Bubble girl

(I'm back from my Christmas break. I figured that if more than half of the world can have a 12-days of Christmas break, the fact that I am Jewish and live in Israel shouldn't keep me from celebrating in a secular Christmas sense as well. If my friend Barb can celebrate the parts of Yom Kippur that she likes, there is no reason I can't pick and choose what I like about Christmas.)

And so, I am back with a thought about living in Ra'anana. After we moved here, many Israelis -- and many North American Jewish know-it-alls -- were quick to tell us that living in Ra'anana was not really living in Israel. My hebrew ulpan teacher said that Ra'anana was a bubble. I didn't really know what she meant because for the first few years, I rarely drove outside the Ra'anana-Kfar Saba-Herzlyia area (for those of you who do not know Israeli geography, I didn't wander very far from home). However, I completely trusted my teacher, who was a born and bred Israeli.

We didn't visit Toronto for almost two years after our move. But before we left, one of my friends told me to be prepared for the Jewish types who wanted to dismiss the magnitude of our move. She told me that they would inevitably say things like: "living in Ra'anana is just like living here (Toronto, New York, Chicago, etc..)."

On our first trip back to Toronto (I specifically mention Toronto, rather than Canada, because there aren't enough Jews anywhere else in Canada to create a collective opinion on anything Jewish), no one said anything of the sort. I automatically assumed that my friend, being an ex-New Yorker, had simply assumed that Torontonians were the same as New Yorkers.

However, two years later, on our next trip to Toronto, I was standing in my old grocery store -- the one with the largest kosher section in all of Canada -- talking to some old friends. We were talking about life in Israel. All of a sudden, some woman I didn't know just joined in our conversation. I guess that if you are standing in the kosher section, other kosher section customers assume you are Jewish and by default, they can just join your conversation.

She said: "I overheard you say that you live in Israel." "Yes," I answered. "Where do you live?" she asked. "Ra'anana," I innocently answered. And then there it was.... plain as the nose on my face. She looked at me and said: "I would just love to live in Israel, but Ra'anana isn't really Israel."

I almost keeled over on the spot. I could see my ex-New York friend's cheshire cat smile in my mind's eye.

As my regular readers know, I am not one to let sleeping dogs lie. It's just not my style. So, I turned to her and said: "Oh really. That's funny. The Israeli government seems to think it is. They gave me an Israeli passport." And now I was on a roll, so I continued: "Don't try to find excuses why you don't have the guts to make the move. Ra'anana is in the center of Israel and even though there are a lot of English speakers there, at least I had the guts to go. Don't justify your pathetic excuses for not moving by insulting me."

That will teach her to join strangers' conversations.

Everyone in my little social circle just stood there.

I love uncomfortable silences -- especially when I initiate them.

I said good-bye to my friends and I went back to my shopping.

Well, that opinion has served me very well for several years now. However, the news of the past few weeks has made me wonder if perhaps I do live in a bubble -- albeit, a bubble in Israel. (Don't even try to start that debate with me again.)

After the rape of a teenage boy in an Israeli Juvenile Detention Center a few weeks ago, another friend walked up to me and said: "Well, what crazy North American olim (immigrants) move to places like Carmiel? It's a dangerous place. Everyone knows that."

I didn't.

I just assumed that moving to Israel was pretty much the same everywhere you went. I know that moving to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem is NOT like moving to a smaller place, but it never dawned on me that there are simply some places that North American, Australian, South African or Western European immigrants simply don't move. Unfortunately, Carmiel is one of those places.

After a little more thought I realized that most North Americans (and probably members of the other three westernized groups) move into areas that have reputations for being more Anglicized. And I guess we do it for a reason. We are more than willing to move to Israel and be active contributors to the future of the Jewish people. However, the more streetwise among us understand that we are never going to be truly Israeli. We are just too westernized. I have an Israeli passport and I speak passable hebrew. Many of my Anglo friends speak excellent hebrew. But it's not about those things.

We think like westerners. We can't help it. Our children wear helmets when they ride their bikes. We insist on using seat belts. We take turns at intersections. We do not honk our horns at the drivers in front of us the split second the light turns green. We take our places in lines. We are not afraid of someone getting in front of us. If we get out of line, we understand that we have lost our place in the line. We say please and thank you. We tip service people who help us. We do not interrupt other people's turns with bank tellers because we just need them for a second. We do not nap between 2 and 4 and we definitely don't get angry if children play outside between those hours.

I could keep adding to the list, but you get the point. Most of us are westerners living in Israel.

I will never agree with that dismissive woman in my Toronto grocery store. It is very easy to be an armchair observer. I can come up with hundreds of excuses for any number of things I simply don't want to do. However, I am willing to accept that Ra'anana is a bubble -- an Israeli bubble.