Weird, wacky, wonderful (Hebrew) words: I'm already (כְּבָר) lying to you...

Running out to the car to get something?  Just popping out to the makolet?
Just let folks know you'll be right back... like by saying you'll be right back.
Right?

Wrong.
Not in Hebrew.  In Hebrew, you don't say, "I'll be right back."

(Okay, you can, before everybody rushes in to correct me -- there IS an expression, אני תכף חוזר / ani techef chozer / "I will immediately return," or תכף אשוב / techef ashuv / which literally means this very thing. But I would argue that few people use these expressions in real life, just write them on signs in shop windows.)

Instead, usually, you say, אני כבר חוזר / ani kvar chozeir / "I'm already on my way back."
Even while you're turning around and walking the other way.

This expression has been tickling my

Do American Jews get a vote in Israel?

If you hate politics, I get it.  Please move along.  Just skip this post.

When I started this site, I feel like I made a promise to you and to myself that I wouldn't get political.  If you want to know more of my thoughts on getting political, in a book that weirdly doesn't get very political, I urge you to read my book, Getting Political: Scenes from a Life in Israel.  (Hey, even if you don't want to know my thoughts, pick up the book anyway!  Seriously, it doesn't get very political...)

And yet.

And yet.

There are times when I feel like I have to get political.

Because when you move to Israel, you cease, in some important way, to be a "diaspora Jew" and become an “Israeli Jew.”

You live here, you walk the daled amos basically every single day of your life, you breathe the holy and sometimes stinky air.

You live with the noise, or block it out with a nonstop stream of English podcasts and audiobooks.

You vote in the elections.

And I don't even have a post I can link to about the elections, because I haven't talked about politics.

But just for a minute, I want to.  So please cut me some slack.
Because I came across this article about how the Canadian diaspora, and presumably, the rest of the diaspora, can influence Israel.

And it scared me.

Spoiler alert: the way that diaspora Jews can influence Israel, apparently, is to participate in the World Zionist Congress coming up in October.  In fairness, it's held in Jerusalem, so they

Why is Israel so noisy???

The noise in Israel drives me crazy sometimes.  There, I said it.  And I feel better for saying it.  And yes, it is specifically the noise in Israel.  Because Israel truly is an especially noisy place.

I used to just think we lived in a particularly noisy neighbourhood.  Luck of the draw, I figured.  Then I travelled around and realized that I do indeed live in a particularly noisy neighbourhood – and that neighbourhood is called the State of Israel.

You simply can’t get away from noise here.  So don’t even try.

Take our house, for example.  We live within walking distance of four schools, all of which, instead of school bells, play tunes and chimes (instead of school bells, like we had in Canada) so loud you can hear them blocks away.  GZ’s school routinely plays music for the kids’ enjoyment in the yard as they arrive in the morning, and you can hear that two blocks away as well. 

Then there are the happy routines of parades, celebrations, simchas, and special occasions, each of which

Amharic class: An immersion in ignorance

Do you ever overhear people talking in another language and wonder what they were saying?

When I was in Amsterdam a few weeks ago I was looking around at all the happy Dutch people, eavesdropping on all their conversations I couldn't understand and I was thinking exactly that. What are they talking about?

But in fact I know exactly what they were talking about. The exact same things we do: “Drat, I forgot to buy milk,” “What are you doing Thursday?” and “This new boss is driving me crazy.” Or whatever.

The point is, it’s probably much more mundane than we think it will be. And it’s not at all exotic or foreign, because nobody is once you get to know them close up. They’re not sitting across from me on the tram thinking, “As a Dutch person, I would love to go home and eat… well, maybe pancakes. Because that’s what we Dutch people enjoy.”

Dutch people, mostly, don’t think or talk about being Dutch because being Dutch is for the most part invisible to them. That doesn’t mean they’re not proud, just that on a daily basis, in ordinary conversations, it factors in very little. They think and talk about mundane things because they’re just people. Just like us.

There are two kinds of people I meet when I say I'm learning Amharic. The first kind

The horrifying truth about Lag Baomer bonfires

There's so much I love about the period between Pesach and Shavuos here in Israel.  But there's one thing that absolutely disgusts me.  I'll tell you in a minute and see if you feel the same.

When we lived in Canada, this time of year was pretty dull and featureless.  There's Pesach... Yom HaAtzmaut, if we remembered it... Lag Baomer, if we got our act together to get to a bonfire... and then Shavuos.

It was okay, but nothing special.

Here in Israel, it's a VERY special time of year, especially if you measure by how many days the kids have to wear white shirts to school.  In many religious schools, often kids are supposed to wear white shirts for Rosh Chodesh and any other special occasion... and these seven weeks give us PLENTY of those. 

My son's school also has them wear white shirts on Fridays, bringing the white-shirt days up to an uncountably high number:  two days for Rosh Chodesh Iyar, Yom Hashoah, a couple of Fridays, Yom Hazikaron, and more that I'm probably not remembering.  Some chains actually have sales on white t-shirts with school logos just to help parents stock up.

I love all these special days, especially Yom Haatzmaut, which comes smack-dab in the middle of the solemn sefirah period and means we can celebrate Israel's birth with music, which we don't normally listen to during this period (I'm aware that different people observe this different, halachically -- consult your rav for details if you're not sure).

But here's what I don't love. 

What I hate, if you'll allow me to use a strong word.  What disgusts me.

Lag Baomer

Feeling under the WEATHER...? Two things making me happy in the rain!

Feeling under the weather…?

And I do mean that literally, by the way.  I wouldn't blame you if you were.  We've had a LOT of weather to be under this winter so far.  The great news is that water levels in the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) are on their way back up to where they're supposed to be, which is one measure of how relatively water-secure this country is.

[QUICK ASIDE FOR ISRAEL WATER LESSON!]

The Kinneret was once Israel’s main source of fresh water.  Today, thanks to desalination, it is apparently only responsible for 10%.  Still a considerable chunk.  Water level in the Kinneret is measured against 3 lines: 

• UPPER RED = Full.  The level hasn’t reached this point since about 2002.
• LOWER RED = Lowest “normal” level.  Below this point will have environmental consequences.
• BLACK = Serious drought / environmental crisis.  The line dipped down below this round about October following 5 years of drought and insufficient winter rain.

(check a live version of this graph)

Oh, yeah, and because the whole lake is below sea level, the numbers run down – a “bigger,” i.e., more negative, number is WORSE, not better.

As you can see from this graph, we’re back above the black line thanks to this winter’s prodigious rain, but not all the way back up to that slightly more comfy lower red line. 

[END OF LESSON]

But while we're feeling flush (ahem) when it comes to water, we're also being deluged in a desert country that's ill-prepared to deal with an excess of water.  When it’s raining, the streets flood, programs and trips get cancelled, and it can be very dangerous to be out on the roads.

All of which means, it’s a lot better to stay home if you possibly can.  (Even though, without central heating, surrounded by dank concrete walls, it can get pretty miserable inside the house as well…)

So I wanted to share two things that I really

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

It’s winter–are you taking a Donut Shower?

Do you shower differently in the wintertime?

Here in Israel, it’s officially Winter.  And in Kiryat Shmuel, where we're always the last to hear about such things, it's actually kind of cold these days, blessedly so.

In the next couple of weeks, we have an oddity coming up:  the one Jewish observance that's keyed to the secular calendar.  From now until the year 2100, in regular years on the night of December 4, and in leap years (2019, 2023, 2027, 2031, 2035), on the night of December 5, we start adding the words ותן תל ומטר לברכה / v’sen tal umatar livracha (Sephardi pronunciation uses v’ten instead of v’sen; both are correct), “and send dew and rain for blessing,”  to the Shemoneh Esrei.

UPDATE:
A reader has pointed out that in Israel, we start saying Tal u'Matar on the 7th of Cheshvan, which was a few weeks ago already.  Which just goes to show ya... don't trust everything you read on the internet, even if it was written with the loveliest of intentions.

And also the very commonsensical rule that halacha from chu"l doesn't always apply here in Israel.

This isn’t the first seasonal change to the Shemoneh Esrei.  You probably already noticed that we started saying משיב הרוח ומוריד הגשם / Mashiv haruach umorid hageshem, “You cause the wind to blow and the rain to fall,” all the way back on Shemini Atzeres.

But December 5th is when we get serious and really dig in (click here to find out why).  At that point, we’re not just asking for geshem, rain, we’re also asking for tal and matar – two other types of precipitation.  Why?

Because every single drop counts.  Not a single drop of dew can be taken for granted here.

There was an ad in the newspaper yesterday driving home this point. 

It basically says, “Yeah, we know it’s raining, but

Can religious Jews celebrate Sigd? If not, why not?

My kids' school did an awesome thing last week.  At least, I think so.  Read on and tell me if you agree.

And before you go on – I just want to add.  This isn’t about politics.  It’s not about liberal / conservative.  It’s not about Orthodox Zionist / Haredi.  It’s just about how we treat one another, and our stories.

Author and scholar Thomas King has said, “The truth about stories is, that’s all we are.”  We are our stories, and our nation is our stories.  And this is about whose stories get heard… and whose don’t.

So here’s what happened:

Last week, my son’s school sent out an invitation via WhatsApp (if you don't live in Israel, you might not be aware of the wonders of WhatsApp -- for those who live here, it's the main way many of us communicate with the world beyond our homes, especially if we have kids in school...) to their annual commemoration of Sigd.

This was the main holiday of the beta Israel,

You speak Hebrew: now what? Top 5 tips to keep on learning!

Full disclosure: my kids laugh if I say the words “I’m bilingual” out loud.  And with good reason.

I’ll be the first to admit that Hebrew is not, and never will be, my first or best language.  I probably won’t ever be as good as they are (even if my vocabulary is technically better than theirs, in terms of sheer number of roots and words I know).

It’s true that I have an accent, and that’s never going away.  I can’t help feeling insulted when people hearing my accent, though they’re trying to be helpful, switch into their terrible English.  What, my terrible Hebrew isn’t good enough for you?

It’s true that I will probably never be comfortable with a fast blast of Hebrew shouted at me over the phone or from across the room.  Stand in front of me, let me see your lips move, let me see your body language.

But still.

What has most made me realize I actually have become bilingual is that

What’s cheaper??? Three things you’ll love paying less for in Israel

We all love to kvetch.  Or maybe I’m just speaking for myself.  I definitely love to kvetch!  But sometimes, it’s worth stepping back and looking around at how much is truly wonderful about this unbelievable place we live.

Here are three that I’m really enjoying this week:

1. Public Transportation

This is my number one.  In fact, this was what caught my eye on Facebook today.  Someone was kvetching about the high cost of buying and renting a car—and they were right.

True, cars are expensive, but public transit is almost laughably cheap.   It’s even cheaper than when we arrived in 2013.  In an era when nothing goes down in price, fares were actually LOWERED around most of the country a couple of years ago!

Here’s what I’m talking about:

I took the kiddies to Jerusalem two days ago.  The three of us went from north of Haifa to Jerusalem and back, taking local buses in both cities, inter-city buses, and trains.  The train was an hour, a one-hour bus ride, then several local trips within Jerusalem.  Then, five hours later, an inter-city bus ride back to Haifa and one local trip to get home.

Total cost?  ₪60 per person. That’s under $20 (US).

Oh, and we could have traveled for another 12+ hours on the same fare, had we been so inclined, because it’s good for 24 hours from purchase.

Where, outside of Israel, can you get around cheaper than that?

(NOTE:  This isn’t what trains look like in Israel nowadays!  This is an authentic 1970s-era train on display in the Railway Museum here in Haifa.  Photo © Deror Avi via Wikimedia)

Two years ago, we were in Ottawa and I wanted to leave my family there and get back to Toronto by bus.  It’s a five-hour train ride, so farther

Weird, wacky, wonderful (Hebrew) words: Time (זְמַן) after Time (פַּעַם) and more…

I figured it was time for a new post!  I know, I haven't posted anything in so long, and now this is like 3 in a 2-week period.  Blogging is like that sometimes.

And speaking of TIME... this post is all about time.  Specifically, the words we use to talk about it in Hebrew.

We use words for time a lot, which makes them extremely useful.
We say things to each other like:

• "What time is the party?"
• "How much time do you have?"
• "How many times have you eaten blue cheese?"
• "I sometimes think I'll try it someday."

In English, all four of those are the same word: time.
Not so in Hebrew.

• What time is the party? / be’eyzo sha’ah hamesiba / באיזו שעה המסיבה
• How much time do you have? / kama zman yesh lach / כמה זמן יש לך
• How many times have you eaten blue cheese? / kama pe’amim achalt gevina kechula / כמה פעמים אכלת גבינה כחולה
• I sometimes think I’ll try it someday. / leefameem ani choshevet she-anaseh yom echad / לפעמים אני חושבת שאנסה יום אחד

What are the time words I’ve used here?

• Sha’ah / שעה – usually, hour
• Pa’am / פעם – usually, time as in “how many times” (think of it as “occurrence”)
• Zman / זמן – usually, time as in the abstract noun, like “we don’t have much time.”

For the fourth sentence, with sometimes, you're going to need a

Weird, wacky, wonderful (Hebrew) words: אֶפְשָׁר / Possible (efshar)

You've been reading these posts for a while.  How about I reward you with a gift?

It's a single word that works as a magic key, opening doors here like no other word can do -- including "please" (בבקשה), which really doesn't go a long way at all in Israel.

Actually, I’ve come to believe that saying please is actually a cue for whoever is supposed to be helping you--in restaurants, government offices, or wherever--to ignore you for a certain period of time.  Like counting to 10 when you're angry.  At least, they kind of stare at me cluelessly when I do it.  I’m not kidding.  It will only slow you down here.  Try it!

So what's the word?
Well, it's a little word that makes everything POSSIBLE...

Because it means "possible"!
And the word is... אפשר / efshar.

(And okay, since I’m not the grammar maven that you might be—technically it means something a lot more like “possibly,” but for the rest of this post, you and I are going to agree to overlook  grammar and technicalities almost entirely… if you want a more linguistically inclined site, check out Balashon – currently on hiatus but nonetheless packed with great info!  Also a terrific pun: balash means detective, lashon means language.)

Now, in English, the word “possible” isn’t used nearly as often in Hebrew. Here, you can use this little word instead of “please” in a huge variety of situations.

For example, in a restaurant:

• Efshar ketchup? / Literally, “possibly ketchup?” but it means

Canadian doctor Tarek Loubani shot near Gaza: A Canadian in Israel responds

You know what this blog post was going to be about?  Volunteers.  And about how Israel doesn't appreciate volunteers who come here from places like United States and Canada. 

It’s an important topic, right?  Too bad that’s not what I ended up writing about.

Volunteers are people of all faiths and all ages who don't have to come here, and who work for organizations like Sar-El (which places volunteers on military bases), on farms, in schools, all over the country.  They must contribute millions of dollars to the Israeli economy, which is absolutely fabulous.

I was talking someone a couple of weeks ago who had been here volunteering on farms for two months, and she started telling me about how she and the others were forced to work half a day on Yom HaAtzmaut, while the farm's owner slept in, then lounged around the house with friends and family (later, the volunteers were invited to join the BBQ -- once they were done work).  She noted that the paid migrant workers weren't in the fields... probably because it's illegal to make them work on a national holiday.

Volunteers can work whenever they want, I guess.

That made me mad, and I also, somewhat guiltily, realized that my daughter has had a volunteer from the U.S. teaching English in her school this entire year and I hadn't even met her, let alone thanked her (she's been working one-on-one with some of the native English speakers), until someone invited her to our Lag Ba'omer BBQ.  So I felt bad that she's been in the country so long and probably barely acknowledged by the community, and finally, belatedly, invited her over.

Like I said, that's what this blog post was going to be about. 

Because seriously, with the feeling towards Israel in North America these days, it's not at all obvious that someone would come here to volunteer, paying their own airfare and often also paying to volunteer, just so they can show up and be ignored at best and their goodwill abused at worst.  Israelis probably see volunteers as "freyers," suckers who are easily conned and therefore aren't worth very much.

(All freyers????  L-R: Sar-El volunteers 2012 photo © IDF via Wikimedia; Austrian Kibbutz volunteers 1978 photo © Robert Schediwy via Wikimedia; American volunteers at Masada meeting George W. Bush 2008 © White House via U.S. National Archives; Farm volunteer © WWOOF Israel)

I wanted to write about that because I was mad.  But then…

Then I saw something that made me even madder, and also -- I found out about people who abuse their volunteers even more than Israel does:  Gaza.  Or rather, Hamas, its quasi-elected dictatorship.

Gaza has had a humanitarian crisis over the last few years due to its leadership's terrorist policies.  Hamas is a government that's in power on a one-plank platform: eliminate Israel.  Once elected in 2006, they dismantled electoral operations so nobody could un-elect them and proceeded to take money out of children's and families' pockets and dedicate it to building terror tunnels and rockets with which to bombard nearby Israelis.

Hamas may be many things, but they're not stupid.  So in addition to these operations, they have poured a ton of work into the PR battle for the hearts and minds of the world.  It's a humanitarian crisis, they weep to the world, which is absolutely, 100% true.  And then, they point to Israel.  That's the whole PR thing: point to the crisis, point to Israel.  Repeat until hearts bleed and journalists cry.  It doesn't take much to make journalists cry, especially if there are pictures of children.

But courting NGOs and liberal media outlets is easy, hardly a challenge anymore.  Like I said, they cry easily.

So if I was in charge of the Hamas PR machine, then the thing that I would want most of all, more than anything else in the world, is a Canadian. 

The world loves nobody more than a Canadian.

To the world, Canadians are innocent, naive, the ultimate freyers, really.

Yup, that’s what would head up my wish list: A nice Canadian frayer, a volunteer who could

Seasons Change: Dreaming of Spring in Israel

Moving to Israel, everybody told us, I’d have to give up on spring – there are no seasons here. I wish I didn’t love spring so much – it’s such a cliché – but how could I not? The smell of rain clinging to everything in sight, the soft bounce of the dirt underfoot. Mud everywhere, but also life.

I only learned to love the seasons when I started gardening in our last home, a tiny Toronto bungalow with an equally tiny lot.

The backyard was a mix of sand and shade – a gardener’s nightmare where only ants could play. Grass refused to grow, though many attempts had been made over the years.

But over the eight years we lived there, with the help of two compost piles and countless experiments with hardy native species (and countless hours weeding out perennial sunflowers), things improved, slowly.

I knew it was getting better when I spotted snails. Though many gardeners are horrified at the thought of snails, chomping up pretty hosta leaves and oozing slime trails, I took them as a compliment. Where there are snails, there is moisture and decay. And where there is moisture and decay, there is life.

My backyard had come to life.

When we moved to Israel in August of 2013, it was more of a nightmare than a season. Back in Toronto, it was also the full heat of the summer, but there was hope of fall, and the ripening of tomatoes to console us from the heat, or what we called heat.

In Toronto, the heat isn’t an enemy. It doesn’t leap on your chest and keep you down for two months, three months, four. It doesn’t make you stop, panting, for water, every block on the way to the grocery store. It doesn’t make you duck into banks just to enjoy the air conditioning. It doesn’t make the kids cry as you weave drunkenly down the sidewalk, in and out of every patch of shade. It goes away at night and lets you sleep, or at least sit on the porch with a glass of wine.

Here, it was hot. And it wasn’t summer as I knew it. Nothing was growing – well, nasty-looking succulent plants with bulbous, waxy leaves, or spikes, or unattractive protuberances. Lizards skittered in the dappled light beneath trees. When lizards are happy to play in the shade, it’s truly a hot day.

But one day, well into what I used to think of as fall, it rained. Just a little – the random specks they call teef-toof. But then it happened again, and another evening, I had to buy the kids umbrellas. The rain had stopped by the time we got out of the store, but everyone around us knew – winter was on its way.

And suddenly, suddenly, the world came alive.

Another day, a sandy front yard I passed every day on our way to my son’s kindergarten was full of green stubble – grass! The next, all the bushes, it seemed, had new, pale-green leaves; a few, here and there. The ground was awakening at last.

Now, months later, we’re nearing the end of winter. We haven’t had enough rain, everybody agrees, but all is green and lovely. Cool breezes blow through the window, citrus trees exuberantly flaunt their colourful baubles: lemons, oranges, kumquats.

It turns out there are seasons in Israel, just not the ones I’m used to. Every Israeli knows them intimately.

How you know I’m still Canadian after all these (almost 4) years…

How do I know I’m still Canadian, even after almost 4 years in Israel?

Well, for one thing, the big Canadian flag in my front window – genuine, no doubt made in China, purchased last week at Dollarama.  (Full disclosure: I bought the JUMBO size, not SUPER JUMBO, so it’s smaller than the Israeli flag we just took down after Yom Yerushalayim…)

(This is my actual flag pictured above – not some cheesy stock photo.  You can tell it’s my flag because it’s held up with a clothespin – see top-left of photo.)

For another thing, the small Canadian flag in one of the front planters.

For a third thing, we’re flying to Canada at some unspecified point this summer, iy”h.  (Or, as everyone says here, be”h.)

For a fourth thing… well, we just are.  It’s just our culture.

In what way?  Well, here are two examples.

Canadian in the mall

Last summer

To have and to hold: The tricky talk of owning in Hebrew

Are you having a good day?  Do you have a cold?  Did you have a nice time?

I’ve said a million times that English is a lazy language compared to Hebrew, and here’s yet another way it’s true.  In English we have this awesome verb “to have,” which we use for almost everything.  We even use it to help other verbs:  “Had I known you had it, I would have chosen hot chocolate!”

But guess what?

This word is completely, 100%, missing from the Hebrew language.  In other words:  it has no has.  When I’m teaching, this is one of the most difficult things to get across – why kids need to be able to conjugate “to have” in English when it doesn’t exist at all, as a concept, in their native language…

But instead of “to have,” Hebrew has numerous different forms that you use depending on what, exactly, you want to say about you and the thing you own.  Here are just a few.  Well, okay… six.

Six Awesome Ways to Talk About Having in Hebrew

1. Yesh! – “There is”

This is the classic.  Back in Hebrew school, I learned the way around this:  “yesh.”  Yesh has two meanings:  to possess or to indicate. 

To Indicate:  you can indicate an object by saying, יש עיפרון על השולחן / yesh iparon al ha shulchan and it means “there’s a pencil on the table.”  Basic stuff (and hey, I’m not a grammar guru, so if there’s a better word than “indicate,” just let me know politely!). 

To Possess:  You can also say יש לי עיפרון / , yesh li iparon, which literally means “there is to me a pencil,” but basically means, “I have a pencil.”  Only without saying have.  The pronoun here conjugates nicely, so you can give anyone you like a pencil (thanks very much!):  יש לנו עיפרון / yesh lanu iparon / “there is to us a pencil” = we have a pencil.

So far so good.  For an English speaker, it takes a little thinking, because in English, all you have to do is figure out the simple pronoun (I, you, we, etc.) and then add HAVE, whereas in Hebrew, you need to conjugate (li, lecha, lach, lanu, etc.).

So that’s yesh, and it takes care of having – kind of.

2. Shel + Suffixes – “Of”

But what if you want to say you OWN something?  “We have a car.  The car belongs to us.”

Hebrew school taught me the easy way to do this –  האוטו שלי / ha-oto sheli / “The car is mine”.  But it doesn’t mean belonging.  This form is far more passive.  The car just sits there and “BE”s mine.

What is Yom Yerushalayim, and why do we need it?

What are you up to this week???  Here in Israel, we’re still celebrating.  It’s like one non-stop party at this time of year, which was so bland back when we lived in Canada.  And this time, it’s one of the strangest holidays of all: Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day). 

This is it – the Big 5-0, and the city is all geared up with so many different kinds of celebration.  Every school in the country, pretty much, is organizing tiyulim to the Holy City, and the place is mobbed with the usual tourists plus some.

I was there, with my son’s school.  We had a great time, but it was a heartbreaking time as well, and here is why:  Jerusalem is so far from being perfect it’s not funny.  Jerusalem is so far from being perfect that I could cry.

At the seder each year, we sing, לשנה הבאה בירושלים / leshana haba’ah bi’Yerushalayim – “Next Year in Jerusalem.”  We sing this even if we are lucky enough to be in Jerusalem, because the last word is הבנויה / habnuya – Rebuilt. 

The Jerusalem that we have is a miracle.  It is a beautiful, busy, living, crazy balagan of a city and I love it.   I love the fact that the country just turned 69 years old, and its capital is only 50 – this shows that you can’t take even a capital city for granted here, since we had to do without it for 19 years.

Yes, a miracle indeed. 

(photo credit: IDF via Wikimedia)

The Jerusalem we have today is truly many things… but it is not yet rebuilt.

This year, we’re celebrating 50 years since the liberation of Jerusalem from Jordanian hands, putting it in Jewish control for the first time in thousands of years.  But walking the streets of Jerusalem, the city does not yet feel free.

Driving past the Damascus Gate (Shaar Shechem), the Palestinian Bus Station, the police standing guard across from Givat Hatachmoshet, the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa, the scars, mostly invisible, that have been inflicted on this city and its people since it was liberated… well, these things are more than heartbreaking.  They are like a slap in the face when everybody’s coming to celebrate.

But this is the reality.

Israel NGOs: Riding tigers down the road to hell

A stabber got loose in Tel Aviv this week.  An 18-year-old man ran amok and stabbed some people and thank God, nobody died, but please don't think that's the point and the incident is over now because nobody died.  Four people were wounded, which is important to remember, but there's an even bigger lesson to be learned here.

The man - 18 is a man, I guess, technically - was a Palestinian man.  He was brought to Tel Aviv.  He was brought there by an NGO called "Natural Peace Tours," which honestly, I would have sworn was a made up name, it's so hokey.  It was their mission, apparently, to bring Palestinians to Israel for what this article calls "grassroots negotiations."

Grassroots negotiations?

First of all, let's be very clear:  "grassroots negotiations" is nothing, because anyone "grassroots" isn't in a position to either offer anything or give anything in return.  So through this NGO, let's face it, you're not negotiating.  At best, you're having coffee with someone, and that's very nice, I support that, but maybe - just  maybe - they could have thought about whether it was safe to do what they were doing.

(“grassroots negotiation” in action)

When I mentioned this incident to a dear friend who lives outside of Israel, complaining about starry-eyed and idiotic NGOs, she said that at least they mean well.  Which I am absolutely sure they do.

But to be honest: I have less patience these days with people who mean well. 

The moral high road to hell

I always used to think the expression "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" meant that people were innocently trying their best and somehow missing the mark.  I thought it meant that nice people who had good intentions were sometimes ineffectual.  But how could you really blame them?  After all, they're NICE people.  And they mean well.

What I believe these days about the expression is different. 

And now for something (a little) different…

One reasons I haven’t been blogging so much lately is that I went back to school last year to finally start working my way towards a master’s degree.  This winter, I did a course in Creative Nonfiction, and for the final project, I was supposed to write a narrative essay informed by the techniques of creative nonfiction, as a genre, as well as by graduate-level research into a subject of interest.

So I thought: “What could be more interesting than Israel?”  Obviously!

I have been sharing some thoughts here all along about the idea of politics, and what it means to get political when it comes to the situation here on the ground, and I figured I’d pull it all together into a sort of story of a nice Canadian who is reluctant to deal with politics but who has been forced to due to living in Israel.

If you’ve been reading here for a while, you’ll know that politics is not what I do naturally, or best. 

So much so, perhaps, that when I tried to write a serious post on Palestinian identity, one person nastily took it upon him/herself (I’m guessing HIMSELF, for some reason) to comment, “Better to stick with tips on a successful Aliyah than playing the political game.” 

Like I said,