But I WANT to give you money!

I'm an honest person. I download tv shows to watch online, but if there is a movie I want to keep, or an album I want, I buy them. Especially so if the album is by an independent artist. I even downloaded an album from a website, that didn't require payment in advance. I listened to the album, really enjoyed it, decided to keep it, and went back and paid for it. I never received an acknowledgement from the not-known-outside-his-local-bar-scene artist, but that's a different rant altogether.

Today I came across an album that I wanted to download. I went through the whole payment procedure, came to "billing address" and started filling in my Israeli information. I selected "Israel" from the drop-down menu for country. Everytime I hit enter, up came an error message stating that my zip code didn't match my state.

Fine. I finally sent an email to Amazon and got this response:

At this time music downloads are only available to customers using a credit or debit card issued by a U.S. bank with a U.S. billing address...You also must be physically located in the U.S. at the time of purchase.

Well, okey dokey then. I understand distribution rights and whatnot, so I'm not too surprised by that. But please explain to me why they would have a drop-down menu with numerous countries listed if you can only be in one country?

A global world demands global accessability, but no one will let me buy this CD. If it were an independent artist, I would download it from a torrent, and send the artist a cheque. In this case, it's not, there's nowhere to send a cheque to. So sadly, the simple fact of living b'aretz, in the Land, means I shall have to find another *cough* means of *cough* accessing this CD.

Bang head here

When I was in the process of immigrating to Canada, I followed quite a few online forums about Canadian immigration. There were frequently jokes made about how if you called the immigration office multiple times with the same question, you would get a different answer every time. Except we weren't really laughing, because it was true. A number of us tested the information line, and never got the same information twice.

I'm thankful for that preparation, because despite having a fairly easy time with the bureaucracy here, we still occasionally experience some serious head-banging frustrations. Case in point:

We are leaving the country (we're not going far, just to Greece. Ha! Greece is "not far"!!) prior to having been in Israel for one year. That means we have to get a special travel document, a Teudat Ma'avar. Fortunately, a T"M is easily obtained at our local Misrad HaPnim office.

Um. "easily"

We went to the office, and were told we need a picture of each of us. Okay, that we already have from our original aliyah process. We go home, but have to come back another time with the pictures, because, like most government offices, banks and post offices here in Israel, they close for the afternoon.

So we come back another time with our pictures. While we're trying to figure out from which category to take our number, an employee comes out to help (for you Canadians, think of the Air Canada employee who wanders the terminals looking to direct passengers to the self-service machines). She informs us we need TWO pictures each. Now I'm really frustrated, because we have two pictures each, but I only brought one of each, because we were told we only needed one, but why didn't I just bring the others just in case and it's not like they're heavy or anything, they're only photos for cryin' out loud.

Anyhooooo.

Because the office is only open two afternoons a week, and I have ulpan (Hebrew school) in the morning, we are limited as to when we can go. So we went today, not realizing that today is not one of the two afternoons a week that the office is open, only to be told by the very helpful (different) lady there that because it's now less than 3 weeks until our trip, we have to go to the city of Ramle to get our Teudat Ma'avar. It seems the office in Modi'in is just a satellite office that sends everything to Ramle to be processed. This apparently adds over a week to the actual processing time, so we wouldn't get our T"M back in time for the trip.

So now we have to figure out how to get to Ramle, where the office is in Ramle, when they're open, and I get to miss another day of ulpan.

Funny: after I explained to the woman why I was about to collapse in a puddle of tears, I listed off all the things we need for the T"M and asked, "that's definitely IT, right? We don't need anything else?" She said, "ומחייך*." Smiles.

Guess she's dealt with olim before.

* I have been corrected; apparently I misheard. Smiles is חיוכים (chiyuchim). Thanks C!

Reframing perspective

Israel is a strange place.

For the last, well, since nearly forever, in the Middle East there have been some Arabs who have used various means to kill Israelis. Really Jews, but since these particular people don't seem to care who dies along with the Jews, I'll say Israelis.

They have used suicide bombers to blow up buses, pizza joints and coffee shops. We put up checkpoints to inspect cars and people to keep explosives from getting into the country. They found ways to sneak in around the checkpoints. So we put up a security fence to force them through the checkpoints. They enter schools and private homes to shoot and kill children and women. We put security guards at kindergardens. Everything they try, we find a way to block them; they just come up with another method.

The last few years have seen the weapon of choice change from one of preparation to one of convenience. And what's more convenient than a bulldozer when you're working on one of the many construction sites throughout Jerusalem? The first bulldozer attack killed a number of people, and would have killed more if not for so many Israelis being, unfortunately, prepared for anything. There have been two more attacks that were defined as terror attacks, and one, in Modi'in, that was shrugged off as a disgruntled worker.

So today, I was travelling on a bus in Jerusalem. We were stopped at the traffic light on Jaffa Street at Mahane Yehuda, the shuk, or marketplace. There is construction running the length of Jaffa, due to the new rail line being built, so there are fences and cement barricades and traffic jams all over the place. While we were stopped at the light, a breaker bulldozer started up next to us, and next to the large crowd entering Mahane Yehuda. As the bulldozer started moving, there was a collective intake of breath on the bus and a tangible tension in the air. The majority of people who were watching were all thinking the same thing: will the driver use his machine for construction, or destruction?

We watched as he swung the arm around, into the crowd of people gathered around the entrance to the shuk. Next to me, I heard my older seatmate start murmuring, "oy" and sucking in her breath. The arm came down - so close to the people - and, like a mother's hand directing her child out of the way, gently moved a cement barrier further into the work zone to widen the pathway for the pedestrians.

The light changed, and the collective release of deeply held breath nearly got lost in the bus sounds. The nervous chuckles had turned into regular bus chatter by the time we neared the hospital, where we got stuck behind an ambulance being searched for explosives before the crew could transport their patient to emergency. This, no one on the bus paid attention to.

"Normal" takes on a whole new meaning in Israel.

Date Night in Israel

Morey wrote a blogpost about our first movie date in Israel. Okay, so it's actually about the new Star Trek movie, but there's a little bit in there about our first Israeli movie-going experience.

Before I say a few words about the new Star Trek film, and you know I must, I need to describe going to the screening, our first 'movie date' in Israel. Israel is a modern country, and that applies to its movie cinemas. The experience was all very familiar, but just different enough to be memorable.

Boldly go... and read.

Roll with it

One of the many quirks of Israeli advertising - aside from the eye blistering overuse of colour, blinking graphics, STARS! EVERYWHERE! and ensuring not a smidge of white space remains to give the brain a second's rest - is the door delivery.

By that I mean, every day we come home to find something new on a door. Usually it's an advertising magnet. Israelis love magnets. Most newer Israeli apartments have metal doors, which, as a result of Israelis' love of magnets, are usually decorated with said magnets. Forget seeing the actual colour of your 'fridge. We have magnets for everything, including the health care branches. Repair guys, pizza, taxis, even the kid down the street who dogwalks.

Occasionally we come home to knob hangers. Flyers hanging off our doorknobs, advertising everything and anything (in eye blistering colours, STARS!, boxes, and every font that comes with Word).

But today, today, we had a really useful advertisement outside our door. A lovely little box with a picture of a puppy on it. Inside the box? A brand new roll of toilet paper. How handy!

Except... I can't figure how it's supposed to stick to the fridge.

The Day of Cows invasion*

* or, "they tried to kill us, they failed, let's eat."

In the United States there is Memorial Day. Ostensibly to honour our fallen soldiers, it has turned into the "official start of summer", the day to barbecue, the day the pools open, etc. Somewhere along the line, the "memorial" part of the day has been forgotten.

In Israel, we have Memorial Day (Yom HaZikaron), immediately followed by Independence Day (Yom HaAzma'ut). Yom HaZikaron, as I mentioned in my previous post, is a somber day. Even the boys' school where we have Ulpan, there was a ceremony honouring the fallen soldiers. Some of the boys had lost brothers and fathers; it was hard to see these normally boisterious, obnoxious, inconsiderate boys sobbing in the arms of their teachers and classmates. It was even harder to look around the room and wonder which of these boys was going to become a picture on the screen someday.

We mourn, we cry, we remember. Then we say "enough." Enough crying, enough pity, enough sadness.

במותם ציווי לנו את החיים
(basically, "By their deaths, they order us to live")

At the end of the day of Yom HaZikaron, we hand over the sadness to celebration, to Yom HaAtzma'ut. Benji Lovett of What War Zone says Yom HaAtzma'ut means, "go to a park and eat a cow." He's not far off. But before you barbecue, you party! In Modi'in, one of the parks was taken over by a stage, kiosks, popcorn stands, inflatable hammers (it's a thing), glowing necklaces, noisemakers - I felt like I was at a mini-Lallapalooza! We went to our friends' Dena and Moishe, whose mirpeset overlooks the park, giving us a bird's eye view of the whole event. The featured acts of the evening were Rita, one of Israel's most famous singers, and of course, meat.

The thing to understand about Yom HaAtzma'ut: it's all about the barbecue. Whatever can go on the BarB, does. Wherever you can fit a BarB, you do. The day of YhA (I'm tired of writing all that out), we went to my sister's in Jerusalem. Her husband stood behind the grill nearly the entire time cooking:

Goose breast
Chicken (both regular and tandoori)
Steak
Veal sausage
Chourizo sausage
hotdogs
hamburger

I've never seen so much meat in one place at one time.

To get to their house, we had to drive down Ben Tzvi, which is a major thoroughfare running alongside a large park, Gan Sacher. At one point, while marvelling at all the cars parked hither and yon - anywhere there was space - I thought there was a fire. A huge cloud of black smoke was billowing across the road. As we got closer, I realized the smoke was the result of about thirty bajillion barbecues all fired up at once. Seriously, Yom HaAzma'ut is the barbecue holiday. It sucks to be a vegetarian on YhA (although I was extremely impressed at the veggies a vegetarian friend of Pamela's brought to the barbecue! Impressed, and grateful).

After all that meat - and not being a big meat-eater, I limited myself - words cannot express how relieved I was that when we went to friends in Rana'ana for dinner on Thursday, they served fish!

What a way to experience our first Yom HaZikaron and Yom HaAzma'ut in Israel. It was momentous. And I just can't think of a better way to honour and celebrate our fallen soldiers than by first, remembering them and thanking them, and then full-on enjoying the lives they protect and the land they defend to the absolute maximum.

One minute for a lifetime

Here in Israel, Yom HaZikaron - Memorial Day - takes on special meaning. When nearly everyone has served in the Israel Defence Force (IDF), when nearly everyone knows someone who has died defending this Land, when nearly everyone knows, or is related to, someone who has died as a result of attacks on our country, observing a minute of silence in the evening, and two during the day is a small offering nearly everyone is willing to give.

Tonight I experienced my first Yom HaZikaron for Israel's fallen soldiers. I've watched the videos on YouTube many times of how people rise to their feet and stop what they are doing. How cars come to a stop on the roads, and drivers get out and stand by their open doors. Tonight, as I stood in my window, listening for the siren, I watched as car after car pulled over, anticipating. As I stood listening to the sirens in my town, in the next town, in the town after that, it occurred to me that I wasn't watching the cars on a video, I was standing with them, honouring my soldiers, my fallen, my country.

As compared to Memorial Day in the US, the music on the radio is somber, the restaurants are closed, there are speeches and songs and events commemorating the fallen. It's a sober event, not a celebratory one. But in true Jewish fashion, after remembering and honouring, we then celebrate on Yom HaAzma'ut. But we'll discuss that later.

Right now - may their memory be for a blessing.