18 Things You Shouldn't Say While an Army Doctor Checks your Nuts

#1 Is it my turn next?

#2 While you down there…

#3 This is just like what Uncle Jack used to do…

#4 Look sir! I have a Man-gina!

#5 Dr. Spitzer did a great job with the transformation don’t you think?

#6 Be carful, my one-eyed snake bites

#7 Sorry for staring you in the eye

#8 I know you’re impressed!

#9 Usually people take me out to dinner first

#10 He’s got a cold,  sometimes his nose runs, but it’s the sneezes you gotta watch out for

#11 Oh so that’s what that does!

#12 WHEEEEEEEE!

#13 That’s nice

#14 I think you forgot to cut your nails

#15 Was it as good for you as it was for me?

#16 Why but the cow if you get the milk for free?

#17 Their names are ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’, right now you must be feeling good.

#18 I’m having a ball!

The truth is, when I got into the doctor’s office at the army recruitment headquarters I had gone through so many stations on different levels of this building (without a lift) that I was quite numb to the whole experience. Initially this expereince was building up in my head to be the most uncomfortable part of the whole process. Luckily the army doctor managed to morph the anxious feeling at the pit of my stomach, into slight disgust.

The man was sitting behind his desk with another future soldier, and whilst interviewing the 17-year-old his fingers where lodged so far up his nose that I was worried they would end up like the Chilean miners (before they got out). His fingers were digging for gold for more time than they were on his keyboard punching in the answers to his routine questions. I just thought to myself: “you’re gonna touch my jewels with those hands?”

Thinking about the bits of booger and snot that was going to end up on my junk distracted me from the idea of a strange man touching me. I was ready. It was going to be like pulling off a band aid… Only pulling down my pants… The only thing that ruined my train of thought was when he said “iz okay, iz okay” which sounded too similar to “me skuzy, me skuzy” (EuroTrip). A wave of violation swept over me along with a shiver of disgust.

So this is what it is to support Israel

Jerusalem Bombing

So a bomb goes off in one of your common hang-outs. You’re not actually there but on the TV screen you see a street sign which you recognise all too well and suddenly you’re at the scene. You recognise the number on the bus which tells you it is a route which travels through your neighbourhood. Its windows are shattered and tyres are tattered. Isles run red with blood, an image too graphic, too reminiscent of Ezekiel 28:23.

The corner stores on the edges of the black ash erratic circle, crudely drawn on the ground by the explosion are too familiar. You bought a bottle of water from that one last week. An apple from the one next door.

You watch as a volunteer on the street lowers a child’s blood soaked coat into a bin where a friend of yours butted out his cigarette the day before.

I’m not physically there, but my mind plays tricks by superimposing me sitting on the edge of the footpath behind the channel 2 news reporter. I see myself there because I was there. Not today, no in that hour, not in that split second where a woman took her last breath of city air, or when the driver punched a hole in that last ticket. The moment before fire and shards of the phone booth the bomb was attached to tore through the air, cutting and burning everything in its path. I wasn’t there then, but I am there now.

I’m sucked back into my sea in front of the TV, and in a whirl my mind flings me back to Sydney. I imagine seeing Bondi Junction in ruins like my bus station in Jerusalem. They are the same distance apart. My house in Vaucluse to the bus depot, my home in Jerusalem to the central bus station. I can see the 387 tilted on its side because it tires are shredded, glass on the seats from the shattered windows, identical to the seat I sat on my way to work.

I am not reminded of my mortality amidst all this. Yes I do feel slightly more alert and aware that any object on the street could be a death trap if someone is successful enough in hiding their home made bob. But I am more so reminded of why I came to this place, and I am glad that I don’t have that usual feeling in the pit of my stomach, feeling helpless as I sit behind the World section of the Saturday paper as I read about the attack, because I will get up tomorrow and ride the very bus which could have been blown up the day before, because I am Israeli, and we’re not going to stop our lives, in order to prolong them. For living in fear is worse than death.

International Women's Day

I feel it would be inappropriate for me to post a blog without mentioning International Women’s Day which came and went this past week. We’ve come a long way a people in terms of achieving equality between a number of things in West.

Women have the vote and we’re quite proud of that, but it has been quite a while since we’ve progressed any further than this point.  Hopefully next year we’ll have true equality!

REFUSER
From the Lebanese mountains
To the Kenyan village of El Doret
We are practicing self-defense
Versed in Karate, Tai Chi, Judo, and Kung Foo
We are no longer surrendering to our fate.

Now, we are the ones who walk our girl friends home from school.
And we don't do it with macho. We do it with cool.

Our mothers are the Pink Sari Gang
Fighting off the drunken men
With rose pointed fingers and sticks in
Uttar Pradesh.
The Peshmerga women
in the Kurdish mountains
with barrettes in their hair
and AK47's instead of pocket books.

We are not waiting anymore to be taken and retaken.

We are the Liberian women sitting
in the Africa sun blockading the exits
til the men figure it out.

We are the Nigerian women
babies strapped to out backs
occupying the oil terminals of Chevron.
We are the women of Kerala
who refused to let Coca Cola
privatize our water.
We are Cindy Sheehan showing up in Crawford without a plan.
We are all those who forfeited husbands boyfriends and dates
Cause we were married to our mission.
We know love comes from all directions and in many forms.
We are Malalai who spoke back to the Afghan Loya Jurga
And told them they were "raping warlords" and
She kept speaking even when they kept
trying to blow up her house.
And we are Zoya whose radical mother was shot dead when Zoya was only a child so she was fed on revolution which was stronger than milk

And we are the ones who kept and loved our babies
even though they have the faces of our rapists.

We are the girls who stopped cutting ourselves to release the pain
And we are the girls who refused to have our clitoris cut
And give up our pleasure.

We are:
Rachel Corrie who wouldn't couldn't move away from the Israeli tank.
Aung San Suu Kyi who still smiles after years of not being able to leave her room.
Anne Frank who survives now cause she wrote down her story.
We are Neda Soltani gunned down by a sniper in the streets of
Tehran as she voiced a new freedom and way
And we are Asmaa Mahfouz from the April 6th movement in Egypt
Who twittered an uprising.

We are the women riding the high seas to offer
Needy women abortions on ships.
We are women documenting the atrocities
in stadiums with video cameras underneath our Burqas.
We are seventeen and living for a year in a tree
And laying down in the forests to protect wild oaks.
We are out at sea interrupting the whale murders.
We are freegans, vegans, trannies
But mainly we are refusers.
We don't accept your world
Your rules your wars
We don't accept your cruelty and unkindness.
We don't believe some need to suffer for others to survive
Or that there isn't enough to go around
Or that corporations are the only and best economic arrangement
And we don't hate boys, okay?
That's another bullshit story.

We are refusers
But we crave kissing.
We don't want to do anything before we're ready
but it could be sooner than you think
and we get to decide
and we are not afraid of what is pulsing through us.
It makes us alive.

Don't deny us, criticize us or infantilize us.
We don't accept checkpoints, blockades or air raids
We are obsessed with learning.
On the barren Tsunamied beaches of Sri Lanka
In the desolate and smelly remains
Of the lower ninth
We want school.
We want school.
We want school.

We know if you plan too long
Nothing happens and things get worse and that
Most everything is found in the action
and instinctively we get that the scariest thing
isn't dying, but not trying at all.

And when we finally have our voice
and come together
when we let ourselves gather the knowledge
when we stop turning on each other
but direct our energy towards what matters
when we stop worrying about
our skinny ass stomachs or too frizzy hair
or fat thighs
when we stop caring about pleasing
and making everyone so incredibly happy-
We got the Power.

If
Janis Joplin was nominated the ugliest man on her campus
And they sent Angela Davis to jail
If Simone Weil had manly virtues
And Joan of Arc was hysterical
If Bella Abzug was eminently obnoxious
And Ellen Sirleaf Johnson is considered scary
If Arundhati Roy is totally intimidating
and Rigoberta Menchu is pathologically intense
And Julia Butterfly Hill is an extremist freak
Call us hysterical then
Fanatical
Eccentric
Delusional
Intimidating
Eminently obnoxious
Militant
Bitch
Freak
Tattoo me
Witch
Give us our broomsticks
And potions on the stove
We are the girls
who are aren't afraid to cook.

"Refuser" is published in Eve's newest work - I AM AN EMOTIONAL CREATURE: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World

Kvetch

In coming to Jerusalem I thought I would be suddenly overwhelmed with theological clarity. In reality, the opposite has happened. I’ve never been so consumed with doubt regarding religion.

I can understand that uncertainty is a trait which very typical for someone of my generation, but I never felt a part of my generation in aspects of organised religion because I think in some way, I was content with where I was.

My new understanding is that to be Jewish, is to Kvetch.

To sit uncomfortably because of the uncertainties welling up inside of you; To struggle with doubt in your innermost being to the point where it feels as though there is a noose around your guts pulling you awake at night, making you lose sleep, lose your hair, loose colour in your face. You have to feel as though you’re swimming upstream against the ebb and flow of atheism and commitment to your ‘Jewish day school deity’, who weights his children’s deeds, rules over all in existence justly but with an iron fist.

It’s exhausting but I believe engaging in the struggle is key to being an observant Jew.

I believe we’re the chosen people – Chosen to kvetch!

We left a life of slaver only to burn our feet on hot sand and accept a covenant which chains us to another ruler who at the drop a hat will sentence us to death. (see: Vayikra/Leviticus and Devarim/Deuteronomy)

And what a cleaver deity we committed ourselves to under that burning mountain! She (gender non-specific) gives a law-book which enables Her (again, not gendered) to be completely absent from this world, but have Her people self-bound to her eternally in committed service because of their curse to kvetch at the thought of not doing something right which is so embeded into our genes...

Oddly I am glad to be a part of this, couldn't picture it any other way...

The Desert Speaks!

“The desert speaks,

It calls for you to be happy,

Reminding you that everything blooms,

Within you, in your heart.”

I spent this past weekend in the desert on a small Kibbutz called Kramim (Vineyards). The recent rain in the area has allowed for the potential life to sprout from the tough arid earth and cover the amber soil in greenery. The landscape was not a dry as I was expecting but the nourishing silence of the desert was there in all its wonder!

I heart the Negev because of its ability change overnight. It expresses its willingness to grow if only it had the resources. 

Sitting on a bus for two hours on the way there I find I always have these two options; either think about how everything around me is somehow connected to my life’s journey, or sleep and wake up on the shoulder of the person sitting next to me in a puddle of my own drool.

This time I chose the former.

I really feel that here there is so much opportunity to grown and bloom. The kibbutz I was on hosts a year long program which gives ‘post-high school, pre-army’ teenagers the chance to explore themselves and learn about their cultural, national and religious identity. So of course there was a lot of ideological discussions on everything from ‘education methods’, to ‘the need to settle the Negev’, to ‘how much alcohol teenagers should be drinking on their gap year’ (in hebrew, ulpan must be working, who knew!?).

It was really fantastic! A wonderful bunch of kids who helped me reaffirm my being here, and made me fear Israeli youth a little less.

Bless!

Happy Julie

Julie was a six-year-old girl who wanted nothing more than to be a bird. So much so that all her physical activities were devoted to building up her upper-body strength so as to hold her own weight while navigating through strong convection currents.

Depending on her mood Julie would morph into a different species of bird and respond to her circumstances accordingly:

When Julie was thirsty, she was a pelican, holding vast bodies of water in her elastic-like bill.

When Julie was hungry, she wasn’t a magpie because worms were not to her taste.

When Little Timmy threw a dodge-ball at Julies face, Julie was a bird of prey.

Julie wasn’t quite sure what attracted to her to the idea of the being a bird, she didn’t relate to Jenny from Forest Gump, she was happy at home.

She thought of her home as a nest she could comfortably grow, live and learn in.

She received enough consensual hugs and (although not regurgitated) food form her mother.

Julie was happy.

Perhaps it was the colours, or the flaunting of feathers while defending her territory, or the calls, oh the calls!

The hunting calls.

The goodnight calls.

‘THE-SUN-IS-RISING’ calls.

They made Julie happy.

The mating calls didn’t interest her so much, she was six you sicko!

By the age of thirteen Julie wanted nothing more than to be a cat.

The weird part was the transitional period...

Julie would pounce, and scratch, rub up against strangers.

She still wasn’t one of those girls who was introverted cause she thought she was fat, or was flat chested compared to Stacey Mcfree, or had a pimple on her face connecting her eye-brows.

Julie was Happy.

Julie became more patient as a cat, and slightly more voyeuristic, she would watch people. As her teenage years went on her inner-animal became more metaphorical. She hunted information for school projects. She meowed secrets to her friend-girls in class about boys. She licked her emotional wounds clean which were caused by bitchy calls made toward her in the playground.

Julie became a vegetarian.

Julie became lactose intolerant.

Julie met a boy.

The boy though he was a dog.

Julie thought that was weird.

Julie is eighty-five.

She wants nothing more than some human contact. Her only friends are Mitzy, Mittens and Snuggles. She only eats chicken. It’s not as though she has had a bad life. She’s been married with kids and achieved things and such. Really her life has been rich and full.

Julie is happy.

Especially for a cat...

Gill

A month after my Aliyah I brave the old city to visit some close friends. Until now I'd been a avoiding the place for reasons unknown. Having strolled through the Armenian quarter, the January air beating against my face turning my cheeks red and making my eyes water, I figured it was only appropriate that I visit the kotel as well. In preparation of my meeting with the Holy rocks which create the boundaries of a now extinct temple I try to think holy thoughts:
''Chareidim are close minded'' no, that's not holy.
“ These rocks are the vertical version of the ones I’m walking on” still not so holy
''Rocks don't represent Godliness'' getting a little closer
''Daily meditation (or prayer) can help you get centred'' close enough! Off I go!

I wash my hands for ritual purity and like a fly to a web of black leather straps I navigate right into the mitzvah trap.

A black coat grabs my arm, it’s stronger than you would assume a man who studies chassidus all day would be.
''Is your mother Jewish!?''
Apprehensive response: ''...ye''
''Tfill!''
Politely refusal: ‘‘its ok thank you, I have them at home if I want to put them on I will''
''You are home! Tfill!''
He drags me to the mitzvah wagon dripping with men swaying to the rhythm of their prayers and starts binding the felactories to my arm. Wish I hadn’t left my whistle at home coz this was definitely not consensual.

''Why should I put these on?''
''God said so!'' he replies with the enthusiasm of a fat kid in a cake shop.

(so many questions, why does an omnipotent being care that one of his creation's skin is being strapped to another? How does a being without a voice box speak? How do the rabbis go from reading 'totafot' to 'teffilin'?) He doesn't have time, he needs to fill his mitzvah quota.

This spiritually riveting experience escalated when a pale senior with a long white beard and peyot to match locks eyes with me with and with no respect for my personal space starts to preach into my face.

I know this guy, its Guru Gill, I've read his book, went from being a Buddhist hermit on a mountain top to a member of the Chassidic world. It’s a shame that all his years spent in silence and he still hasn’t learn to listen...

He taught me these lessons Three:
(I'll save u the full transcript)
1) Men wear pants, physically and especially figuratively. A relationship works because man is dominant.
2) Being vegetarian is a good thing, but if God says skin a cow and strap em on, you strap em on!
3) There is nothing more to life than marrying a Jewish woman and popping out a few more Jews, the rest is peripheral ramblings.

I serreptitiously sneak away both of us enriches for the experience.
I head toward the bus feeling dirty from being mitzvah-raped...
Going back there on Saturday, such a sadist.

Poetry Slam, Wine, Popcorn, Shuk Duf, Beer and Dancing... I'm Home!



Last night was the first time I felt I could get everything I was missing culturally from Australia, in Israel.

Sitting on a bus yesterday in front of an Arse (Middle Eastern hooligan), who was blearing Sephardic pop music from his mobile phone to the point that the person sitting next to me’s ears began to bleed, I felt this figurative butterfly floundering around in the pit of my stomach, giving me an ‘oil and water’ feeling in terms of my place in this land.

Then, as though from my bowels to God’s ears, a poetry slam pops up on the cultural calendar!

Free wine and popcorn, of which I had three glasses, (yes I was that guy, the guy who took cups of popcorn to his seat). Sufficiently full of fermented grapes and carefully constructed sentences I strolled toward the shuk (the current love of my life).

On Monday nights at the ‘5th of May’ bar in the shuk there is live music followed by a DJ who plays the latest tunes. Something about dancing in the middle of the alleyways of the shuk which, during the day are jam packed with people, just rocks my socks in a very real way! Like eating a delicious cake, instead of taking a bag of drugs.

Surrounded by a facade of smoke, dreadlocks, knitwear, nose rings, and music improvised by a band with an androgynous looking drummer I was suddenly overwhelmed with a feeling of ease, and I showed it to the WORLD through dance!

Sipping on a beer brewed in Ramallah perfected by Christian monks in the 1500’s who drank it to fortify themselves against their ritual fasts also helped.
(It tasted of oppression and x-ray machine)

Life in a Dryer

Just preface this by saying: Israel is great! But I’ve had some not-so-great moments, not bad, just not great.

I wouldn’t go as far as to call them beige moments though. Everyone would agree that beige is just this bland colour that exists between mother-of-pearl and cream and doesn’t really get people excited about much, but is used on upholstery because it isn’t offensive or political.

Here, there are no beige moments. If it’s not someone in the parliament being charged with something, it’s neighbouring countries causing a ruckus about something like a lack of health care or baseless killings or something. I recon it’s about the same level of excitement as there would have been in the Wild West (without the syphilis)...

Every “mundane” chore here requires a huge amount of energy and it’s definitely not for people with a heart condition. A classic example is my run in with the post office:

I needed to find number 144, I see number 142 and 146 and then in between is what looks like an abandoned warehouse up a long driveway with some unmarked delivery trucks. I figured it’s either the post office or the HQ of a kidnapping gang.

So I walk up toward a seedy man smoking a cigarette in front of a “no smoking” sign who sends me a signal with his hand which looks like he’s apathetically turning off an invisible tap. I return the gesture. He does it again. I do it again and keep walking. I know it means “what are you doing?” but I say “what are YOU doing?” Coz that’s how I roll!

I find the office which looks as though a 7 year old had set up a lemonade stand in this warehouse. But instead of a sweet blond girl, a pregnant lady who doesn’t look happy to see me says “Nu!?” and I hand her the receipt. Upon hearing my accent she starts speaking to me in her loudest broken English articulating the silent letters as well. “YOU - RECIEPT!?” (There is a difference between speaking a language with an accent, and being deaf lady! After our chat I just might be both...).

We spend some time arguing about the package for whatever reason, and man comes out from the back to sort it out. He tries to placate me by saying “This is Israel!” as though knowing that everywhere I go is going to be the same as this is meant to comfort me... I head out, he says “Shabbat shalom achi” (Peaceful Sabbath my brother) and we part ways neither richer for the experience.

At the end of the day feeling like I’ve just taken a ride in a dryer, ironically, nothing cured my troubles like clean washing fresh out of the dryer...

After Thought: I guess if he called me “brother” I may have made a friend...

.

Tranquility Amidst Pandemonium

Three hours before Shabbat came in and the shops in the shuk (market) close for a brief 25hours I take refuge in a small cafe called Mitbakh Briut (Health Kitchen).

The crowds which pass me by are seconded only by the hordes of teenage girls who rush to get a glimpse of Justin Bieber.

People pushing past people, veggie -vendor trying to out-scream veggie-vendor, and I sit and escape the daily grind at this quaint cafe with a sizzling pan full of shakshuka (eggs fried in a tomato base) and a glass half full of coffee.

I watch the kids stand in bewilderment of fruits which looks as though they exploded out of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. I see the religious sieve through produce, desperately searching for the choicest goods for their weekly feast. Tiny birds mock shop keepers by flying down and stealing grain from the open sacks which lie on the floor in vibrant colours. Tourists come, caught behind their cameras, they knock and block people, unable to break through the lens and see.

After a while of digesting the chaos, I sense some sort of order.
Spruikers yelling daily specials and bellowed greetings of “Shabbat Shalom” from across the main drag now sound melodic and I’m somehow apart of it.

I feel as though I’m playing the part of the breaks in the soundtrack of the shuk. Just as poetry would seem a melting pot of letters without its spaces and commas my role is just as key.

With me creating these silences are the sigh of exhausted hagglers who breathe again after scoring a bargain, the beggars who smile when a stranger drops a coin in his disposable cup, and the savatas (grandmothers) who drift by tasting an olive from here and a date from there.

It is us, the silent ones, who exist in contrast to the noise, who complete the orchestra of the shuk.


.

Chug a Chassid

This past week has had its highs and its trials but whenever you're asked 'mah hamatzav' (what's up? Lit. What's the situation) you respond with 'me'ah achuz' (100%)!
last week ended on an absolute peak with a spiritually uplifting Shabbat service at a shule in nachlaot (suburb in Jerusalem) where I was greater with an array of head coverings from knitted kippot, to classic strimel (Chassidic fur hat), to tie-dyed kippot. There were about 60 men party cramped into a room which fit 20 comfortably, and the rest were singing their praises outside the shule, and this was only on the male side. I was dumbfounded when the bearded hippies started maneuvering themselves into a circle in this intensely crowded space to dance. I wouldn't exactly call it dancing, rather a sweaty stroll around the room in circular formation rubbing the rest of the congregation platonically as you pass them. Its was great, I think I was standing next to a guy wearing a kimono, another guy at the front was crying as he prayed, and the rest clapped and bounced on their toes sporadically throughout their service as an expression of their soul leaping within their bodies.

I just get so into it when the congregation is the choir in a shule, I find it really empowering whilst feeling a sense of unity with the smiling strangers standing well into my personal space.

The greatest thing about those experience was that after 2.5 hours of singing and praying, the well fed Chassids in their black kippotas (traditional eastern european trench coat) were dishing out 'good shabbos hugs'! this is great for me because I'm always that guy who goes in for the hug too early, before you've even met the person I'm up for the hug. Its just the way I am..

Huge shout out to my host for Shabbat, simply divine!
!

Hug a Tree!

Been having quite a bit of trouble connecting to God here, I actually feel that with my souls burning desire to reach Jerusalem satiated the flow has been restricted slightly.

Then comes Tu B’Shvat the festival of trees and nature and BOOM my shakras (spiritual cisterns) are cleared and I reopened to the idea of being friends with YHWH again.

So I went to the hardcore-hippy tu b’shvat seder where the symbolism what dripping of the walls. Going through each of the fruits and through the four cups of wine representing the four levels of spirituality I could sense meaning in things again.

For example: before eating the date (one of the seven species of Israel) we meditated on the idea that the fruit comes from a tree whose roots, who’s values, run deep into the earth. The palm tree is firm in its beliefs but at the same time the trunk has the ability to sway and be flexible in its ideals. So when ingesting the fruit of this unique tree you ingest this idea as well.

Another example is the pastries, you don’t eat a pastry that falls on the ground but you also forget that it actually came from the ground and is something that can level you. Also when making the pastry (which was delicious) the flour is sifted so you meditate on the idea of sifting out the bad from your life and using the good to contribute to the world.

In the back of the room, which could fit 40 comfortably but was packed with about 80 people, there was the religious equivalent of a "WOOW girl" only instead of being a girl he was a guy, and instead of being a “Woow Party!” kinda guy he was a “WOOW GOD!” kinda guy. And in his American accent and tie-dyed tzitzit (ritual fringes) he would eat each fruit and shout “Yay God thank you for making Banana trees” “Thanks God for rugelach!” etc. His passion for nature was a cross between inspiring and God damn annoying. (70% of the latter) He was normal compared to the Mother Earth looking grandma with a tamborine which said Moshiach (Messiah) on it. She was the Gaya from Captain planet of the seder.

I leave you with a final though a lonely girl shared with us:

Its so interesting that his festival falls in winter, where the trees aren’t in bloom and their colour and fruits are hidden. A seed (she said) disintegrates completely before sprouting out of the ground, meaning that when it appears that nothing is happening the most vibrant activity is happening hidden from the naked eye. All you need to do is scratch the surface a tin my bit to see it.

The parallels with the fruit and my life are lame but meaningful to me, so I wont share them.

Happy new year trees!

Semi Retraction

Re: my previous post I have also learnt throughout my week’s experience here that to be Israeli you also have to care a lot about your fellow Man (gender non-specific). You have to stand to let the elderly sit, you have to offer people you don’t even know lifts if they are standing in the cold, and most of all you have to make sure people are not only fed, but bloated and crying from internal bleeding from exploding intestines. This past Shabbat I was stuffed like a thanks giving turkey while staying at a family I adore. The experience as a whole affirmed the idea that Israel can be home.

In a small Israeli town called Tzofim, next to a bigger Arab town named Kalkilia (cheap oranges) I was introduced to the community as ‘the guy who moved to Israel’ to which people responded which varying degrees of surprise, shock and interest which obviously reflected their experience of Israel to date.

From one of the Bnei Akiva youth it was “Why? Because I want a reason to stay” from a middle aged man pushing a pram it was “why?! I came back from a trip to America wishing I was still there” and from an older man who had made aliyah 20 odd years ago it was “Why? I know why I came, I hope you know, because you’ll need those reasons to get you through the tough times”.

But at the end of the day I could feel that they all know why they were there, they look around an get a feeling of belonging that runs deeper than mere familiarity. Israel sends vibrations to their core which make them quiver and shake when they think about their relationship with the country, it’s both positive and negative.

I’m starting to feel it, but it could just be a bowel movement..

Shavua Tov!

(Pleasant Week)

The Art of Not Giving a Shit

As part of my absorption into this fine nation I need to learn to not give a shit. For example if you drop food on the flood in a shopping centre, don't pick it up or everyone will know you're a chutznik (lit. Outsider, i.e. not from Israel). Asking if you can use a restaurants toilet without buying something also makes you a chutnik. If you need to spit don't swallow it, go right ahead! Let is out! Also,. don't wait in lines, you were here first! And finally, using full sentences can also make you look like a chutznik don't ask in your perfect Hebrew "excuse me, is this the bus that I take to the centre of the city?" rather just say in a mumble "City Centre?". In fact the less words you say the better; "toilet?", "Movies?", "Single?" etc. you get the picture. Basically all I need to learn in Ulpan are nouns, no need to work on conjunctions, or conjugations, let's leave full sentences for the bible.

Israel is really great, spent two days chilling with the hipsters of Tel Aviv (TA), they don't sell picklebacks (an independent drink consisting of a shot of whisky followed by a shot of pickle brine, created in Brooklyn but perfected in Sydney)but they do sell 'arak-ashkoliot (licorice spirit with grapefruit juice) which I recon s the equivalent coz I received a nod of acceptance from the pierced fellow behind the counter. YAY Acceptance

Aliyah Day 2:

There’s something uniquely serene about sitting with the morning sun shining on your back helping you defrost from a night of bitter cold sleeping next to a window with not glass in it, with a pot of fresh porridge in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

Even though my room is Fung Shwayed like a prison cell (besides the cupboard with its mahogany veneer making it look the centre piece of a lumberjack’s living room), the sun and Paul Dempsey tunes playing in the background warms the room almost to the degree of a mother’s hug after a bad day at school.

In other news, went to the first bureaucratic stop today (Ministry of Interior) and although I didn’t get what I went there for, the woman at the desk told me that “Alita Be’style” meaning “I made Aliyah in style” commenting on my outfit, my sisters would be proud :-D

Idealistic or Insane?

There’s a fine line between idealistic and plain crazy; After my 24 hour flight to Israel lying in my bed at about 2am in the absorption centre I will call home for the next 6 months a strange laugh erupted from within me, it was actually closer to a cackle. I wasn’t quite sure what it meant. I’ve laughed plenty before, but this was different. It was coming from a weird place. I laugh from my stomach when I’m around friends, sometimes I laugh from my mouth, like when my Dad tells jokes you know you’re not meant to laugh at because they’re about minority groups or something. This laugh had a life of its own and came for somewhere much deeper, from the middle of my essence, my soul (if you’re into that) it was as though the centre of my being was expressing itself ferociously saying “you’ve done it you crazy son of a bitch!” It may all just have been a result of my lack of sleep, combined with the sleeping pills I took, mixed with my excitement, and the fumes wafting from my armpits.

Not sure really, but I did just use an oxford comma, yooHOO yaHooHoo.

In other news, is using facebook to say how bad the Social Network movie is ironic or hypocritical? Saw it on the plane, didn’t really like it, I feel the whole non-linear structure has been overplayed

“Shalom” – Just about says it all

“Shalom”: “Hi”, “bye”, “peace”, and one of the many names of God all rolled into one word. With that one lonely word you can start and finish a conversation while praising the Lord and wish for World Peace! I guess that’s why Israel is so fast pace. If only saying goodbye was that easy though. To the more ‘mature’ member of my family, i.e. grandma (Nana) and great aunt it could be one of the last times I see them, which is both a morbid and sad thought...

My Nana didn’t say “Shalom” when I said goodbye to her this evening, she simply turned to me and with her ocker Melbournian accent said ‘Kol-aka-vod’. Although she said it with a similar intonation as “G’day mate” with a similar tone to that of Julie Andrews the day after her throat operation (because of her pack-a-day for 50 years), I could tell it meant a lot more than the literal meaning of those words - “Well done”, or literally “all of the honour”.

I could sense she was saying something along the lines of ‘my parents paved the roads of Israel in the 20’s, and my husband kept them safe in the 40’s, my daughter lived there in her 20’s and my son moved there with you in his 30’s and now you are going to enjoy the gift they built for you. They followed their dreams now you have to too!’

Even though her pearls of wisdom usually need to be censored for coarse language or mild vulgarities I really got that vibe from her. Her “Shalom” was more of a "I wish I wasn’t saying 'goodbye', but go in 'peace' and prosper!"

China Still Cool

After a nice Japanese meal in the heart of Chinatown (ironic), my family and I decided to take advantage of the warm evening and stroll down the main mall amidst the steamed dumplings and the BBQ duck corpses hanging in the shop windows. To our surprise we found a cheap pastry shop which sold us little balls of heaven called “emperor’s puffs” (donut type pastry filled with what was most probably warm custard) as well as a bag of fortune cookies.

I don’t know how many I ate, but the fortunes I kept were the following

1)      “You are the centre of every group’s attention” – well we were there partly as a farewell dinner to me, so 1 point to you sir.

2)      “We can live without religion, but we cannot survive without human affection” – this is some great advice seeing as I kinda feel like I might be moving to a city which values the former over the latter, that is until your wedding night. But sometimes prayer books feel cold and hugs seem inviting. This could be devil talk but there, I said it..

The third was pretty cool though:

“You’ll never plough a field by turning it over in your mind”, moving past the giggle I had at the initial innuendos which popped into my mind after reading “plough a field” I felt it really resonate and despite the fear that the guy who I saw sneeze in the kitchen at the restaurant may have been preparing my food I felt quite at peace with the move. It’s time to do, not just think about maybe possibly in the near future give some thought to perhaps start talking to someone about potentially starting a dialogue about Aliyah.

The Plunge

Its always daunting typing up the first post to a blog where millions of readers could access it. By 'always'  I mean 'right now', coz this is the first time, and by 'could' I mean 'probably wont'.

I guess the best way to being is to be up late at night with a jug of freshly plunged coffee and just type as though your fingers are each ninjas enacting a Jacky Chan fight scene. Hayah! Take that blank space!

Last week I received my ticket from the office and after loosening my bowels at the shock that I'm actually doing this and then regrouping I got this sense of excitement. Embarking of a voyage of sorts, and making my way on my own. Kinda like Abram, only my Dad doesn't worship idols and i don't have bothers (in the strict sense of the word, I mean, being part African, North East African, I could call other people from the region my 'brothas' but I'm no gangsta). The other difference is, I feel I have a little more agency because there's no looming deity 'encouraging' me to go by offering me land, wealth and my loins in abundance.

I've been trying to clear out my room and make an attempt at packing, but my room just ends up looking like a bomb hit it, which has an air of irony because my room is more likely to be bombed in Jerusalem than it is here, but don't tell my Mum that.

Packing is also harder than it seams, it involves a lot of trips down memory lane, and a lot of distractions. For example, in clearing a dusty box I found my discman and inside that discman was a CD I thought I had lost but had since got off a friend's computer onto my ipod. So i thought back as to who bought me the CD/burnt me the CD, then when i had listened to it last before the period where I thought I had lost it, then I wondered if the sound would be more clear on ipod speakers through an ipod or ipod speakers from the CD. Stuff like that... Brings you no closer to packing, but leaves you with a sense of satisfaction.

Feeling like I accomplished something here, I think its time for bed.