Someone pass me the remote

I grew up before the days of cable or satellite TV, in Scarborough - a small suburb of Toronto. Like everyone else, we picked up broadcasts by means of a roof top antenna, with a very limited choice of stations. There was no remote control at the time - just a knob that we turned to change stations. When there were only about six stations to choose from, that wasn't much of a problem. Which doesn't mean that this station  control wasn't mobile. When my parents went out and left my sister and me alone, the channel war began. At the time, my sister was obsessed with anything to do with horses and I wanted to watch pretty much anything else. After we were unable to negotiate agreement, the channel knob came off the TV and the race began. Which meant that instead of actually watching TV when my parents were away, we spent the time wresting control of the channel changer, which couldn't do much of anything until it was attached back to the TV.

So much has changed since. And as the technology continued to develop, I somehow appeared to always be one step behind.

It all started when I decided to leave Canada and see where my travels would take me. After working my way through Europe, I ended up on an Israeli kibbutz, and just as my friends back home were entering into the world of colour and cable TV, I entered into a world of black and white and one state-run TV station.

It's not as if I missed TV. At the time my whole life was still an adventure, and TV was of little interest to me. Of course, when the Yom Kippur War broke out about four months later, I did squeeze my way into the television room and watch as generals used maps to explain the present situation. Luckily I didn't know enough Hebrew at the time to understand that we were very close to being pushed into the sea. All I knew was that Israelis kept telling me: "Yihyeh  beseder." (Everything will be okay). It was only much later during my Israeli experience that I realized that Israelis only said this when things were really bad, or out of control.

We had to go to a communal television room, at the time, to watch TV because kibbutz members didn't have TV in their apartments. All to do with socialistic values which have long since disappeared.

Watching Israeli television at the time was like going back in a time machine to the fifties and sixties. And since the whole nation was watching the same programs, it was quite easy to find someone with whom to discuss a program from the previous day. And it was remarkable to see how the whole country appeared to shut down once a week to watch a new episode of  I Claudius. There was almost no traffic on the streets. You could hear a pin drop.

When it was finally decided to introduce TV sets into the apartments of kibbutz members, my future wife to be and I would go to her parents' apartment to watch TV with them (TV sets were handed out according to kibbutz seniority and we still had to wait). I found myself watching things that I would have never watched - had I a choice. And although there was a vibrant TV world developing out there, Israeli TV was basically a collection of grade B reruns. This was still before there was any real Israeli Hebrew sitcom content. What original Israeli content there was on Israeli TV was mainly made for TV documentaries and children programs. Israeli Educational TV was the shining light in the early Israeli television experience.

In the meantime, I missed a whole generation of North American TV. I never saw the Watergate broadcasts; I never saw Wayne Gretzky play in a regular season hockey game; I  never saw Seinfeld until the last episode was finished and all that was left were the reruns. But I rationalized: "If you are going to leave a culture behind, leave it behind. Don't expect it to follow you to wherever you end up." Just another reason for my friends back home to proclaim me crazy.

But TV is somewhat a measure of the ever-changing Israeli experience. Israel before and after colour television is not just a question of colour, but also a question of social fabric. Why, we must ask ourselves, did Israel wait for over ten years to implement Israeli TV broadcasts in colour when it already had the technology and equipment? Moreover, when Israelis began to import colour televisions in order to watch imported TV programs in colour, why did the government order the state-run TV station to use a special mechanism to erase all colour from the broadcast? Then Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, described colour television as artificial and unnecessary. Political elements in the government went even further in claiming that the import of colour TV sets would only widen the gap between the Haves and the Have Nots. But Israelis, known for their ingenuity, began to purchase TV sets which had a built in anti-eraser mechanism which returned the colour that had been erased.

The kibbutz also struggled with the social impact of television on the kibbutz way of life. Bowing down to increasing pressure, it was finally decided to introduce black and white TV sets into kibbutz members' apartments. But by the time that that happened, Israel had started to broadcast in colour and the rest of Israel was moving over to colour sets. It took a while for the kibbutz to catch up to that, too, but by then we had decided to leave the kibbutz and were headed south, deep into the Negev desert.

That was when we really began to feel the technological gap. But what do you expect, living in the desert?

The first development was the creation of a second Israeli TV station - this time a commercial one. Soon, not only were friends back home in Canada telling me what I was missing, but friends back in the centre of Israel, as well.
"You have to watch Seinfeld!" they told me.
"It is only on Channel 2," I told them, "and the signal doesn't reach us."
The children were complaining and my wife kept pointing out what we were missing, but what could you do - it was out of our control.
"Yihyeh beseder," I said.

And then Channel 2 only made things worse, by increasing the signal, just enough to tease us, but not all the way there.
"What are you doing on the roof?" my wife called up to me one day, as I stood precariously above twiddling with the antenna.
"Trying to get Channel 2," I said.
"Are you crazy!", she exclaimed. "You will kill yourself."
"That program you told me about last night, that you really want to see, is on."
"I'll turn on the TV" she said. "I'll let you know when we get a picture."
"Do you see it now?" I called down to my wife, through the open window.
"I see something."
"And now?" I asked twisting the antenna just a bit more.
"Better!"
One more little twist.
"Good! That's it," my wife called out. "Don't move!"
After about ten minutes, I decided it was time for me to be rewarded for my efforts and let go of the antenna, starting to make my way down.
"We lost the signal!" my wife cried out.
It was then that I discovered that I am a good human conductor.

But if I am known to be one thing, it is obsessive. The signal was out there taunting me, and I wasn't going to give up soon. I found a long iron pole that had been discarded in a nearby junk yard and brought it home. Attaching it to the house, outside of the living room window, I attached the antenna at the top. I could then lean out the window and slowly turn the pole, turning the antenna, until I got the best picture. I even managed to pick up Jordan TV at times. But because of usually strong evening winds, I had to hold the pole so that the wind wouldn't cause the antenna and pole to turn. But at least now, hanging out of the window, I could keep a hold of the pole and watch TV at the same time.

It was then that cable television reached Israel. Israel was finally catching up to the rest of the world. Well... most of Israel. The cable company (a monopoly) informed us that it was too expensive to lay cables down in our remote desert neighborhood. And here we were again, way behind everyone else.

It's not that I had to have such access to the boob tube. It wasn't totally necessary, as Golda Meir would say. But I wanted the ability to choose, even if it were the choice not to watch.

And along came an Israeli satellite company and the cable company's monopoly was over. For the first time, anyone, anywhere, could be hooked up to hundreds of stations. Since we were one of the first communities to hook up to the new service, we were offered the opportunity to sign up to the unlimited package, something I jumped at, and something they soon no longer offered to new subscribers. And just like that, everything changed. It wasn't long before we got a digital recording box as well, and access to VOD (video on demand). Suddenly, all those years of drought were behind us. We had better access than many of my friends back home in Canada.

So, what is the punch line? Patience, perseverance? What comes around, goes around? I don't really know. Right now I can choose not to watch 90% of the stations available. And I like that - just fine.

Ideally Speaking

Vivian Rakoff, in “Ideally Speaking” says: “Idealism in a way is a manifestation of a generalized human desire to have a sense-making model or paradigm of the world. There are those who just accept what is given to them implicitly without it being explicit and there are those who try to make it explicit and if they haven’t got a model, go looking for it. We seem to need a sense-making system that takes away the sense of frivolity in our existence because we have a real terror of meaninglessness.”

The major difference between myself, and the South African Jews interviewed in the book who decided to emigrate to Israel in the end, is that they came here for reasons of ideology. I came first and discovered the ideology afterwards.

In a way, I am somewhat envious of those who grew up in Jewish youth movements, with a clear sense of their own identity, engaging in intellectual discussions of burning issues. Jonathan Broomberg, in “Ideally Speaking”, says: “My sense is that each person who was in the movement in each generation has a different and quite unique relation to that ideology. At one end of the spectrum were people whose involvement was entirely a function of the group while at the other end you had people for whom it ran very deep personally.”

The reason for my lack of ideology, then, as a youth, might have been because there was no group for me to be a part of. I grew up in a rather sterile WASPish suburb of Toronto. My family didn’t have any marked ethnic distinction. And although I read extensively - devouring the theories of Freud, the teachings of different world religions, the background to revolution and the philosophy of the ancient Greeks... there was no one to intellectually share these ideas with. At a time when the hippies were beginning to assemble in the streets of downtown Toronto, preaching new world order from their makeshift community in Yorkville, my peers in Scarborough were only concerned with the trivial affairs of the day.

And by the time that I was old enough to join the hippie movement, it was already petering out. But two things stayed with me from all of their proclamations for social renewal and a better world: one was the idea of communal living and the other was the return to the land.

Meanwhile, in South Africa, the Jewish youth there were also talking about creating a better world, although their approach was quite different from that of the “flower generation.  In most Jewish youth movements, the concept of Israel and the kibbutz were almost inseparable. Israel was seen to hold the promise of “a light unto the nations”, and most saw this to be best realized through the socialistic and utopian nature of the kibbutz life style.

By the time I heard about the kibbutz in my sheltered existence, the “real terror of meaninglessness” had already led me to  consider leaving Canada in the search of something more. I heard about the kibbutz for the first time from a friend of my sister’s, who was planning to go to a six month ulpan on a kibbutz where you learn Hebrew half the day and work the other half. Something seemed to click when she told me about this and I felt that this was something I had to do. The irony was that she never did go to Israel in the end, but rather went to work with the native Indian community somewhere in Alberta, trying to right the wrongs of discrimination in her own backyard. Which is somewhat similar to the decision of many South African Jews not to emigrate to Israel but stay in South Africa and fight against Apartheid.

So, somehow I and many South Africans ended up in the same place. I had never planned, though, to stay here. I came to see socialism in action, and also learn Hebrew on the side. The ideology only really came afterwards. There was a time when I believed I would spend the rest of my life on the kibbutz. But that is when reality set in, both for me and for many of the South Africans who had decided to settle on a kibbutz. We gradually discovered the discrepancies between vision and reality; between the idealization of human nature and human primal instinct. If “Ideally Speaking” is any indication, most of the South African Jews who came to live on a kibbutz have since left. Many have left Israel, also - some going back to South Africa and others settling in other countries around the globe. We came very close to leaving Israel when we left the kibbutz, also. But in the end, we stayed, settling for isolation in the desert. The main difference here between me and South Africans, was that I only felt overly disillusioned with the kibbutz, feeling that it didn’t live up to its ideals. Many South Africans had become disillusioned with the country as a whole, feeling that they had been misled during their years in the youth movements about what really to expect. But my advantage, perhaps, was that I had first landed in Israel without any expectations. No one had tried to plant a pretty picture in my mind about Israel. Rather, at the kibbutz desk, when applying to come to a kibbutz ulpan, they appeared more interested in dissuading me from going.

You might wonder why I have concentrated on comparing my own experience to that of South African Jews. Why I would want to make such a comparison at all. Or why I didn’t choose youth closer to home, such as North American Jewish youth.

This was inspired by a book I recently read and have quoted here: “Ideally Speaking”. Although the  book is based on a series of interviews with a wide cross-section of South African Jews - now living in South Africa, Israel and abroad - I feel that much of what is expressed in the book is relevant to all of us, and warmly recommend the book to all of you.  I first heard of the book from one of its two editors: Steve Hellman (Lindsay Talmud is the other editor). I had never met a South African before coming to Israel and Steve was one of the first South Africans that I did meet. Not only that, but Steve played a significant part in my life in the early eighties when I was just starting out as a new teacher. In his role as coordinator of the English department at Kibbutz Brenner Regional High School, where I began my teaching career, Steve both welcomed me to the world of teaching and served as my mentor. And I owe it to him for not only getting through those first few months as a new teacher, but for also instilling in me the inspiration for thinking outside of the box in my teaching and in creating authentic teaching environments. Thirty years have passed since then and only now have I really discovered the world that Steve came from. And I thank him for what he gave me then, and what he has shared with me now.

Taking the “new” out of New Years

We are already into the third week of the new year and I am waiting for something wondrous to happen.

You see, I have this fascination for new years. Somewhat of a childlike expectation. As if something different is supposed to happen simply because of the way we artificially separate time. I can’t help myself. It begins with officially toasting in the New Year with warm anticipation (although at times it is more like a heavy sigh of relief at having made it through yet another year). Actually, it begins even earlier than that - during the last week of December when making New Years resolutions in front of a roaring fire in the company of my closest of friends. Maybe it is the seductive lure of the fire, but we really do seem to believe that we will stick to these resolutions each new year.

Looking back, I don’t have a very good track record when it comes to New Years resolutions. The only time that I can remember carrying one out, in recent history, was the year of  2011 when I pledged that I would - no matter what - get my book published. And actually succeeded in doing so.

Maybe the shock of my actually carrying through with a new years resolution is what spurred my two close friends to not only declare significant resolutions for 2012, but also set out with a fierce determination to carry them out. Meanwhile, for the first time, I am left with no resolution at all for the new year and time is running out.

I suppose that we cannot make a resolution until we decide what it is that we want. And I keep coming up with a blank. Sure, I want to continue with my writing after taking this first big step. And I am also working on a screenplay.  But what is it I want out of all of this. Another book? Endless adulation? A smug sense of worth?

We think that if we could go back thirty years, knowing what we know now, we’d be much more in tune with our needs and desires than we are now. As if hindsight would create a better world. But it doesn’t work that way, does it. If we don’t make the same mistakes again, we will make other mistakes. Perhaps just as big, perhaps even bigger. There comes a time when you have to accept where you are in life. Accept it and work on making it better.

Does this mean I should give up on the idea of opening up a pub in Yellowknife? Would such a decision negate all that I have gone through and have become, or would it be a natural continuation to all that came before it. From hot desert to cold desert. From a small dysfunctional community to a slightly larger one. Okay, Yellowknife is much larger than my small desert community. But I’m sure that I could find a community just as small and isolated, not too far from Yellowknife. A community probably only accessible by dog sled or small plane. But how much beer would get sold? There must be a tangible level of possibility for any New Years resolution in order to turn it into  a feasible goal. Otherwise, what is the point? I learned this from a redhead. 

“You really should try living somewhere normal for a change.”
Normal. Here she was staring at me from across the room, knowing all that she knew about me, and yet talking about normal.
“Normal? Scarborough was normal. About as normal as you can get.”
“Don’t confuse normal with a comfortable middle class community of WASPs and  Father knows best,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Have you been to Scarborough lately?”
Point taken.
“What’s a normal location in your eyes?” I asked.
“A nice small, comfortable apartment in Tel Aviv. A short walk to take in some culture or eat at a good restaurant. A stone’s throw away from an evening stroll along the promenade by the sea.”
“Have you been talking to Adva?”
“No, I have been eavesdropping.”
She would always have the upper hand, living in this invisible world of hers. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get both feet in.
“There is only one problem with that vision,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“The people.”

Maybe that is the key. Both the Negev desert and the Canadian Arctic offer places where most people wouldn’t want to even visit, let alone live there. I probably missed my calling in not becoming a hermit, but then they didn’t have Internet back then.

But I am no closer now to a New Years resolution than I was when beginning to write this piece. Am I doomed to now wander through 2012 without any direction at all? When does a nomad simply become someone who has lost his way?

I am open to suggestions. Can anyone suggest a New Years resolution for me?

Tearing down memories

They are tearing down my old alma mater. I guess I should shed a few tears. The thing is, I am trying hard to remember what the school looks like, both inside and out. David and Mary Thomson Collegiate Institute, on the corner of Brimley and Lawrence, in Scarborough, Ontario. Well, at least I have a point of reference. The only picture I have of the high school in my mind is from a recent drive by, when visiting my mother in the old homestead. How is it that I have shut out almost all memories of my high school years? Were they that traumatic?

Actually, I would say that the opposite was true. They were so bland as not to deserve remembering. Washed away in the flow of time.

A few memories do remain, though:

- The school newspaper that we put together in Mike Jackal’s basement while listening to Cat Stevens, a newspaper that quickly went underground when we chose to bypass the school censor and hand out birth control pamphlets together with it. Probably my only ever visit to the principal’s office, where the school censor appeared scared, the principal ended up talking about the Kennedy assassination for some unknown reason, and somehow the matter was closed. It didn’t appear that anyone knew what to do with so-called revolutionaries in a Toronto suburb.

- My best friend and I, bored to tears in Math and Physics classes, deciding to keep what little was left of our brains alive by unscrewing and removing all of the handles on the Physics cupboards underneath each student desk and storing them in our locker.  It took us at least a week to remove them all, all done during regular classes, and another week before this was noticed - the Physics teacher bringing the no-nonsense Vice Principal in to view the situation during one of our classes. We shifted the “merchandise” to an undisclosed area just in case they decided to do a locker check. Locker checks were quite unusual at the time. Drugs hadn’t yet become much of a problem in Scarborough, and no one appeared to want to enter into the grey area of constitutional rights over Physics desk handles. I think we had more fun putting the handles back, bit by bit during the Physics classes. It simply drove them crazy, and that was the whole point.

- Then there was the intellectual discussion over whether it was possible to make love in a sleeping bag - a literary critique of one of Hemmingway’s books - to the chagrin of our teacher. Another English teacher thought my comparison of “A Separate Peace” and “Lord of the Flies” was brilliant and announced to the class that I would “go places”. That shows how much he knew, although I did make it to Israel.

- One of my most creative moments was when I wrote a paper for my Physics class disproving the existence of matter. I got a very high mark. Apparently the Physics teacher didn’t understand a word, and was still shell shocked from the disappearing cupboard handles.

- Another less demanding creative moment was when I went beyond the usual strategies of writing a book report without reading the book, by making up a title of a book, publisher, date of publication and storyline. I got a very high mark for that also. Best composition I ever wrote. That was before the days when a teacher could easily check such things through the Internet, if they knew how, and instead had to depend on their own common sense.

- My best friend and I, looking for new ways to amuse ourselves, took a creative approach to an English project by providing a tape of musical appreciation. Those were the days of cassette tapes and old tape players where we could attach a microphone. We would tape the beginning of a song, then come in with our own commentary, explaining the song’s meaning, history and relevance. These were all popular songs that we grew up with and we had a great time, rolling on the floor with laughter at times. The English teacher surprised us by giving us a mark of 100, and we never did see the tape again. I guess it is one of those treasures that teachers like to lock away. I guess we were surprised because we never thought that we were supposed to find learning that much fun.

- One of my warmest memories is that of a scholastic history class, run by Mr. Brown who played the devil’s advocate while we explored and compared the great revolutions: Russian, Chinese, French... I owe many of my critical skills to him. Yet, it was the same Mr. Brown who warned me about going to Israel when he heard of my plans to learn at an ulpan there. “I know you, David. You won’t be able to keep your mouth shut about what is going on over there and will probably end up in jail.” He must have seen the picture of me that had appeared on the front page of the Globe and Mail, a few years earlier,  where I appeared in the front ranks of a demonstration at City Hall against the War Measures Act imposed by Prime Minister Trudeau during The October Crisis. Ah, those were the years when I still saw things in black and white, and didn’t understand that most of it is grey, and still more grey. My “liberal leaning” friends also weren’t appreciative of my going to Israel. Most of them disowned me long ago. Not that there were many. Friends, that is. You know, that thing that we used to have before Facebook Friends took over.

So they are tearing down my old school, freeing up a choice piece of real estate, as the school merges with a school nearby - or so I heard from a fellow Thomsonite through facebook. The other school received notoriety not long ago when one student stabbed another. Long gone from the days when underground newspapers and birth control pamphlets were the main concern.

For some reason, the thing I remember more from my Scarborough years is my elementary school - Knob Hill Public School. I still visit it, each time that I am back to visit my mother, when I go with my other best friend on the “neighborhood walk”. Leaving Danforth Road, we go up along Barrymore and then down Miramar Crescent where she lived. Turning left onto Gage upon passing the United Church, which keeps adding on new extensions, then over to Seminole and up to the school. At the back of the school I can still envisage myself playing foot hockey with a tennis ball during recess on the same small outside basketball court, which has changed little.  Then herded back into the school  by Mr. Wolf.

And what about the faces? It seems that the only faces that I remember, or recognize - when flipping through the old D&M Thomson yearbook - are the same faces who were with me at Knob Hill Public School. One day I tried looking up a few of those faces on Facebook. This may not be the best idea, for our saved image of people is nowhere near to what they look like now. And if they have changed that much, then what does it say about us? But we are tough. We can take it. So, you Thomsonites out there  - if you want to drop me a friend request, I promise to accept, and we can talk over forgotten times. I hope your memory is better than mine.

Home is where the Heart is

“There is no place like home! There is no place like home! ” Dorothy exclaims, clicking her heels together three times,  as she is magically transported back to the Kansas farm she calls home.

I grew up in the same house in Scarborough, a Toronto suburb, for the first 18 years of my life (minus the first 18 months in Belleville where I was born). This was the only home that I knew throughout my childhood and teen years. And when, years later after I had left Canada, my parents informed me that they were thinking of moving to a place further north, I was shocked at their news. This was my home they were taking away from me!

It didn’t matter that I barely made it back for a visit once in every five years, because of the constraints of being a kibbutz member at the time. The little house in Scarborough was still home to me. Probably even more of a home than the kibbutz where I had lived for over ten years. I think this feeling was augmented the first time I took my three small children to visit. I saw the world I had left behind, and memories from my childhood, through their eyes. And this awakened the Canadian in me, more than anything else has ever done.

If my parents had moved, would my concept of home have moved with them? How much does home belong to the heart and how much to things that we must touch and hold?

“I knew it the very first time I touched her. It was like coming home, only to no home I'd ever known. I was just taking her hand to help her out of a cab.”
~ Sleepless in Seattle

Why would some of us be tempted by the World of Oz to stay, while others never lose sight of their roots? Is every person who travels abroad for the first time a potential “expat”? Or are expats genetically wired differently? I don’t think an expat ever expects to live abroad for the rest of his/her life. It starts out as an adventure and somehow way leads on to way, and then there appears to be no way back. This is the main difference between an “expat” and an “immigrant”. An immigrant plans to live the rest of his/her life in a foreign country from the very start. Of course there is always a “physical” way back, even for an expat. But the heart has changed, somehow.

And then some of us may lack a real heart and go out into the world searching for one, just as the Tin Man did. But it may not be about the heart. It may all be about the journey.

I never felt completely at home in Canada, even at an early age. I felt that something was missing, as if I was born in the wrong place at the wrong time. I suppose that I romanticized the notion that there was a place out there for me. I just had to go out and find it. So, after finishing high school, I was ready to set out. My plan was to travel through Europe for a few months and then go to a kibbutz ulpan in Israel. “I have no idea when I’ll be back,” I told people.

Europe came up empty. It was the last place I could ever call home. And then, one day, I arrived in Israel. The flight had been delayed because of security concerns and I missed the last bus to the kibbutz, so I slept on a bench in the airport. I should have been uncomfortable there and quite nervous. The bench cut into my back and kids my age walked by me in army uniforms, touting guns. But I felt more at home, at that moment, than I had ever felt before. And this feeling stayed with me for quite some time on the kibbutz. I often wondered if I had been somehow genetically programmed to find my way there, perhaps a lingering gene from a missing generation. If I had been Jewish, this might have made more sense.

I quickly discovered, though, that people are still people - the same everywhere. Well, I didn’t discover this all that quickly. I had to learn Hebrew first. When Israelis stopped trying to speak English with me and gave into Hebrew, I knew I had reached that threshold where I could properly gauge where I was and what to expect. But my most important discovery was the revelation that you can’t run away from yourself. You can change continents, language, culture... but things will catch up with you in the end. It may take months, years, or decades. But we are what we are.

This led to a sudden epiphany, one day while walking with my wife along the Palmachim beach.
“I’ve realized something,” I told her.
“What?”
“The reason why I have stayed here all these years. The reason why I probably will never leave.”
“I have to hear this,” she said.
“Well, before I came here, I never fit in well. Not in Canada. It was as if I was a foreigner in my own land. I thought that if I could find the right place, all this would change.”
“And this the right place?” she asked.
“For a while I thought so. But slowly things caught up with me. I don’t feel any more at home here, now, than I did in Canada.”
“So why do you stay, then?”
I sighed, staring over the vast expanse of sea.
“Because, I have an excuse, here. I am a foreigner. I am not supposed to fit in easily. Back in Canada I have no excuse for being such a misfit.”
“You aren’t a misfit,” she said. “You have fit in. You have become very Israeli and most people  have no idea that you aren’t Jewish.”
I nodded, but she wasn’t fooling anyone.

Maybe it all is in the mind... or in the heart.