Voting as Israelis

For those of you who are not on top of your Israeli politics, this week Israel held elections for the 19^th Knesset (Parliament).  For both of us, this was a very exciting event.  Matt was feeling particularly Zionistic.  I think his exact quote was, “I can feel the Zionism pumping through my veins!”  I was just excited to vote, as this was the first time in my life I voted in “real time.”  Since I have been of legal voting age, I have never lived in the US during an election year – I was either studying in Canada or Israel – and have only voted absentee.

Voting in Israel, however, is very different than voting in the US (or any other country for that matter) in many different ways.  Firstly, the logistics of voting are quite unique.  Left over from the early years of statehood, one votes in Israel by slipping a small piece of paper with a letter on it representing the party you wish to vote for in an envelope and then slipping the envelope in a box called a קלפי, kalpi.  The trick is knowing which letters represent which party because, more likely than not, they do not have anything to do with the party name.  For example, the Labor Party (in Hebrew: עבודה) uses the letters "אמת" on their slip of paper, the Torah Judaism Party (in Hebrew: יהדות התורה) uses the letter "ג"  on their slip, Tzipi Livni's new party, HaTnuah (התנועה) used the letters "צפ", so on and so forth, with each party represented by a seemingly arbitrary array of letters.  The history behind this is quite fascinating.  In the first years of statehood, much of Israel’s population was made up of immigrants, many of whom were illiterate in Hebrew.  To ease the voting process, each party was assigned a letter starting with "א" then "ב" and so on (this is like assigning parties “a”, “b” etc.) so that citizens who could not read could simply find the letter of their party and vote.  Over the years parties have merged (causing multi-lettered slips) and many many new partied have formed (there were over 30 parties running in this election) each getting assigned a new letter or combination of letters.  The result of all of this looks makes the voting booth look like this: 

                                                   

And here we are putting our sealed envelopes in the kalpi - the moment of truth!  As they say here: מי שמצביע משפיע / Mi sh'matzbia mashpia / Whoever votes, influences (it sounds better in Hebrew because it rhymes).  

                           

Figuring out your voting "strategy" highlights another major difference in voting in Israel - the fact you need a strategy to vote.  Unlike in any election we've been eligible to vote in before, when voting here you're not necessarily trying to vote for the "winner" (also known as the Prime Minister).  I'm not about to get into all the details of how the Israeli parliamentary system works (it's complicated, you can Google it), but suffice it to say that the government works on a proportional representational system, so one may decide to vote for a party that has no chance of getting the Prime Minister-ship, but is likely to represent their views as part of the ruling coalition.  Or one may choose to vote for a party that is likely to head the opposition   Or one may vote for a small party with a very specific agenda, that hopefully has a chance of crossing the threshold to get seats, so that their specific interest can be represented in the government (for example: the Pirate Party, the Anti-Pornography Party and the Green Leaf Party).  This last option often leads to wasted votes.  If this all confused you, it's ok, you're in good company.  Like many Israelis, we weren't 100% sure who were voting for until the last minute, literally.  

The last thing that struck us as odd about election season here in Israel is that it is completely PC to ask people who they are voting/ voted for.  While your actual ballot is cast secretly, your family, friends, neighbors, co-workers and bus driver do not believe this information is private in any way.  The day after elections we took the afternoon off to go to the Train Museum in Haifa (which, if you like trains and/or Israeli history, is a pretty cool place).  When buying our tickets, we asked the man at the ticket counter if there was a special price for new olim (immigrants), which most museums in Haifa have (one of the fun perks).  While he sadly informed us that they did not, our question did perk his interest in us.  "Where are you from?" he asked.  "The United States," we replied.  Which he responded to by asking, "Oh, did you vote yesterday? Who did you vote for?"   At first we were slightly uncomfortable being asked by strangers about our voting tendencies, but found that no one really judged us and it is just a normal topic of conversation here.

If you want to know who we voted for, you can email us privately.  :)

Wishing you all a great week,

Stef and Matt

Language Barriers as Israelis

Generally, the two of us pride ourselves on having fairly decent Hebrew.  We can get around, do our shopping, have intellectual conversations with our Israeli friends and read books, but that by no stretch of the imagination means we are 100% fluent.  I am still learning dozens of new words a day in Ulpan (many of which you would never use in casual conversation, but frequently find in newspapers and books, nonetheless...).  In any given conversation, news broadcast or radio program we are averaging between 70 and 95% comprehension of all words used - which is not too shabby and does not prevent us from garnering the overall gist of what we are hearing.  Last night we went to see a play with one of my Ulpan classmates.  At the end we all remarked that the play was very interesting, but we all had a hard time with the first few minutes because the Hebrew was fast and complicated.  Once we understood the context of the play, however, the rest became much easier to follow.

The fact that we do have a strong grasp of Hebrew puts us ahead of the curve of many new olim (immigrants) here in Israel.  For many newcomers, the first weeks, months and years are an extended crash course in a new language that uses a completely different alphabet and has markedly different grammatical structures.  This proves challenging for opening bank accounts, signing leases on apartments and general day-to-day shopping.  Thankfully, most Israelis have a decent grasp of English, but that doesn't always help...

Earlier this week we took a train to Netanya to meet one of Matt's college roommates who was here for work.  Let me first mention that the fact that we were meeting up with this particular friend in Israel is one of the most unpredictable and amazing occurrences since we made aliyah.  This friend, a good Italian boy with no previous connection to Israel (except for Matt, that is) is now working for a company that is building a desalinization plant on the coast of California.  The company that is helping them build the plant is an Israeli company that has built similar plants here in Israel.  Now this friend gets to come to Israel for meetings and we get the pleasure of meeting up with him.  What are the odds... Now back to the train ride.  Since we've taken the train before, we knew that you have to get off in at one point and switch trains (not necessarily so obvious for first time train riders).  On the second train, at the stop before the one we needed, the conductor made an announcement that the train would not be stopping at the next stop, but would rather be heading straight to Tel Aviv.  Any riders who wanted the next stop would have to get off and switch trains again.  This announcement was made quickly and only in Hebrew.  At that moment we were very thankful that we speak Hebrew, otherwise we would have ended up an hour from our intended destination.

Language barriers can also innocently offend people.  Last Shabbat we invited over two couples who are also new in our neighborhood.  Both couples had a kid around 2-3 years old and they immediately hit it off and starting playing together.  While working on a puzzle, the little boy, whose family had only arrived in the country a few weeks prior, called out to his parents that the little girl told him to "die" and he was very upset.  What the little boy didn't understand was that the little girl, whose family had already been in the country for a few months and who had been attending Hebrew speaking Gan (kindergarten), was speaking to him in Hebrew.  The word "die" in Hebrew means "enough" and is often used by small children to mean "stop it! leave me alone!"  The parents of the children then had to do some quick intervention - "don't worry, honey, she's just speaking Hebrew, she doesn't really want you to die."

And on that note....

Shabbat Shalom and have a great weekend!

Stef and Matt  

Seeing my Students in Israel as Israelis

One of the hardest things about our decision to make aliyah was leaving behind a job that I knew I would never be able to replace here in Israel.  The unique niche in the world of Jewish high school education where I found myself suited me.  That's not to say that everything about it was perfect.  Like any job, there were days when I came homed and complained to Matt about how hard things were that day and why I was so frustrated at this thing or that person.  But overall, it suited me.  I was teaching a subject I loved to students who (at least pretended or learned to) care with colleagues that I respected.  

For many reasons, which include language barriers, lack of opportunity and differences in culture, an equivalent job here in Israel just does not exist, especially not in Haifa.  While I am sad that the short Chicago chapter of my life is over and I will now have to reinvent myself professionally, I am happy that my connection to Chicago, my school, my colleagues/friends and my students carries on.  This week, the senior class of 2013 arrived in Israel for their Senior Israel Experience, a 3 week trip, and I was there to greet them at the airport when they arrived.  These students were my first class.  They were freshmen when I was a "freshman" teacher.  I learned from them what worked and what didn't in the classroom.  And when I had some of them again as Sophomores and many more of them again as Juniors I got a second chance at being the best teacher I could be for them.  I watched them grow up from hyperactive 9th graders to, still hyperactive, but significantly more articulate upper classmen.  And now, as an Israeli, I got to see them at the peak of their senior year, listen to them talk about their memories of high school and expectations for college, and be a significant person in their life, albeit not their teacher anymore.  

As I accompanied the group on the ride down to the airport (which turned out to be quite eventful as the luggage compartment was left open and a few bags flew out on the highway - all were later recovered) one of my colleagues turned to me and said: "Your presence here feels so natural."  Which had been my exact sentiment at that moment.  

I often miss my old job, but I am also extremely happy where I am in my life now.  And I am comforted to know that the connections I made, the lives I touched and the lives that touched mine are not lost, but strengthened by our new relationship.  

Shabbat Shalom and have a great weekend,

Stef (and Matt)

Finding Family as Israelis

One of the first questions Israelis ask when they hear that you're an oleh hadash (new immigrant) is: Do you have any family in the country?  Until recently  the answer for me (Stef) had always been "no".  

Marrying Matt, however, meant marrying into his Kibbutz family, of which now I get to claim as my own.  Little did Matt know that marrying me also meant marrying into a kibbutz family.  I didn't know either...

A few years ago, when Matt and I were planning our wedding, my mother was tasked with the job (which turned out to be a very difficult job) of proving I was Jewish.  This lead her to search for her mother's ketubah, which in turn led her to a shoe box.  In this shoe box was a folder and in the folder, a stack of letters held together with a rubber band.  The letters, she discovered,  were a correspondence between her grandmother, my great-grandmother (who I had the privileged of knowing until I was 10) and a second cousin of hers in South Africa.  After a quick facebook search, my mom learned that the descendants of this cousin from the letters lived here in Israel.  The family had all picked up from South Africa in the 1960's and moved to a kibbutz about 30 minutes outside Haifa.  Of the 5 sons, 2 still lived in Israel, one passed away, one went back to South Africa and one recently moved to Australia to be closer to his kids.  Over the course of the past few years my mom has been reaching out to these newly found family members, among others, and rekindling long-lost relationships.    

I met the first of these Israeli family members (the one who now lives in Australia) two summers ago.  He and his wife, who are of my parents' generation, met me in Netanya and took me out to dinner.  It is odd experience to meet strangers who are actually family, but who are still strangers.  What it really means is that the person who passes you on the street or sits down next to you on the bus might actually be your long lost cousin, and you would never know.  

With my mom visiting us for the past couple weeks, she decided it would be a good time to meet the rest of the "Israeli side of the family."  Another of the brothers and his wife, who live outside Netanya, picked us up and drove us to the kibbutz where their family first settled 50 some-odd years ago and where one of the brothers still lives with his wife, also a native kibbutz-nik.  All of the "cousins" were lovely people.  We schmoozed, shared family stories and compared old photographs - an exact copy of one of the photos was found in both my mom's album and their album - a nice piece of evidence that we were eating lunch with the right people.    

Another discovery at the meal was that my family's kibbutz, Galed, was the "parent kibbutz" of Matt's uncle's kibbutz, Ketura.  To top it off, my cousin's wife is the first cousin of Matt's boss at Ketura from when he volunteered there in 2006 and who, we learned, grew up down the street from where we currently live in Haifa. The world just keeps getting smaller and smaller.

At the end of the day, I'm not sure that these new cousins really feel like family.  I am happy to have found these distant relatives and had the chance to meet interesting people, but I don't feel any more connected to them as I do to the other wonderful people we have met here in Haifa or at other points in our lives.  I was raised to believe that good friends are just like family and I have always been grateful for the presence of good friends in our lives.  Who knows, maybe some of our friends are really family anyway?

Shabbat Shalom and have a great weekend,

Stef and Matt