"It's not Israel, it's you."
At least, that's what I tell myself sometimes.
"It's all your fault," I tell myself.
Most of these thoughts start with the words, "That's what you get..."
That's what you get for living in an older building, without a vaad bayit. A building that isn't maintained. A building where the tenants seriously don't care about anything as long as the thing doesn't fall down around their ears. A building where the neighbours physically threaten us
Here’s the truth that nobody is going to tell you: you may just be in for the worst 6 months (or so) of your life.
That’s the side of aliyah that you don’t see in the ads, or the videos, or the posters or the shots of smiling, happy families at the airport.
My family’s not in those shots.
You won’t see my son, lying kicking and wailing on the floor of the airport.
You won’t see my daughter, weeping because she misses our family in Canada.
You won’t see me in our apartment at the merkaz klitah, screaming and crying in the middle of the night because my husband cannot make the cruddy Israeli beach karaoke – literally the loudest music I’d ever heard, and I’ve been to more than a few concerts – go away at 3 a.m. on Shabbos morning until I finally fell asleep with a pillow over my head.
Or the kids lying in bed calling out, “Juke! Juke!” (cockroach, cockroach)
I don’t know if I’d call it the worst six months, but it was definitely a difficult period. A very difficult period.
Friends of ours spent 6 months in Israel a year or so before we came. They'd just had a baby, so he had parental leave, and they’d always wanted to spend time here. Everything went wrong - absolutely everything.
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.
One of the things everybody warned us about before we came was bugs.
“Israel’s full of bugs,” they said. “Watch out. You will have bugs.”
What kind of bugs?
Everything ranging from ants to lice to cockroaches to scorpions to weevils in the flour to I-don’t-know-what.
Cockroaches are semi-affectionately known as “Jukim” (pronounced “Jew” (as in Jewish) and “keem”) here. And yes, we have seen them in our apartment. One or two. I have been as grateful as anything that there haven’t been more.
Yes, they’re hideous. And yes, the kids scream “Juke!” every time they spot one. Which is rarely… so I figure we’re doing okay.
Someone else told us, “After Pesach is when the ants come.” It’s like a Biblical curse.
Does my hand look disgusted in this picture?
It should.
This is a stalk of what passes for “celery” in most parts of Israel.
The celery here came as a bit of a surprise, because of what everybody (truthfully) says about the produce here in Israel – which is almost universally fantastic.
Almost.
We have found a few exceptions.
Early oranges, for example, are not inspiring in the least. But they sell like crazy anyway, because people are so eager for oranges after months without them.
The cucumbers here are tasty, but they are tiny, more like little pickles than a full-blooded cucumber. Most people don’t bother peeling them, making them a convenient snack (for most people).
But in me, the peeling habit has become ingrained, making them a totally annoying treat. I’ve read too much about all the pesticides and bad stuff in the peels to just munch away on them. So I have to peel and slice four of them to have enough to serve even me and the kids. (slicing is optional, I admit)
And as for celery…
