איש חיל

So yesterday I logged onto the army equivalent of facebook. It’s pretty much the same, only with a few differences: The colour themes are camouflage green, rather than baby blue. There are chat groups where you can receive instant orders from your commanders in your free time. There’s no ‘like’ button, just one that says “yes sir”. It has tips on how to avoid smelling like a dead skunk while living in a tent in the Middle Eastern summer. What to pack for your next mission. There are also groups about you rights and your obligations – contrary to popular belief, you don’t just leave your civil rights at the door when you enlist. Another difference is that you don’t write your profile, it is written for you.

They don’t include what music your into, or what quote you’re finding most ironic at the moment. They just give you scores.

These scores are not like HSC (final high school examination) scores, which make you feel like shit because they’re never good enough but don’t actually represent your value as a human being. These scores do. They describe how you are physically, emotionally, psychologically and intellectually.

The army is so efficient at valuing your worth that they can do this after just 2 hours of examinations.

They checked my eyesight, my height, my IQ, my private junk, they ask you personal questions like “do you have friends”, “how many times a week do you call your mum” (it’s a Jewish army, so the more often, the better the score).

Digression: To get in to each of these examinations is like trying to convert to Judaism (despite there being conscription); you go into each office and they say “we can’t help you” three times before something starts happening. Only once your eyes are twitching from over exposure to the waiting room’s florescent lights, and your mouth is foaming from hunger and thirst, and your arms are flexed like an Alpha Male gorilla defending its pack do they say, “Ok, now you’re ready to enlist.”

I overused the sentence “אני לא זז מפה עד שתתנו לי מה אני רוצה” (I’m not moving from here until you give me what I need) so much so that I could shorten it to “לא זז” (not moving). I walk in past the security guard saying “לא זז” (no move) waving away his objections. I walk past reception “זז” (move) they just knew what I meant. Then I’d wait until someone called me in.

So I’ve finished this process and I’m on the army facebook and I open my profile and it turns out my marks are posted and they happen to be the highest you can get! Yay me!

I mean, I always thought I was a Wolverine. Ultimate warrior! Like if Xena and Yoda had a kid. (sick³) Toughest mucho man, most emotionally stable soldier to be!

Anyone who knows me knows this is a gross overstatement. I can do one sit up a day, and that’s when I get out of bed.

I know what you’re thinking, first you thought “wow kudos, you’re my hero”, then you though “I bet you only got that score because you let the doctor cop a feel of your dangly bits.”

Well you know what?

Sometimes a man’s gotta do awkward things to get what he wants! I’m not proud of it, but I’m trying to succeed here.

What’s worrying about this score is that the army likes to chup (scoop up) the guys with high scores and try get them to enlist for longer…

Why didn’t I wear my man-kini to the psychological interview!?!

Salt

"The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea."

-Isak Dinesen (Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke )

This quote really rings through for me at this point in my Aliyah because thanks to the powers on high I managed to get two jobs. The employers, without out a doubt, get a lot more than they pay for. The minimum wage here is less than the cost of a glass of beer, and I certainly sweat more than a pint during each shift.

Both of these places of work gave me much more credit than I deserved.

First was the ice cream shop. The boss within in the first hour of me working there, left me alone in the shop to scoop ice cream for hordes of tourists groups alone. It was a great first shift though. I ate ice cream till the point of ‘bloated and crying’, and what was meant to be a 4 hour shift somehow transformed into eight.

It was hard work, and on the bus to go home feeling sore sticky and smelly, I worked out that I had earned what I could have earned in Australia in 2.5 hours. Despite this I somehow felt a strange sense of catharsis.

The next job was working with a catering company which is just starting up. It was a small home based Bat Mitzvah for 101 people in Modi’in.

My given shift was from 1:30pm till 11pm, that’s fine. I got home at 3:30am.

Every muscle in my body crying to be put out to pasture and put out of their misery. I schlepped, I set up tables, I served food, I cleaned, I schlepped some more, and all with a smile.

The entire time I had Ben Gurion’s picture in my head, the one where he’s pushing a wheelbarrow at age 80-something. I thought to myself, so this is what it was like to work hard to establish the state of Israel. I’ve never worked so hard in my life. I think it was so difficult because of my complete lack of upper body strength.

It’s amazing that it wasn’t my past job experience, or my university degree which helped me through this, but rather my experience in the Youth Movement.

Packing the truck, working on getting food out in time, and serving apple crumble to kids craving more sugar even though their twitching eyes and jittering hands told me they’d already had too much.

Knowing that my Zionist youth movement actually helped me which my Aliyah gave me a real sense of satisfaction.

I’ve swam in the salty Mediterranean here, sweated like pig in heat, and cried on a strangers shoulder. I think whatever needed curing, has been cured.

The Idealism of Huge.

Last week I was fretting about several things, namely; my army draft date, work, and accommodation after Ulpan. Three important facets of life which weren’t sorted by any means. But I kept my chest in the air, and thought to myself “the early pioneers had a shit-load more to deal with, so calm down”. I let this phrase circle my head like a mantra, calming me, soothing me…

Recently everything just fit together.

It didn’t help. I sat in class quietly freaking out. I was simultaneously learning how to conjugate weak roots (which sounds a lot dirtier than it is), and facebook stalking people when I stumbled upon a friend who posted that his apartment is up for subleasing for two months in the exact dates that I needed! HOO-HA!

I pounced on that one and got to cross one worry off the old list. But how am I going to pay for this new expense? “The early settlers didn’t even have a roof over their head” I chanted.

On the way to check out this apartment I get an email from the owner of a restaurant I interview at saying: “When you memorize 80% of the attached menus in Hebrew and English you can start work”. About eight excited breaths later I get a call from an ice-cream shop on Ben Yehuda St I applied for asking if I can come in tomorrow for a trial. “Amazing!” I sung out loud while dancing and politely thrusting my hips as a sign of ‘Yay-ness’.

Now when I was at the apartment having a look around I  get a call from a private number. “Shalom, this is the army”, “Shalom Chaver!”, “Can you come in on Sunday for your final interview before we sort out your draft date?”, “YESH!”

Three strikes and my life seems sorted!

But no, my Jewish genes can’t cope with being ‘ok’. I feel the wretched worry-worm creep up my neck and start nibbling the inside of my scalp. I have everything the early pioneers didn’t… except idealism.

My mind start ticking as though it has a mind of its own, or, it’s its own mind. I’m confused. Anyway…

I start thinking about the idealism behind scooping ice-cream balls. What would Ahad Ha’Am say about it? Would Herzl approve?

I guess ice-cream can be used to help solve the conflict. Everyone’s smiling when they have ice-scream, even Abu Mazen would smile if he got an ice-cream…

And I guess you could take and ‘idealistic reading’ into being a waiter in a Charedi Italian restaurant. I mean waiters listen to people, and are easy going, which is something you could use to make Israeli society more tolerating.

There, I’ve managed to justify it to myself. It’s not making the desert bloom or promoting coexistence or helping new migrants integrate. But it’s something.

Home Hunt

Future Home.

Ulpan is about to come to an end.

Now more than ever I really feel that I am actually making Aliyah. By ‘Aliyah’ I mean running toward a blurred horizon where everything is uncertain but has some sort of purpose.

When I left Australia I knew where I was going to live, what I was going to eat, and what I was going to do when I got here. Now, everything I plan on doing in the next 6 months to a year is followed by a “maybe”. 

This is both exciting and intensely unsettling.

I like to forward plan, but in this country if you approach someone and say “I’m interested in renting this place in a month”, they say; “come back to me in a month”.

Just reflecting a little on the whole Absorption Centre experience. I’ve made some great friends, some who I will keep in touch with post Ulpan. Then there are some I can’t stand, and after Ulpan I will carry a plastic bag at all times coz if I see them I might throw my guts up.

We have our final exam next week, but we have classes until the 6^th June (weird), and are expelled from the building on the 15^th. So if you do the math, the 6 month Ulpan the government is meant to provide its new immigrants isn’t very much at all.

If there were no breaks it would only be 4.5 months, but there were many breaks; Pesach, day trips, Independence Day etc. Now 4.5 months becomes just under 4. But then the Ulpan itself was never full-time, it was 3.5hours a day which in my opinion was a good thing, but nonetheless halves the Ulpan period which come to 2 months.

My Hebrew has improved immensely, that’s for sure. I can bargain for a better price for my veggies in the shuk. I can complement a soldier at the recruitment office on his compassion for ‘Lone Soldiers’ so that he gives me what I need. But could I write a Master’s Thesis? – Harbeh Lo. Can I deconstruct the literary devices of a Yeuda Amicha poem – Pashut Lo. But I’m getting there.

I can understand about 70% of the news, so that on El-Naqba day I knew that someone from Syria had broken Israel’s borders, not sure if it were their tanks or protestors. Lucky I don’t worry about these things.

Hebrew can often be confusing though, especially with the news. Neshek (weapon) and Neshikah (kiss) are very similar. So a young man in downtown Lod was cought kissing a teenage boy, big deal, is that really news worthy?

The security guard at the supermarket asked me if I had a knife (sakin) I said yes and showed him my plastic bag (sakit) I wanted to reuse. ‘To wait’ (lechakot) and ‘to copy’ or ‘imitate’ (lechakot) are identical to the ear. So when an Israeli friend told me to wait for her while she went off to go to the toilet, I followed her and did as she did. Awkward…

Especially being Australian where pronouncing each consonant isn’t so important makes Hebrew all the more difficult where an ‘i’ or and ‘eh’ can change the entire meaning of the word. And I don’t think I’ll ever learn to pronounce the ‘resh’ (‘r’ sound)

Oy Vey.

Apartment

This is a short tour of my apartment. It's minimal, but functional.

This was taken about four months ago so the cupboards and fridge are more full, and the bathroom is less clean.

Production, cinimatography, lighting design, set design, costume design, script, acting, editing is all me - could you tell?

Tha Mazal of a Chest Infection

So I’ve been coughing for about a week now, thought it would pass so I just pumped myself full of Echinacea and vitamin C and went about my day. Then the phlegm transformed from an ‘ok-clear’ a thick ‘not-so-ok-green’, making it look as though fat slugs were jumping out of my throat with each cough – a good sign to go see a doctor.

I go to my not-so-local medical centre in the hope of getting a quick check up but all their doctors are book up until next year. I knock on the door of a Dr. Moirman anyway in the hope that he’ll see me for long enough to print me out a prescription of the strongest antibiotics available. You know, the ones which make you nice and drowsy and give you a good trip, and destroy the virus along with your immune system.

He begrudgingly takes me into his sterile office and takes my membership card swiping it into his computer, at this point I’m grateful, but feel I only have one lung left to cough up. He looks at his computer through overworked, underpaid eyes and asks “are you sure you’re with Maccabi” (NB: Maccabi is my medical insurance company). “No dumbass, I have a plastic card with my name, and ID number printed on it as something fun to show my friends” I think to myself. I’m not a violent person, but a throat full of mucus and a nose full of shnot is not a combination for a happy-chappy.

This is where it gets fun.

Dr. Moirman sends me to the admin offices to sort out my lack of membership appearing on his computer and tells me to come back to him when I’m done.

I wait an hour in the line only to be given two phone numbers of the Nation Insurance, neither of which works – thanks.

So I join the queue again only to be told that I need to go to the national insurance office physically to sort this out, because right now I’m not insured. I tell her “I’m really glad it’s not something more serious than a cough” – she agreed but showed no sign of sympathy.

It takes me half an hour to walk to the Insurance office coz now I’m scared out of my brains I might get hit by a car, or graze my knee without insurance. Before I wasn’t worried at all about the Middle Eastern conflict because I had insurance. Before I was like “do your worst Islamic Jihad! I’ve got Gold Class cover!” Now I felt like I was tightrope walking without a net.

I get there in the end. I wait in line only to be given a number by an angry Russian woman who has one of those flat secretary bums and looks like she escaped from Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. I think this was mainly because her skin was slightly yellow from makeup and she had plucked her eyebrows so she looked constantly angry.  I’m sure she has a nice personality though.

She gave me number 267, and the three people working behind the counters were up to number 222.

I pictured myself growing old in this room. I would have to raise children and grandchildren in here, and live off vending machine snacks.

I get called up by number to an office where a typically looking Israeli woman with skin sitting on her face  like dark loose leather brings up my file which has all been legitimately approved yet they decided to cancel my insurance anyway just for shits-and-gigs. Hilarious! Jokes on me! Lol! Rofl! Icbiwoop![1]

The lady makes a call to the head office on the other side of the country, socializes for a while, then hearing my sigh, she gets to the point, sorts it out, hangs up, and tells me in her jaded unfluctuating tone to wait an hour and it will be sorted. She prints off the form I filled out 3 months ago [‘Thanks I didn’t remember waiting 2 hours to fill this out last time’] and sends me on my way.

That only took 2 hours, but that’s fine, I’m not busy.

An hour passes, I give them a call – They’re closed for the day. It’s 1pm, such hard working people. Still coughing my bowels out… Welcome to Israel Motherfu**er!

I decide to walk back to the medical centre, as I walk in Dr. Moirman is locking his door and going home for the day. Great!

I wait in the admin office line again, where a new woman decides to toy with me. As she’s checking my file on her computer she says things like “you file is probably ok, but if it’s not okay you’ll need to wait another day.” She sends me on an emotional rollercoaster, I’m dizzy and nauseous enough as it is! This goes on for ages

Eventually I get to see a South African doctor, someone who speaks my language! Only his cure for my illness is to laden me with nonsensical doctor mumbojumbo which translates as ‘you have a virus, go home and drink water’, no prescription, thus ending the whole fiasco…

At least now I have insurance, I guess it’s all part of the fun!

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[1] Icbiwoop – I chuckled but it was out of pity (Lisa Kappel c. 2008)

V-Club

In February this year I conceived an idea to put on a production of the Vagina Monologues in English in Jerusalem as a way of raising funds for the Jerusalem Rape Crisis Centre (JRCC). The seed was taken by a friend of mine who works there, and it gestated with her for a little while. The idea slowly took form, and now is born, moving and breathing by itself, the play now being less than two months away.

My role in the production is in the behind-the-scenes side of things, and (self promoted) assistant director. This is mainly because, due to my physiological makeup in my Be’er Sheva region, I cannot perform.

This is also because a lot of the monologues include the phase ‘My Vagina’: “My vagina is angry…”, “My hairy vagina…”, “My menstruating Vagina…”, “I saw my vagina…” etc. and using a possessive pronoun with the word ‘vagina’ doesn’t work for me, and that’s okay, it’s something I came to terms with a long time ago. I have the right to a vagina, but physically I don’t have one.

Anyway! Last Friday we met with the director and the actors, this was a phenomenal inside look into the feminie sphere. The meeting took place in a small classroom the chairs were pinky-red, a fitting colour for the discussion about to take place. The room was carpeted, also fitting…

As the women entered they greeted each other, either by their vaginas or by the state of their wombs. The babies who were brought in with their strollers were greeted as “my cute little vagina”, where as a hearty “hello Mama” was directed toward the heavily pregnant woman, who walked in a swollen-ankles-aching-back kind of shuffle. There was also the ‘recently pregnant’ woman who was deciding if a C-section is the best way to go for her next birth.

And then there was me… The lone man, with no part worth mentioning him by, so they just called me by my name.

But I was happy.

At one point I was sandwiched between a middle aged woman who was breast feeding, and a woman recounting the story of finding her 4-year-old daughter discovering her “bagina”.

The meeting as you can tell was not so productive. But even though I felt a part of this newly established ‘Vagina Monologues’ community, I felt it was not my place to assert my authoritative patriarchal view of productivity onto them. It’s just too imperial. Perhaps the idle banter that went on for the two hours was what these women considered ‘productive’. Who am I to impress my view upon this clearly female forum?

So I stayed quiet, meak, and submissive.

The meeting was a wonderful, and I’m sure the next will be even better.

The Vagina Monologues will be held in Jerusalem in mid June, stay tuned for more details.