23/2/01

Learning the Hard Way

Twenty years ago this week, I made aliya. I only did it for the laughs.

    At this point in my aliya, I can read a phone bill, I know the difference between MK Yitzhak Cohen and MK Yitzhak Levy, and when sirens go off, I know not to panic.
    It wasn't like that when I first got here. Like every newcomer, I had my moments of embarrassment, naivete and confusion. Sure, now we can laugh, but back then...
    I was studying at ulpan on Kibbutz Na'an. Part of our curriculum was to understand radio news reports, without which one could not be a passenger on an Egged bus. At the time, the Lebanon War was the lead item of every broadcast, so even among us ignorant twits -- important news to us was whether there would be a midnight skinny-dip at the pool, and if Michelle was planning to attend -- we knew there was a war.
    One lovely spring day, we left the classrooms and were trudging across the soccer field to the dining hall, when it happened.
    Air-raid sirens!
    I was no idiot. I knew what that meant.
    "Quick! Everyone to the bomb shelter!" I shouted.
    They were all frozen in sheer terror.
    "Hurry! We're going to be attacked!"
    No one moved. They were staring at me. Even the teachers were stuck in this mass paralysis.
    I jumped about, urging them to snap out of it, to race like mad.
    Someone had to be the hero. Someone had to save their lives. I shook a teacher. "DO SOMETHING!" I shrieked above the din of the siren.
    Of course, it was Holocaust Remembrance Day, and everyone realized it but me, even the Christian students.
    For all of them standing still in respect and retrospection, this was a deeply stirring moment, their first such experience, and here I was, hopping around like a yotz. Try as they might, some couldn't help but laugh.
    Finally, after about 20 seconds, someone whispered a word in my ear.
    "Oh," I said, and finally stood motionless, like every other person in the country. 

I MIGHT be prone to spectacular gaffes. Not long before I moved here, I was working at the Montreal Gazette, and I was sent on an errand. On the way back, I came upon a sizable demonstration.
    Happily, I noted they were Iranians.
    They were being largely ignored until I came along and whipped them into a frenzy.
    Addressing them a little too loudly and none too brightly, I announced that the Iranians were a great people because they were friendly to Israel.
    Wrong Iranians. Uh-oh.
    I sensed I'd better get back to the office, and fast. But the demonstration decided to follow me, and chanting fearsomely they nipped at my heels all the way through the park to St. Antoine Street.
    Naturally, this brought everyone in the Gazette to the windows, and someone asked, "What's going on?" (This is not unusual for people who work at a newspaper.) An editor answered, "It's Orbaum. And a few thousand friends." 
    It was the luck of the Iranians that I brought them to a newspaper, because they figured this is not a bad place to vent their fury -- especially if the building was full of Zionist enemies like me -- and they massed there until the police dispersed them. I volunteered to work very late that day.

ANYWAY, BACK to Israel. On my fifth day here, my sister Vicky got married in Tel Aviv. I was invited. I now had a lot of new relatives from Vicky's Persian groom and sister Debbie's Yemenite husband. The subsequent sheva brachot ceremonies doubled as an initiation rite for me, only nobody told me.
    I had watched enough TV to know that you never insult the natives when they're plying you with their culinary culture. That's why I've never been to China, because I'm not willing to eat twitching monkey brains.
    What these Israelis did to me was worse. It so happens I cannot tolerate fiery food. Put two grams of harif in a vat, feed me a morsel, and my flesh starts to dissolve.
    They figured this out right away, and they also realized I would rather accept the torture than be rude.
    "Try this, it's our specialty," they said, and I did, and I nearly fainted.
    "Very nice," I managed to say.
    Then someone came running over with a red sauce. I said it was very nice too. A green sauce. Delicious. They poured me a fiery drink. Yummy.
    By now, I had made a lot of new friends, lots of young Persian and Yemenite men only too eager to share their finest delectables with me.
    "Here, taste this. You like? Good! Want more? Good!"
    My belly was roiling with molten lava. I felt like a lab rat, but I soldiered on, not willing to make a scene.
    It didn't occur to me that, to my Jewish brethren in this here Holy Land, oppression of a captive freier was considered "fun."
    It was only a long time later that one of these gentle natives jabbed me with an elbow and said, "We sure got you good, eh?"
    Some day, I swore, I will get my revenge. With gefilte fish, but without the horseradish.

I HAD so much to learn about being Israeli, and I was learning the hard way.
    My next lesson came a few weeks later, when I was a volunteer on Kibbutz Lavi.
    I was shmoozing with some people, and mentioned that I was considering Zionizing my name -- literally. I knew a fellow in Jerusalem whose name I admired, John Zion, and I too was thinking of taking such a name.
    (It should be mentioned, this is a religious kibbutz.)
    "Sam Zion," I said, trying it out, smiling happily at the sound of it.
    Of course, everyone went nuts. They couldn't stop.
    I had no idea what I said, but finally someone explained, and the hysterics redoubled.
    (If you don't understand why that's funny, I can't help you. Smut laws, and this newspaper's very integrity, forbid me from translating that. All I can say is that it's Israeli slang for "****".)

CHANGING THE subject as quickly as possible, I would like to discuss public transport.
    There are a few people who still ask me to tell the taxi story, lo these many years after it happened.
    I was late for work. I was always late for work, but only by 15 or 20 minutes. Nevertheless, I was new at the Post, and it drove my boss crazy. Ultimately came the ultimatum: do it again and you're fired.
    So I woke up late again, and racing out into the street, I was near tears as I frantically searched for a taxi. But for some reason, on Herzog Street where I lived, you cannot get a taxi during morning rush hour.
    I ran like the wind to the next intersection and waited, searched, wondering where I'd be employed the next day.
    Finally my savior arrived, stopping right in front of me. I jumped in next to the driver and snarled, "Jerusalem Post! And FAST!" By now, I was in a fierce mood. I snapped open my newspaper, not caring a hoot if I was irritating the driver. Oh, I was bristling.
    A few blocks before we got to the place I was about to be fired from, the driver pulled into a parking lot and said, "Sorry, this is as far as I go."
    You can just imagine.
    I exploded. I shouted, cursed, screamed, fulminated. I then ORDERED him to take me to the Post IMMEDIATELY "or I won't pay you."
    He looked at me in amazement. "What, you think I'm a taxi?"
    It was a private car.
    Now I looked at him in amazement. "Of course you're a taxi! You're telling me you're not a taxi?"
    "I'm not a taxi."
    "You're NOT a taxi?!"
    "No, I'm not --"
    "YOU'RE NOT A TAXI?!?!"
    "No, and I'm also late, so if you don't mind..."
    I couldn't get out. I gaped at this fellow, eyes bulging in absolute horror -- at my own chutzpah, my rudeness -- still not believing him. I looked around: no meter, no coin tray. I scrambled out and saw it was a white Mercedes, with a roof rack -- it sure looked like a taxi.
    "I'm sorry," I said. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
    With the tiniest smile, he left me.
    I staggered to work, now 40 minutes late. My boss opened his mouth to say those two deathly words, but I shouted "Wait!" He stopped just long enough. "Before you fire me, let me tell you what happened."
    I did, and he didn't, and 18 years later I'm still there, and to this day I wonder why that driver didn't throw me out of his car a lot sooner.

AS I SAID earlier, my linguistic skills are still wanting, and even now, after 20 years in Israel (plus seven years learning Hebrew in Talmud Torah) I have no problem performing a verbal calumny. At a social gathering recently, I reminded a woman -- in front of numerous witnesses -- that I once interviewed her.
    Well, that's what I meant to say, but the verb "to interview" is difficult to conjugate. What actually came out was, "Hi there! Remember me? Sam Orbaum -- I once impregnated you!"
    Maybe I should have changed my name to Sam Zion.