Ring, Ring
If you’ve ever considered fleeing overseas in order to get away from pesky telemarketers, DON’T move to Israel. It’s almost as bad here as it is in North America. A Mother in Israel elaborates.
Just about every day we get unsolicited calls falling into three categories: telemarketers, surveys, and charitable organizations. I have found that the best way to get rid of telemarketers is not to give them a chance to talk. One of my children once asked me, “Why do you always say, ‘Lo meunyanim’” (not interested)? Afterward saying those magic words I hang up immediately. I figure I am doing them a favor by not letting them waste their time on a non-sale, although one called me right back to chastise me for being rude. I don’t think she has much of a future as a telemarketer!
On the rare occasion that I agree to answer a survey on the phone, I always regret it. They invariably take about twenty minutes to complete, even though the caller insists that it is a “short” survey, and that he is “almost” fniished. My favorite was the marketing survey about a new type of white cheese. Each of the thirty or so questions included the name of the brand. Clearly this survey was an effective advertisement as I remember the name of the cheese to this day.
When we first came to Israel, the few requests we received from charitable organizations occurred on their “yom hatramah” or annual appeal, which was run by volunteers. Nowadays our phone rings constantly with requests for one organization or another. Lately, every week brings a new organization requesting aid for “mishpechot bimetzukah” (families in distress). How many such organizations do there need to be? There are two or three in my town alone. And the callers are as aggressive as any telemarketer. I know most of them are paid, and they must work on a commission. I don’t have any other way to explain the fact that they call every two or three months or more. When going over our expenses we recently found that my husband and I had donated to an organization twice within the same week.Then there was the caller who tearfully pleaded for funds on behalf of a patient needing an operation in chutz laaretz (outside of Israel). When I mentioned an amount the caller exclaimed, “Oh, that’s not enough!” I am not implying that the request was not genuine, but I had no way of knowing for sure.
More than once I have found an exorbitant charge to a charitable organization on my credit card statement. Fortunately I was able to cancel these donations easily. Are these genuine mistakes or are they intended to beef up a commission? It’s too bad that the reputations of these organizations become sullied by this practice. I don’t want to entrust my credit card number to careless or dishonest representatives.
Dude, Where’s His Dude?
Old Benji had a bad, bad plumbing week. I noticed earlier that he was having trouble coping with the concept of pay toilets. What I didn’t notice was that during the same week, he ran out of hot water:
Got home yesterday to my roommate saying “Dohnt show-ehr!” What, like ever? “No! There is no hoht wahter! The dude is noht wohr-keeng!” Excuse me? Who is the dude and how can we get him back to work?
The dude…is not a dude. It’s the dood, otherwise known as the hot water boiler. As in the individual hot water boiler for each unique apartment. As in there’s no central water heater. As in each owner maintains his or her own. And as in ours BROKE yesterday and Daddy’s got no hot water. OMIG-D. Yeah, I know there’s this whole situation with the Arabs but in case you didn’t hear, I DON’T HAVE HOT WATER!!! Now mind you, I often don’t have hot water. Because with a dude, you have to flip the hot water switch outside your bathroom somewhere between 10 and 30 minutes prior to getting into the shower. Which means you have to wake up, flip the switch, then kill some time before getting Zestfully clean. That certainly doesn’t fall under the category of convenience.
My roommate suggested that I clean myself like she did on her Indian vacation, using a “hot bucket”. A hot bucket is when you boil water in your kumkum (electric water kettle, warrants its own post), pour it into a bucket, mix it with cold water, and then pour it over yourself. In other words, absolute insanity. When I asked her if she had lost her mind, she said “you ken write about eet een your blohg.” Yes, I can! BRILLIANT! I was prepared to do some investigative journalism until it was fixed tonight. The landlady sent a maintenance guy to fix it. Thank G-d…somebody wouldn’t have smelled good tomorrow.
The Sweet Taste of Persimmons
OK, I know I posted an ode to strawberries recently, but hey – some bloggers get excited about cats, I get excited about fresh fruit.
When I first came to Israel, I’d never seen a persimmon before. I remember thinking “why are these weird tomatoes bright orange?” But one bite of the yummy fruit that you could swear was spiced with cinnamon sugar and I was hooked. This article contains two pieces of good news — first, that persimmons are likely to stay in season longer than they currently do, and secondly, that the rest of the world is catching on.
In recent years, Israel has conquered second place in persimmon export, coming in after Spain. The Plants Production and Marketing Board reports that the fruit reaches most continents; mainly Europe (east and west), followed by South Africa and Australia.
Even more eastern countries like China, Singapore, Japan and Thailand enjoy the Israeli persimmon.
Chairman of the persimmon growers board Yair Kaplan says the fruits success abroad is due to its sweet taste. “We grow the Triumph variety, in which we have managed to reach a 25 percent sugar content, whereas competing persimmons only have a 15 percent sugar content.”
A Musical People
A night out on the town in Tel Aviv leads Hannah to observe that in Israel, you really can’t stop the music, though she’s not quite sure why:
We met at a nearby bar that some were (sarcastically) claiming was “the new hot Tel Aviv bar”. I have absolutely no idea if this is true, but by midnight the place was so packed that you could barely squeeze through the crowd to get to the bathroom. The music was an odd mix of Israeli less-than-mainstream favorites (i.e. things you wouldn’t hear on Galgalatz) and songs like “YMCA”, “Ironic” by Alanic Morrisette, and Michael Jackson. Some people get snobby about their music, but I love the crazy mixes Israelis think up and just sing along regardless. A little alcohol to lighten the mood always helps. And really, it could have been karaoke night because everyone in the room was tapping their feet or bobbing their head while they sang along to the music.
It’s something I love about Israelis, they love to sing. There is absolutely no fear of looking like an idiot, you just sing wherever you are. I see delivery men singing as they wait for the elevator, cooks singing as they prepare a salad, young people walking down the street and singing their favorite songs. It makes me smile and, though I don’t often join in, I think that it is something worth admiring about Israeli culture and perhaps even sort of insightful into how Israelis deal with war, violence, and terrible terrible drivers… or maybe they just like to sing.
The Writing Is On the Wall:
I had to put this West Bank Mama post next to Yael’s, because I was struck by how these two clearly thoughtful intelligent women think so differently — that the political chasms in Israel aren’t so clear-cut, black-and-white, good-vs.-evil or naive-vs.-realistic. (For the uninitiated, Bnei Akiva is a youth movement, one of several in Israel. They combines traditional scouting activities with an idealogical direction that cross the spectrum from hard-core Labor Zionism to right-wing religious. My son is in one that is affiliated with the Conservative movement.) Anyway, back to West Bank Mama:
Every year those of us with children in Bnei Akiva (from fourth grade to12th) endure – um, I mean enjoy what is called Shabbat Irgun. This day sums up a month of work by the kids to get geared up for the year. They have “morale sessions” (basically singing at the top of their lungs about how great their group is), they prepare a skit for the Motzei Shabbat extravaganza, and they scrape off the paint, do a whitewash, and repaint their portion of the wall in the Bnei Akiva “snif” (clubhouse).
Each year the parents are invited in to see these walls. Each time I go I get a sense of what the kids are thinking about (or at least what their teenage advisors are thinking about).
Last November most of the paintings were colored black or orange, and referred to the destruction of Gush Katif and the hope that we will return there. Some of the more philosophical groups wrote about hope and despair and faith – with quotations from various sources.
This year there was a different feel. The war in Lebanon and in Gaza took precedence. Some groups had collages of religous soldiers painted on the wall. Some used military “accessories” to showcase each kid’s name in the group – one group used the “kumta” – the beret, each one with a different child’s name. My son’s group used dogtags. It certainly was a queasy sight seeing my ten year old’s name, with a number that he just made up (at least he didn’t put his teudat zehut number, that would have been too much).
Another group painted the following slogan in their space:
“Shalom zeh hazman bein milchama l’milchama” – “Peace is the time between one war and another.”
Sobering, yes.
At the same time, though, I found this slogan to be somewhat encouraging. Not because I love war, G-d forbid. The idea of my sons fighting scares me to death.
I found it comforting, though, that although these kids are only teenagers, they understand what it takes to live here in Israel. These are normal, happy adolescents, who worry about pimples and popularity just like others their age the world over. But at the same time they know that living in their homeland takes sacrifice, and they are willing to make it.
If everyone here in Israel saw things this clearly we would all be better off.
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