With friends like these, how could he be nervous?
Michael was a student at a New Orleans university, who came to Israel for a semester after Hurricane Katrina closed his school. What could be better? Hang out in Israel with his friends for a few months, earn some academic credit, and have a dry place to sleep? Well, looks like he’s gotten more than he bargained for, now that he decided to stay in Israel for good . . . and the Jewish tendency to laugh at (not with) one’s pain is not helping matters . . .
Through either serendipity or inertia (history will decide), a semester at the Hebrew University before a triumphant return to the ruins of New Orleans ever so slowly transformed into full-on immigration to Israel. Some will say it was the hummus what did it. Others will say full-on immigration was my plan all along. I don’t really remember at this point. It’s been a very long, yet very short year – when I consider all that’s happened to me, it seems like it’s too much to squeeze within the bookends of a year, but in another sense, time seems to be racing ever faster towards an inevitable destination, no longer beyond the horizon but increasingly in plain sight.
I’m sorry, I’ll stop abusing metaphor and get the point: I’m getting drafted in a couple of months.
This is something of a surprising development when considered objectively. I’m a lover, not a fighter. Well, I’m not really a lover. I’m neither mod nor rocker, I’m a mocker. And yet, here I am, on the brink of signing away a good chunk of my life to the military of the country I’ve rather recently adopted.
I could make an attempt to explain my motivations and feelings toward service in the IDF, but honestly, I’ve never been very good at sincerity (it always strikes me as insincere), and I’m sure you’ve heard it all before, so take five seconds and look at that charming “Hagen Al Moledetkha” poster in Laya’s recent post and I’m sure we’ll all be on the same page. And being one of those old-fashioned “Whoo-hoo, let’s make the desert bloom!” Zionists, Blue Train to Post-Zionism’s Ascensions, let’s say, I’m taking “Kravi zeh hakhi, achi,” to heart and shooting for combat infantry, or as my ever-encouraging mother calls it, “cannon fodder”.
I admit to a moderate amount of nervousness, which tends to be exacerbated rather than alleviated by everyone around me. My mother, beset by conflicting impulses to guilt me into changing my mind about the army in general, convince me to shoot for a non-combat role, or accept what I’ve decided, has become somewhat incoherent. (And before I get the indignant phonecall, she still is my favorite mother). My American friends are at best puzzled, given that my interests in high school were chiefly playing the drums and completing my collection of Prince albums on vinyl (this is not to say that these are no longer my interests, mind you). My Israeli army veteran friends mostly like to tell me somewhat alarming anecdotes that are apparently, in retrospect, the Most Fun Things Ever, such as, “The best part is when, during your tironut, for gas mask training, they make you go into a tent filled with tear gas, and then they make you take off your gas mask and make you work out until you’re crying and snot is pouring out of your nose and every cell in your body is crying out for the sweet release of death! It’s fuckin’ awesome!” Not that I’ll name names or anything.
But by far the most generally discouraging of my friends and supporters are my very own Jewlicious co-bloggers. ck and laya, with minimal input, will gladly launch on a half-hour spiel about how my death in combat would be the best possible thing that could ever happen to Jewlicious: “Just think of the traffic! The publicity! It would be blogging gold! We could make a post about your funeral and write you an awesome eulogy! The first blogger killed in action! Ooh, even better! You could marry (female friend of mine) first, and then you could leave behind a grieving widow! Or, EVEN BETTER, you could knock her up first! That’s even more tragic! And then we could establish charities in your name! The Michael Foundation – bringing together Israeli and Palestinian children and teaching them to play the drums. It’s gold!”
I love my friends so much.
On Vacation, with Children
Gavriel reports from the Galilee:
We’re still on vacation. While it’s totally obvious this vacation is recharging the parental batteries (how could it not?) I thought I’d give a quick list of some of the many vacation benefits our kids are also getting out of this trip to Israel’s north:
1. Chocolate cereal for breakfast and barbecued marshmallows for dinner.
2. Local dogs that know how to suck up to little kids, hoping to merit dibs on any leftover barbecued chicken. I also notice the kids seem to have a heartier appetite, cleaning their plates more than usual even though I can’t specifically remember seeing them actually eat much of
anything. Aside: thank goodness these dogs showed up after we almost ruined the vacation by saying no when asked if it was possible to rent a dog for the trip.
3. Cable TV with the same selection of channels the kids are used to, so they can have a little time each day that feels like home only farther away.
4. A beach that has ROCKS. A lawn outside the cottage that has STICKS.
5. New bunk assignments, seating arrangements, and bathroom protocols to negotiate — using “negotiate” here in it’s euphemistic, Hamas-ian sense.
6. Microwave popcorn (it’s good anywhere) and healthful granola cookies (Ok, they didn’t actually fall for that but I give Sharon credit for trying).
7. Air conditioner controls that are low enough for all three girls to reach, all the time.
8. Lights with dimmer switches that really dim, even the 17th time.
9. A whole new vista of questions to explore:
- why is the cottage made of wood?
- why are the worker guys not married?
- are we there yet?
- how much longer until we eat?
- where did you put my shoes?
- since it’s vacation, do we have to brush our teeth?
- can we watch TV before we brush our teeth?
At least it must seem like a whole new vista to them.
10. The thrill of swimming in Lake Kinneret (Sea of Gallilee) even though we had to give them strict instructions not to pee or sneeze in Israel’s drinking water.Good thing our vacation will be over in the next day or so — I’d hate to accidentally overcharge anyone’s batteries.
The Baby is Here!
Yakira Miriam
Must’ve been Christian tourists
A man and his ever-nagging wife went on vacation to Jerusalem. While they were there, the wife passed away. The undertaker told the husband, “You can have her shipped home for $5,000, or you can bury her here, in the Holy Land, for $150.” The man thought about it and told him he would just have her shipped home.
The undertaker asked, “Why would you spend $5,000 to ship your wife home, when it would be wonderful to be buried here and you would spend only $150?”
The man replied, “Long ago a man died here, was buried here, and three days later he rose from the dead. I just can’t take that chance.”
Contact Hypothesis
After working for an hour and a half on my assignment covering ethnocultural tension, multicultural citizenship, contact hypothesis and sustained dialogue, I left the office and waited for my ghetto bus with everyone else. There I was, holding my English newspaper, feeling 10,000 miles away from the group of teen Ethiopians sing songing next to me; there they were, feeling 10,000 kilometers away from the group of young arsim rowdying nearby; there they stood, seeming 10,000 kilometers away from the dati-leumi (national religious) girl, standing and waiting for our ghetto bus.
We all faced each other, but we were all 10,000 miles away, with our backs turned.
If only I could hand that in as my paper: an example of our little society, pre-sustained dialogue, pre-contact, pre-intergroup relations.
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