After my last entry turned into something of an ideological rant, I’ve decided to try and make this one slightly more entertaining... and pertinent to those people who want to know what actually goes on in the first few weeks after aliyah.
It’s just over a month since Deborah and I arrived here. One month since we were wandering around the town centre, cold, inadequately dressed (having forgotten that sometimes Jerusalem rain is just as cold as the English variety), looking for somewhere to eat, prior to creating a habitable apartment with edible items in the cupboards (well, any items actually).
Things have come a long way in one month in some ways, and yet in other ways we feel we haven’t really started life here yet. During a stereotypical week-in-the-life-of-the-unemployed, we entertained ourselves by cross-referencing prices at different supermarkets to find the cheapest toilet paper (which, by the way, is substantially cheaper in Remi-Lev than it is in Mega-bool... Mega-bool’s motto used to be ‘haSupermarket bli ha bool-sheet’, which translates as ‘The supermarket without the... well, you can probably work it out). But two weeks ago, the real aliyah started, at long last. Rather than late mornings and slow wanderings around the town centre drinking coffees, we were welcomed to a new way of life with the arrival of the rest of the occupants of the absorption centre. Bit by bit, the building filled with 200 olim from literally all over the world. We are English, French, Uruguayian (if that’s a word), Mexican, Brazilian, Peruvian, Russian, Ukrainian, American, Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian, Canadian, Turkish, Australian, South African and Iranian. I finish with the Iranian dude, because his story is the most interesting.
While the general stereotype is that the Western olim move to Israel for ideological reasons, and the Eastern olim move to have a better life, the Iranians are (currently) unique. They must jump through unimaginable hurdles to escape the persecution of Iran. We are not allowed to share the names of the Iranian Jews who manage to escape to Israel, for fear of rebuke to their families who remain. To escape from Iran as a Jew, they must travel first to other Arab countries, then to Europe, then on Israel. The Mossad, the Israeli Government, and the Israeli army are all involved in the aliyah process from Iran, which is a testament to the ideology both of Iranian Jews and of Israel. The bloke on our course is following his sister who left shortly before him, and his parents are due to follow soon. But once one leaves, the rest are in even more danger, and the urgency increases.
I already mentioned the assessments each person undergoes to demonstrate their language skills. During this process, everyone becomes nervous and stressed, which is totally irrational, because the aim is purely to place you in the appropriate level of class, ranging from A1 (learning the alphabet), and going up 8 levels to a grade where people already speak fluently but need to learn the nuances of the lingo...like how to say ‘nuance’. The word in Hebrew is pronounced... ‘nuance’.
So, when it came to my interview I was given a choice of class, as I fell neatly in between two grades; the option was either not be pushed, or work really really hard. So, eager to make the most of the one-off opportunity to integrate and learn the language, I chose the tough option. Deborah was assessed by the same two women, eager to keep the couple together, but ultimately was placed one class below... probably the one I should be in. Hebrew is relatively simple to learn once you know the alphabet, and would probably be fairly quick to pick up; but when the entire teaching day is entirely in Hebrew, getting started is not easy. Imagine your first day at school, having been brought up in the UK, and then immediately communicating with everyone around you in Swahili. And when you don’t know a word, what do you do? You ask the teacher what it means. Naturally, she describes the word, in Hebrew.
Each day we get a whole new mountain of words, declensions, grammar, prepositions and irregularities to learn, and getting into a mindset where you come home and do homework is not easy after years of employment. But, despite the anxieties of every person in every class, the progress is astounding. Words that I didn’t know a week ago creep in subconsciously to conversations on the street. Subtitles on TV no longer look like letters, they make words that can be read in time before the next set come on!
Each day’s work starts at 0830, which means that we are free by lunch. It sounds like a nice short day... and it is. But nonetheless, with the amount of crap still to organise, each day is a rush. Take the banks for example. Banking in Israel is nothing like the rest of the civilised world, and for a country where technology is quite simply everywhere (I’m using the internet on my own laptop in a cafe. There are 21 Wi-Fi connections available, and I’m in a detached building in a PARK!), the banks are still very much in the stoneage. All significant transactions must be done at the branch to which the account is registered, which means that setting up a standing order, putting in a foreign cheque, or even changing PIN codes must be done in one place only. As we set up our account with a representative at a fair for new olim, our account is registered to her branch, in Ramat Beit Shemesh, a city an hour away from Jerusalem. When we signed up, she reassured us that we would never need to come to the branch, and everything can be done either on the internet, or in the local branch, who will send every single scrap of paper, cheque and document over to our branch, who will read it, photocopy it, process it, and send back the receipt. Before I slag off Bank Leumi too much, she was in fact correct... technically. The entirely Hebrew internet site is still beyond us, so that’s out, but we could use the local branch... were it not for the fact that it’s full of liars who deny that they are able to send things between branches (as this would involve standing up and getting an envelope for internal mail, or may even require walking across to the fax machine). Add to that the fact that EVERYTHING costs money at the bank (pay to use your card, pay to speak to someone, pay to take out cash at a cashpoint, etc etc etc), and they don’t pay interest, and you have a banking system which is very wealthy, but very crap. A lot of it stems back to Jewish law, which states you can’t charge interest on a loan to a Jew... so the only plus side is that mortgages and loans are very very reasonable.
We’ve come to the end of our third week in Ulpan, and it’s been fascinating to be part of what feels like a giant Big Brother series. 250 people, all 21 – 32 years old, nearly all single, living under one roof. For those of you interested in psychology, there is the famous ‘Storming Norman theory’, that states the steps involved in group formation:
Forming – Getting to know each other – everyone is artificially friendly, talks to everyone else, tries to make a good impression, keeps on smiling.
Storming – People let down their guards; people discover the irritating habits of one another, identify the weird girl who doesn’t talk to anyone, bitch about the boy who is flirting with 6 girls and 2 guys, get homesick.
Norming – Coming to terms with the status quo, making real friends, getting to know the people who you need and want to know.
Performing – Accepting your friendship circle, and those of others, accepting those you won’t ever be friends with, and getting on with the purpose of the group.
Mourning – The end of the group, mission accomplished, saying goodbye to comrades and moving on in life.
We have quite clearly moved into the storming and norming periods now; Deborah and I are nearly unique in the group due to both age and marital status. Although there are people older than us, there is a skew to the younger ages, and so we probably fall (or at least I certainly do) into the oldest 10% of the group. We are accepted from a social point of view, but often as ‘the couple’ rather than as peers; when out at a bar last week, we lost count of the number of people who said ‘you’re such a cool couple; I didn’t think marrieds ever went out.’. As the ‘parents’, we are privy to a large amount of bitching; each time someone has a fall out from our own clique of friends, we are subjected to a tirade on the offender.
It’s an odd position for us to be in; the atmosphere is akin to starting University, or even your gap year. But whereas this is the ‘cattle market’ period where everyone is mingling, pulling, breaking up, getting drunk and bunking lessons etc, we are the ones on the shelf! We are ‘in’ the group, but not ‘of’ the group. But, there are plenty of people around who share at least parts of this experience, so we are not alone.
Without doubt though, the most striking divides in the ulpan are geographical, and remarkably similar to WWII. The Brits hang out with the Americans, and the French occasionally tag on for good measure, but will also socialise with the few other Europeans without putting up any resistance. The token Canadians don’t number high enough to be significant, and the Ozzies are laid back enough to chill with whoever comes their way. The Soviet Union lives on, with Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians and Georgians creating an iron curtain (smoke curtain actually – it’s amazing how much they must bolster the economy buying cancer sticks) outside the front door, which we must pass in order to get in and out of the building. South America stands solidly together, and were there any Germans around seeking asylum I’m sure they’d be welcome. When it comes to dinner time, the CCCP arrive en mass, holding seats in the crowded dining room for their comrades, while timid Westerners search for a seat that does not belong to the collective.
In terms of the content of the course, it feels very much like the old days of learning languages in school. I walk, you walk, he walks etc etc etc. What stands out though is the ‘רק בישראל’ (only in Israel) parts of the course. Where else would the terms ‘suspicious package’, ‘terrorist’, ‘racism’, ‘holocaust’, ‘intifada’ and ‘nuclear weapons’ all turn up in the first 2 weeks of the course?
If there was one trait Israelis are justifiably famous for, it’ll be lack of respect for rules. Smoking was banned in public places here several years ago, but is about as well-enforced as the age of consent is in the UK. It is standard to sit in a bar in Tel Aviv with no smoking signs on the walls, directly above ash trays on the tables. It’s not uncommon to walk through a mall and see people sitting on benches lighting up, and even to step out of a public lift (elevator) with your eyes watering. Deborah and I went with some friends to see Avatar (which is, by the way, fantastic); like me, one of our friends has an intense hatred of smokers in general, but more specifically those who see no shame in subject other people to their fumes. After such a long film, many patrons could not sustain their feeble willpower any longer, and lit up inside the foyer of the cinema. As we (including our heavily pregnant friend) tried to leave, we decided to engage with the enemy. Some people were bashful, some apologised, some even put out their cigarettes. Others swore, blew smoke at us, or laughed. One particularly wrinkled prune and her husband decided to strike where it hurt... our country of origin.
“Why should I put out my cigarette?”
“Because it’s illegal and not fair on everyone else here.”
“I was born here. I can do what I like. We don’t need people like you coming here and telling us not to smoke.”
“Are you saying you are more important than us?”
“You want me to hit you with my bag?”
It’s not the only social etiquette that has been totally ignored here; with the advent of mobile phones that play music, it is quite normal to hear people playing their own music out of poor-quality loudspeakers at full volume on the bus. Who cares if you don’t like Techno-pop? On the rare occasions people have objected to the music, the phone-owner either turns it off with a look of absolute disbelief that someone might not appreciate this masterpiece, or, on occasion, turns up the volume.
I suppose that it would be quite reasonable to apply the Storming Norman theory of group formation not only to our ulpan time, but to our aliyah in general, and probably also to our very recent marriage. We've had our forming time now, where we start to get to know the people, the routine and the land, and now we're into the storming period where we need to assert ourselves, develop our niches and our network of friends, and discover all the things that aren't right here, that we'll need to come to terms with. In time.
Someone introduced themselves to me at a meeting last week, by saying "Oh, I'm an oleh chadash (new immigrant) too". I asked when he made aliyah, to which he replied, "1992. They say you can call yourself a 'new' immigrant for the first 25 years".
Hopefully by that point we'll be 24 years into the 'performing' stage of the process.
No comments:
Post a Comment