trees and should be in everyone's homes, but come on, Russim-- you're in Israel now. In the Arab neighborhoods in Haifa, a few strands of Christmas lights blink from balconies. Other than that, though, life carries on. I saw menorahs dripping in stores and booths in the mall during Chanukah, but no Christmas garlands or sales the past few days. No "Happy Holidays" from people who really mean "Merry Christmas."

It's nice. :)

Don't Call Between Two and Four

 Our adopted street kitten Pixel (back when he was little and cute) demonstrating appropriate Israeli behavior between 2-4

In the US, I knew it was rude to call someone's home before, oh, 8:30 AM or after 9:30 PM. But in Israel, there's an extra layer to this rule: don't call between 2 and 4 PM. This is reserved as siesta time in Israel, perhaps because in the days before air conditioning it was too hot to do anything but nap at this time. In fact, lots of stores and offices in Israel are open from 10:00 to 1:00 and then again from 4:00 to 7:00... the middle of the day is reserved for lunch (the biggest meal of the day in Israel) and sleep.

Me, I don't nap. I can sleep in in the morning as late as my schedule lets me, but I can't lie down and sleep in the middle of the day. But whether you nap or not, remember: don't call any Israeli friend between two and four! When I forget and violate this rule, I'm often greeted by groggy, irritated Israeli voices. On the other hand, this is a good way to learn some new words.

P.S. Happy Chanukah! The menorahs are out in full force in Israel... :)

Are Israelis rude?

I was actually just going to post a link to today's Haveil Havelim blog carnival, hosted by A Mother in Israel, but as I was browsing her wonderful blog, a post about Israeli "rudeness" struck a nerve with me, and I had to add my own thoughts. (I agree with A Mother in Israel's response to this question... I'm not ranting against what she said, but rather at the attitude she addressed!)

We've all heard that Israelis are rude, and to some extent this is true. More often, though, Americans coming to Israel are ruder than they realize. What is polite in America is not the same as what is polite in Israel.

For example, I've posted before about the way the relationship between Israeli sales people and customers is different from the relationship in America.  In America, the customer is always right-- and the customer is therefore entitled to demand service RIGHT NOW, monopolize a sales person's time and then walk away, ask to speak to the manager if anything is wrong with service, etc. In Israel, on the other hand, the sales person sees himself as an authority-- and is therefore entitled to take his sweet time in coming to serve you, give you advice you didn't ask for, and refuse to sell you a more expensive product if he's convinced a cheap one will do. The flip side of this, though, is that sales people usually feel invested in helping you find the right product, and they often have good advice to offer. Americans who come in expecting sales people to be subservient come across as arrogant and demanding... sounds familiar?

In other situations, I think Israeli "rudeness" stems from the feeling that we're like a big family crowded into a too-small apartment. Of course we tell each other what to do! Yes, strangers might ask pointed personal questions after spending two minutes with you in the supermarket checkout line. (If you don't want to respond, adopt the teenager-tested strategy of refusing to give away information. "Where are you going?" "Out." "What are you going to do there?" "Stuff.") Imagine if a family member was simply indifferent to you-- wouldn't that sting more? And here's the thing: when Israelis yell at you, it's something like your brother yelling at you. At the end of the day, he still loves you and you love him. It's not personal. Two strangers in Israel can have a loud, heated disagreement, and at the end of it clap each other on the back, call each other "achi," and buy each other coffee. An American after the same disagreement might nurse a grudge for years, while Israelis were just voicing their opinions and having a little battle of wills.

Israelis see Americans as friendly and polite on the surface but aloof and insincere in this kindness. Imagine: Americans see someone else's child misbehaving or crying and don't do anything! Americans might obey traffic laws, but they don't pick up the teenagers hitchhiking along the side of the road or invite strangers into their homes for a meal. When Americans give directions, they rarely offer to show the asker to his destination. Americans don't offer coffee to repairmen or shots of homemade peach liqueur to customers in their shops. When a friend of mine moved back to America after a decade of life in Israel, she was shocked by the dirty looks she received in American supermarkets when she accidentally nudged strangers with her shopping cart, and by the indifference of fellow travelers on American city buses as she attempted to lug around a baby and a small child. Again: Israel and the US have different definitions of "polite." Americans are offended that someone bumps into them in the grocery store yet don't consider that giving a dirty look in response could be rude.

In the US, social norms often call for you to be indirect and perhaps even passive-aggressive in how you state your opinions. You smile when you don't mean it. You say "thank you" when you don't mean it. You complain to everyone except the person with whom you have a problem. In Israel, social norms call for you to be direct and assertive. You honk your horn and flash your lights at the car that is going too slowly in front of you, and then pull over if they seem to need help. For me, the Israeli system works so much better. I hate being around people who might be upset by my actions and not say anything. I'm notoriously bad at picking up subtle non-verbal cues and like it when people are direct with me and I can be direct with them. It's tricky to nail the right degree of assertiveness (rather than combativeness) in your interactions with Israelis, but when you find it, you develop a relationship based on mutual respect. If you avoid confrontation at all costs, on the other hand, this might not be the country for you.

I feel for tourists-- I really do. The American strategies of smiling and being polite (until you're REALLY upset) send the wrong signals to Israelis and so elicit responses that only make Americans feel more attacked and annoyed. Because Americans assume you have to be furious to shout at a stranger in the street or lay on the horn, they must get freaked out by fairly normal interactions in Israel. Yes, Israel might gain a better reputation in the world and among visiting tourists if we learned about tact. But if you're in Israel, maybe you should try acting like an Israeli. People are so much nicer that way!

Ok, that's my rant. Told you that touched a nerve. What do you think? Have you had experiences with "rude" Israelis (or rude Americans)?

Grocery shopping like an Israeli

There are a lot of differences between Israeli and American grocery stores, as I learned on my very first day in Israel. I was strolling down the street, feeling all cool and Israeli, and I decided to look around the inside of our local Machsane-Lahav.

By the way, basically half of the big stores in Israel these days is calls Machsan-something. Machsan means "warehouse" (or storage room, as in the machsans on the ground floor of most apartment buildings) and I guess it indicates "cheap" and "big" to the Israeli consumer. I bought our fridge in Machsane-Chashmal (Electrical Warehouse), I passed a lamp store called Machsan-Teorah (Lighting Warehouse) last night, a butcher shop might be Machsan-Basar, etc. Machsane-Lahav means "Flame Warehouse"... I'm really not sure where that one comes from.

Anyway, on my first day in Israel, I strolled into the grocery store (known as a super in Hebrew--pronounced "soo-pear" and short for "supermarket," I guess). A guy standing at the door tried to get my attention as I waltzed in, but I had heard Israeli men tend to be aggressive. Was I going to be the clueless American who made eye contact and encouraged Israeli pickup artists? Not me! I was Israeli! Cool as a melafafon, I strolled towards the bread section, only to see the guy coming after me and shouting... and he had a gun.

Turns out he was the security guard at the door who was supposed to check my purse before I entered. Oops. And for the record, having pretty decent Hebrew when you arrive backfires when you need to convince a security guard that you are a fresh-off-the-plane olah who didn't know any better.

These are some other fun things you should know about shopping in an Israeli super:

• Be nice to the security guys. If they get to know you, they'll let you go in without being searched. Also, they can watch your little-old-lady-wheeled-cart (post about that later) or your bags of veggies from the yarkan (post about that later too) or your stroller at the door while you go shopping.
• The grocery store (unless it's a non-kosher basar-lavan-selling chain like Tiv-Taam) will close early on Fridays and be closed all day on Shabbat and holidays.
  
• If you have just one or two items, Israelis almost always let you cut in front of them in line if you ask.
• The check-out lady might not say "thank you" or "have a nice day," but she will tell you that you have only bought one bottle of olive oil when you get a better price for buying two, and she'll wait for you to go get another bottle. She will also attempt to sell you a range of products from dark chocolate to hand lotion that she has sitting on her checkout counter. She will also do this for all of the people ahead of you in line, which means you should be prepared to wait for a while to check out.
  
• Buy-one-get-one-free in Hebrew is denoted in simple math: 1+1 (echad ploos echad). Buy two get one free is 2+1 (shteim ploos echad) and is WRITTEN as 1+2... Hebrew goes right to left, remember? (Thanks for a commenter for reminding me of this!)
• You probably need to bag your own groceries and you probably need to ask the checkout lady to throw some bags up on the checkout counter for you.
• When you buy more than, say, 200 shekels of groceries, you will be asked "kama tashlumim," which means "how many payments?" If you want to pay everything at once, you can say "echad" or "ragil" (normal). A rumor circulates among olim that the way to ask to pay everything at once is to say "makah" (hit), but when an Argentinian told me this in the checkout line once, the checkout lady said she'd never heard it before.
  
• On your receipt when you pay with a credit card will be two lines. The top is for your signature, and the bottom is for your phone number. To be really Israeli, don't write your phone number in this space unless the checkout lady insists. This would be giving away information. I've barely ever written my phone number on a receipt, despite the fact that every receipt contains a spot for it.
  

I think I'll devote a whole post some time to the differences between food packaging in Israel and the US. What general super shopping-tips did I miss? Have you had any adventures in Israeli grocery shopping?

You are TALL

In the US, I was considered a normal height. At five feet five inches (1.67 meters), about half the women I knew were taller than me, half shorter.

Here in Israel, this is me:

I cannot tell you how many times I have been called "gavoha" (tall) here. Sales people hear my shoe size and think I must be joking. (True, I have especially big feet, but size 9 1/2 shoes-- 41 European-- are at least usually available in the US!) When I'm with a crowd of Israeli women, I feel like that one tall girl in middle school... and I was really short at age 12.

Of course, it's not just me. In the US, my husband was on the shorter side of average, but now he is more often than not one of the taller people in a room. One of my olah friends is my height and bemoans the fact that it's hard to find guys who are taller than her. When the Israeli national soccer team plays, say, the Austrians, they can pretty much forfeit any head-butting duel.

To be fair, there are tall Israelis. I attended a bar mitzvah recently for a boy who had to be over 6'2". (His mother's speech consisted primarily of references to his height... in a loving way, of course!) If I hear about my height this often, I can only imagine what it feels like to be truly tall here. Does anyone have experiences to share?

So if you want to be Israeli, remember: you are probably taller than you think!

P.S. It's STILL raining. 

Don't drive during the first rain...

The first rain in Israel-- after months of endless sunny days-- usually arrives in late September. This year it came on Rosh Hashana-- a driving rain that left puddles in the streets. The air smells like wet clay, like cool breath. I opened the sliding doors on the mirpeset of our apartment and let the raindrops flick in onto my boxes of herbs. The first rain feels like a shower at the end of a long camping trip, when your hair is greasy, bits of leaves cling in weird places, and you don't want to know how your armpits smell. It rinses dust out of the air so that we see the radio towers on hills along the border with Lebanon all the way from Haifa, and deposits this dust on cars: brown splats of raindrops cling to our windows after the first drizzle.

It also releases the motor oil and dust and grease from the asphalt on the roads. I bet a lot of olim aren't aware they need to drive carefully during the first rain, no matter how gentle. We scoff at the way Israelis might drive during snow and don't understand that this film of released grime can be just as dangerous. But Israeli drivers crawl along during the first rain-- and if you have ever seen Israelis drive, you know how significant it is when they actually go slowly.

I always get the urge to run outside and frolic during the first rain, but I settled this year for sitting on our balcony, feeling the water against my face, petting my freaked-out cats, and smelling the air.

Let's hope this winter is wet!

Can I use the bathroom... er... toilet room... er... WC?

Not our toilet. (http://nerdapproved.com/bizarre-gadgets/mr-toilet-plush/)

Israelis tend to think it's gross to have a toilet in the same room as a bathtub. I've seen a few houses or apartments with everything in one room, but most Israeli homes contain a toilet room and then a separate room with a bathtub, shower and sink. Nicer homes have a little sink in the toilet room, but in our apartment we have to angle out of the toilet room (attempting not to touch anything in the process) and into the separate bathroom to wash our hands. This is especially fun when a guest happens to actually be taking a shower when I just used the, er, toilet room-- although I guess it's nice I can use the toilet at all when someone else is showering!

All this leads to a little terminology confusion. I'm used to calling it all the bathroom, or the ambatia in Hebrew. But when I ask where the bathroom is at someone else's house, people tend to think I'm looking for a bubble bath. So then I have to figure out what's the word for the room with just a toilet-- restroom? Toilet room? Powder room? Maybe WC, the British word for "water closet," and, incidentally, what they call toilet rooms in French (Veh Seh). In Hebrew, the correct word is shirutim, "services," but I tend to forget this. Once, our drains clogged when we had American guests. I took one of the guests to use the bathroom--er, WC-- in our neighbor's apartment. But when I got there, I completely blanked on the right word, and I ended up asking if the guest could use their "asla," their toilet. A little graphic. I've never quite been able to look the neighbors in the eye since.

So if you want to be Israeli, just remember to ask for the shirutim, not the ambatia. It's also a good idea to remember that the plural of shirut (one of those group taxis) is moniot shirut, not shirutim... I've also gotten weird looks when ask if shirutim come to this bus stop.

Ah, good times. Maybe I should stick to posting about my dirty dishes. :)

Living in a water shortage

Yesterday, I was doing something in my kitchen when I heard a crack, then what sounded like someone dragging the sheets from our clothesline to the ground. But when I looked out the window, I saw that a branch had snapped off the tree in our courtyard.


Twigs from the branch were brittle like dead, dry wood. I don't know this for sure, but it seems as if our water shortage is so severe that live wood is drying out. A scary thought.

Israel is a dry country, but this water shortage is more severe than normal. We're like people who live off of credit cards and realize they're nearing their credit limit. We've taken for granted that the red line on the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) can move lower and lower, but now we're beginning to wonder if the water left might not be enough.

In the US, I sometimes experienced droughts-- the spring on my family's farm would dry up and we would switch to well water, and then we'd get a big storm and the water would return. But what we considered a drought in rainy Pennsylvania is a way of life in Israel. We don't get rain all summer here, so we depend on winter rains... and continue to live beyond our water means.

Next time, I'm going to post about how to wash dishes in a water shortage-- complete with pictures of my dirty dishes! (Actually, you might not want to check back for that.)

For now, one of our favorite new water-saving tricks: we put a bucket in our shower to collect the cold water that runs while we wait for the water to turn warm. (Not "gray" run-off water-- clean water that otherwise goes wasted.) Then, I've been using this water to water plants and mop floors. Honestly, there's too much of it-- I now have a full bucket of water that I'm not sure what to do with. We might start using it to flush our toilets, although that sounds a little tricky. Or I might just buy more herbs for my window boxes and revel in the fact that I don't need to feel guilty when I water my plants. Any other ideas?