There are Days (Ode to Expat Living)

It’s been two years, this month, since I made aliyah. Mostly, it was a very good decision. But there are days.

There are days when I stand in the middle of my living room, arms upraised, and declare, in my best Scarlett O’Hara accent, “Canada. I’ll go back to Canada.”

There are days that start out in the Canadian consulate for a pleasant fifteen-minute wait, where the only rude person in a fifty-foot radius is the Quebecois who complains that the Israeli security guard doesn’t speak French.

There are days that begin with an efficient Canadian government worker looking at my documents, stamping my passport renewal form and asking if there’s anything else she can do for me within three minutes of my sitting down at her desk.

There are days where I manage to completely fudge both the Israeli healthcare system and Israeli banking, and think that perhaps I’m just too much of a provincial idiot to live in a foreign country.

There are days when I tramp home through the Tel Aviv heat, sweat slicking every inch of my skin, and think to myself that even if this is the Holy Land kissed by G-d Himself with blessing, it would be nice if He would stop slobbering on me and drooling down my back every time I step outside in summer.

There are days when I can’t even look at people’s faces as I pass them, and the urge to knock over the person who seems to be INTENTIONALLY blocking me on the sidewalk gets so strong that I bite my lip and draw blood.

There are days when I realize that the person blocking me is one of my old students, arms spread wide, grin spread wider, literally bobbing up and down on the sidewalk with joy that we’ve bumped into each other.

There are days when I return to the bank and the teller takes one look at my face and refuses to do anything until I have taken several deep breathes with him and practiced some calming yoga moves in the middle of the bank, and we are both laughing.

There are days when the bank teller wishes me Shabbat shalom not once but twice in lieu of an adieu, refusing to say goodbye when he can say something that places us as part of the same tribe.

There are days when my healthcare representative calls me just because that’s a service they provide, and is thrilled that she can actually give me information. 

There are days that I sprawl on the floor of my living room under the fan, arms under my head, and declare that I'm not going anywhere. 

The ceiling fan responds, "frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

Cultural Confusion: Personal vs. Professional Spaces

I just sent the following email to one of the Ministry of Education’s district coordinators, and as I pressed send, I was perfectly aware that it would cause him enormous confusion. I wrote:

I do not have a work phone number, but you can reach me through the school office phone during regular work hours at -----. I will be reachable this coming Sunday between ---. If none of those times work, send me an email and we can sort it out. 

Looking forward to discussing this with you,

Now, to all you North Americans, that may seem like a perfectly normal email. But when he sent an email asking if he could call me to explain something, he surely expected my personal phone number, and he surely expected to be able to call me in the evening to sort it out.

Now all you North Americans are shocked. Give your personal phone number to a professional contact? What a breach of professional conduct! What an inappropriate idea! What a lawsuit waiting to happen!

I agree. But now I live in Israel, and the expectations here are completely different. People use their private cell phones for professional use. They get called at all hours of the night, and I’m not merely talking about doctors on emergency call. There’s a mingling between personal and professional life that happens here that seems immoral to an American like me.

One note—my life-work balance is a MILLION times better here than it was in the States. While I still work on weekends and evenings (I’m writing this blog post as a break from grading IA’s), my planning hours are flexible and much less taken up by data nonsense and mindless form-filling than in the States. Also, the general atmosphere of the staff here are much more like family than an American work environment. The principal walks around in sandals and sends me emojis, we make the custodian cups of tea to get her through the day, and we know each others’ families and hang out together after work.

But still, I feel my phone should be off bounds. I am not in the staff Whatsapp group, and I refuse to give my personal phone number to an outsider. I don’t want a call on my personal line for professional reasons. I don’t want to bound up from my chair to check a text, only to find that it’s from work. Our IB coordinator calling me is one thing—I know her and trust her and she only ever calls for urgent, time-pressing matters, or else because we’re friends and she’s calling non-professionally. This is something else.

Probably, I’m being silly. I’m certainly aware that my hopeless crusade to turn Israel into a written culture, instead of a damnably backwards oral one, means destroying some of its bonhomie in favor of cold efficiency. But truly, couldn’t the district coordinator just write an email instead of calling? Why must I waste hours of my time on personal contact when the written word is so much more reliable, and a nice, solid record, too?

Another Israeli cultural phenomenon to which I must accustom myself is my students constantly having absences for army draft interviews. The first time a kid told me they’d be gone because of their “Tzav Rishon,” I looked blankly at them.

“You’re missing class because of first turtle?” I translated poorly, and quizzically.

Since then, I receive at least one email a week titled “First Turtle Absence.” I’m thinking of storming the drafting office and demanding that Israel stop the churning of its military-industrial complex –or at least during English class hours.

In my end of year conversations with students, one of them told me she feels pretty good about our classes, because “everyone knows that a Wenger 5 is an IB 7.” I guess I was the only one who did not know that. Sometimes I wish I could just smush the IB markbands into their faces until they inhale the criteria and have them memorized like me. But probably best to avoid that as a teaching method.

On Monday, my colleague from East Jerusalem interrupted my grading.

“How’s it going?” he inquired.

“Good, how about you? Ramadan going okay?” I responded.

“Baruch Hashem!” he answered, and exited winking as I burst into startled laughter. Sometimes our school feels like the oddest poster-child for coexistence.

Ramadan Mubarak and Chag Shavuot sameach, everyone.

With the Help of G-d

When I was in university, I turned in my honors thesis rough draft with a feeling of great anxiety. Called in to my advisor’s office to discuss it, we spent a good hour or so on the intricacies of the quest for autonomy in American literature, and then he started humming in a way that let me know we were going to talk about something uncomfortable.

“By the way, when you’re discussing Ahab’s defiance of divinity…”

“Yes?”

“You write it in a peculiar way… I looked it up and found out that religious Jews won’t write G-d with the “o” inside—is that why you wrote G-d throughout your paper?”

“Oh. Yes. Is it a problem?”

“Well, it’s not exactly… I don’t know…”

We sat and thought on it for a while, and then called in the help of some other professors to think on it, and I can’t remember what was decided. However, the episode came to my mind this morning when I was reviewing some student work that was to be sent to the IB, and came across בס׳׳ד at the top of a document.

בס׳׳ד stands for “With the help of G-d,” and some religious Jews automatically write it on every paper they lay pen to. I wasn’t opposed to it appearing on the document, and didn’t think the IB would be, either. But somehow it seemed… unprofessional. A breaking of anonymity. Out of place. And yet it was absolutely fitting—a student who feels G-d helped him with his IA should write it! What to advise him?

I talked about it with him, without arriving at any conclusion, until I asked one of the wise heads in my school. She gave me the most brilliant advice:

“Tell him to write it, but write it in white, so it doesn’t show up on the paper.” Genius. We’ll see what he thinks of it.

In psychology class, students were researching Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and checking their own countries’ cultural norms. A Palestinian student raised her hand.

“Ms.! Ms.! Palestine is not in the drop-down menu!”

Ooosh. What to say? I remember when a student, asked where Israel should fit culturally (Europe? Asia? Middle East?), said “it shouldn’t.” It felt like a punch to my gut. And here, this student had her nationality denied by a website… no matter that Palestine isn’t officially recognized as a country, it’s her identity, and it’s missing. Should she check out Israel? Jordan? Urrggh. Nothing I could suggest seemed fitting.

I decided to think about it, but not soon enough—the next day, when they took the Harvard Implicit Bias test, Palestine was once again missing. And I still haven’t decided how to respond when it happens beyond a sympathetic shrug. I don’t think I’m the right person to counsel a Palestinian undergoing an identity crisis brought on by an American website. Ideas?

We have visitors on campus, which means… it’s time for the psych kids to run proximity experiments! They’re cozying up to strangers, or initiating conversations from uncomfortably fall away, while others record reactions.

In English class, a student brought in some William Carlos Williams for a warm-up. Opinions erupted quickly:

--The plums represent love.

--The plums represent the apple of Eden.

--The plums represent impatience and arrogance and justice.

--The plums are plums! They are just plums! Why can’t they just be plums!

--Ms. W, what do you think? Can they just be plums?

--I’m not telling. Read the rest of his poems and come back to me.

Later, I got antsy in the beautiful weather and had the kids all write questions on paper, ball it up, and head outside for some dodgeball. Once an entire team was down everybody grabbed a few questions and we sat in a circle, having a lazy, wandering discussion about The Awakening.

In a recent psychology class on authority, I showed my kids videos of the Milgram experiment, and Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison experiment, and asked them when it might be relevant in their own lives. I scanned the kids’ faces, wondering when an Israeli would think about the fact that they’d soon be joining the army. Only after a Vietnamese kid mentioned it, did one pick it up. I hope they remember it.

At the end of the class, I gave them a brief lecture about how not abusing power is one of the most important classes, one of the most important moral lessons they could ever receive.

“Repeat after me,” I told them.

“I will never abuse authority.” They intoned it solemnly.

“I will never stand by and watch those in authority hurt others.” They repeated it.

“I will never mindlessly repeat the words of another or follow their authority without examining it first.”

“I will never…” they broke into chagrined giggles at being tricked, and trickled out of the classroom in a slightly less somber mood.

Two weeks ago, on the senior trip in Eilat before pesach, we went snorkeling. I watched one of my students, a quiet girl, nervously dither on the steps, and I got back out of the water and held her hand.

“On the count of three. One. Two. Three. Jump!”

As we leaped through the air, a thought crossed my mind: if only all teaching were this easy. If only it was all holding your child’s hand, and leaping with them.

Well. Maybe it is. 

So Long, and Thanks for All the Dabs

I woke up this morning in a panic. I cast about me for my computer, and then calmed down and realized: it was not the day Extended Essays are due, the vivid mental picture I had of a student conducting her research on the actual due date was not true, her family was not gathered around me berating me for an extension, and the student I was visualizing was actually someone I’d gone to college with, not a real student of mine.

Phew.

A few minutes later and I was grinning. This is the stuff of which teacher dreams are made on, eh? But I have a newly formed resolution to re-check in with certain EE students.

I had the funniest interaction with a set of identical twins I teach. I really thought they were cheating and writing each other’s essays, but after checking through it with them, I realized, nope. Their writing is just as identical as their appearances. Whoops. They graciously forgave my misreading.

My 11^th grade English class has fallen in love with the Socratic Seminar. They’ve began a tradition wherein every time I enter the classroom after they’re already there, they’ve arranged the desks in a circle and all coo “Socratic Seminar?” at me. So I’ve rewritten my unit plans so that they get one at least every two weeks.

My psychology class learned about conditioning, and decided to condition me against using the word “like” inappropriately. So they clap every time I say it, in a loud, assertive way, and I’m starting to be conditioned to... clap about a second after every time I say “like.” Which is not exactly what we intended, but funny. Pavlov is chuckling.

My seniors had their final classes this week. They have about two months of self-study, mock exams, and final exams before graduation, but never again will we be gathered in the same room at 9:30 am, 11 am, and 2:30 pm every week. Being a teacher sucks. You pour your heart into educating and caring about and building relationships with these kids, and then it’s so long and thanks for all the dabs.

Two years ago, we started class by my giving them each half of a quote and making them find the other half. In our last class, I asked them to each give me a quote, to remember them by. I hung them on the wall by my desk, and looking at them gives me a deep satisfaction, as I remember what each kid said they learned and would take away from the course in our final circle.

I sent an 11^th grader the briefest of emails, asking the reason for his absence that day, and received back two paragraphs. The first explained that he was at a conference on neuroscience and brain technology. The second was a paean to my character and teaching. As I read through the list of fifteen adjectives that he was laying at my door, my heart sank. And then lifted again, buoyed by new purpose. Someday, if I try hard enough and don’t lose the thread, I’m going to become the person that my students think I am.

Israel? It shouldn't.

Sometimes, at lunch, I get tired of pretending to be a grown-up, and sit with my kids. They’re always having fascinating deep philosophical conversations about the nature of being, and I’m inevitably greeted with a few cries of “dank, Miss” when I plop down at the table. It also lets me see who’s not eating enough, who’s sitting alone, who’s unexpectedly got a whole posse of friends that aren’t in my classes with her, etc.

So a few days ago I sat in the middle of a fascinating conversation. The Culture Club is planning an evening of international culture, and was trying to sort out where the kid from Sri Lanka would go. Not with the Chinese, Cambodians, and Vietnamese, of course—everyone could agree that was weird. The Turkish kid interjected that his country was equally lost—Europe, or Asia? Both, the students decided. But where to put Sri Lanka? Maybe he could do a dance with the one Indian kid? Decidedly not, he responded in clipped British tones.

Then somebody mentioned Israel. It didn’t fit in the Arab bloc—where should we put it?

“We shouldn’t,” answered a student. She takes Arabic as her first language instead of English, so I don’t teach her. I peered around curiously at her, while the Turkish student frantically made cutting motions across his neck at her.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It shouldn’t exist at all. Do you know originally, it was supposed to be in Madagascar?”

“Uganda,” I answered feebly, and left to turn my tray in. I couldn't think of a single response-- all of my thoughts were running around the treadmill of "wow, there's an actual person who wishes I didn't exist and told me so to my face." I had so many other thoughts I couldn't sift them-- obviously, there are Israelis who don't want Palestine to exist, and does this girl's level of anger justify the way she just tried to erase my identity, and what would have existed in this area without Israel-- Syrian Civil War? ISIS? Who knows.

As the highest-level English teacher in a school where the only other native-level languages provided are Chinese and Arabic, I tend to miss these demographics in my classes. I don’t often get to hear what they think. In both of my English classes, in grades 11 and 12, I only have one Palestinian/Arab-Israeli student each, while several Israelis share their opinions regularly. When we inevitably come up against issues relating to the conflict, theirs is a lone voice, or sometimes, a silent one.

While reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings this week, we started to talk about racial profiling. None of the kids were American, and so inevitably, they began to talk about their experiences in Israel. The Italian kid has trouble in airport security because of his passport stamps, while the Swedish girls said the blond sails straight through, the brunette gets stopped.

“It’s not great to say, but we really need racial profiling, because—“ the Israeli kids trailed off uncomfortably, wondering if they sounded racist. I wanted them to finish the sentence, and asked, “does it work? Have terrorist attacks, suicide bombs, vehicular rammings, and stabbings, gone down since it’s been implemented?” There’s too much the Israelis never say in our hyper-liberal environment.

The internationals were torn. “It’s a bad thing. But sometimes, for security, you need it,” was what they generally responded with.

The Arab-Israeli spoke once, but emphatically, against it. Racial profiling was harmful and unjustified, and just as in the book we could see evidence of Maya's complicated racial identity, it had repercussions in real life.

We moved on to the question of whether people of color can be racist, and the kids got embroiled in an exploration of systemic vs. personal racism.

While the discussion was interesting and the students passionate, I kept thinking how safe it felt. At the start of reading the book I’d asked the students whether it would make a difference that there were no students of African descent in that particular classroom. While it’s full of students of various ethnicities and who would be identified as “of color” in the greater world, nobody relates to this book as Maya’s race. The kids thought it was both a good and a bad thing, and didn’t seem to mind my asking them to be conscious of it as we read in class.

But in a week, we will all go up to Jerusalem, for three days of exploring the local conflict, and while I’m curious about how it will go, I feel deep anxiety about my role as a mediator and mentor.

On the second day there, we’re to split into investigative groups and tour on our own, preparing a presentation for the school at the end. I’ve been assigned to the group exploring “The Civic Status of East Jerusalem.” Predictably, all but one Israeli student has switched out, while Palestinians and Israeli Arabs have joined in large numbers. In our planning meeting, the other teacher leading pointed out to me how those same students who spoke so eagerly about the deprivations in East Jerusalem completely shut down when a Vietnamese kid asked about bias in our visits.

I have a lot of concerns going in:

·      I don’t really know anything about what civic status means in any city.

·      The Arab kids will feel uncomfortable sharing their true thoughts with a Jewish-American and an Israeli teacher leading.

·      The Arab kids will share some of their hatred for Israel, and spread it among the international students.

·      The one Israeli kid will sit as silently as he did in our planning meeting, for the entire trip.

·      The international kids will see only East Jerusalem, and hear only from Palestinians or Arab-Israelis.

·      While I will learn a whole lot, rarely having been in East Jerusalem, the kids from East Jerusalem who are so excited to show us their city will see nothing new and nothing that challenges their viewpoint.

·      Will I be able to emotionally care for my students? I’m worried that since I myself am unsure what my beliefs are, I will be busy processing, rather than able to watch out for them. Open-mindedness on my part will call for a lot of intentional thinking, and I’m worried that my choices are between actually processing and thinking about what I’m learning, and being there for my students.

·      Safety. Is it better for us to all speak English and pretend we’re all internationals or Arab locals, or for us to get a proper security guard who walks around with us? The Israeli kid and the Israeli teacher are both very Sefardi in appearance, and my accent and dress makes me seem American—will we be safe?

·      And so unfair that in the other groups, who will probably split their time between the two Jerusalems, the Arab kids don’t have to worry about safety with the same intensity that Jewish Israelis venturing into East Jerusalem do. I keep thinking of the questions that I'll never be able to ask if I want to let the Arab kids feel like they can share in our discussion group, and of how I can't truly investigate the question of one country supporting people within it that don't want it to exist or actively want to cause harm to its population. That's certainly not something they'll bring up on their own, but if I ask about it, will they close off completely?

I rode home with the Hungarian Global Politics teacher, who told me that it’s only natural I feel anxious—now I’m about to see the flipside of Israel that I ignored when I made aliyah, and as a religious Jew, everyone is going to assume certain things about my viewpoint. But I shouldn’t feel too anxious—I did not come to oppress, and in fact, in teaching at our school, I’m helping.

I left the bus uncertain what to do with what he’d told me. He said it as though these were things I already know and agree with, but I think my wide-eyed pondering is a foretaste of what I can expect in our Jerusalem trip.