I love my old TV: an Israeli populace in dire straits

There is something more than a little surreal about going to pick up a gas mask. And I have been putting off the task for some time now, in spite of regular reminders by post and having been sufficiently aware of the possibility of a heavy, sustained attack on Israel – and Tel Aviv especially – to have blogged about it every few months (most recently in Getting ready to rock ‘n’ roll with Iran and Reflections on Armageddon).            

Gas mask graffiti: man reading sports pages (Rabin Square, Tel Aviv)

Fortunately, it is not in the Israeli “live for today” constitution to lose sleep over such an eventuality, and many of the natives won’t even bother to collect their masks – or “individual protection kits”, to give them their official, Orwellian name – as they consider them a waste of time (and they probably are).             

My friend Itzik, on the other hand, has been preoccupied with the spectre of war for months now. Meeting another friend, an IDF intelligence officer, for the first time recently, Itzik spent the entire evening trying to extract hints as to when he should book his outbound flight. And, ever since discovering my source, Itzik has regularly been enquiring as to whether I have “heard anything”. I, of course, now delight in terrorising him: “Where are you?” I’ll fire as he answers his phone. “How soon can you be at Ben Gurion (Airport)?”             

The recent automated telephone reminders – supplementing the postal ones – to pick up gas masks, however, have started to make me think that something really may be up . . . and imminent.             

Collecting my prehistoric CRT (cathode ray tube) television from repair – show me the Polish Jew who can easily dispose of something that once cost him several hundred pounds! – last week, the workshop owner mentioned that he was born in Iran. Instantly forgetting the dilemma of whether I should leave him the great hulk of mid-nineties Japanese engineering and keep the three hundred shekels in my pocket (an option he offered), I asked Assi whether he thought that Ahmadinejad was “just a big talker”.             

I was looking, I think, for reassurance, from a man with some understanding of the Iranian psyche. I immediately wished, however, that I had stayed shtum.             

“Oh no,” replied Assi confidently (in a now unmistakable Persian accent), “it’s gonna go crazy here . . . and before the chagim (Jewish high holidays, beginning in the middle of next week). If you have got somewhere to go . . . go!”             

The nonchalance with which the TV repair man turned doomsayer delivered his prediction made it no less shocking.

I attempted to calm myself with the recollection that this was the very same man who had informed me, just a few days earlier, that old tellies display a far better quality of picture than state-of-the-art TVs.      

This time, however, Assi had nothing to sell.       

“So why don’t you go?” I retorted.             

“Where am I going to go with my kids? Anyway, I haven’t got the money.”             

I immediately handed over the three hundred shekels and somehow squeezed the giant Sony Trinitron back onto my back seat. And, by the time I had schlepped it back up to my second floor flat, I was determined to collect that gas mask once and for all.             

The postal reminder listed the nearest pickup point to be my local ACE DIY/home improvement store – a kind of B&Q with attitude – which somehow added to the surrealism of the exercise:    

“A pack of double ‘A’ Energizer batteries, some cheap tumblers, a plastic garden chair . . . oh yes, and a gas mask, please, in case of biological or chemical attack.” 

Gas mask distribution point, Ramat Gan

Two young frechot sitting at the rear of the store were checking teudot zehut (ID cards) and handing out the cardboard boxes. And there was a sample mask, in its constituent parts, on the desk in front of them.      

Seeing as I had never worn one – I was at university, in England, when they were last used, during the first Gulf War – and that the girls had informed me that opening the box is prohibited (before you absolutely have to, I interpolated), I enquired as to whether they would be kind enough to show me how. The twin gazes of incredulity, however, that greeted my request – reasonable, I thought, in the circumstances – told me that they had no intention of allowing their discussion of what is new in frecha fashion, or of which Avi, Benny or Yossi had abused them the previous evening, to be interrupted. I scuttled off home.             

Oddly enough, after the danger to those near and dear, the thought that most haunts me about Israel coming under heavy and prolonged attack is not of the ignoble mass party that will undoubtedly break out right across the knuckle-dragging Islamic world, but rather of the sickening glee that it will also bring to the Kaufmans, Galloways and Finkelsteins, not to mention the poisonous little Gerts, of the rest of it.             

Back in Sheinkin, I treated myself to a comfort sabich and chips. I had needed something rather more substantial than the information, provided by Assi, that “many Iranians secretly listen to Israel Radio English news”.             

David, a Welshman, still here some twenty years after meeting an Israeli girl in a Camden Town pub, joined me.             

“Do you think about it much?” I asked him, my head still in gas masks.             

“There’s not much to think about,” replied David. “You either stay or you go. And I’m not going.”             

And, after investing fifty-odd quid in that old telly, nor am I . . . but will – like a good Polish boy – be seeing out Assi’s three-month guarantee, at the very least!     

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Taking the SMS: Avi the Texting Masseur

Just when you think that the chutzpah can’t get any worse, the Israeli will usually surprise you . . .

During a massage, last week, in her holiday home in Herzliya Pituach – the hot destination, these days, for British “Deckchair Zionists” – my friend Donna’s blissful indulgence was intermittently disturbed by a faint clicking sound.

She ignored it.

Opening her eyes, however, towards the end of the one-hour session, Donna caught her masseur, Avi, with one hand on her foot and the other typing a text (SMS) message on his mobile phone.

Now, call me old-fashioned, but I would say that a masseur on 300 shekels (50 British pounds) an hour can reasonably be expected to use both hands!

The incident reminded me of a university flatmate whose girlfriend, in the middle of doing something to him that he could not do to himself – would we males ever leave the house? – looked up to find him channel-hopping with the TV remote. (In his defence, there was footie on the box . . . but she gave him a mouthful anyway. The cheeky chappie, meanwhile, eventually migrated to his natural habitat . . . Israel.)

Such chutzpadik multitasking was also exhibited by an Israeli first date of mine who, on arrival at the pretty garden café handpicked by me – and having evidently resolved that I was not as attractive as I considered her – insisted on sitting inside, so that she would not miss any of the goings-on in the Israeli Big Brother house.

Indeed, the Israeli is a multitasker nonpareil, who can, for instance, smoke, devour garinim (sunflower seeds) and cuff the kids and/or missus . . . all while driving at excess speed, with one foot on the dashboard, cursing down his mobile and gesticulating at other road users.

While now – having lived here for over ten years – conditioned to Israeli chutzpah (and not averse to dishing out some of my own when required), I am also far less likely to put up with it . . .

Overhearing, in my local hummus place on Sheinkin, that I was flying back to London the following morning, an Israeli woman who I know from the area enquired whether I would mind taking something for her son, sojourning in Wood Green (of all places).

“Of course not,” I foolishly replied.

The woman scuttled away, returning a quarter of an hour later not with the latest Amos Oz novel or Arik Einstein disc, but with a plastic bag – from the makolet (supermarket) over the road – weighing several kilos and bursting with family-sized bottles of Osem tomato ketchup.

“He is used to it,” she declared, as if that should have been of interest to me.

Some years earlier, I would have been so taken aback by such chutzpah that my only reaction would have been momentary paralysis, an awkward smile, and a hasty unpacking of my suitcase to accommodate the condimentally-challenged nincompoops. And I may even have thanked her for selecting me for the honour.

But no longer.

“I’m not taking that,” I laughed, almost contemptuously. “I am already overweight.” I wasn’t. “Anyway, what’s wrong with Heinz?!”

What could she say? She had been outchutzpah’d.

You see, it is just that on encountering foreign accents – usually accompanied by indications of (relative) meekness – many of the natives see a flashing “Freier!” (sucker) sign.

And not to be taken advantage of here, one, regrettably, must become like them.

Avi “the Texting Masseur” no doubt calculated that – unlike his Israeli clients – Donna would not mind him sending SMS messages while he was supposed to be giving her a massage . . . and that, even if she did, the English lady would not say a word.

And he was, at least, half right.

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If I were a Jewish man: the Arab fiddler on the roof

The rape (by deception) conviction, last month, of an East Jerusalem Arab who posed as a love-seeking Jewish bachelor in order to get into the knickers of an Israeli Jewess prompted me to recall some of the more spurious yarns I have spun, over the years, to get my wicked way.

One summer, for instance, on a road trip across the US (during our break from Manchester University), I scored – with a Smiths-obsessed frat girl – with the whopper that Morrissey was our next door neighbour (a claim to fame which left her with no choice).   

In fact, the absolute ludicrousness of both the recent conviction and the 18-month prison term (appealed) handed down to Sabbar Kashur – a married, 30-year old, father-of-two who introduced himself to the complainant as “Dudu”, an Israeli nickname – caused me to do the unprecedented (forbidden?) and concur with Haaretz’s Gideon Levy: see He impersonated a human.   

“If she hadn’t thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious romantic relationship,” ruled Jerusalem District Court Judge Zvi Segal, “she would not have cooperated.” 

After approaching Kashur as he exited a grocery store in the capital, that fateful midday in September 2008, the “serious romantic” Israeli – in her late twenties – clearly did not need an awful lot of persuading to accompany “Dudu” for a quickie on a nearby roof (it is not only the Tel Avivit, it would seem, who possesses the Subtle Art of Seduction).   

Sabbar “Dudu” Kashur in his East Jerusalem home

And Kashur maintains that he “didn’t pretend” anything. “I said my name is Dudu because that’s how everybody knows me. My wife even calls me that.” (The penny perhaps dropped for our nice, naive yiddishe girl with Kashur’s cry, at the height of passion, of “Allahu akbar!” Okay, I made that bit up.)

The court then heard that Kashur – who has been under house arrest ever since – departed the scene without waiting for his Jewish princess to get dressed. 

But what exactly was he expected to do? To hold her for a few minutes and, looking into her eyes, tell her that she was his best first-date bunk up since his morning coffee break? 

“The court is obliged,” continued Judge Segal, “to protect the public interest from sophisticated, smooth-tongued criminals who can deceive innocent victims at an unbearable price – the sanctity of their bodies and souls.”   

While Kashur’s oral physiology and abilities are not matters about which I care to speculate, I suspect that his ‘victim’ may not have been quite as chaste as Judge Segal would have us believe. “Sanctity of bodies and souls,” indeed!   

“When the very basis of trust between human beings drops, especially when the matters at hand are so intimate, sensitive and fateful, the court is required to stand firmly at the side of the victims,” concluded Judge Segal, “otherwise, they will be used, manipulated and misled.”   

“Intimate” and “sensitive”?! Shagging a complete stranger on a roof?! 

No. The only thing that “drop[ped]” in this case was a pair of loose-fitting knickers (if, indeed, there were any to begin with). And, regarding our nice, virtuous Jewish meydl, the words that spring to mind are “gagging for it”.   

One thing is for sure: If an Israeli male had nailed an Arab woman by telling her that he was a Muslim, there would have been no case to answer (except, of course, with her brothers). Indeed, this whole sorry affair is an uncomfortable reminder of certain 1935 racial purity laws. And just when one thought it impossible for Israel’s world image to sink any lower.   

Anyway, if you happen to be reading this, you poor innocent thing: I really am a Jewish bachelor . . . and like nothing more than a bit of “serious” rooftop “romance”. 

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In the Rudest of Health (The Israeli, Part III)

“You’ve got too much to say!”

So North-West London’s most famous French teacher would often chide his loquacious (he preferred “yapping”) pupils.

And not always having to say something – especially if, as my parents would remind me, that “something” is not worth saying – is an English attitude that the Israeli would do well to consider. Indeed, while silence and Jerusalem may both be golden, only one of them is “blue and white” too (for the time being, at least).

As I have documented on these pages (here, here and here), most Israelis are of the view that it is not only their God-given right, but also their duty, to give their opinion – even to complete strangers – on absolutely everything, whether or not that “everything” even concerns them.

Most common is advice . . . in my case, dating, dieting and doggy (dogging is, I am informed, something completely else). Earlier this week, for instance, there was the elderly lady on Rothschild who deemed it incumbent upon her to inform me that I was endangering the lives of Stuey and Dexxy by not observing the Do Not Walk sign (wonderfully altruistic, I thought, considering that Hezbollah is now in possession of scores of missiles capable of reaching, and destroying, her bidet).

The Israeli, however, does not limit him or herself to the purely prescriptive . . .

Two Saturdays ago, I drove Stuey and Dexxy to see Tal, a friend’s 6-year old daughter – housebound and miserable due to an upset tummy – who is particularly fond of my hairy flat mates, and who had summoned them to Hod Hasharon to cheer her spirits.

It might have been wise, before tucking in, to have spared a thought for the cause of Tal’s stomach ache. And, lo and behold, a short while after being amply fed by my Moroccan hostess, Tal’s mum, my bowels started to feel the effects of her schnitzel and couscous (delicious though they were).

While Edna’s apartment is small, and WC smaller still, I have brilliantly refined, over the years, the subtle art of camouflaging my lavatorial activities in other people’s homes. I don’t wish to give too much away – if the Made Simple or For Dummies people are reading this, you know where to find me – but it involves cleverly synchronizing  eruptions, emissions and plopping (to quote my earlier Blog on the Bog) with the ebbs and flows of living room discussion and/or peaks in television volume.

And on this particularly delicate – the smaller the abode, the greater the risk of social disgrace – occasion, I put in a typically sterling performance. Indeed, even the absence of a canister of air freshener in the poorly ventilated shoebox did not worry me unduly, as I had noticed that Edna had only just exited. The true professional, you see, leaves nothing to chance.

Fortune and fate, on the other hand, are vicissitudes for which even the ultimate pro cannot legislate . . .

Whilst washing my hands in the adjacent bathroom, I heard (who I immediately understood to be) Edna’s ex-husband (and Tal’s father) – whom I had never met, and who was totally oblivious to my presence – enter the apartment, and head straight for the toilet.

“Shit!” I exclaimed to myself. “What stinking luck!” One always likes a few minutes grace after visiting one’s host’s WC.

And my worst fears were confirmed at once, with the uncouth bellowing of “Ed-naaa . . . eifo ha’spray (where’s the spray)?!”

“Shut up!” I silently begged. “Pleeease!!”

I had, now, nowhere to hide.

I mean, I hardly expected a momentary awkwardness, followed swiftly by a forced (and redundant) clearing of the throat and an off-the-cuff comment on the day’s weather – the inevitable English response – off a Moroccan! But, meeting the corpulent, hairy native in the narrow corridor, neither did he deem a cheeky grin and a wink to suffice . . .

“La’briyut, gever (good health, man)!” bellowed the great oaf – clearly delighting in my lavatorial faux pas – as he shook my hand in traditional, Gever Gever Israeli style (i.e., as if trying to yank my arm off my torso).

I was reminded, by way of contrast, of an incident from my youth – at a friend’s parents’ dinner table in the genteel London suburb of St. John’s Wood – when a contemporary’s risqué crack was instantly met, by our friend’s mother, with a totally straight-faced “More meat, Jonathan?”

But the thought of saying nothing on the subject – or, at least, nothing that would heighten my considerable discomfort – had not even occurred to Edna’s ex. And I wouldn’t mind, but it is not as if your average Israeli male has exemplary toilet habits (see a philistine with a small pee).

On the other hand, perhaps I am just, still, a little too sensitive to that male. After all, the episode was nowhere near as humiliating as that experienced by a friend, backpacking Down Under, who – from overenthusiastic eating on suddenly being reacquainted with home cooking – chundered over the seder (Passover) table of his Australian friend’s parents, whom he had just met that same evening.

It was also far less excruciating than that suffered by another travelling friend, who chose the family home of an American girlfriend, no less, to discharge matter that stubbornly refused to be sent on its fetid way. Seeing no alternative – and I jest not – he fished the offending object out of the bowl, wrapped it in toilet paper, and smuggled it out of the house.

Nonetheless, hardly just reward for a well-intentioned visit to a poorly child.

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Ovadia & Nehemia: Two Ends of the Same Shmekel (Doss vs. Chiloni, Part II)

In Doss vs. Chiloni: Two Sides of the Same Shekel, written during a slight down period (with Tel Aviv especially), I expressed my despair at the ultra-Orthodox/secular polarisation of Israeli society and my longing for the mutual tolerance and respect – relative, at least – which I had known in the Jewish community in the UK.

While I snapped out of that downer some time ago, and am once again certain that I much prefer being a Jew here than anywhere else, I am again feeling the deep, often ugly, religious and even racial chasms within (the purely Jewish constituency of) this country.

Firstly, there has been the shocking – at least to idealists, like me, who believed (or wanted to) that they were living in a modern democratic Jewish state – case of charedi (ultra-Orthodox) Ashkenazim (Jews of European origin) segregating their daughters from charedi Sephardi/Mizrachi (of North African/Middle Eastern descent) girls, at a school in the West Bank town of Immanuel.

Pouring oil on the flames, when this appalling racism was (quite naturally and predictably) challenged in the High Court, the supposed spiritual leader (and former Chief Rabbi) of Israel’s Sephardim, Ovadia Yosef (right), castigated – of all people – the Sephardic petitioner, proclaiming that anyone who “raises his hand against the Torah of Moses” by petitioning the chiloni (secular) High Court “has no place in the World to Come.”

I have made no secret of my contempt for the shenanigans of Israel’s charedim and the disregard with which they treat this, their country: see The Good, the Sad and the Ugly. Moreover, it never fails to amaze me how irresponsible – many would add “malevolent” and “dangerous” – characters such as Rabbi Ovadia succeed in becoming leaders of their own households, never mind entire communities. In 2000, for example, the firebrand ‘Ayatollah’ described the Holocaust as God’s retribution against the reincarnated souls of Jewish sinners (The Independent). Nice.

Then, on June 13, Israel’s Haaretz daily published an op-ed about certain, ostensibly nefarious, activities in the Ramat Aviv suburb of north Tel Aviv:

“At night they lurk among the trees and on benches for the teens, offering refreshments and sweet talk . . . taking in a youngster and destroying a family . . . Where are the police and the municipality as strangers badger children among the trees at night . . . with their butter-wouldn’t-melt smiles?”

Such language, from the keyboard of veteran journalist Nehemia Shtrasler, immediately summoned up images of Mein Kampf:

“. . . the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood . . .”

I would often recite this passage to an old school friend – newly religious, incidentally – who, with similar intent, would prowl the streets of Woodside Park for Scandinavian and Eastern European au pair girls with defences (and, often, soon knickers) down.

But what has actually been going on in the leafy suburbs of north Tel Aviv? Packet-of-sweets-and-cheeky-smile predators? Surely not?!

No. Far worse . . . frummers!

Shtrasler (right) was expressing his disdain for the activities of Chabad Lubavitch hassidim, the presence of Chabad House, and the opening of the organisation’s kindergartens, in the secular heartland of Israel.

How dare they!

And, with sentiments and language as rational as the British fascist’s “they come here, they take our jobs,” Shtrasler documents Chabad’s “organized plan to take control of the neighborhood”. Horror of all horrors, they have even opened a yeshiva (institute of religious learning) – “staffed by ‘messengers’ who are prepared to sacrifice their souls for their Rebbe” (language of Fundamentalist Islam purely coincidental?) – and encourage locals to “keep the Sabbath and follow mitzvot [Commandments]”.

How dare they!!

Experiencing a sudden bout of intellectual and journalistic schizophrenia, Shtrasler then sees fit to quote the late, great Rabbi Elazar Shach: “Chabad is the cult closest to Judaism.” Talk about picking sources to suit one’s story!

Now, admittedly, I do not spend too much time in their company – the last time they tried to get me to put on tefillin (phylacteries), outside a Jerusalem supermarket, I told them I wasn’t Jewish (disgraceful, I know) – but when was the last time anyone heard a Chabadnik tell a child that “their mothers and fathers are sinners”? Or that “people who don’t honor Shabbat are doomed to hell”?

“The sight was elevating,” Shtrasler – now himself sounding like a Chabadnik – describes the 800-strong anti-Chabad demonstration “to protect their homes” and “their values”.

What . . . Tzfonim (north Tel Avivians) with values?!

And, on reaching the very bottom of his extremely deep barrel, Shtrasler notes how Chabadniks “have no problem flouting the law” and that “they build without permits.”

Unlike other Israelis you mean, Mr. Shtrasler?!

Of course, Shtrasler fails to mention any of the fine works for which Chabad is so renowned, not least the warm and generous hospitality it extends to all travelling Jews and Israelis in every far-flung corner of the world. But heimishe (homely) Friday night dinners are, no doubt, of little importance to a man who would probably sell his own mother if he was concerned about fellow leftie ‘intellectuals’ thinking her too Jewish.

The Biblical Nehemia (and this is as close to a Devar Torah as you are ever going to get from me) is believed by some to have been a eunuch. And seeing as “no one whose testicles have been crushed or whose penis has been cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 23:1), can Shtrasler’s bitter anti-religiousness perhaps be interpreted as some bizarre, misplaced sense of identification with his namesake?

Anyway, what arrogance! Only, this time, chiloni. But, make no mistake, it is no less hateful than the bigotry of the Immanuel charedim (whom Shtrasler must surely despise even more than the far more worldly ones of Chabad . . . or perhaps not, because at least the former leave him alone).

Indeed, replace “Chabadnik” with “Jew” and “Shtrasler” with “Streicher”, and such poisonous rhetoric (full article) would not have been out of place in Der Stürmer.

At the end of another polemic, in this Monday’s Haaretz, Yoel Marcus – demonstrating that Shtrasler’s language was no one-off – summed up the racial unrest amongst Immanuel’s charedim by referring to a Heinrich Heine poem:

“. . . if the rabbi and the priest could both move back a little; both of them stink.”

To my mind, however, arrogant chilonim such as Shtrasler and Marcus are as much a part of the stench as the charedim whom they so decry.

So much for the “Jewish state”.

Giving too much of a f*ck: kiosk counselling

I took Tali to the kiosk on Rothschild for the first time on Sunday morning.    

Bringing a new girlie to the kiosk is no less of an ordeal or a statement than introducing her to your mother (not least because wake-up coffee is the clearest indication that you are no longer sleeping only with your dogs).    

Avi “Borsa” (so-called because of his preoccupation with the stock market), who rarely descends from his stool once parked on it, made an immediate point of coming over to take a good look. Indeed, I was half expecting him, like an inquisitive child in Madame Tussauds, to reach out and touch Tali’s nose.    

Anyway, by the following morning, when I was at the kiosk on my own, the news was clearly out – it was official: (to those not already cognisant of my formidable record with the ladies) I was definitely not now gay, celibate, or just incapable of pulling.    

Dalia, a fifty-something mother of two, was disappointed, even frustrated, to have missed Tali the previous day (having departed her perch slightly earlier than usual). Avi, however, had already updated her.    

“So, who is she?” Dalia enquired, before my bottom had even hit the stool.    

“Just a girl,” I replied nonchalantly.    

“She’s nice,” Avi interjected, and then repeated, providing the affirmation he believed I must have been waiting for.    

“Thank you, Avi,” I replied, playing along as genuinely grateful to have received the green light to continue the relationship.    

“Take her to a nice restaurant,” Dalia instructed. “To Pronto,” she immediately followed up, as if I was not capable, on my own, of identifying a nice restaurant.    

Omitting to mention that Tali’s mother had invited us – and with an unjustified, therefore, air of self-satisfaction – I informed Dalia that we had already been to Idi, a classy fish restaurant in Ashdod. Dalia gave Avi a look as if to say: “You see. I told you. He is not such a clueless twerp after all.”    

Having passed (even if by cheating) that test, Dalia moved onto her next piece of advice. “Take her away somewhere nice for the weekend.” Avi, 49 and single – though, on this showing, clearly not because he knows not the ways to woo a lady – nodded enthusiastically. I ignored them both.    

“How long are you going to wait?” Dalia – on a now inexorable roll, and only just moving into fifth gear – continued, “Ilan and I got married after two and a half months.”    

“We are just getting to know each other, Dalia!”    

She rolled her eyes. My mother would love Dalia for all of this.    

“Anyway,” I said, “I am too young to rush into anything.” Dalia doesn’t get my humour (or attempts thereat).    

But how does an Englishman deal with such unbridled directness and complete lack of boundaries? Dalia and Avi are, after all, kiosk friends and no more. 

The kiosk, however, is not unlike the kibbutz chadar ochel (dining room) – it is as if, by merely sitting there, one waives one’s right to a private life. 

Perhaps, however, I waived that simply by making aliyah. Indeed, the Diaspora Jew’s guiding principle – “Don’t get involved” – could not be more alien to the Israeli. In fact, he likes nothing more: from advice on dating, to my current weight, my taste in clothes, to how I might better train the dogs (see Who the f*ck asked you?!) 

The flip side, of course, of all of this is echpatiyut, Hebrew for caring. In England, no one gives a f*ck, often even about those close to them (never mind virtual strangers).    

Anyway, perhaps it is it just that Dalia believes that a guy like me is not going to take the plunge without a little (or, in her case, not so little) push . . . and that it is her duty to inform me that, at 42, I must take whatever I can get.    

I saw Dalia again yesterday morning, when even the seemingly imperative question of where I pick up my gas mask could not distract her.    

“You have to take Tali to meet your mother,” she reopened the issue.

After all this, my mum is going to be a walk in the park.    

The kiosk, Rothschild Boulevard, Tel Aviv

Sometimes there’s a man: Pichotka’s simcha

“Sometimes there’s a man . . . I won’t say a hero, ’cause what’s a hero? But sometimes there’s a man . . . he’s the man for his time and place. He fits right in there . . . I don’t know about you, but I take comfort in that. It’s good knowin’ he’s out there.”    

The Stranger, The Big Lebowski (1998) 

When I was a boy – or, should I say, were a lad? – my greatest wish was to meet William John Bremner.    

Footballer Billy Bremner was the captain of Scotland, but, more significantly for me, of my beloved Leeds United. And I still recall exactly where I was – on Yirmeyahu Street, in north Tel Aviv – when I heard news, on the BBC World Service, of his premature passing, in December 1997.    

I doubt that it is still an Anglo-Jewish custom – professional footballers’ salaries hardly need supplementing these days – but, growing up in the UK, the very best present that parents could give a bar mitzvah boy was to invite his favourite footballer to the party. And every Friday’s Jewish Chronicle would feature photographs of sheepish looking Gentiles, who clearly (and understandably) would much rather have been in the pub – or anywhere else for that matter – than surrounded by scores of fawning Anglo Jews.    

But, however much I may have dreamt of meeting “King” Billy, I knew that my parents had more depth than to cheapen my coming of age with so meaningless a gesture. And I respected them for that.    

At a recent family bar mitzvah in London, however, I was saddened to hear even the Rabbi (United Synagogue), in his sermon, appeal to my twin cousins purely in terms of Arsenal FC and cricket. It may come across as pompous – even as hypocritical, from “El Presidente” of the Tel Aviv Whites! – but don’t we Jews have enough of our own, genuine heroes to whom we can point?    

Indeed, a close childhood friend, as steeped in Arsenal as the worst of them, chose to name his firstborn after Yonatan Netanyahu (right), the fallen commander of Operation Entebbe. Whilst, at the time, rather tickled by the gesture (considering Graham had never even set foot in Israel), “Yoni” was by far preferable to the always more likely “Thierry”, “Dennis”, or even “Charlie”.    

A couple of weeks ago, my new squeeze invited me to the wedding of Binyamin, an old friend of hers from film school. Tali has had quite enough of having to suffer smug, boring and/or miserable (are there any other kind?!) married couples at such dos alone. And, not sharing her fear of The Wedding – what can be bad about a free bar and good scoff? – I accepted.    

As we arrived at Sadot, a delightful, rustic venue (no more miserable synagogue halls, tasteless banqueting suites, or airport hotel conference centres for me!) close to Netanya – and before I could even get to the bar for my first bottle of Goldstar – Tali pointed out Binyamin’s father, who, she informed me, is a well-known ex-ish tzava (army man).    

Brazen Zionist that I am, I was suddenly excited to be there for reasons other than grub and alcohol (and, of course, you, Tali!) And the feeling was only heightened when Tali told me his nickname: “Pichotka” (“פיחוטקה”). You can’t be a serious ex-IDF man without having a nickname like a teddy bear.    

To corroborate Tali’s account, I immediately sms’d another ish tzava, my friend Yuval, to find out whether he knew of “Pichotka”.    

“Of course!” came the instant reply.    

“I am at his son’s wedding!” I texted back excitedly.    

“Forget “Pichotka”,” Yuval responded, clearly unimpressed, “how is it going with Tali?!”    

But my feelings of privilege and recharged Zionist zeal were not to be dampened.

"Pichotka" & Ariel Sharon (1st & 2nd left), Battle of Mitla

Tat Aluf (Brigadier General) Efraim “Pichotka” Hiram was born in Poland in 1933. Ariel Sharon recruited the young Holocaust survivor, now an artillery officer, into his Paratroopers Brigade in 1956. In October of that year, during the Sinai Campaign, “Pichotka” participated in the historic Battle of Mitla – to this day, the only occasion on which IDF paratroopers have parachuted in a combat situation – and, in the following years, in numerous operations against Fatah and the PLO.    

One story, shared at our table, was of Sharon, not knowing his officer’s real name, refusing to let “Pichotka” go on a mission, but ordering that Efraim Hiram be sent in his stead!    

A confidant of Yitzhak Rabin and friend of former Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan, “Pichotka” was influential in the promotions of future IDF Chiefs Dan Shomron and Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, as well as of Major General Matan Vilnai. (Less interestingly, to me at least, he went on to become mayor of Ramat Hasharon.)    

"Pichotka" (right) with Major Saad Haddad, founder and head of the South Lebanon Army (circa 1982)

Sharing “Pichotka”’s simcha (celebration) served as a much-needed reminder for me – at a time when it is all too easy to forget – that this country is not just about high-tech and real estate.  

I know nothing about “Pichotka”’s childhood, merely that, before eventually relenting, he forbade Binyamin from setting foot in Poland. And, observing “Pichotka” during dinner, I opined to Tali – though in the knowledge that a Sabra (person born in Israel) would not quite understand – that only we Jews could have gone from the Holocaust to rustic weddings within so short a time frame.   

At the end of the evening, I made a point of approaching “Pichotka”, and wished him a warm mazal tov (congratulations). It had been a special simcha – Binyamin had been, like me, a 42-year old bachelor! – and I felt the handshake of a survivor in every sense. In his mid-seventies and white of hair, perhaps . . . but “Pichotka” still has a presence and voice that boom as loudly as any artillery cannon.    

At the kiosk on Rothschild, the following morning, I proudly announced to anyone who would listen that I had been at “Pichotka”’s simcha. What did the Sabras understand, however, or care? But I was chuffed, indeed privileged, to have been there. For a diehard Zionist who didn’t grow up here, it was the real deal.   

We employ terms such as “hero” and “legend” far too lightly. It is the “Pichotkas” of this world, ordinary people who have made extraordinary sacrifices, who are the real ones for us Jews, not the “Bremners” (whose only merit, if it is one, was being good enough to have earned a living as one of – to quote my former French master – “22 grown men chasing a pig’s bladder”).    

And “Pichotkas” live amongst us. They are not just names and stories in some ancient Book. And, on this anniversary of the day on which God is supposed to have given us the Torah, we should appreciate – indeed, tell our bar mitzvah boys about – our living Davids and Gideons.    

Happy Shavuot ! חג שבועות שמח  

The Post Office Nasty

Patience – or savlanut, as they call it in these parts – may well be a virtue. But it is most definitely not an Israeli one. And, while the natives are notorious for being incapable of standing in line, inability to queue is only one symptom of their lack of patience.

Walking Stuey and Dexxy through the labyrinth-like streets of Tel Aviv, lost motorists will often ask me to come to their rescue. Instead of stopping and listening to the directions that they have requested, however – as they would in any normal country – drivers here continue moving forward, almost expecting you to carry on giving them while running alongside their vehicle. The attitude seems to be: “I want to get there as quickly as possible, but I can’t wait for you to you explain to me how.”

Walking down Melchett, last week, a middle-aged cyclist asked me for directions to the beach, all the time continuing to pedal.

“If you stop,” I responded, failing to conceal a different type of impatience, “I’ll tell you.”

“This rough direction or that?” she screamed – signalling left and then right with each arm – as, continuing to look at me from over her left shoulder, she moved further and further away.

Resisting the temptation to stick out my left arm, I grudgingly held out my right.

Indeed, this may be the only country in the world where one gets penalised for trying to be courteous . . .

Last Friday morning, I trudged along to my post office, on Yehuda Halevi Street, to find out what treat lay in store for me. I had received one of those dreaded postal service collection notices, which in the UK usually signifies a parcel or goody of some sort, but here more often than not indicates notification of a road traffic offence. And, with three pending court hearings for speeding, I was fearing the worst.

I pulled my number from the dispenser, but – due to the rather less-than-warm greeting extended to Stuey and Dexxy by a fellow hairy beast – we waited by the open door so as not to disturb the patrons (i.e., my attempt at courtesy). We were no more than 30 feet from the counter, and with a clear view of the electronic board, on which I was keeping a beady eye.

About ten minutes later, as it ticked over to 91, I immediately strode over to the indicated clerk. It must have taken me all of six seconds.

Alas, just before I could get there, an old dear – hovering for a hesitation – submitted 92.

It is almost acceptable – even normal – in these parts to push in. The attitude seems to be: “With our lovely neighbours, who knows how long we’ve got . . . so why waste time queuing?!” Indeed, tell an Israeli not to push in and, the chances are, you will be met with an extremely quizzical gaze.

And rather than politely inform the old lady that “Sorry, madam, this gentleman was first” – the words one would undoubtedly hear in such circumstances in the UK – the twentysomething frecha behind the counter instead barked, Soup Nazi-like, at me:

“Me’oochar midai!” (Too late!)

I slid my hand between the glass and the counter, grabbed Frecha by the throat, and yanked her so violently towards me that it was a miracle that the glass didn’t shatter as her thick head thudded against it.

Well, at least I fantasized about it.

When the red mist had lifted somewhat – regular readers of melchett mike will know that it was not the first time that it had descended – I ruminated over what I was going to say to Frecha when my chance would finally come. Alas, still hardly collected, “And that is why you are working in a post office” was the best I could come up with. Needless to say, I didn’t use it.

In the end, when the old lady had finished and moved aside, waiting a metre or so behind her, I lunged at the counter like a sprinter through the finishing tape.

Frecha gazed at me as if I was demented.

“Maspik mahair?!” (Fast enough?!), I fired, eyeballing her with contempt.

Frecha didn’t flinch . . . though I did catch a hint of satisfaction as she pointed out the box on the collection slip ticked: “Available for collection from next week.”

“At ro’ah – hayiti mahair midai!” (You see – I was too quick!), I quipped, in a last-ditch, though futile, attempt to save some face.

With which, the three of us exited. Two tails were wagging. The third was firmly ensconced between its owner’s legs.

“Shpichen Sie Hebräisch?” A sticky situation in Ivrit

Ivrit, or Hebrew, can be a surprisingly dangerous weapon. And, following some tips on how to handle the natives, the best advice that I could give to the new immigrant to this country would be to make the most of his or her introductory ulpan (Hebrew school) . . . and not in the manner in which I made the most – or, at least, continually attempted to! – of mine.    

Ulpan Etzion front gate (former, original Baka campus)

Following my aliyah (immigration to Israel) in January 1996, I spent five months at the Jewish Agency’s Ulpan Etzion, in Jerusalem. This residential school, Israel’s first ulpan (in 1949), was the modern-day embodiment of Moses’ promise, in the Book of Deuteronomy, regarding the “Ingathering of the Exiles”.      

And, for your average twentysomething male (I was a considerably more virile 28 at the time), Ulpan Etzion was also the heavenly fulfilment of his fantasy, in no particular book whatsoever, about the ingathering of exiled Jewish totty from all five continents. Indeed, it was very much a case of take your pick (which all three of my first cousins who preceded me at Etzion obviously couldn’t wait to, marrying women – from three of those continents – whom they met within hours of touching down at Ben Gurion).      

Even if the “knocking shop” run from her room by a Russian resident of Etzion catered to non-residents only, the atmosphere during my time at the Ulpan – also known as a merkaz klita, or absorption centre – was certainly conducive to “absorptions” other than the purely linguistic. In my defence, my aliyah coincided with a sickening spate of suicide bombings, forcing me to swiftly adopt the Israeli practice at such times of finding solace wherever I could. What choice did I have?!      

None of this, of course, excuses the fact that the ultimate goal for me and Aussie Nathan – who sat on the opposite side of the classroom – in each tedious Hebrew lesson would be to catch as many pieces of flying chocolate in our mouths as possible while Esti, our teacher, was writing on the board. And she never did discover why seemingly spontaneous applause would break out during her lessons (i.e., whenever Nathan or I had been successful). After years of dreary employment, it was like being back at Hasmonean . . . only with girls to show off to.      

This honeymoon period in Israel, however, followed by continual employment in the English language ever since (my current boss refers to me only as “Shakespeare”), has left me with my own peculiar dialect of Hebrew – Hebrish – that constitutes a continuing source of embarrassment and frustration to me. Most humiliating of all (especially when I am only trying to buy a carton of milk), I speak it with an accent that causes most listeners to take pity and to respond in English.      

To me, Israel’s adoption of our ancient tongue rather than English – the international lingua franca since the early 20th century – makes its 1967 occupation of the Territories, with no apparent exit strategy, appear relatively sensible in comparison. Indeed, rather than naming major streets in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem after him, I would instead have ‘rewarded’ Eliezer Ben-Yehuda with a couple of grubby newspaper stands in the Ashkelon and Dimona bus stations.      

But I digress . . .      

On Sunday morning, I met up for coffee with my architect on Levontin Street, in the up-and-coming Gan Ha’Chashmal neighbourhood of Tel Aviv.  

Now, Shlomit is quite atypical of T.A. Woman. In fact, Shlomit is the very antithesis of her. She is refined and ladylike (that should not be taken as an insult, bra-burners!), and the very last person at whom one would want to direct a filthy utterance. 

Discussing plans for a new, Toblerone-shaped building to be erected on the opposite side of Levontin Street, I resolved to be clever and to show off my new Hebrew word – shpitz, or apex, recently taught to me by my friend Yuval (probably with the intention that I would, later, inadvertently misuse it to great comic effect) – to delineate that side of the building of most interest to me.

“Ani ma’adif et ha’shpich,” or “I prefer the cum,” I informed Shlomit boldly.

Shlomit stared down into her creamy hafuch (latte). 

When, some seconds later, the realisation of what I had said shot through me, I resolved that I would have to get myself out of the horribly stiff, sticky spot by either continuing the conversation as if nothing had happened or by confronting my malaprojism (beat that, Kopaloff!) head on.

My cheeks, however, were already throbbing crimson, meaning that the former approach was lost.      

“Oy! Ani kol kach mitsta’er . . . hitkavanti shpitz!” (Oh! I am so sorry . . . I meant apex!)      

Shlomit giggled, nervously, as I forlornly attempted to regain my composure and to continue our discussion about real estate as if I had not just ejaculated about semen.      

Had my faux pas – a fadicha rather than a fashla, it would seem – outdone even the (apocryphal?) group email sent out by the secretary of the large London law firm, requesting assistance after she had dropped a “clit” into the photocopying machine?!  

I was also reminded of the time that a former Canadian colleague at Amdocs – that most hierarchical and regimented of high-tech companies – mistook an instruction from our Israeli boss regarding an “otek” (copy) for a call of “motek” (sweetness).     

“B’seder (okay), motek” Dalit replied in kind . . . totally inappropriately to a woman with the sense of humour of an abscess. And, naturally, we never let her forget it. (Dalit laughed last, however, when another of our technical writers’ group, Andrew – in the elevator after lunch, one day – dripped ice cream onto the club foot of one of the Amdocs Vice-Presidents [most of whom appeared to consider themselves only a notch below Head of State].)      

Having made aliyah over 14 years ago, I can no longer call upon the pitiful excuse – as I did so shamelessly for so long – that “I am an oleh chadash” (new immigrant).

As they say in these parts, however, and usually in the face of far greater adversity, yih’yeh tov (it will be okay). And Shlomit, no doubt, now understands that she is dealing with a complete dimwit.      

To all readers of melchett mike, a slightly belated – though grammatically correct, this time – Chag Atzmaut Sameyach (Happy Independence).

England, Your England

“Sorry,” he proffered, as he inadvertently passed between me and the bookshelf.

“Bloody hell” I thought, after doing a brief double take, “that would never happen in Steimatzky!”

I had been browsing the Travel Writing section of my favourite bookshop – Waterstone’s (formerly Dillons) on Gower Street – as the impeccably mannered Englishman momentarily obstructed my view. This seemingly insignificant episode, however, resonated with me, demonstrating as it did the huge contrast in attitudes and behaviour between my birthplace and my homeland.

There is something lovely and serene about many aspects of life in Blighty, including the manner in which (most) folk treat each other with common courtesy and respect (if not warmth).

After a week in London (following a year and a half without a visit), however, I was ready to come home (which I did a few days later, last Thursday). Whilst enjoying the ‘civilisation’ booster, I now experience considerable difficulty in readjusting to the English, and – oddly perhaps – to English Jews especially.

This has become very apparent to me on Anglo-Jewish charity bike rides overseas, when I find it extremely testing having to spend a week and a half with a hundred, primarily North-West London coreligionists. For my last ride, in the Far East, I made my own way from Tel Aviv to the group’s hotel in Saigon. On arrival, the first person I came across, from Stanmore, on hearing that I had come from Israel, felt compelled to assure me of his Zionist credentials:

“I would never sell my flat in Herzliya Pituach.”

Oh, Theodor would have been so proud!

At last Monday’s seder (Passover meal), which I enjoyed in Muswell Hill, the Manc sitting opposite me, finding an Anglo-Israeli at the table, laid into American Jewish settlers, who – even if I don’t always agree with them – have priorities considerably more weighty than the “French château that sleeps 19” which Manc informed us he is about to lose to his ex-wife. I liked her already.

Then, clearly trying to impress the new fiancée by his side – and more closely resembling the Haggadah’s (seder service’s) Wicked Son (who tries to distance himself from the Jewish people) with every ignorant word – he became a tad bolder:

“It might have been better if Israel had never existed.”

“Your life would be a lot more precarious if it didn’t,” I fired back as if he had just dissed my mum. In fact, if the Wicked Son hadn’t been my friend’s brother-in-law, the Isaac Son might have jeopardised any future invitation by following the Haggadah’s instruction to “smash his teeth”.

The purpose of my trip was to attend an Isaacson simcha (festivity). And whilst – following the bar mitzvah of my cousin’s twins – there are two fine new Isaacson men, the speeches (including that of the Rabbi), essentially on cricket and Arsenal FC, prompted even this once sports mad teenager to think that his Isaacsons (should he, one day, surprise everyone) will grow up here.

When in England, these days, I find myself acting like a member of the Israel Tourist Board. Wicked Son excepted, I offered Melchett hospitality to everyone I met. The obvious reluctance of some to accept it, however, saddened me.

“I am not visiting until there is peace,” declared a cousin on the other, Reiss side of the family, who spends his vacations in Dubai. “I wouldn’t feel safe there” (a curious statement, I thought, considering he has never been). And another (who has a box at Arsenal) hasn’t returned since receiving poor service at his hotel’s pool during his only visit, in the Seventies.

I also dropped in on an old friend from law school, whose seemingly delightful Hampstead Garden Suburb existence – replete with BMW jeep and designer Labrador – showed me what I could have had if I didn’t love this f*cked-up country so bloody much.

The only thing that I truly do miss about Blighty is the sound of leather on willow – one even more seductive than that, from the building opposite, of “Melchett Shabbes afternoon girl” (if you get my drift) – but the politeness, the châteaus, the Premier League boxes, the Suburb, the jeeps, even the ‘proper’ dogs (only joking, Stuey and Dexx!) . . .  none of them held any real allure.

If you feel that you truly belong here, none of that “stuff” is any substitute.

[See also Why I Am Not (Really) an Englishman and the last four paragraphs of my Rosh Hashanah Message.]