TRAVELOGUE: OUR HONEYMOON IN ISRAEL (continued)

Bruce David Wilner
April 1999

WED 14 April

Eytan will be leaving us today, but we still get to torment him for another ten hours. He is so knowledgeable and good-natured. Eytan shares a brief introduction to Jewish mystical literature with the group. He starts to discuss the qabalah, and I note that the front desk of our kibbutz hotel was marked "qabalah." That is not as surprising as it might seem, since qabalah means "reception," not only in the sense of "reception of guests," but also in the sense of "reception of revelatory mystical experiences."

Eytan talks about his own experiences with kibbutzim. He was born on a kibbutz (technically, his mother delivered him in a hospital in Afula), the child of highly educated German immigrants with a socialist dream. He spent his early years hauling 50-kilogram bunches of bananas. We agree that the kibbutz is a Communist experiment and then digress into a discussion of the interrelationships among economic theories of Marx, Smith, and Rousseau, but we are losing the group, so we give it up. Remembering that Eytan told us that he was retired from the air force at age 45 six years ago, I conclude that he was probably born in 1947 and is therefore technically a Palestinian, not an Israeli, since there was no Israel until May 1948. I ask about this, and he readily admits that, in the strictest sense, he is not an Israeli.

We continue our peregrinations through the Galilee, where jobs are few and far between, and head up another breakneck mountain road with its hairpin turns toward Tzfat, where there are old synagogues and an artists’ colony. Walking through the artists’ colony, a couple of Hasidim are upset that, as I snapped a photo of the breakneck steps and lopsided buildings, they happened to be caught in the shot. That’s just too fucking bad. If they attack me, I will scream "mishtarah" or "esh" or something at the top of my lungs until someone rushes to my aid.

Cheryl is enjoying the artists’ colony and makes several purchases, to wit, two posters featuring gorgeous calligraphy of Judaic themes and a silk-screened cartoon image of various Hasidic figures. I feel rather more generous and blow NIS 400 on a breathtaking, hand-embroidered tallit with paintings of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Even though we have been exposed to a lot of Judaica in Tzfat, Cheryl is upset that the first synagogue was closed, and she feels gipped while the two Romanian gossips continue to bemoan the fate of The Innocents Abroad.

I innocently ask Eytan why my mineral water is marked "May Eden" when I have everywhere else seen the word for "water" used in the plural, mayim. He tells me that it is Mey Eden, not May Eden. When I ask why, he says that it’s the same as the case of bayit and beyt. When I ask for further justification for this umlaut and apocopation, he explains matter-of-factly that it’s "because of smichut," and I choose not to press the issue. While a big dog barks ceaselessly on a nearby overhang—the same dog that was barking ceaselessly on our way into the shul—I tell Eytan that, in civilized Montgomery County, Maryland, a "problem dog" whose owners must be cited three times by the authorities is put to sleep.

On the way down the hill and toward the Mediterranean for our trip toward Haifa, Qeysariyeh (Caesarea), and Tel Aviv-Yafo, Eytan arrogantly remarks that the American aid to Israel, which (as I recall) amounts to some US$10 billion per year, is not really needed. I believe his exact wording is that, while the gift is "not insignificant," it "isn’t much compared to Israel’s total budget." Yeah, sure, Israel is such a well-to-do country; that’s why Eytan can name all four of its hospitals. I guess that, when a 55-year-old has a mild heart attack, he dies en route to one of these four hospitals, whereas in my American neighborhood I have a selection of quality hospitals and emergency care facilities, plus trained emergency medical workers at the fire station, all within a few minutes’ ambulance ride. Eytan then tells me that, at the current rate, Israel’s standard of living will pass that of the U.S. within a decade or two. This is the funniest thing I’ve heard all week. It is almost as funny as looking out my window and seeing pockets of a few dairy cattle grazing here and there on the brutally steep, rocky mountainsides, clinging to dear life on terrain where chamois would have difficulty.

We stop at Aqo (Acre) to check out the Crusader city and its great view of the sea. I briefly discuss Crusades, popes, and such with Eytan. This visit leaves me cold: not only am I tired of ruins, but I find it disturbing that every photo that I try to take of the site shows more iron railings and English-language signs than actual ruins. Speaking of signs, I am disappointed that the Hebrew word for "crypt" is qriptah, and I once again tsktsk at Eytan over the shameless piracy that characterizes the modern Hebrew language. We stop for ice cream at some Arab-run seafood restaurant where one would be ill-advised to eat, then we pose for photographs overlooking the rickety wooden wharves that jut into the mighty Mediterranean. We see an Arab couple, recently married, whose "limousine" is just your standard Israeli subcompact but is nonetheless gaily bedecked with flowers, ribbons, and crepe paper.

We stop at Qeysariyeh for lunch and visit the glassblower’s shop around the corner from the self-service restaurant. We buy a hideously ugly shot glass for someone back home who specifically asked for a shot glass. Noticing that the standard multilingual Palphot publications are also offered for sale, I ask the proprietor what her feelings are on selling to German tourists, given that Germans fomented the Holocaust, etc. She says, not only does she dislike selling to them, but they are also the world’s stingiest people, despite their considerable material wealth.

Driving through Qeysariyeh to view the aqueduct and the other Roman ruins, we stumble upon a driving school for police. Rows of fluorescent orange cones have been set up in the sand, and police are negotiating the cones at high speed in four-wheel-drive vehicles. It is fascinating to watch such precision work, much more interesting than the lovers dallying in the archways of the aqueduct and the growing collection of tour buses accumulating at the entrance to the beach. Qeysariyeh itself (outside the ruins, that is) is a sight for sore eyes. The town appears to be a high-end exurb for Tel Aviv. It is beautifully landscaped, exploding with verdant growth, and features very lovely contemporary houses which, unfortunately, are too closely spaced. We also learn that Qeysariyeh is the site of the only golf course in Israel. (Given that tidbit, I’m surprised that its road signs are not also marked in Japanese.)

We stop off in Netanya to visit one of the world-famous Israeli diamond exchanges. After viewing a film about diamond mining and processing that reminds one of the cheap shorts shown in elementary school auditoriums in the 1960s, we are treated to a firsthand demonstration of how the various machines operate. (Naturally, all the loose stones have been secured before our arrival.) The funniest part is when we are herded into a showroom where they actually expect us to be Chantshen Yisrael and purchase diamonds without even knowing their weight. (Chantshen Amerika is the archetypal Jewish innocent who lands at Ellis Island and stumbles around Manhattan getting duped and cheated.) I know more about diamonds than most people, and I can see that even the lighting is deliberately overpowering and off-color. When the lady tells me (apocryphally or otherwise) that they use carob bean seeds to weigh their stones, that’s enough for me.

My jokes are getting worse. When I see a sign pointing out the way to Qiryat Yonah ("Village of the Dove"), I deliberately misread it aloud as "Qiryat Zonah" ("Village of the Prostitute"), making Eytan laugh. Eytan is proud of my progress (I have learned to identify the blue lamed as a warning of a nearby driving school, and I correctly identify a truck marked Bezeq as belonging to the telephone company), as he asks me, "Bruce, do you always figure out every detail of a country completely in one week, and then spend the next week totally bored?" I further demonstrate my progress by putting Eytan on the spot while singing one of the group’s favorite Israeli songs, "Finjan." Having noted that the J sound does not occur in Hebrew (except in Rechov George Washington in Jerusalem), I challenge him to admit to me that "finjan" is not a Hebrew word. It is not, he reluctantly admits: the song was appropriated from Armenian immigrants.

Driving toward Tel Aviv, I am surprised to see a bus stop on the freeway. The mystery resolves itself when we presently find ourselves stuck at red light, revealing that the "freeway" wasn’t really a freeway after all. Sights on this thoroughfare include our first Volkswagen Beetle and our first instance of non-Israeli license plates (viz., a California rear tag with a missing front tag). After expending time in the worst rush-hour traffic I have yet seen in Israel (although it obviously pales by comparison to New York or Washington or Los Angeles), we finally pull into Tel Aviv and realize that it’s time to say goodbye to Eytan as well as to Avraham. I give Avraham US$10 and he gives me a big hug in return. (Poor Avraham: he has never even heard of a Lexus, which not only occupies my driveway but is all over the streets of our home town of Bethesda, Maryland—along with countless Mercedes, Jaguar, BMW, and Infiniti. It dawns on me that, with Israel’s 100% automobile sales tax, my Lexus would cost NIS 260,000 here.) I give Eytan NIS 140 (which, oddly enough, is the exact amount that Linda chose to give him to cover herself and her son). There has been some tension in our relationship, and I know that he thinks I’ve been trying to deliberately stump him, but I really haven’t. It’s just that my questions have come out of left field by comparison to those asked by the others, which have typically ranged from, "What language do they speak in Syria?" to, "Is Israel in Europe or in Africa?" to, "Nowadays, does the king of Israel wear a robe or a business suit?" I have enjoyed you, Eytan: you have enriched my experience in Israel. You meet many tourists in a month, but I meet only one Eytan Tel-Tsur in a lifetime. I shall miss you, my friend.

Our hotel is visually striking from the outside, and the lobby is beautifully appointed. The room isn’t that great: it suffers from the standard twin beds, has primitive audiovisual facilities, and has trouble dispensing truly hot water from the faucets marked "hot." They also reuse the sheets night after night instead of giving you new ones. But our view of the Mediterranean is spectacular. We give the bellhop US$1 for carrying our bags, and he is thrilled. Not knowing whether we are American or British (but assuming we are one or the other), he offers us both a "Thank you" and a "Cheers."

The people here in Tel Aviv are very different from the ones in Jerusalem. The people in Tel Aviv smoke more cigarettes. They include blacks (not Falashas), Vietnamese, Chinese, fat people (the first ones I’ve seen in Israel), and transvestites. They are crazy about their dogs, taking them to the beach, the restaurant, and the shopping mall. Many younger men have long hair and tattoos. I see teenagers and young adults wearing flip-flops, but the guys wear them with shorts while the girls wear them with bell-bottom jeans. (Note that both of these styles are passé in the U.S..) They also enjoy inline roller skates.

We have a delicious shvuarmah and pizza dinner at Rondo, an al fresco restaurant on the Tel Aviv beachfront. The shvuarmah is not what I expected: rather than looking like your standard Greek-American gyro, it consists of chunks of freshly sliced roasted lamb (with a bit of flavorful fat included), spiced with garlic, salt, and pepper, served in a pita pocket with lettuce, chopped tomato, and hummus. It is accompanied by the all-you-can-eat salad bar, which offers pickled eggplant, picked cucumbers, pickled peppers, pickled maize, chick peas, pepperoncini, green beans, cherry tomatoes, onions, beets, and radishes. The platter costs an unbelievable NIS 35 (under US$9) and is exceptionally yummy.

We stroll along the beach after dinner. People love to hang out here in Whitman’s "mystical moist night-air," where the temperature is a steady 70 degrees under a cloudless azure sky. Every single storefront along the beach vends a complete selection of hard liquor—yet I don’t see anyone stumbling around drunk. We stop off at a stone sitting area where an artist from England is sketching portraits with a pencil. He prepares a competent profile view of the two of us for NIS 30, having us pose separately (first Cheryl, then me). A group of elderly native onlookers chats with me while Cheryl is posing. I get by with them by mixing Yiddish with their broken English, filling in German where my Yiddish is faulty. (There seems to be less English spoken here than there was in Jerusalem, perhaps because this is a working city whereas Jerusalem derives a significant portion of its economic base from tourism.) While I am posing, staring at the same black pebble in the conglomerate sidewalk and forbidden to budge, some Guido drives up on his motorcycle and tries to "pick up" my wife. When she points out her husband on the opposite bench, this does not dissuade Casanova. That is what I call chutzpah. Soon, the Yiddish-speaking oldsters return and give Cheryl a leaflet that she is instructed to give me. She is not sure what it is, although it begins with a cartoon of a robed man riding a donkey. Anyone recognizing this image:

Zech. 9:9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.

should realize that the leaflet is Jews for Jesus literature in Hebrew.

During our brief stint as a captive audience, the street artist tells us (naturally) what an absolutely marvelous place Israel is, devoid of street crime, etc. He then warns me that, of all nations, only people who live in Israel will be safe from the LORD’s wrath, citing two verses:

Jer. 30:10 Therefore fear thou not, O my servant Jacob, saith the LORD; neither be dismayed, O Israel: for, lo, I will save thee from afar, and thy seed from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return, and shall be in rest, and be quiet, and none shall make him afraid.

Jer. 30:11 For I am with thee, saith the LORD, to save thee: though I make a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee: but I will correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished.

My interpretation is a little different from his: the verse speaks of the people of Israel, not the geographical division called Israel, but I am more interested in a relaxing seaside stroll than in hermeneutics. I don’t bother to share with him another verse, which demonstrates that an entire additional group of people is also safe from this "full end" spoken of by Jeremiah:

Gal. 3:29 And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.

Having spent a significant fraction of our dwindling supply of shqalim on the portrait, we are desperately low on cash. Actually, I have NIS 190 in my pocket, but I refuse to spend it: the bills are to sit in my coin collection, looking pretty and gathering dust, even if they are worth US$48. I have squirreled away a hundred, a fifty, a new twenty (green), and an older twenty (gray). I have also assembled a complete assortment of Israeli coins in my pocket: 5 agorot, 10 agorot, ½ sheqel, 1 sheqel, 5 shqalim, and 10 shqalim, totaling NIS 16.65, worth US$4 and change.

*

A trucker transporting a load of penguins breaks down. He asks a passing Jäcker (a German immigrant to Israel, noted more for book learning than for common sense) to load the penguins onto his own truck and take them to the zoo. After the first trucker’s vehicle is repaired, he makes his way into town and is surprised to see the Jäcker marching the penguins across the plaza. "I thought I asked you to take those penguins to the zoo," protests the trucker. "I did take them to the zoo," answers the Jäcker, "and now we’re going to the museum."

 

THU 15 April

We wake up to the stark realization that this is our last day in Israel. I have been getting on Cheryl’s case all along for constantly locking and unlocking and relocking our luggage, and I know that this is a disaster waiting to happen. All of a sudden, the combination on one of the locks changes all by itself (presumably because I looked at it wrong), and we must summon the maintenance man to apply a bolt cutter and destroy the lock. We breakfast at our hotel, where the waitress is Vietnamese, the waffle chef is Japanese, and the guests at the next table are Russian. For the first time this trip, I have a trace of shilshul (traveler’s diarrhea). However, I attribute it not to the water, but to pigging out on pepperoncini soaked in vinegar last night. Oh, well, that’s why I packed IMODIUM tablets with our luggage.

We head to the beach, which is already abuzz at 7:00AM. Joggers abound, with their Sony Walkman CD players curiously strapped to their upper arms with Velcro—not clipped to their waists as in the U.S.. People are running or jogging along the shore: some with sneakers, some barefoot; some accompanied by dogs, some not. There is a graphic sign on the beach that warns, "Cats prohibited," and I wonder what kind of a fucking idiot would bring a cat to the beach. A milk truck drives past (its shape is barely recognizable, but I can discern the Hebrew word chalav). The patriotism here continues to astound me: even the garbage collector proudly flies an Israeli flag from a staff mounted on his garbage pail. We have to get to the Sheraton to meet up with our mini-tour group at 9:45AM. Trying to scamper across Rechov Hayarkon like the protagonist in the video game Frogger, we are almost flattened by the crazy drivers who care not for human life. At the Sheraton, my Hebrew vocabulary takes another great leap forward: I learn that modiyin means "concierge."

Our tour director is an older guy, Zeev Shai, who smokes cigarettes, while our bus driver is another Eytan. I don’t really care for either of them. Our tour group is small—we are accompanied by Al and Kerry (her mom is feeling ill today and won’t be joining us) from our original tour group; two Austrians; and one Spanish-speaker (oddly enough, I think she’s actually Brazilian). We visit the folklore museum and look at wine presses, olive presses, mosaic floors, and other artifacts, both real and reconstructed. (Chatting with Kerry, I am surprised to learn that wine is extracted from grapes nowadays by machines, not by spotlessly clean bare feet. Kerry appears to be knowledgeable not only about grapes in specific, but about botany in general—she is able to instantly identify camellia, hydrangea, eucalyptus, and Bougainvillea.) Zeev is unable to tell me why one of the outbuildings has garlic hung over the door, and I joke that it’s for warding off vampires. Gazing through the museum fence, I see for the very first time a soldier wearing a kipah. Presently, I piss off Cheryl, Al, and Kerry because I start farting around in German with Zeev and the Austrians, tipping the balance of our group from primarily English-speaking to primarily German-speaking. Our fate is sealed when I coin the word Notstandenaufgangemethode for "evacuation plan" and am obviously understood: for the remainder of the day, the chief language of explanation is German, with Zeev occasionally condescending to translate into English for the ignorant. Actually, Zeev’s German is stilted (relying heavily on French loanwords) and his pronunciation substandard, but the Austrians don’t complain.

We set off for another diamond center, this one in Ramat Gan. Unlike the run-down, one-story structure in Netanya, this one occupies gleaming twin towers interconnected by a catwalk. I am jealous of the hostess’s excellent Spanish (she was able to summon the word pechero for "breastplate" when I would have had to think on my feet to come up with the clumsier protector de pecho or escudo de pecho) until I realize that she uses the word every day when explaining the exhibits. (I am even happier in a spiteful sort of way when I return home and consult my encyclopedic Larousse Spanish dictionary and find that the proper word is pectoral, yea, that there is no such word as pechero. So, the Spanish-speaking tourist was probably just listening along and chuckling to herself, "What kind of jackass concocts the word pechero when any seven-year-old knows it’s pectoral?") An unpolished diamond in a glass case is marked golem in Hebrew, and I ask the hostess whether this word is related to the Golem of Prague, an unfinished, rough-hewn monster that protected the Jews from persecution according to medieval legend. Her answer is a tentative, definite maybe, but common sense tells me that I’m right.

After the exhibit, during which we can spot security cameras focused on us from all angles, we are led across the street to a jewelry showroom, just as we were in Netanyahu. In this case, the sales tactics are even blunter: the showroom is filled with buxom, scantily clad blondes. The stones are not marked as to carat weight or grade, only as to gold weight. Once again, they expect us to be Chantshen Yisrael, and they are sorely disappointed.

I wish Zeev would give us more bathroom breaks. (I'm so sorry I inconvenienced the tour guide by insisting on a modicum of comfort, e.g., a rest stop every two hours or a meal every six.) Speaking of bathrooms, the British influence shows through plainly in the fact that nearly all public bathrooms in this country are marked WC for "water closet." (A lot of them also say sherutim in Hebrew; I had thought that a sherut was a kind of shared taxi. I later found out that sherut simply means "service.") We drive through the streets of Tel Aviv, which are desperately crowded at lunchtime. We pass Kikar Yitzchak Rabin (the square that commemorates Yitzchak Rabin, who was assassinated in 1995), which we unwittingly blew right past in our walk last night. A violinist on the street is playing one of Schubert’s Lieder, a melody that I recognize instantly even though I haven’t heard it in about 25 years. One can readily perceive the dreadful parking problems in this city, which were also evident in Jerusalem. Adding to the problems are these commercial strips where you find one car rental place after another. Again, we saw the same thing in some parts of Jerusalem.

Our tour concludes with an excursion through Old Yafo (Jaffa) on foot. We stop off at some crowded place to pick up a pita topped with cheese and mushrooms, while Cheryl eats an unadorned sesame pita. Climbing onto a meter-high concrete wall to get a good view of the harbor for a photo, I smack my head solidly into an overhead beam and nearly dash my brains out. (Kerry suggests that I take off my sandals to facilitate climbing, but I’m afraid to catch a rare foot disease.) We pass the artists’ colony selling the ubiquitous silvern Judaica. There are some lovely views of Tel Aviv from a hilltop in Old Yafo, but the most interesting scene is evidenced when we are back in our bus, trying to merge onto the crowded main street: a group of Arabs matter-of-factly marches a beautiful, snow-white Arabian horse up the sidewalk.

Back at our hotel, we pad over to the beach for a brief swim. There are very pretty shells on the beach. Unfortunately, there are also hundreds of cigarette butts. Swimming is prohibited by a sign featuring a red skull (gulgolet adumah – my Hebrew is improving) because the busy pleasure boating and commercial shipping make it hazardous. Most people ignore the prohibition, but I obey, particularly since the water is freezing cold—probably about 65 degrees—even if its deep sapphire color is alluring. The sand is extremely fine, finer than table sugar: I am still finding granules buried deep under my toenails. It’s hard to get any peace and quiet while lying on the fine sand, as some fat guy is marching around hawking ping-pong sets (which he, oddly enough, calls frizbi in Hebrew) at the top of his lungs. (Not only that, but in addition to the usual air traffic into Ben Gurion, a noisy military transport is flying overhead every few minutes, which, we conclude, has something to do with the Kosovo airlift.) Seeing pigeons on the beach is a new experience for me. (Our Australian touring companions, Kerry and Susan, had earlier referred to these vectors of urban filth—which look the same in Tel Aviv as in Manhattan or San Francisco—as "doves," which I found connotatively funny even if denotatively precise.) The sight of American-style street blacks selling musk oil and incense along the promenade casts a pall over my heart. This city, too, has its days numbered.

I convince Cheryl that, despite the variety of restaurants in Tel Aviv, it would be a good thing to stay at the hotel and eat at the lobby bar. It is a pleasant, air-conditioned place that, unlike many Israeli eateries, features a graciously appointed non-smoking section. They have the weirdest signaling device for calling the waitress from a distance: you press the button, and a radio signal is sent to the receiver at the bar. The attendant can then determine from which table the signal originated. Aside from a couple of vodkas, we enjoy a delicious smoked salmon salad platter with cream cheese and caviar, plus some fresh, homemade cheese ravioli. We head down the beach to a waterfront al fresco café called London and watch the sun set over the Mediterranean as we sip coffee and eat ice cream cakes. Then it’s upstairs to lounge around and hit the sack at about 7:00PM in preparation for another 4:00AM wakeup call (thanks, dear).

*

The pilot addresses the passengers over the loudspeaker and says, "I have bad news and good news. First, the bad news: we’re going to crash. Now, the good news: we’re making excellent time."

 

FRI 16 April

My, oh my, how I love my wife. Despite bickering brought on by tension, stress, and close quarters, I have spent most of this trip worrying about her; comforting her when she was disappointed; inviting her to sleep on my shoulder when she was groggy; searching frantically for her when she lagged the group or dawdled in a curio shop; fearing for her life when she went to the bet shimosh (bathroom) unattended. (Interestingly, although, as Eytan told me, bet shimosh—"house of service"—is the polite term for a bathroom, not one of the dozens of bathrooms that we passed during our travels was so marked.)

Cheryl is concerned that I should gather up all my receipts for purchases made in Israel so that we can have the 17% value added tax (VAT) refunded to us. (Every merchant has a VAT ID number, which is printed on all receipts, and posted prices include the VAT.) I would rather not have the customs agents go pawing through our luggage, so I decide to forgo the VAT refund, even if it might amount to US$100 or more.

We are picked up outside the hotel and driven to Ben Gurion airport by our old friend, Udi, who fetched us thence on our first morning, but he doesn't appear to remember us. Unlike National Airport back in Washington, which was dead in the wee hours, Ben Gurion is bustling at 5:15AM. Airport security was astonishingly easy on us again. Perhaps it’s because I reported an Arab whose handshake with his buddy seemed to be accompanied by the surreptitious transfer of a small item and its immediate burial within a back pants pocket. When I qualified my report to the airport authorities, indicating that I might be wrong and I didn’t want to cause trouble, they said, "No, it’s O.K., what you have done is very important." (The Arab did not make his flight, though his parents did.) While others were scrutinized down to their pubic hairs—a Korean visitor had his large silver sculpture nearly disassembled to look for explosives—the extent of our grilling was, "Why did you choose to visit Israel?" "Did you accept any boxes from anybody that weren’t packed right in front of you?" and "Thank you."

For whatever reason, British Airways screwed up. (Fortunately, the Arab lady who fainted—the same one whose son was kept off the plane by Israeli security—recovered when given oxygen.) The flight got in late; there wasn’t even a jetway at which we could dock, so we had to park in midfield. There was such a dearth of buses to shuttle us to the terminal that they had to borrow one from the Saudi airline. (I thought the bus driver was going to crash driving down the wrong side of the road—then I remembered that this is the UK and people drive on the left.) This time, the Heathrow security staff insist on X-raying our film (in its leaden bag, albeit), citing "government regulations," though they were content to examine it manually last time.

This terminal is so tremendous and only provides a token 100-meter-long "people mover" here and there. I can scarcely believe they would have the chutzpah to expect people to navigate this colossal edifice on foot. I indicate to a gentleman driving one of those "beep-beep-beep" carts for transporting the handicapped that I am about to collapse from an asthmatic attack (Cheryl is also doing her share of panting and coughing), and we are graciously invited to ride the cart to the gate. We are dying of thirst, but we don’t have a half-pound coin for the soda machine, so we open her backpack and pick through the few remaining Juicy Juice® containers and top them off with a Fig Newton® or two.

The flight from London to New York was absolutely miserable. I had become accustomed to the modern Boeing 777 and was unprepared to sit in a Boeing 747 that was nearly thirty years old. Not only were the seats tight, but the one in front of me was semi-broken so that it leaned toward me. To make matters worse, its occupant was a mental case who fidgeted nonstop for seven hours and was nearly decapitated several times due to his proclivity to bend his torso ninety degrees and stick his entire head, neck, and shoulders into the aisle while the food carts were rolling past. Yet, the mental case was evidently highly intelligent, as his reading material treated spectral factorization over orthonormal basis sets. I considered starting a discussion with him on the computation of Lebesgue versus Riemann-Stieltjes integrals over Banach spaces, but I reconsidered.

At JFK, I immediately feel uncomfortable amid all the blacks and Hispanics even though I was born and raised in New York. Not once did I feel this way in Israel—even when venturing into new towns for the first time. That’s certainly food for thought.

These "water-resistant" bags from L. L. Bean are not as water-resistant as is claimed. They only sat in the rain for a few minutes, but some objects inside are wet. Partial loss: the suede and cork soles of my favorite thong sandals are wet, but they will dry out. Total loss: the pages of Cheryl’s full-color booklet on the Citadel museum in Jerusalem are waterlogged.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

I would not have the nerve to try to capture the entire Israeli ethos in an essay as short as this one, and I have no doubt that even my brief exposure to Israel has given me enough raw material to seed a lifetime’s philosophical discourses.

Israel is a fascinating land, a land of great natural beauty, stark contrasts, urban sophistication amid squalor. It does not come close to offering the facilities or conveniences of the United States, but it has had only fifty-one years in which to build itself. There is the tendency for one to say, "Well, if I had been the builder, I would have done such-and-such differently," but I won’t. They have come a long way, but they have a long way to go.

Eytan is proud of his country, and rightfully so. I can see that Israel’s need to rely upon the generosity of the United States for defense as well as improvements to infrastructure is a sore spot for him, as well as, presumably, for other Israelis. It is interesting that Eytan enjoyed a taste of life in the U.S.—New York, even—as a youngster: he lived in the Jackson Heights section of Queens. Why, then, would he want to stay in Israel? The answer probably lies with some deeper undercurrent of patriotism that develops when every citizen serves in his or her country’s military. I am a technocrat, a button-pusher and check-writer, and I have never served in the military, so perhaps I take my country for granted.

As a Jew, I did feel special in this land. It felt unusual to know with certitude that the vast majority of the people around me were Jewish. Yet, in the U.S., Jews typically occupy the uppermost roles in society: doctors, attorneys, professors, judges. In Israel, the trash collector and the street sweeper are also Jews. Interestingly, I wasn’t as acutely aware of class differences in Israel as I am in the U.S.. In the U.S., even though we live in an extremely affluent neighborhood, I find it disturbing that so many uneducated, dumpy-looking goyim are always underfoot. In Israel, I generally felt much more comfortable among the crowds even though the people were quite pushy. I wonder if this has something to do with the civil rights movement in the U.S.. Here, everybody is mixed together—at times quite artificially—and the government tries desperately to ensure political correctness, even though racial and ethnic tensions are high. In Israel, the lower classes (for the most part) speak a different language, follow a different religion, are segregated into their own enclaves, and keep their place when they mix with their superiors.

Now, in the U.S., I don’t have to worry about terrorism on a daily basis, whereas in Israel they do. However, in the U.S., street crime is a legitimate concern, whereas it appears not to be in Israel. If you play it strictly by the numbers, it is possible that people are indeed safer in Israel. Yet, when a bomb goes off, the horror is so pervasive, whereas a murder on the street is, to paraphrase Stalin, "just a statistic."

Enough said. I deeply enjoyed our trip to Israel, but when I look out my window, or drive down the street, or get anything I want just a fax or phone call or button or keystroke away, I thank the LORD that I am an American. The idea of a Jewish homeland may be legitimate, and perhaps I should not denigrate it inasmuch as I cannot recall ever having personally suffered persecution on account of my religion. (Now and then, I descry a swastika spray-painted on a wall or hear of overturned tombstones in a Jewish cemetery, but I have always gotten the distinct impression that these criminal acts are based more upon some twisted sense of vandalistic fashionableness—or sheer boredom—than upon true anti-Semitism.) Indeed, all my life, every benefit that the U.S. has had to offer has been delivered to me on a silver platter. Israel may be the Jewish homeland, but the U.S. is my homeland and shall always be.

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Dedicated to the love of my life,
my darling wife,
Cheryl.
I love you with all my heart.

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