End of Kipple #13

 July 29, 2011

Ask my generation of America how we feel about American Dreams. The answers reverberate with disappointment.

Clarkie Expats

We aren't dying in the trenches for the most part. But we are dying of disease, of suicide, of pointless, causeless crime. We are dying of loss. Of broken hearts.

We scatter to the four winds. We take America with us. I find the country I love more than anything else in the world bursting at the seams with passion far beyond its borders.

On the streets of my  new country, I may not agree with all the protests. But every time I pass them, shove through them, I grin from ear to ear. Tel Aviv is exploding with the fury of the people.

July 30, 2011

These days, there's a protest about everything. Walk down Rothschild and we've got a tent city for the next five months. "The Housing Protest." Because "the rent is too damn high". And damn it, we're going to impose homelessness on ourselves (sort of) until the government does something about it.

Elyaqim

Signs everywhere scream "If I were a Rothschild" and because we're all into irony and half-assed wittiness around here, the masses set up their tent city along the richest street in the city, just to piss off those who don't have to worry about the rent being too damn high in their front gardens. Because they're probably the ones raising the prices too damn high.

The protesters are adamant: "We're not leaving!" 

"This is a democracy and the people say..."

"This is capitalism, opening the market to everyone, closing the gap between rich and poor."

The tent city feels like a carnival, fully equipped with fire throwers, street musicians, magicians, food vendors.

I can point out the blatant hypocrisies of this gang: how they all seem to be clean, despite the fact that they have supposedly abandoned their roofs and plumbing for the duration of the demonstration. Over 100 days. How, despite the too damn high prices, the street musicians come equipped with state-of-the art performance equipment: speaker systems, computers with mixing programs. And the tents are relatively empty. The possessions are being stored--Mom and Dad's place? In the apartment we're not sleeping in but still pay for even though the rent is too damn high?

Well, the rent is too damn high, so I'm all for doing something about it. But if I were sleeping in the tents of Rothschild Blvd., you better believe I wouldn't be handing over the rent check every month. Maybe it's working. There have been rumours floating around from Up Top about building new units and subsidizing all of us whiners for the interim.

Of course there was the "Cottage Cheese Protest," which was relatively successful. Same basic principles as the housing kaboom: "The price of dairy is too damn high, how are we supposed to feed ourselves?" Solution: stop buying dairy for a significant period of time.

Social Justice Protest, Tel Aviv, July 30, 2011

A bowl of cottage cheese was sent as a "gift" to the Prime Minister because it is so damn expensive, he should cherish that bowl forever because the people think so highly of him. And whaddya know? Prices dropped by two or more shekels. I had cottage cheese with breakfast the other day. We're still whining, but not as much.

The doctors have been protesting for months, on a rotational basis. "There aren't enough of us." "We don't get paid enough" and, as we all know, "the cost of living is too damn high". To rectify the plight of the doctors, though, will require a complete overhaul of the medical system--not the health plans, but the admission rate of doctors in this country. Perhaps open the door to Nurse Practitioners and Physician's Assistants in the country. Less of a burden on the doctors, more health care accessibility for the people. No need for an ongoing MD hunger strike.

It's going to be a long one.

The "Young Couples Protest". They bring the babies in the strollers. "Diapers are too expensive." "Day care is too expensive." "Everything is too expensive, how are we supposed to raise our children like this!?"

The Social Workers were also on strike but sadly, to hardly any avail.

My roommate says: "The country is in a balagan!"

A Housing Protester at the Social Justice Rally, TA

I love it. It's the era of America I missed, having been born too late. But for here, I was born right on time.

It disappoints me that Americans aren't doing the same thing. Just imagine if. I feel like I can be more American in Israel than I could ever have been in the States. Plus the fact that here, it might be getting bad, so we scream about it, whereas the situation has long become unsalvageable in America.

I think I'll stay. I know I'll stay. My job might be horrible, but my life is great. Here, there is so much to live for beyond mere existence. What is important in the end is what counts here. Not the ticky-tacky in between.

End of Kipple #12

July 23, 2011
There is not a day that goes by that I don't ask myself at least five times why I gave up on everything and naturalized myself into this crazy place. But there is not a night nor morning that I regret it, that I am any less than absolutely certain that it was the best decision of my life.

Sure, I feel more free here than in "The Land of--" and rail against the place I came from, for everything is has allowed itself to become and everything it hasn't. American is my greatest love affair gone awry. All promises broken, all expectations spent. I will never get over it.


Nearly one hundred years after our first Lost Generation, we are lost again, scattered globally, reifying the American Dream that found itself impossible to realize within American borders. True, I could have stayed, fought forever in vain to change what cannot be changed and sacrificed that greatest gift of existence.

Perhaps I am selfish. Perhaps I have left Uncle Sam down and although I feel completely betrayed, I still asked myself "not what my country can do for [me] but what [I] can do for [my] country". I asked and Providence answered truthfully: "Nothing. Go out and create the Dream beyond here. Represent the best possible and fight by being the opposite of expectations".

I am tired of complaints matched with complacency. I am tired of rhetoric and no action and no results. So I throw myself full-force into it where I can and I do not stop. I will be a juggernaut, if need be.

End of Kipple #11

May 30, 2011

"Yes, I made Aliyah," I can say, and I know that sentence is loaded with whatever religious, historical, imperialistic, and political weight we put on it. I have heard that word, "aliyah," used in a reverent tone, an excited one, a loathsome one, a bitter one. I can translate it: "I ascended"--to this place so full of contradictions it makes my mind reel. 

But there is a Midrash that asks: "Why is the Torah compared to water?" The answer is a simple one: "Because water flows to the lowest places. The Torah finds those who are the most humble and the most downtrodden and reaches out to them. Those at the top are left without the sustenance of life." So perhaps we have all ascended merely to to go down again. Perhaps I must follow the water down to its sources and pool there, create subterranean oceans with it, feed the land above, because not everything that exists meets the eye. Remember that beauty is rooted in something unseen. Try to find it and rest there with it.

However you feel about "aliyah," I did it. I ask myself everyday if I am insane. The answer is always, irrevocably, "Yes". But I would never live anywhere else. The thought of that scares me half to death.

Over the next week or so, I will be moving from this City on the Hill, where I can't find gold anywhere other than the cheap kind that gilds. I am very tired of holiness these days. It just doesn't turn me on. Maybe a day trip here and there. Man-manufactured holiness beats me down, stifles me. I need open spaces, freer thinking, less judgement. That is holy. But I don't want to think about it. Just let me be.

I found an apartment in Yafo, very near the sea, and very near central Tel Aviv. I found an amazing roommate and an amazing location. I get mixed reactions:

"Yafo! That's amazing! Yafo is awesome! Really suits you! Really artsy. Lots of music. Lots of art," etcetera. And "Yafo! Why would you move there? Aren't there lots of Arabs there?"

My first reaction is to ask, "Aren't there lots of Arabs in Jerusalem?" I asked that yesterday and was answered with "But Jerusalem is Jerusalem." I held my tongue but wanted to say "But Israel is Israel and the Middle East is the Middle East."

Maybe I'm pretty much on my own on this one, but I don't tend to judge people by what they are.I don't tend to condemn people because of where they come from or what they look like. I judge people by who they are and go from there. I never knew how to see what people looked like on the surface. I had to be taught that this was important in society when I was young. I learned to force myself to look at something I always thought was inconsequential. 

I still force myself to look and I still don't understand it. But I am almost 24 years old and I still struggle to see the point the crowds are screaming at me, insisting that it's important that I notice whether you're black or white, Arab or Jewish, etc. etc. Talk to me and then I'll see you. Walk up to me with your masks and I won't.