Park This Way

There's an Israeli comedian that tells how in Israel you have to take twenty eight driving lessons before you can take your driving test to get your licence. His punch line is aptly delivered in a simple "Why?"

Our seventeen year old daughter has been working hard to pay for her own driving lessons of which she has so far completed half the required amount. She has also been studying the theory book in English and today I drove her to Hadera to take her theory test which she passed. Since I would be in Hadera with a few hours to spare I called my friend who is a police and traffic officer to meet for a coffee and a chat.

Hadera is Golans beat; he walks through the streets and is greeted by all with affection. Once there was a time where he handed out tickets and fines, but now many years on he knows everyone and they all know him. He no longer hands out fines but rather warm greetings and small reminders for all to be on their best. He agreed to meet me outside the driving school a block away from the centre of the small city and as I pulled up outside he was there to greet us.

On the way Tay had read out loud from her theory book and I had tried to explain the logic behind the answers to her questions. I was curious when she came to the question about parking on the opposite side of a two way street. Can one park on the left side of a two way street facing the same direction? In Israel you drive on the right so the obvious answer would be no. Yet my husband had asked a booking officer that very question one day in Zichron as he rushed out of the American Pizza bar to save himself from getting a ticket. "Ze b'seder", he was told, in fact "b'seder gamor" (absolutely OK) by the cop. I was relieved to discover that indeed it was not absolutely OK, in fact it was absolutely illegal to park on the opposite side of a two way street facing the wrong way and explained to my daughter the seemingly obvious reasons why.

Yet lo and behold as I pulled up outside my daughters driving school, a parking spot appeared on the opposite side of the street and Golan proceeded to stop the oncoming traffic and directed me to park in the spot, facing the wrong way. Luckily a spot appeared on the right side of the road, and I was able to pull in facing the right way, saving myself the enormous stress of having to negotiate Israeli traffic down the narrow side streets of Hadera and the internal conflict of doing something completely illegal with the absolute blessings and guidance of the law itself.

I got out the car and gave Golan a big hug, grateful that at least in Hadera I was on the right side of the law, whatever side that was. "What's wrong with you Israeli's?" I asked him," how can you park on the wrong side of the road like that? And you, a cop right outside a driving school? "
"Here, I am the law" he said shrugging his shoulders ..."and this is Israel."

Intimacy On The Dancefloor

When my husband suggested we make Aliyah, I didn't think twice about it. I didn't even think once about it, there was no way I would pick up our five children and move them to a country whose primary goal was to prevent itself from annihilation by hostile neighbours intent on its destruction, all in a language I neither spoke nor understood. At the time, we were living an essentially religious life and my connection with my body, apart from its role as a delivery truck to my babies, was completely nonexistent. One evening a friend suggested I come along to an Israeli Folk dance class in Sydney. I had been a tap dancer till my late teens so she thought I would manage the intermediate class even though they were half way through the year. She was wrong. I spent the next three years chasing legs just to catch one tiny piece of a sequence without tripping over myself and bumping into everyone else even though I was sure they were all going the wrong way!

A few years later when my husband broached the subject of Israel again, I made a deal with him. I would come live in Israel with him if he would come learn Israeli dancing with me; and so it was that we made Aliya just over a year ago. He came to a few classes and subsequently dropped out, he's not a dancer, it's just not his thing and much as I would 'immigrate' just to dance with him, I gave up pushing it and embraced the opportunity to dance three sometimes four times a week and have him stay home and hold the fort. I had a lot of catching up to do.

I remember dancing a solo tap routine from the Broadway musical Cats as a young teenager and experiencing that moment when you 'get' what it means to lose yourself in a performance. It's a transcendent moment that allows you to be something greater than your regular self. In dance it's about complete presence, focus and body centred awareness. You have to lose yourself (your ego, your self consciousness, your fear), to access your greater self - the fearless, expansive part that resides in your centre. That's how I wanted it to be when I danced, not for the performance, but for the sheer bliss of feeling expanded and present. For me dance is a much needed meditation.

Yet to be completely present in a dance with a man who is not your life's partner, presents some challenges. At this point I will dance with anyone who will dance with me, even though I have some partners with whom I feel a particular affection, and with whom our movement, time and rhythm is perfectly weighted and synchronized. The challenge is not in the connection of the body but rather in the connection of the soul, which happens through the meeting of the eyes. When two people are aligned in a movement together and look at each other from the centre of their bliss, intimacy is the natural expression; dancing after all is courting ritual.

The question is not how to prevent that intimacy from expressing itself, because to do that one would have to disengage from their own centre, but rather how to manage it in a grown up world where married men and women dance with other married men and women. If you are able to feel the intimacy and allow it to express itself in the moment, without interpretation or transference it can be as innocent as two friends sharing a joke. For me that is the ultimate way to dance, connected heart to heart in innocence and bliss.

Still it's very hard to separate parts of ourselves, and stay clean in an intimate exchange between two humans. We confuse sex with love, the personal with the universal, our emotional with our intellectual. I watch couples dance together and wonder how they manage to be present with each other without complication. Perhaps it's the fact that I can't communicate in Hebrew to create clear boundaries or perhaps I'm missing something complicated in their partnership, an underlying chemistry that is not immediately revealed. Or perhaps I have to find a gay partner with whom I will be able to play and dance pretending we are secret lovers in an old black and white movie, or perhaps one day the true love of my life will get the jitters and join me in this exciting adventure on the dance floor of a basketball court somewhere in the middle east.

Marketing Israel to Itself

At this moment in time, Israel sits between that casual non affected place we all fell in love with in the seventies and a slick stylised future of the new century - hovering somewhere between the collapse of the Berlin Wall and Kylie Mons 'locomotive'. Last weeks Yom Ha'atzmaut celebration was a case in point. Podiums designed to look like large blue underpants , a pompous staged military presence, endless formations of predictable Israeli symbols visible only to the camera's eye, and masses of dancers all doing the same thing over and over again to the backdrop of (I concede) some relatively impressive entertainment technology.

I imagine some big Israeli names were called in to produce the event but still it felt staged and flat. Of course in the Tel-Aviv world of design Israel is well and truly up there with the best, as it is in the world of the arts, music and dance, but the rest of the country, is still very much stuck in flared jeans and gaudy fonts.

During the week I attended a small Yom Ha'atzmaut celebration where Children from all the kindergardens in the town gather at the local military courtyard to sing national songs, wave Israeli flags and be indoctrinated through a somewhat dated socialist youth project. Scattered parents hovered close to their children as they all swore emotional allegiance to the State through song and dance. Of course there isn't a dry eye when little Jewish children sing Hatikvah but it's the military and nationalistic overtone that I found somewhat dated. If this country wants to market itself to the next generation, it's going to have to find a better strategy.

I understand why Israeli children need to be indoctrinated, they will all give at least two years of their life to the country in service and it's important that they have a strong sense of National Pride to do so. Still as I watched little mouths yawning away to no less than six official speeches, I couldn't help but feel that these ceremonies are more about the adults reaffirming their allegiance to the state than the children who would be just as easily bought off with a Magen-David shaped chocolate on a stick and a bag of Bambas.

Last week I went with my daughter to the Misrad Haklita, the Absorbtion Centre in Hadera to sign some forms. On the way up to the office, we went in to what looked like a regular pharmacy, though the name of one of the National Health Funds was clearly signed. My daughter needed to buy a packet of tissues. When we finally get to the counter, the woman serving us asked if we were members of Macabbi. What, to buy a tissue? I ask back, astounded. Yes, she replied, you can only buy tissues here if you are a member of Macabbi. My daughter and I burst out laughing; the woman serving us doesn't get the joke.

When we got upstairs I shared my tissue story with the woman at the misrad - who has been nothing short of a Godsend to us. She told us that during Chol Hamoed, across the state, the misrad employ staff to sit in the office all day to answer the phone, even though the office is officially closed. Their sole purpose, for that week is to tell whoever calls that the office is closed. She shrugged her shoulders and explained in a word - "Inertia".

'Inertia' indeed – the country that markets itself on its intelligence is still running on the generators of a dated socialism, reflecting the cumbersome sluggish style of its post hippy era. We will never return to the Zionistic free-style of long days in the Sinai but the conservative style of the eighties and nineties has been replaced by diversification and vitality that must be reflected in all things Israeli not just its hi-tech industry.

Meira of Hadera - My Initiation

I am returning to Sydney to celebrate my parent's fiftieth wedding anniversary, but Meira didn't know that. All she knew was that I had lost my Israeli travel document (a temporary passport issued to Orlim who leave the country before one year). She looked down at me disapprovingly through the glass screen between us and waited for an explanation I did not have. The implication was clear. Yes, of course I understand that in a country like Israel, where security is of primary concern, the loss of such a document is no small matter. I did not need Meira to tell me that, though she obviously felt that I did. "It's very expensive to replace" she said, her eyes awaiting some kind of grovelling apology for my very existence. "It's 500 shekels". "Wow, that is expensive" I said adding to my growing debt-guilt, "but what can I do, I've booked my ticket, I'm leaving in three weeks."

"Go over there and get a letter from that girl to say you've lost it" she commanded. I scurried across the office, dodging a blind Arab man holding on to a pretty young Arab woman wearing an elegant black scarf. 'Slicha' I said half smiling and wondering at the same time if perhaps my travel document hadn't fallen into the hands of a mad Jihadist plastic surgeon with a tribe of daughters willing to look just like me for long enough to complete some massively destructive mission.

I returned to Meira with my tail between my legs and handed her the paper. She handed it back. "Fill it in" she said. I looked at the page full of Hebrew and I looked back at her. She knew damn well that I was far from capable of filling out this form. At my request we were speaking in English. She turned the snobby corners of her mouth up, grabbed the form back, made a personal call on her mobile phone and filled out the form while continuing a previous conversation with her co-workers behind the counter at the same time.

This place reminded me of the Road and Traffic Authority in Bondi Junction, with its ticket system and windowed counter. I missed the rough faced Aussie women with whom you could always share a personal story, and open up a conversation just by admitting you were human. Meira wasn't human though. She was one of those beautifully groomed Tel-Aviv women, streaked blond hair cut sharply against her chiseled face. She wore a large diamond studded eternity ring on her stubby manicured fingers, a high maintenance girl, clearly too good to be working an office job at the Misrad Hapnima in Hadera. There was no breaking the ice with this one.

I gave her my Australian passport, my Israeli ID, my Tudat Orlah , I gave her my husband's Israeli credit card. "Who's Gabi ?" she asked suspiciously. My husband I said, calling him over to identify his legitimacy. Where's his ID? she asked rudely. I was starting to come undone. I pointed to my ID, which has his name and number on it, she continued stapling and folding, stamping and writing.

I thought about my dad and I started to cry. I don't know why but I did. She neither noticed nor cared and by the time she handed me back my card, and told me it would arrive in the post within two weeks, I had completely fallen apart. Meira had managed without actually saying anything to completely annihilate me. I had been initiated.

This is the Israel I had heard so much about, this is the beurocratic nightmare, the scorpionic Sabra of which I had been warned. Up until now, I had been spared. I left the office in tears and cried all the way home. I still don’t know why I was so intimidated by this woman, maybe it was the full moon or maybe I'm just terribly homesick, or maybe that's what Meira does to make her feel better about herself.

I could wipe Meira out in a psycho-spiritual battle in a flash. I have squatted down and birthed five times, I have lived in a rain-forest. I have sat in tribal circles with powerful women, manifesting healing and manipulating energy. I have immigrated. I am a strong woman, a powerful being, capable of drawing powerful forces to my aid. By comparison Meira is a child, an un-evolved being, caught in the superficiality of her unprocessed life. Life will process her, it always does. I hope it does so gently so she grows to see that her external beauty will only ever be a reflection of her inner essence.

Role Reversal in the Holy Land

I'm not a control freak, really I'm not. I'm really a pretty laid back person, ask anyone - except my husband. OK, maybe I am a bit of a control freak but for very good reason. I want everything to be done the way I want it to be done. That doesn't mean I'm a perfectionist though, I just like things to be ordered, not necessarily spotless, just tidy. I'm certainly not that mom scrubbing the kitchen cupboards down with meths; I'm that mom drinking it!

Our recent immigration has presented new challenges but money is not one of them. Money is an old challenge, one that's been part of our dynamic since I rejected the idea of contraception and married a man sorely lacking in a MBA, and now to add fuel to the fire we are trying a role reversal. I did the first twenty years and now it's his turn.

The playing field is pretty even because as things stand I'm not earning any money, but my housewife skills even back then, when we first started out were noticeable better than his. Now he's communicating with underpaid teachers, under aged postal workers and overworked secretaries - in a language he neither speaks nor understands; but to be fair I was pregnant, nursing and sleep deprived for fifteen of my twenty years, so that pretty much puts us on par.

The thing that really gets me is that nothing ever gets done along the way; there's an end goal and it gets reached but along the way, if you'd only pick up the socks and drop them in the laundry and let the cat out and close the dishwasher and fill it with powder and press start ...it's on the way!!! It makes no sense that you wouldn't just see it and do it, you're literally right there.

There is no forethought and no organisation and when it comes to the children there is little compassion and even less food. Am I being too demanding? I come upstairs from my office. The pantry is open before an empty chair some hungry child has stood on, to remind me that my umbilical cord still pulses with healthy guilt. The potatoes are out, five scattered along the kitchen bench top awaiting a future fate. I heard talk of hot fried chips for lunch, but that was before everyone mysteriously disappeared. Carrots spread with crusted Miso sit drying in a bowl on the kitchen table, and assorted empty packets of corn chips, spill out of the garbage onto the kitchen floor.

Yesterday I took a break from work and while feeding the cat I stumbled upon an old tin plate which I thought would sit well on the wooden shelf by the front door. When I brought it inside to wash, I found the kitchen sink full of dirty plates, which I furiously stacked on top of the crusty pots from the night before and wondered about the ingenious way in which the Almighty fashioned 'man'.

I am reminded of a joke. Man says to G-d "Why did you make women so beautiful?""So you would love her" G-d replies. "But why did you make her so stupid?" Man continues, "So she would love you."

Housework is cyclic. The washing has to go in the machine in the morning, be hung in the afternoon, folded and put away at night so a new load can be done at night ready to be hung the next morning before everyone wakes in need of breakfast and school lunch, shoes and permission notes. Dinner also has to be thought about in the morning and children have to be thought about throughout the day, not all day but from time to time, especially around pick up time when they all get out from four different campus's at the same time. Some forethought is required. They also need to be FED!

The house is silent. I can't imagine he's taken them all to the supermarket to stock up for the week's meals and snacks - that's what I would have done. Then we would have come home, the children happily bouncing off the walls from junk food whose ingredients I can neither read nor understand. I would unpack the shopping in neat categories in the pantry and start cooking dinner. I imagine they are at the park, cold and hungry. I make myself a cup of tea and contemplate our future. I don't think this is going to work.

I put the potatoes in to bake, clean up the carrots, and wash the dishes. I don't think he will ever be the housewife I once was, and I will probably never earn enough to keep us, still I think it's been a healthy exercise. I'm a better mother than I am a father and he's a better dad than mom. The dog barks ahead of the arriving crowd, they storm in flushed from an afternoon on the windy sandbanks of the local beach. "I'm starving" the little ones say in unison, tearing their shoes off leaving neat little piles of sand on the rug which they will try rub out with their feet when they notice. "What's for dinner mum?" the teenager asks. Some things never change.

Time In Israel

According to cultural anthropologist and biblical scholar Raphael Patai the predominantly Arab, Middle Eastern Culture reflects an interesting relationship with time that can be understood through the Arab language. In his book entitled The Arab Mind, he says "In Arabic the imperfect form can stand for present, future and past ". The Arab language reflects a clear lack of concern for linear time, with significant historical events often grossly misrepresented in linear time sequence. A disconcerting example follows.

The names Mary and Miriam share a root and in Arabic are one and the same; Maryam. Patai tells us that even though Mary -mother of Jesus, lived some thirteen centuries after Miriam- sister of Moses, "the two women are represented in the Koran as one and the same person". Koran 3:35ff. The wife of Imran (ie.Amram, father of Moses) is said to have given birth to Maryam, who in turn gave birth to Jesus. In Koran 19:28 Maryam the mother of Jesus is addressed as "sister of Aaron". Even to the lay scholar this lack of regard for linear time presents a major problem, with fundamental Jewish and Christian events being merged into a cholent of misinformation.

My friend, who works with the Arab Israeli peace initiative, teaching Arabic and working closely with Israeli Arabs, tells me that the Arabs are not in a hurry to take over the country, they have time. Meanwhile the Israeli national hand symbol for 'be patient – savlanut" is silently screamed out of every car window at every opportunity accompanied by horn blowing before the lights even change colour - like your mother reminding you to pick up your dirty socks as if you weren't going to anyway. Coming from abroad where less parve hand signals are frequently used, it's easy to be offended when an Israeli sticks their pinched fingers up at you implying somewhat more than a polite request for a little patience. Patience is not widely practiced in this country implying that Israeli's are in a hurry to get things done, to be productive, efficient and not waste time.

Unless of course you are in the service industry. If your job requires you serving anyone in any way shape or form (with the single exception of the staff at the King David Citadel) the old Arabic sense of timelessness takes over. No one is in a hurry to do, finish, accomplish anything. There is no rush, time itself will wait. Personal calls are taken, meals are prepared, cows are milked. There is no sense of time in the Post Office, bank, health department, or council offices. The ministries all over this country float in the Arab national time frame blissfully ignorant of the fact that outside the enclosed walls of Israeli bureaucracy, linear time is still the order of the day.

Schools fall somewhere in between, insisting you send your child prepared to every event with just a days notice, and at the same time initiating services over years if not decades. By the time my seven year old is assessed for learning difficulties he will be a general in the Israel Army, and believe me he won't be the first to make it into Israel's fighting forces with unaddressed issues. In this case it may even be a bonus. In fact in most cases it's probably a bonus.

My sister in law has a diary in which she schedules her busy life. Lunches and parties are penciled in weeks and months ahead, and she never misses a birthday. We aren't like that; still I can't help but be confused. Am I supposed to be efficient and productive or endlessly patient? Is time in this country important or irrelevant? The Torah perspective would of course say that the six days of the week are for productive linear time, and the Sabbath is a day of transcendence where we float above time in blissful celebration of the gift of the day. Perhaps if all of Israel honored this cycle, the order would be evident and there would be less confusion.

Israel is a strange and mysterious place, ordinary, gritty and hard. I can't seem to sink my teeth into anything here; time evades me as I desperately try to create order in my daily life and the life of my family. Nothing gets done and yet we float from day to day, with a vague sense of purpose. I am woken in the dark hours of the early morning by the Mosques call to prayer. Morning merges into afternoon, afternoon into night and by the time I climb into bed I wonder what it is that I have done all day.

Perhaps it is the land that sets time up in this way, Arabic and Ancient Hebrew reflecting the essential nature of this timeless arid place. Productive modern Israel and modern Hebrew with its clearly differentiated verb tense system, seems determined to overcome this indifference to time. Still I think they don't stand a chance with the girl behind the checkout counter at the local supermarket and the fifteen year old running the international post depot in central Tel Aviv and so for a carton of milk and cotton socks from grandma, we will patiently wait.