If you're overrun by ants in Israel, is it ANTY-semitism? (with helpful "bugs" vocab chart!)

Sigh. I wish it was a joke.
But alas, it isn't.

How are the ants where you live?
Growing up, I met two kinds of ants: black and red.

Black ants were friendly ants you could gather up and experiment with.  I wasn't the one with the magnifying glass, but these guys were slow and inoffensive enough that you could, if you were so inclined, corral them, then sizzle and pop them by magnifying the rays of the sun.

Red ants, well, you didn't want to mess with them, because there were rumours that they'd bite you.  But they were also shy ants, and if you kept out of their way, they'd mostly keep out of yours.

The creepiest ant incident in my entire childhood was one time, on a family trip, when my toddler sister sat down by the roadside (maybe we were stopping to fix the car in some way?) and then started shrieking because she'd sat on a massive anthill.
She was always doing stuff like that.

So presumably there were some aggressive ants within driving distance of our home.  But they weren't exactly a clear and present danger.

There were also certain facts I learned about ants.  Maybe you learned them too.  Spoiler alert: FACTS THAT TURNED OUT TO BE 100% WRONG HERE IN ISRAEL.
Facts like… Ants love crumbs

Israel: It’s for the birds (and for you)

When I met my first husband, I told him about our family's annual camping trips to provincial parks where we'd drive in, park on the site, pitch the tent, and head to the beach or river or forest or whatever to enjoy nature.  Sometimes, those campsites would have running water, other times, you had to walk somewhere else to get water.  My father's strategy was sending the kids to wash dishes in the bathroom -- strictly forbidden according to all provincial campground rules, but you know.  Someone has to be an exception to the rules.

So that was camping.

But my first husband quickly declared, "It doesn't count if you can get to it with a car."

He would have had a hard time with Israel.

Here, camping sometimes means that your tent is just a few feet away from the next person's…

(© Tiberias municipality via Wikimedia)

… and hiking usually means taking one of quite a few well-used routes, like the Israel Trail, a 1025 km. (look it up!) route – nothing to sneeze at, really, given that National Geographic has called one of the world's 20 most "epic trails."  But there certainly isn’t the variety, and from what I’ve heard, you’re very likely, in most stretches and hiking-friendly seasons, to bump into a number of fellow travellers.

(It’s also perhaps the only one that apparently features a lending library so you can pick up reading material along the way -- People of the Book, indeed.)

(photo credit © royisoko via Wikimedia)

Finding a nature getaway definitely isn't hard in Israel.  But as with so many things when you make aliyah, you may have to (slightly) redefine what you mean by the term. 

Since almost every spot is within half an hour's drive of a big city, and there are factories and processing plants of all kinds everywhere from north to south, you're probably not going to get total solitude and silence to commune with nature unless you take to the deep south.

But that has its upside, too, like the fact that you can hop in a bus in Nahariya and within not very long, be standing in the middle of one of the world's most extraordinary bird sanctuaries -- the Hula Valley.  A crucial migration spot between Europe and Africa (and back), the Hula Valley hosts about 500 million migrating birds every single year, and an incredible range of birds as well.

And it happens to be crane season RIGHT NOW.  Well, okay, as our guide explained, these days, it's crane season all winter long, at least until March.

That's because of the Strange History of the Hula Valley, which I'll sum up here very briefly.
Maybe in Hebrew school you learned how

Don't forget! Nine things to remember before you fly

Even with the best-laid plans, there are some important things that can fall through the cracks.  Here are 9 of the most important reminders – things you’ll want to take care of before you pull on that spiffy new Nefesh b’Nefesh ballcap and hop on the plane to Israel:

 

1.  Medical Check-In

 

Sure, health care in Israel is free.  But you’ll be sitting in front of a doctor who doesn’t know you, doesn’t have your records, and perhaps doesn’t speak English.  (Medical clinic receptionists will insist that “all the doctors speak English,” which means they know the names of medical conditions, but many still can’t carry on a conversation.) 

 

There’s also a different cultural approach and you may not have the confidence as a dripping-wet oleh to be pushy enough with Israeli doctors to make your concerns known.

 

If you have any medical worries, even little niggling things that you’re concerned might get bigger before your Hebrew gets better, get them taken care of ahead of time.

 

2.  Prescriptions

 

This could have been part of #1, except it’s so important I’m giving it its own bullet point.  Get a copy of all prescriptions, and a six-month supply of any medications you take on a regular basis. 

 

Keep these prescriptions in your carry-on baggage along with a few days’ supply, at least.  Checked baggage does get lost, and stuff gets lost inside checked baggage (especially if you’re bringing a dozen or more huge suitcases!). 

 

You don’t want to deal with a medical crisis immediately on landing.

3.  Dentist

Read everything I just said about doctors and multiply it by ten.  Then take out the part about it being free – you will have to pay for dental care in Israel, after you’ve figured out how to find it and how much it’ll be. 

 

Take me with you: How to make aliyah with pets

Would you make aliyah and leave your family behind?  If you've got a precious fuzzy (or scaly, or slimy) friend at home, you probably wouldn't consider a big move without them. 

Your dog, cat or reptile may not be exactly Jewish, at least according to the Law of Return, but that doesn't mean they aren't family.

Before we go on, I’ll admit something.  Two things, actually.

One, I have owned almost every kind of pet there is except dogs and birds.  Lizards, guinea pigs, ferrets, cats, frogs, hamsters, turtles, fish.

Two, when I found out I was expecting my son, twenty years ago, I got rid of every single living thing in the house.  I love animals.  But I knew I could either raise animals and plants... or I could raise a kid.  I wasn't responsible enough to do both. 

We've had a couple of near-brushes with cats since then, but so far, nothing has stuck.

So when we made aliyah two years ago, we were petless.  To get some advice on what it's like doing it with a fuzzy (or otherwise) buddy, I turned to some reliable sources on Facebook, as well as personal friends who brought their sweet (ginormous) doggie to Israel from Canada.

Clearing all the hurdles

Most important:  don't assume that just because you've mentioned your pet to your Jewish Agency rep that it's all taken care of.  The Jewish Agency is in charge of HUMAN aliyah. 

Pet aliyah is governed jointly by the Ministry of Agriculture and the Nature Reserves Authority, along with the Director of Veterinary Services.  All of which will require a whole slew of paperwork of their own (some no doubt redundant and - seemingly - unnecessary).

Bug OFF! More creepy crawly critters I’ve known in Israel.

If you're easily creeped out, maybe you'd better not read on.

Still here?

Good.  Because if you’re planning to move to Israel, you’re going to have to think about insects.

As I write this, I am literally pecking ants off my computer screen.  It's ANT SEASON here in Israel.

The first year we were here, a friend told us, "After Pesach, the ants come." 

I didn’t think she was lying to us, but really?  In Toronto, insects don't have a schedule.  Sure enough, though, days after Pesach, they arrived.  Right now, we’re in our second year, and, yes, in the middle of our second invasion by ants.

My 7-year-old son loves this, because it lets him make up rude rhymes for the song "The Ants Go Marching," in various multiples.  Me, not so much.

Ants, of course, are not the worst of it when you live in a hot desert-type country like Israel.  I guess the worst-case scenario would be the friend who got stung by a scorpion moving some furniture in his house.

Things that are weird in Israel # 14: Worms (vs Snails, and which you’d rather step on after rain).

Further to my coverage of the brink-of-disaster weather reports last week… this being winter, we did indeed have some weather.  Blue skies now, and the sun’s shining, but I admit, it’s been a rainy few days.

It occurred to me a couple of weeks ago what’s missing here in this rainy season.  I took a whole bunch of pictures before I came to my senses and realized that you were never in a million years going to guess based on a random picture of a puddle.

Still.  Try to forget you saw the headline up above and tell me what’s missing from this random little Kiryat Shmuel puddle:

Neglected dog next door :-(

Kind of the opposite of Toronto:  in the winter, maybe (just maybe) it's okay to keep a dog outside with no shade, food or water (okay, not really)... but with summer coming, I really fear for this dog.

Plus, he stands there barking at every single person going past, often late into the night.  Very obnoxious.

Since the dog arrived in the neighbourhood (shortly after we did), I sort of assumed there was nothing we could do.  Probably by extension from the Broken Windows Theory - this street and all the yards are kind of run-down, even by Israeli standards, so I figured nobody from the city would care.  Plus, the language barrier.

But last night, I broke down and finally contacted the Haifa equivalent of the SPCA.  We'll see if they're able to do anything about it.

On Stink

It’s true, I’m getting used to it.  But it still bears saying:  stinky smells jump out at you here on every corner.

Like you’ll be walking along and all of a sudden, you will be surrounded by an odour, overwhelmed, buried alive with a stink the likes of which you have perhaps never experienced before in your life.  Then if you keep walking (which you must, in self-preservation!) it’s gone a second later.

To be fair, I’ve decided this is mainly because of the heat, because it wasn’t so bad in the areas where we were last winter on our pilot trip, and because I don’t notice it as much now that the weather has cooled off by a few degrees.  (a few!  not a lot!)

In certain areas, there’s not only the heat to contend with but also the fact that the air isn’t moving around much; without a breeze, a smell can linger noxiously just about forever in one spot.

But it’s also because of the garbage.  Depending on where you go in the country, it’s everywhere.  This picture is in no way representative, in fact, because it shows a garbage bin with the garbage placed nicely inside, no debris casually tossed on the ground nearby and there’s a mattress propped up neatly nearby.  (This wasn’t even meant to be a picture of garbage; it was just a random shot snapped from the top of a double-decker tour bus last week in Yerushalayim.)

Ah, but if I actually wanted a picture of garbage, I’m sure I could find a great one.  Here in the krayot (burbs of Haifa), things are actually pretty neat – depending on what area you end up; I’m not counting the dead cat I saw on the way to GZ’s gan this morning.  Here, street sweepers putter around and men trim grass and bushes and pick up litter seemingly all the time.

(Even with all that, it’s nowhere near as clean as Toronto, or anywhere else in Canada that I’ve ever visited – okay, maybe Montreal, which I love, but is an older and grittier-feeling city than Toronto.)

But certain parts of Yerushalayim are absolutely awful.  Soda bottles and cans and laundry detergent bags and diapers and discarded whatever that somebody didn’t want anymore.  And then once seven people have used a yard to dump their stuff in, there’s very little to stop the next seven, and the next seven, and… well, everybody.

But this post really isn’t about garbage, I promise, and it’s not about the spiritual tragedy that  is a few ratty diapers cluttering up Yerushalayim.  I’m sure others have ranted more capably about that.  (and I don’t actually believe it IS a spiritual tragedy; so there)

It’s about smells.  And how they jump out at you.  It takes getting used to, and so far, they have predominently been BAD smells.  Rancid smells; manure smells; rotting vegetation smells and many others that probably cannot or should not be named. 

Part of it is dog owners.  Despite signs warning them that they will be persecuted to the fullest extent of the law, they never seem to notice what their dogs are up to when they’re off the leash (aka always). 

Probably a thousand times in the last couple of decades (usually when my children beg for a dog), I have told myself that I am above stooping to pick up a dog’s disgusting waste, and so have never bought a dog.  Israelis, on the other hand, seem to tell themselves they are above stooping to pick up a dog’s disgusting waste – so they look the other way and then keep right on walking.

But dog messes are not what this is about either; just smells.  And how they pounce and take you by surprise, stealing your breath like a cat might do to an unsuspecting infant if that legend were indeed true.

The good thing is that if you keep walking, the smell is gone quickly.  The bad thing is that if you walk the same route day after day, sometimes the same smells are waiting there to jump out at you, day after day.

As I write this, I’m standing in my window overlooking the Mediterranean, a slightly-salty sea breeze making my skin cool but a little sticky (as it usually is here).  And there is a bit of a garbage-truck smell wafting in, lightly, hidden away like it’s been tucked in lovingly by the sea.  Just the slightest hint of eau de garbage.  Creepily enough, I don’t mind it all that much.

With the weather changing, there are some good smells creeping in, too.  I find that I can smell the bakery from farther away, or maybe it’s my imagination.  When we were here in February, I remember thinking (did I blog it?) that the whole country smelled like a good bakery, yeasty and floury-sweet.  And I can smell a little of that now, even over the faint nastiness of the breeze.

As in other areas, perhaps it’s just that this crazy country is not shy, cannot be shy, is incapable of being shy or coy about anything.  If there’s garbage, it’s gonna stink; if there’s a bakery, it’s gonna make you drool.  And yes, even both happening at once, the bitter and the sweet, or Naomi Shemer’s poetic dvash, the sweet honey, along with the oketz, the painful sting…

…or is that stink?