When I find myself fading

"When I find myself fading, I close my eyes and realize my friends are my energy." 
~ anonymous

I have many things to complain about, but I also have many more to be thankful for. I have been blessed with true friends. Friends who help carry me forward during the toughest of times, just by knowing that they are there.

It is said that you can count your true friends on one hand. I find this to be true for me. Even in the age of Facebook, where we have friendship lists that often measure in the hundreds, sometimes even in the thousands. And even I have a friendship list of 644. How does this adhere to my concept of friends? 

I think it was Thomas Moore who once said: "I have many acquaintances, but very few friends." - a distinction which Facebook once completely ignored, serving to belittle relationships rather than mirror reality. Until one day when Facebook decided to make amends, allowing us to differentiate between friends, close friends and acquaintances. And by doing so, our Facebook access to our closer friends increased considerably.

"Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend." 
~ anonymous

What defines a true friend? Is there some secret formula? True friends do not have agendas. If they did, we'd all be in trouble. For a true friend knows many of our darkest secrets. They are our confessor, but do not carry judgement. They could write our explosive biography, but would do so only with our permission, before or after we die. 

“The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.” 
~ Richard Bach

I come from a small Canadian family, and try to return each year during the holiday season to visit my mother, sister, and two close friends. These two friends are family also, for although we grew up under different roofs, we also shared each other's homes. And despite the distance and years that passed without seeing each other, each time we meet, we carry on as if no time has passed since we saw each other last. For our respect and joy in each other's lives surpasses all else.

I know that many families become increasingly dysfunctional over time, something that is magnified especially during holiday season. Maybe my family is too small to be dysfunctional, or I am not in Canada enough days of the year, but we seem to get on quite well. Not only that, but each visit is of great importance to all of us.

With family, as with friends, I have been extremely fortunate. And not just with my Canadian family, but with my Israeli family as well. My Israeli family consists of my Israeli born wife and three children (all born in Israel on a kibbutz), and my in-laws. I know that many people (perhaps most), don't get on well with their in-laws. But, despite my coming from a different background, language and culture, I was accepted with open arms by Adva's parents. My test wasn't the baggage that I brought with me, but how I treated their daughter. Which I was made well aware of when my mother-in-law casually informed me that she kept an Uzi sub-machine gun under her bed and knew how to use it (she had been an officer in the Palmach and not someone to mess around with). Fortunately she never found reason to use it, or thought that Adva could do worse. I have always gotten on well with my brother and sisters-in-law also. My brother-in-law hosts family and extended family each major holiday at his house on the kibbutz. Nothing dysfunctional there, either, unless you count my slipping out after the dinner festivities to check my email at my father-in-law's house.

Family and friends cannot really be measured in numbers, defined by blood relations, or categorized by time and place. They are the people who touch our inner core, for whom we would fly across continents, make our way up from the desert by train to Molly Blooms, meet for coffee or wine after a hard day's work, or join in extended noisy family holiday celebrations. In many ways my life has turned upside down, but friends and family stay with me, and keep me from fading away.

Comfort and Fashion - Never the twain shall meet

Those of you that know me, know that I don't struggle much with fashion. At least not now, when I am pretty well worn out."
Adva would claim that my poor dress habits even go beyond fashion.
"You're not wearing that!" she exclaims. "It is full of holes!"
"There are only two... three," I respond. "And I am just wearing it around the house and for working in the garden," I lie.

Usually I get away with wearing what I want, but sometimes I hit a snag.
"I hope you haven't been wearing that to work!" Adva says, surprising me on one of the rare occasions that she arrives home from work before me.
"Well... I had to move some computers and stuff."
She doesn't seem quite convinced. A few days later, the shirt mysteriously disappears.

I have been struggling with clothes since the early years. My mother would dress me up in a suit and tie for Sunday school and I would enter with what some people might call my penguin imitation: my arms curved up and out like a penguin as I waddle into the room. But it was no imitation. It was all me. I just couldn't stand certain things rubbing up against my skin. This struggle between comfort and fashion continued for a long time after that and may be one of the reasons why I ended up on an Israeli kibbutz. Israelis, in the early 70s, weren't concerned much with fashion - whether they lived on a kibbutz or not. Even in the 1980s and early 1990's, when I went to international computer business conferences in Israel, it was rare to see an Israeli in shirt and tie. Almost all of the suits were visitors from abroad. No wonder why I felt more comfortable here than in Canada. All this suited me fine.

But in the last decade, suits and ties have started popping up in many places where they hadn't been seen before on the Israeli scene. Fortunately for me, by the time this happened, I was already turning into a grumpy old man with little patience for anything, let alone primitive trivial social norms. Wearing a noose around my neck and dressing like everybody else to fit seamlessly into some social norm had no longer any meaning for me, if it ever had. You are what you wear, they say. And as I have already been deemed a social outcast - I guess it is time that I dress the part.

Some of you might think that I am an ideal candidate for a nudist colony. You can't get much freer than that when it comes to dress, they say. But there are two flaws to that assertion.
1. You are once again conforming to what you can and can't wear.
2. This conflicts with my incessant need for privacy - I just have to keep some things to myself.

The desert serves me well, in this regard. During the long Israeli summer - which lasts close to seven months - all that I basically need are two pairs of shorts, three short-sleeve shirts, a pair of sandals, and enough underwear to last me the week. Oh yes - and running shoes for the gym.

Adva, like most women, has a much more extensive wardrobe. Most women won't wear the same thing two days in a row. I am not sure how many days must pass before they can wear the same outfit again. Then there is the makeup, perfume, and the trick of showing just enough cleavage. While I make do with a short shower, a dab of deodorant, brushing my teeth and my hair (what's left of it) - Adva disappears for a thirty minute ritual and comes back all made up.
"It's important to dress up for work."Adva says, noticing that I am wearing the same outfit for the third day in a row. "Don't you want people to respect you?"
Which translates into: "What, don't you have anybody to flirt with at work?"

It's a matter of priority, I suppose. What really is important. Which, for some of us, cannot come without comfort.

When will Israelis get a real weekend?

One of the first things I had to get used to in living and working in Israel was the fact that Sunday is the first work day of the week. Sunday is actually called Yom Rishon ("First Day") in Hebrew. When it comes to naming the days, Hebrew is quite sensible:

• Yom Rishon ("First Day") [Sunday]
• Yom Sheni ("Second Day") [Monday]
• Yom Shlishi ("Third Day") [Tuesday]
• Yom Revy-ee ("Fourth Day") [Wednesday]
• Yom Chamishi ("Fifth Day") [Thursday]
• Yom Shishi ("Sixth Day") [Friday]
• Shabbat (the "Sabbath"- day of rest) [Saturday]

As you can see, the names are quite practical and straightforward. No messing around with borrowing from the gods, celestial bodies, or whatever. The formula is quite simple - name the day by its number in the week. Except for the seventh day. It had to be different:
And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when he rested from all his work of creation.
And so the seventh day was given the name Shabbat (the day of rest).

But things didn't stop here. Not only was Sunday the first work day of the week, Israelis also seemed to have never heard of a two day weekend. They should be given credit, though, for coming up with the whole concept of a day of rest, far before others. The Romans didn't come up with the idea until the year 321, when the Roman Emperor Constantine declared the dies solis (Day of the Sun) [Sunday] an official Roman day of rest. And another twenty centuries would pass until the Western world came up with the idea of the two day weekend. Apparently this was first instituted by a New England cotton mill which wanted to allow its Jewish workers to adhere to their own religious Sabbath. Ironically, it was Henry Ford (who was considered by many to be an ardent Anti-Semite) who, in 1926, was among the first to standardize the two day weekend, shutting down his automotive factories for all of Saturday and Sunday, while still paying his workers the same wages. As for Israelis - "If the one day of rest was good enough for our forefathers..." - well, you get the message.

I may have adapted better to this one day weekend in Israel had it not been for the fact that there were no buses on Saturdays (you couldn't go anywhere unless you had your own car), no stores were open (no opportunity to plan shopping for the end of the week when you actually had the time), and no television (no afternoon ball games on the tube). If  you were an observant Jew, this worked out just find. But if you were secular, you really did want to have the right of choice.

And if all this weren't enough, I was rudely introduced to the seven day work week. Yes, you heard me right. And no, this isn't something that came straight out of a Charles Dickens novel, although it might have.

I should clarify here that the seven day work week was not something common to all Israeli society. Rather, it was an essential part of the kibbutz way of life: the dreaded toranut. Back in the days when most of the kibbutzim were still communal in  nature, kibbutz members took turns in working in essential services on the Sabbath - services such as the communal dining room, children houses, milking and feeding the cows. Which meant that every three or four weeks, you didn't have a weekend.

Now, I don't think I have to tell you how important the weekend is to maintaining our sanity. Already by midweek, the promise of the approaching weekend keeps us going. And when the weekend arrives, we heave a huge sigh of relief and lapse into denial for two days. No matter how bad the week has been, things suddenly get better. But when the weekend is taken from you  - even the one day with such limited opportunities as the Israeli weekend - one is prone to enter into the pits of despair. There is nothing to hold onto to keep you going during the week. I kept telling myself that this was my choice, that this was an integral part of maintaining a communal way of life, but I could never get used to it.

Things have changed since then. The cows have been sold, the children now live at home with their parents, kibbutz members no longer go to eat in the dining room... and somewhere along the line we decided to leave the kibbutz. Sometime after that the kibbutz was privatized. Meanwhile, Israelis unofficially got a two day weekend. I say unofficially as the schools are still open six days a week, as are many businesses. But most people are now taking the Friday off, as well (which has always been a half-day workday in any case, as people are given time to welcome in the Sabbath which begins at sunset on Fridays).

But voices are beginning to be heard that are calling for more. Silvan Shalom, an Israeli government minister, has suggested making the two day weekend an official one - with people having Saturday and Sunday off. And Friday would be  a work day until noon. This would enable schools to move to a five day week and it would also be easier for the Israeli business community to coordinate things with business communities around the world whose weekend is Saturday and Sunday.

And most of all, as Silvan has been reported as saying:
"It is time Israelis got a real weekend."

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.

You're so vain, you probably think this blog is about you

People annoy me. What can I say. I don’t even remember when it started. I have a vague memory of the doctor slapping me when I came out of my mother’s womb...

Not all people annoy me. Or at least, not all of the people all of the time.

“You can be very annoying,” you say.
“Yes,” I answer. “What is your point, exactly?

People, by themselves, are not always annoying enough to reach my radar. It usually takes an extension of themselves: their pet dog or brood of children - to really get under my skin. You see, most people believe that they are god’s gift to mankind.  And, just in case no one has gotten the point, they send out their dogs and children to get into the face of anybody who might otherwise ignore them. You’ve been there: kids running rampant through the aisles in the supermarket, screaming at the top of their lungs when something is refused - dogs barking in the middle of the night while their owners sleep peacefully and leave the rest of us to toss and turn in despair.

Now, I like animals. Actually like them much more than people. There is probably a name for that ( there is a name for everything these days). Maybe it is because both animals and I don’t talk much. Much more into observing. So, the other night, at 1:30 in the morning, I went out and picked up some stones on the way  to confront the dog who was barking behind my house. Getting there, I found a dog tied up outside of a house. He saw me and wagged his tail with a huge dog smile, glad to welcome a human presence so late at night/early morning. What could I do, then? Throw a stone at him? So I left him to it and went back to bed, cursing the moron who should have never been allowed to have a dog, much like many parents who should have never been allowed to have children.

If you find this not to be politically correct, so far,  I can only say that it is going to get worse. But in order to partially placate your delicate sense of fair play, I will no longer brand people as “annoying”. Rather, let’s just say that they are “socially challenged”.

Actually, I am just as socially challenged as anyone else, but I keep it to myself. Which most people consider annoying. You see, I can sit at a party, or dinner, or any other social event a whole night and say nothing. Most people will probably pass this off as my not being intelligent enough to take part in their riveting conversation. Other people attribute my silence to my not finding them, or their conversation, interesting. And this really pisses them off. You are supposed to mingle in social situations. And if you don’t have anything interesting to say, making a fool out of yourself is just as socially acceptable.

“What are you, socially autistic?” you ask.
“I have never thought about it in that way,” I answer. “But now that you mention it, the shoe fits.”

The irony of it all is that I am not a people person (if you haven’t already guessed), yet I have spent almost all of my adult life living in small communities (we are talking about less than a thousand souls - not counting the dogs). This brings me into more contact with people than I would have, say, in the city. The first community (14 years of my life) was a kibbutz. The second community (20+ years and counting) is a small community on the edge of the Zin Wadi. When we first came here, the community was much smaller, almost everyone knew each other, and there was a feeling of common purpose in living here. This has changed over the years. What was once a cohesive community has turned into social anarchy. We could blame this on how quickly the community has expanded, as more and more people build houses here. Or on the fact that many people build houses only to rent them out at obscene prices in order to make a windfall. But the main factor may be that many people have recognized this is a place where they, their children and their dogs can live as free spirits. What others might call - “running wild”. But hey, let’s not quibble over semantics.

I mean, how many places do you know where you can let your dog run loose terrorizing children and bark all night terrorizing aspiring sleepers, without any fear of being called into account. Yes, we do have a “residents committee” which has promised to work towards “enriching” our communal experience. And yes, like most good committees, they keep sending us newsletters telling us about how they are going to round up dogs on the loose and call their owners into account. For about ten years, we have seen these proclamations repeatedly. Haven’t seen them in a while though, probably because a dog chews them up, just as two dogs chewed up our Friday newspaper which was dropped off early morning by the paper boy. Did the dog owner offer to buy us a new newspaper? No, he simply cleaned the mess of torn fragments off of his OWN lawn.

“Bitter. You think I sound bitter? No, not at all. That is one of the advantages of being a socially autistic and cynical pessimist. You don’t hold high expectations.”

“The name of the small community where I am living now? I think I will keep this to myself. Otherwise, you’re so vain, you’ll probably think this blog is about you.

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.

The Bearded Wonder

Why do men have beards? There are a multitude of explanations, I’m sure. Freud must have devoted a chapter to it, somewhere. I can only speak for myself, and even then, I am on shaky ground.

I think I decided to “sprout” a beard as soon as I was able to grow one. Most likely, even before that - when facial hair was no more than an unpromising stubble. Was this in an effort to appear older? Or perhaps, I saw it as a stamp of my own individuality. I really can’t remember that far back. I only know that, except for a few years later in life, I had a beard in some shape or form.

By the time I could grow a beard, and had reached an age where I could grow my hair long, the hippies had pretty well run out of steam - many of them leaving behind their nomadic, power of love life style, to open stylish boutiques where money became their new object of concern. We were into the seventies, the sixties were but a memory, but either no one had told me that the flower generation was over, or I didn’t care. With my long hair and beard, I set out for an Israeli commune, looking for a life where people lived together in harmony and social bliss.

It would be interesting to measure my induction into the socialistic life style of the kibbutz against the length of my beard. When I arrived on the kibbutz, one might say that my beard was “bushy”. Yet still under control. I had spent two months before that working in a small hotel on Rue Pigalle in Paris - what was known as the red light district. The characters that I met during those two months could have provided the inspiration for a compelling thriller. They took one look at this young Canadian boy, who they called “Le petit Jesus”, and took me under their ward. They would take me out for a walk through Paris late at night and I knew that there was nothing to be scared of, as they were much scarier than anything we could possibly meet on the way. At the end of the two months, when I was supposed to go to Israel to join an ulpan, they did everything in their power (other than kidnapping me) to try and convince me to stay. I often wonder what would have happened if I had stayed. But more about that in a future blog entry, entitled “Life Choices”.

So when did my beard start getting out of control. One might say, just before my marriage. By then I looked like a character out of the “Lion King” - or The Lion King himself. I was still in an upward spiral, becoming more and more of an integral part of the kibbutz, filling many roles such as head of the Manpower and Education committees. We had our first child and he spent his first years sleeping in the children’s house. But then things began to change - the kibbutz began to change. The signs were there - had been for quite a while, I imagine. Even now, although I left the kibbutz for the same ideological reasons that brought me there, I am surprised at how quickly it all fell apart. Right up to privatization.

And these are the years where my beard got increasingly shorter. Soon, the overall bushy look was gone, although there was still a firm growth of beard there. A vote in the general assembly decided that children would now live at home. And, as I became more and more involved in the sensitive areas of the kibbutz - especially when I became the head of the Members Committee, I saw how big the cracks had become, and found it difficult to justify staying there any longer. And my beard could now be described as “neat” - something it hadn’t been since my early Canadian years.

It must have been a year or two after we left the kibbutz, moving down to live in the Negev, that I shaved off my beard altogether. Maybe this was my way of stating that I was starting something completely new. I needed something to signify the separation, something which was an intricate part of myself. I remember when Adva came home and saw this strange man in the house. She was quite excited at the time, at least for the first few minutes until she realized it was me. That is another good thing about having a beard. By shaving it off, you can feel that you made a significant change in your life. Even if it is only for a moment. But growing a beard is nowhere the same. As G. K. Chesterton once said: “You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion.”

When it comes down to it, it is all skin deep - or should I say “hair deep”. Some people told me that being clean shaven made me look more distinguished, others - “younger’... but there were those - especially my sister and two childhood friends -  who appeared to have a problem recognizing me in my new naked form. Not that they didn’t know who I was - but they had  grown up knowing me only as a bearded wonder. And then this new person walked into their lives and he didn’t quite fit.

Probably the thing that convinced me to grow back a beard, albeit a small one, was that I could never get used to not being able to run my hand over my beard when in deep contemplation. There was no friction to help me think. Also, while staring at myself in the mirror, I was taken aback by the gaunt look.  So, much to the chagrin of some people, I started to sprout facial hairs again.

And here I am, late in life, wondering whether to just shave it all off again. Is it now the need to look younger? Or simply a need for change? In my facebook status, I asked people to vote for what they like more: a bearded or beardless David. If I thought they would help me decide, I was mistaken, as the votes are split more or less down the middle.

Maybe I should listen to the wisdom of Jean Cocteau: “There is always a period when a man with a beard shaves it off. The period does not last. He returns headlong to his beard.”

There are those who experiment with having a beard, and those of us who experiment without having one.

A rose by any other name

What’s in a name? Are you happy with your name? If you had a chance, would you change it?

A name is something that belongs to us. It is both a part of us and a part of how others perceive us. But how unique is it?

It wasn’t until the age of Google, that I realized how common “David Lloyd” was.  A simple google search of the name turned up about 16 million results. That sort of lessens your sense of worth, don’t you think? But what’s in a name, really?

Listen to what Shakespeare had to say, in Twelfth Night.

CLOWN:  You have said, sir. - To see this age! - A sentence is but a cheveril glove to a good wit. How quickly the wrong side may be turned outward!
VIOLA:  Nay, that's certain; they that dally nicely with words may quickly make them wanton.
CLOWN:  I would, therefore, my sister had had no name, sir.
VIOLA:  Why, man?
CLOWN:  Why, sir, her name's a word; and to dally with that word might make my sister wanton.

Is it better to have a name that goes by unnoticed, or one so unique as to catch the interest of all around you?  Remember those days in elementary school when the teacher would insist on reading out the names, one by one, for attendance? David Lloyd didn’t bring about any snickering, but anything uniquely different at the time brought about endless teasing. However, if you did survive the teasing, an unusual name later in life could help you make your mark. Don’t you wish now that you had one of those names that barely fills up a page in a google search result? So unique that google actually offers alternatives. (“Did you mean...?”) They never offered an alternative for David Lloyd.

Another problem of having a common name is the people that you share it with. There is a David Lloyd  - professor of English at the University of Southern California - who is aggressively leading an academic and cultural boycott of Israel. I received a phone call once, late at night,  from someone in Israel.

“Did you know that I searched your name in google and got this person organizing a boycott of Israel?”
“It isn’t me.”
“Maybe so, but he has the same name.”
“It isn’t me.”
“It’s on google.”
“He lives in California and I live in Israel.”
“Maybe you should do something, so that people don’t think he is you.”
“Right, I’ll get on it right away,” I said politely, hanging up.

Why can’t people confuse me with the David Lloyd who wrote one of the most beloved episodes ever in a comedy sitcom - the infamous “Chuckles the Clown” episode on The Mary Tyler Moore Show? There was a man who left a true legacy. If only I could meet the challenge that he set for the rest of the David Lloyds out there in the world.

Here is something else that Shakespeare wrote about a name: in Romeo and Juliet:

JULIET:  “What’s a Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What’s in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title: - Romeo, doff thy name; And for that name, which is no part of thee, Take all myself.”

Some people do change their name, for all sorts of reasons: artistic, political, a desperate attempt at trying to reinvent themselves... but I don’t see the point. You are who you are, and your name is a part of that.

Well, actually we weren’t born with a name labelled on our heads. This was decided upon by our parents, however misguided some of them may have been. (Remember the Johnny Cash song - “A boy named Sue”?) Deciding on a name for your children is no simple feat. Adva and I had to do it three times. And this was before the age of Internet when we had to actually buy books designed for helping you name your child. I had two ways of testing how well a name sounded. One was imagining how it sounded when calling the child in for dinner:
“Joshua, come into the house right now for dinner!!”
Doesn’t quite work, does it?
And the other was imagining all of the pet names people would make of it: Josh, Joe, Joey, Gee Willikers...
As if this wasn’t enough, we had the added complication of not only finding a more modern sounding Hebrew name (unlike the dated Biblical names: Devorah, Rivka, Abigail, Esther, Shimon, Avraham, Aharon...), but one that could be easily pronounced by the non-Hebrew speaking side of the family - those back in the old country. You didn’t want to have a “chet” stuck in there somewhere which would cause people to choke when trying to pronounce it.
 

“Chana.”
“That’s what I said, Hannah.”
“No, Chana.”
“Cha... “ cough, cough., choke...
“Get the woman some water!”

All said, though, picking a name for our first child, Edan, was rather easy. It took us a little longer, though, to choose a name for our second son, Noam. But by the time we came to our third and last child, it was anything but easy. Knowing that it would be a girl, we were nowhere near agreement as the delivery date neared. We must have tried out every Hebrew name in the book on each other: from Modern Hebrew, Biblical Hebrew... even Proto-Semitic. And then, as the clock ticked down, realizing that the Hebrew option was exhausted, we settled on something quite different.

I remember walking down a kibbutz path the day after Adva gave birth and meeting one of the founding kibbutz members.
“I hear that Adva gave birth,” she smiled sweetly.
“Yes, a baby girl?”
“And what’s her name?”
“Nicole.”
“Nicole!” I had to catch her as she almost fell over backwards. “That’s not a Hebrew name!” she exclaimed.
“Yes,” I concurred, and moved on.

I guess we have to be grateful that we didn’t have to choose a middle name as well for each of our children. Israelis only have first and last names. I never could figure why we needed a middle name. Although, when I did put “David Gregory Lloyd” into a google search, only about 3,600 results showed up. So maybe I should have used first, middle and last name, as some people do. It would have made my name a little more unique and probably stop people from phoning me in the middle of the night asking me why I want to boycott Israel.

Kibbutz by the Sea

Last week, standing on a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean, I watched as the sun began its slow descent into the sea. The air was quiet, the colours of the kibbutz slowly changing into an evening hue. Fourteen years. Fourteen years mixed in the salty air, the sound of seagulls, the faint sound of a tractor in the distance. Fourteen years, as I looked over to the row of white houses built into the steep hill running down to the beach below, our house second to the right.

I have visited many beautiful places in my life, and have also been fortunate to live in two of them. One of them is where I am living now - Midreshet Ben Gurion, perched high above Wadi Zin (Zin Valley) in the Negev Desert, reaching towards the red mountains of Jordan.  And the other is Kibbutz Palmachim, resting on the Mediterranean Sea, squeezed in between Tel Aviv and Ashdod, with Rishon Le Zion sneaking in from the rear.

“How could you have left a house on the sea?” people ask me. Yet no one asks anymore, “How could you have left the kibbutz?”

I never expected to leave the kibbutz, but then, I never expected to be there in the first place. And if it hadn’t been for my reading of “Walden Two”, I probably never would have.

For a long time, I identified with Thoreau’s “Walden”: isolating myself from society, both mentally and emotionally,  in order to obtain a more objective understanding of it; my way of achieving self-reliance. But Skinner’s “Walden Two” suggested an alternative: a utopia of communal interaction where self-reliance is attained at the community level. In such a community, one must become  a participant, as well as an observer.

Like most things, this would have never gone beyond philosophical masturbation had it not been for a friend of my sister who told me about the ulpan program on the kibbutz.  Not only was there suddenly a place offering itself as a testing ground for such theory, but it was a place I could easily go to for six months.

I don’t know what I expected to happen once I was on the kibbutz. I certainly never expected to spend the next fourteen years of my life there. But I felt that I had found my place. Milking cows, learning to drive a tractor, moving irrigation lines, going to university, starting a teaching career, teaching myself computers in order to computerize the kibbutz school, marriage, three children, and filling most of the key administrative positions on the kibbutz - fourteen years may not be a lot for some, but it was a key period of my life.

It wasn’t an easy decision to leave the kibbutz. My wife, who was born and raised on the kibbutz, had already wanted to leave for a number of years in order to try something new. But it wasn’t until I filled the delicate position as the head of the members’ committee that I was faced with such discrepancies between what the kibbutz was and what it professed to be, that I decided it was time to leave also.

It was while being on the kibbutz that I discovered that I could be both a social hermit and an active participant in the running of the community. So, it was only natural, upon discovering the Internet in the early nineties, that I use this tool to create virtual communities through which the members would provide mutual assistance, while I remained in the background, helping to run things quietly. In my English Teachers Network, which contains over 1,700 members, I have personally met only a few members face to face, although I answer scores of messages every day. I am sure that there are those who believe that I am simply a virtual creation who is online 24/7. And you know what?  I am quite content with that assumption.

Standing on the cliff, looking out over the sea, the last half of the sun slowly sinks into the sea. I do not feel sad that we left. Some of the memories I relive, some are totally forgotten. But there are things that are not lost... a Canadian, a kibbutznik... things that I still take with me.

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.