playing against stereotype
With a long tradition of mutual distrust between haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews and the Israeli police, it’s nice to read about a secular police officer going out of his way not just to protect, but also to serve the haredi community where he works:
Sometimes the ingenuity of one person is enough to carry over an entire community. Meet community policeman Shuki Der’i (44) who has been running an original project in the Jerusalem haredi neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo: he has started a group for teenage boys dealing with different disabilities including Down’s Syndrome, autism, and other communication problems, and meets with them once a week to help connect them to their community.
While he is at it, Der’i, a qualified fitness instructor, gives them a fitness lesson and asks them to tell him about the good deeds they have done.
. . . The weekly meetings, Der’i explains, are run according to a steady order of business. “At first we sit around a table, in a home environment. Every boy is required to tell one good deed he had committed that week. One of them told the group that he stopped hitting his brother following our meeting, another one about helping his parents with housework,” he smiles.
“In one of the meetings we worked on polite behavior, on the importance of saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, things they were not accustomed to before. They did not know how to cross a street either, so I taught them how to walk in a safe manner.”
According to the (admittedly rather sloppily reported) article, the community, or at least the kids themselves, have taken a liking to Officer Shuki:
Recently, the proud instructor escorted the boys on an outing to the Western Wall.
At the end of the visit one of the boys approached him and announced excitedly that “he put a note in the wall asking to be just like Shuki,” and melted Der’i’s heart. “Once, one of the boys would get scared and run every time he saw a policeman,” he sums up. “Now he says he’s not afraid of cops anymore, because ‘I have Shuki, and he’s there for me’. A sentence like that is worth it all.”
“The smell of earth and home”
Filed under: History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Profiles
Isrealli.org asks “23 questions to an Israeli in New York,” the Israeli being Yael Hartmann, publicist, freelance journalist, and former army captain.
Exerpt:
14. I wish I could live in Israel and in the US near my family simultaneously.
15. I smile when I hear Israeli music playing in a New York deli
16. I get angry when I hear people talk about Israel when they don’t know all of the facts.
17. I do not forgive those who cannot forgive.
18. Once in a life time experience: Being responsible for the American media during the Disengagement from Gaza and going through Trapeze school would be neck and neck. The heartbreaking snapshots etched in my mind after 8,000 people were removed from their homes in front of the media circus are still impossible to describe to those who were not there. However, flying through the air when one is afraid of heights and then letting go so that someone can grab your arms is another experience that no one can take from you. I would highly recommend the latter.
19. Favorite travel destination: India was incredible with its extreme poverty and decadent wealth and its incredible food and colors. Mexico is a magnificent country – you need never leave in order to experience contrasting cultures, landscapes, fragrances and peoples.
20. What I miss about Israel: The music, the smell of earth and home when you get off the plane, and the view of the sea from my apartment.
Read her answers to the other 16 questions here.
Oh, the irony
Filed under: A New Reality, History and Culture, Politics
Via Israellycool and Jewlicious, an article about the 3rd Annual Israeli Apartheid Week, with events taking place in the US, Canada, and England to show the world to what extent Israelis are racist, bigoted jerks who want to keep all the power for themselves.
One of the keynote speakers is Dr.Jamal Zahalka an Arab member of the Israeli Parliament. His photo and biographical information can be found on the Knesset website here.
Has anyone planning that event allowed this to sink in? I mean, I’m the first to admit that Israel does some stupid and cruel things, but apartheid? Give me a break.
Little girl, overreaching
Story from House of Joy in a suburb of Jerusalem:
Once upon a time, in the land of Israel, there was a little girl named Sophia Nessa or as her friends called her, Sophie. Now Sophie was a very smart little girl and she was a very able little girl but she was a little girl and had not yet learned about limits. These three character traits combined to keep Sohie’s mommy – who had three other wonderful children very busy.
One day Sophie decided that she was big enough to take herself to the bathroom all by herself. After all, her older brother and sister went to the bathroom all by themselves. Never mind the fact that Sophie was not ever two years old, she knew how to go to the bathroom. And so, while her mommy was making lunch, Sophie went upstairs, took off her dress and her diaper all by herself and went poo poo in her little potty. Then she lifted the lid, took the cup out of the potty and went to pour it into the big toilet bowl. But, as I mentioned, Sophie is not quite two and she does not have good aim. Instead of landing in the potty, Sophie’s poo poo landed on the toilet bowl itself. She didn’t notice that this was a problem and promptly put the seat down so that she could stand on the seat and flush the toilet. Then, Sophie decided to wash her hands so she went to turn the water on and wash her hands. When she finished with this, she decided to wash out the cup for her potty. So she climed into the bathtub. She forgot two things. First, she forgot to turn the water in the sink off. Second she forgot that while she knows how to get into the bathtub all by herself, she does not know how to get out of the bathtub. She called for mommy who ran upstairs to find a flooded bathroom, a squished poop on the toiled seat and Sophie smiling in the bathtub holding a dirty cup.
The Magic Touch
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Immigrant Moments, Life, Profiles
Last week, The New York Jewish Week published a story I wrote about “Magic Michael” Tulkoff, a “humor therapist” at several Israeli hospitals, who makes balloon animals and jokes for Jewish, Muslim, and Christian children:
With both balloons and tzitzit hanging from his belt, Tulkoff indeed exudes a special bedside aura, a mix of jubilant jokery and sensitivity for patients’ pain — and that of their parents. Recently Tulkoff visited a 2-year-old boy who had just received a heart transplant and had a long incision down his small chest. The child was alone and looked sad. In an effort to cheer the boy, Tulkoff tooted his harmonica and kazoo, to no avail. Bubbles elicited a small response.
By now the child’s understandably stressed mother had returned. Tulkoff created balloon swans and bears, hung them above the boy’s bed and squirted them with air to make them “jump.” The boy laughed out loud. But what Tulkoff noted afterward was that “[the] mother was thrilled.”
A few hours on rounds with him makes it clear that Tulkoff sees his role not just as an entertainer, nor just as part of the rehab team — his official position at Alyn — but as a healing presence for patients’ entire families.
The families are often surprised to encounter Tulkoff “out of uniform,” since clowning and magic jar most Israelis’ stereotypes of Jews who wear black hats and suit jackets. Tulkoff said that often his religiosity “sets me way apart for the good,” since clients have no fear that he will make crude jokes. And anyone with negative images of Jews who wear tziztit is immediately put at ease: Tulkoff, like most medical providers in Israel, does his work equally well, with equally corny jokes, for all patients, regardless of nationality or beliefs. He performs in rudimentary Arabic and Russian as well as English, Hebrew and Spanish.
You can see the rest of the story here. I spent a significant amount of time with Michael, both alone and on “rounds” with him at two different hospitals, and I’ve met his charming family. He is indeed a very special person. In the photo above, he is encouraging a young burn victim to flex his arms.
anti-Semitism, imported
From Ynet, a sad and disturbing story about certain immigrants from the Former Soviet Union — many of whom are not Jews — whose anti-Semitic attitudes find fertile grounds for expression in the Jewish State. Often their bigotry is directed at other Russian immigrants:
Ella Shapira from Tel Aviv is a veteran immigrant who came to Israel in 1976 from Leningrad. In her hometown, she was not able to pursue a career or get accepted to a university because she was a Jew. She personally experienced anti-Semitism and hoped that she could forget this unpleasant experience upon her arrival in Israel.
However she can tell of the many hateful utterances she has heard in the Russian stores, in public parks, or just in the streets. One incident, in 2001, even became physical, when a drunken man attacked her and yelled Russian slurs at her. “I walked in the streets and cried. “To where have we come, if in the Jewish state they humiliate me because I am Jewish”, she says.
Shapira is angered by the comprehensive disregard of the problem. “This is a subject that no one likes or is afraid to speak of. For the workers in the Jewish Agency, bringing new immigrants to Israel is a good business, many people profit from it. But they are bringing people who have no connection to Judaism, and some who have been brought up to hate it. I often encounter these situations. My outer appearance does not reveal my origins. Thus, a few weeks ago I went into a clothing store and the two saleswomen began to talk about me in Russian: ‘Here is a dirty Jew, she is going to touch everything and make it dirty.’ They were shocked when I answered them in Russian and explained to them that it is forbidden to speak that way”.
“I once heard a group of kids next to a school, cursing each other with the words “stinking Jew”. I decided that I had to approach them and find out why they had so much hatred towards Jews. They explained that until they came to Israel, they had no idea that they had any Jewish blood. Their parents and relatives, including those who had come to Israel- hated Jews…the word “Jew” in Russia was considered a bad word. Most of them were embarrassed to be Jews, hated it and learned from the Russians to hate Jews”.
Kinda makes one wonder why people who are inclined to paint swastikas on walls and desecrate mezuzahs would move to Israel to begin with. But the other level at which this story is disturbing is the number of other Israelis who will use it (and do) to make sweeping generalizations about Russian immigrants.
::sigh::
Hair today, gone tomorrow
Mother in Israel explains what finally got her son to go from this:
to this:
There is even a reference to the Palestinian conflict. Check it out.
UNIFIL: Israel was telling the truth
With the foreign media focused on the non-story at Mugrabi gate, Yonatan brings our attention to this tidbit from Haaretz,which probably won’t make it to CNN:
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) accepted on Thursday Israel’s version of the events that concluded in an exchange of fire between the Israel Defense Forces and the Lebanese Army at the border late Wednesday.
UNIFIL patrolled the area around Israel’s and Lebanon’s shared border, photographed the site, and concluded that IDF troops operated entirely within Israeli territory.
The Lebanese Army on Wednesday fired warning shots at IDF troops, claiming that the troops had entered Lebanese territory.
The incident occurred north of the border fence that Israel erected several dozen meters within Israeli territory, but south of the actual international border between the two countries.
Israeli weddings: Revealed and Untucked
Filed under: History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness
Shmuel writes from the Golan:
I always try to stop and pick up hitchhikers – it is part of Israeli culture – after all, for years I benefited from tons of rides. On the way home, we spoke about when he grew up on the Moshav and as we approached the turn off into the Moshav, he told me to drop him off at the corner.
He needed to continue heading south towards his cousin’s Bat Mitzvah party. I was shocked, because he was dressed in a faded t-shirt and green cargo pants.
Ah, yes, the moment when Westerners in Israel come to realize that dressing up is almost never de rigeur. I wrote about this phenomenon recently for the Catered Events section of the New York Jewish Week. The article, which focuses on weddings, is here.
Exerpt here:
But as much as Israeli brides prefer to “go glam” more than their American counterparts, other members of the wedding party may expect to dress down. While an American groom will wear a suit and tie, or even a tuxedo, Israeli men typically turn up at their own weddings “in a nice shirt,” Summerfield said. Roth added that tucking in said shirt is not a requirement.
How much more so, then, are siblings of the bride and groom free from the American expectation to go shopping for a gown or suit, or have their hair and makeup done. “They wear what they would wear on a date,” Roth observed. “In Israeli society, dressing up doesn’t make you closer to the bride or groom, so why should they? Not wearing a suit or a gown doesn’t take away from their respect.” No surprise, then, that other guests may turn up in jeans and pressed shirts, or in their army uniforms.
“It blows Americans away, that people turn up in jeans and sandals,” Summerfield said. “You can’t stop people, and why should you? Israelis don’t look at it as being disrespectful. In general they don’t dress up so much. It’s very hard to find an evening dress here. You have to go to Tel Aviv, and search for it. There’s no demand for it.”
Roth said that her own wedding invitation specified “evening attire preferred,” but that only “the Anglo crowd” – native English speakers in Israel – attempt to enforce a dress code. “Israelis do not understand it,” she said, “and those that do find it offensive. They wonder ‘are you my mother? Why are you telling me how to dress?’ The Israeli mentality is less concerned with what they are wearing as a representation of how much respect they have for an event. It’s true of how they dress for work, and for synagogue, and for weddings.”
Note that the one person at an Israeli event who “dresses up” is the bride. And how. Except that the “in” wedding dresses these days here are not a matter of elegance, but rather of seeing just how many beads and rhinestones one can fit onto the skimpiest dress possible. On Saturday night I attended a trade show for Events vendors in Jerusalem: musicians, photographers, caterers, etc. It was just as I expected. There were models everywhere wearing incredibly revealing — in my mind, tacky — wedding dresses (the examples included in this post are quite representative and actually have a little more material in them than most of the other dresses that were featured there.)
On the other hand, I found one vendor who specializes in dressing the groom. His whole catalogue was full of photos of men in dress pants and suit jackets, wearing different kinds of nice white shirts. All untucked. No ties. The height, the height I say, of . . . um . . . something . . . .
BananaramaBibi
David Bogner’s latest post is a treatment of his thoughts, both pro and con, about Bibi Netanyahu as a politician and representative of Israel, and also of the question of just how, exactly, do Israelis refer to former prime ministers? The impetus for the post was his participation in a conference call with Bibi, organized by One Jerusalem.
On the one hand, I was pleased to hear Bibi compare the world’s current complacency with Iran to the policy of appeasement Germany enjoyed in the years before WWII. I was also interested to hear him suggest some interesting measures that might be employed against Iran such as economic isolation/sanctions.
However, I was disappointed that nobody thought to test his WWII analogy and suggestion of economic isolation with the obvious complication that it was partly the policy of economic isolation that contributed to, if not Germany’s, then at least Japan’s decision to lash out.
But barring that, I liked that Bibi wasn’t simply tossing around empty rhetoric about how the world should fear a nuclear Iran. He was at least exploring theories of how best to prevent that specter from becoming a reality.
Full post, with a link to the whole conference call, here.
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