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Friday, March 23, 1984

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Art By Lisa Fisher

LIFE IN ISRAEL

Adventures
of a 'new' Israeli

"In the States, I was a Jew. In Israel,
I'm an American. It hardly seemed fair."

By TUVYA BEN-SHLOMO

Special to The Jewish News

I am on oleh chadash — a new immig-
rant in Israel. I've been living here for
about two years now.
Go ahead: Ask me what it's like. I can
give it to you in one word: Switched.
I've been switched.
The first day I was here, the immigra-
tion clerks, the taxi drivers, and the
skycaps at Ben-Gurion Airport all said,
"Take the American to a cab." They we-
ren't being rude; they were simply calling
me by the name they thought best iden-
tified me to their fellows.
In the States, I was a Jew. In Israel,
I'm an American. It hardly seemed fair.
I told myself that the first thing I was
going to do in this country was to smell,
look, sound, feel, and taste like an Israeli.
No more Mr. American for me. No, sir.
I'd have had -better luck trying to
sculpt the Statue of Liberty out of whipped
cream. The word "American" was stamped
all over me no matter what I did.
To a passerby on the street: "Excuse
me, madame, but could you please tell me
where the nearest branch of the post office
is? I seem to be fresh out of stamps." All

this was spoken in faultless Hebrew, mind
you. Every nuance and inflection was as
perfect a copy of my teacher's as I could
make it.
"Two blocks down on the left," came
the accented reply — in English. "And hey
a naiz dey."
How did she know? Over and over
again this happened to me. Over and over
again I asked myself how they knew.
Could it have been my looks? There I
was, an aging hippie: long curly hair, be-
ard, plaid Wrangler shirt, Levi jeans, cow-
boy boots.
"Aha!" you exclaim. "It's as plain as
the baseball cap on your head and the apple
pie in your hand: You dress American!" Ta
da!
No way. Israeli men looked more like
aging hippies than any other group of men
I've met. That description of me also fits
half the adult male population of this coun-
try: Long hair, beards, Wrangler shirts,
Levi jeans, boots. Very Israeli.

Maybe it was my accent? Nope. They
had me pegged before I'd even open my
mouth. Just walking by a taxi stand, one of
the drivers was bound to call out to me,

"Hey American! You want to go Haifa?
Special price."
So there I was, and I couldn't for the
life of me figure out why I stuck out like —
forgive me! — a tourist.
Go ahead. Ask what's so bad about
being a tourist. You know I'm going to tell
you anyway.
Listen, being an oleh chadash means
some pretty nerve-wracking things. Like
not understanding news broadcasts (Ter-
rorists? Did he say "terrorists?" What did
he say?).
Like struggling through the first two
words of a road sign printed in Hebrew and
realizing, as the sign zips into your past,
that you've just read the words "Grave
Danger . ." (Sh'ma Y israel and white
knuckles the whole rest of the way).
It means never getting to finish a He-
brew sentence because the Israeli you're
talking to inevitably jumps in with the
word he assumes you're looking for, (it's a
word you've never heard of before. You
agree, to keep things flowing).
Not until later, as you retreat from
"The Wrong" — the wrong office, the
wrong store, the wrong bus station, the
wrong whatever he's directed you to — do
you figure out that hiS word and your word
were not the same word at all.
And being an oleh means people re-
gard you as feeble-minded because, at least
in Hebrew, you sound feeble-minded. You
speak like a three year old.
But being a tourist — except a very
rich one, a very experienced one, or an ex-
tremely cautious one, which most aren't —
means all this plus ripped off by people who
assume that if you're American, you have
oodles of money to burn. I couldn't afford to

stick out like a tourist for very long. I had
to make a definitive switch.
So how did they know? I finally figured
it out, and here's how:
One day I went to a customs office. I
walked into the middle of an argument. I
waited my turn. The clerk was jabbering in
Hebrew at a woman who was screeching
back at him in English. Neither under-
stood a word of what the other was saying,
but they kept on arguing merrilly along as
if each had The One and Only God on his
side.
He was telling her that he had no
authority to grant what she wanted. She
was telling him that it was only a package
of used lingerie sent to her by her daugh-
ter, and would he please hand it over to her
at once if not sooner. I waited patiently.
The clerk turned to me and said in
English, "Speak Hebrew?"
"Yes." I said. How did he know to ask?
He continued in Hebrew, "Tell this
woman she's got to go to the Ministry of the
Interior because her identity cards needs to
be . ." And as he was explaining this to
me, a man walked in. He looked just like
me — long hair, beard, jeans, boots. He
strode over to the counter as if the woman
and I weren't even in the room. Without
saying a word he plunked a custom's form
down before the clerk. The clerk broke off
his explanation to me, looked at the form,
and said to the man — in Hebrew — "Two
doors down on the right." And away the
man went.
That was the moment of revelation for
me.
Two men, dressed alike: one comes in
and stands in line, waits his turn; the other
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