Israeli Culture: Jekyll and Hyde? ...and other random musings from this week

So I know--I've fallen behind, and I've got a whole lot of updating to do about Yom Kippur and my trip to Egypt over Succot break. But in the meantime, here are some reflections from this week...

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This afternoon, a woman cut me in line to use the ATM. Being the friendly, non-confrontational person that I am, and not confident enough in my Hebrew skills to complain, I let her get away with it. And immediately, I was angry at myself for being such a wet-behind-the-ears American pushover. No Israeli would ever have let her get away with that--by all standards, I should have yelled at her, made a big scene, or otherwise given her a hard time.

Take the grocery store, for example. It's impossible to go through the checkout line without somebody yelling at somebody (and I mean yelling): the whole line shouting at the person who cuts in front, the cashier yelling at the woman who takes a full cart through the "10-items-or-less" line, a woman screaming at a cashier in Hebrew that's too fast for me to understand. Or, my favorite story--the time I tried to check out at Rami Levi with the one item I needed, and the cashier angrily accused me: "You just came here to pee, didn't you! Right? You're not a customer! You think you can just come here and pee, is that it? Well, this isn't a public bathroom. Who do you think you are? Get out of here!" and she stormed off, leaving me standing there bewildered with my container of cottage cheese.

The bank's the same way--there's always a customer shouting at a teller, a teller shouting at a customer, or both. No such thing as "the customer is always right" in this country. The bus, too--you've got to be assertive if you want to get on. No waiting for the people getting off to get off first; the moment the doors open, people shove their way onto the bus, even when it means pushing past little old ladies.

On the other hand, despite the frequent instances of stereotypical Israeli rudeness, I am often surprised by Israelis' generousity and open-heartedness to total strangers. The strangers in the supermarket doing their pre-Shabbos shopping on Friday morning who invite you over for Shabbos dinner. Or my bank teller, who wants to make sure I'm adjusting well and settling in and that I have an apartment and that I'm making friends. When I'm carrying bags (or my first day in Jerusalem, when I had two giant suitcases), people are always offering to help. Or the best: a few days before Sukkot, a friend and I see a woman carrying a bunch of chairs and offer to help. "Oh no, no, " she says, "I'm just bringing them to set up in my sukkah, I don't need any help. Actually, you know how you can help? Come sit in my sukkah with me on the holiday!" Only in Israel. :)

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So, it might have snowed in Ithaca and Boston, but this past weekend here it suddenly became summer again. Absurdly hot, like in the 90s, out of nowhere. It messes with my internal calendar--I keep forgetting it's almost the end of October.

Apparently this heat is called Khamsin, from the Arabic for five (like חמש, khamesh in Hebrew), because the hot wind comes from the desert and lasts five days. Sure enough, it got hot on Friday, and lasted until Tuesday; Wednesday got suddenly cool again. Exactly 5 days. Weird.

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I started my ulpan (Hebrew class) this week. It's Mondays and Thursdays, from 5:30-8:30pm, and the first two classes went really well. It definitely feels like its exactly at my level, and I'm very relieved that we're systematically going over how to conjugate all the 7 verb groups in all 3 tenses, because that's review I really need.

The ulpan is downtown, which is great. It's nice to get away from Pardes for a bit, and what's really cool is that the students are from all over the world. Really all over the world. Finland, Italy, Brazil, the US, Israeli Arabs, the Czech Republic, Canada, etc... It means that everyone has a different accent, and that the common language between all of us is Hebrew (though most people also know some English).

And, the 12-hour days are not nearly as draining as I expected, which is definitely a good thing.

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*note/possible correction: According to Wickepedia, Khamsin is from the Arabic for 50, not 5, and describes a 50-day-long hot wind that comes from the desert around April. So, I dunno.