Real Israel: 'Guide to a wild life'

A new book offers a light look at Israelis in their natural environment.

By LIAT COLLINS
Magazine cartoon 521 DO NOT USE (photo credit: Avi Katz)
Magazine cartoon 521 DO NOT USE
(photo credit: Avi Katz)
In the foreword, Angelo Colorni says he wrote Israel for Beginners: A Field Guide for Encountering the Israelis in their Natural Habitat partly for the “subtle pleasure that benevolent picking on the natives always gave me as my belated way of getting back at them for all the abuses and miseries suffered as a new immigrant.”
“Subtle” is not, however, the first word that springs to mind when reading this humorous look at who we are and why. Occasionally Colorni’s tongue is not so much in cheek as sticking out. But it’s hard to imagine anyone who has spent any time in the country (or any time with Israelis) not recognizing what lies behind the good-natured digs.
Colorni, 64, says the guide, published by Gefen Publishing House, is based on “first-hand, day-byday survival of over three decades in Israel.”
The result is sometimes painfully honest – just like Israelis themselves: “While some people have tact, Israelis tell the truth,” he writes.
The author, who immigrated from Italy in 1973, is a senior scientist at the Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research, National Center for Mariculture in Eilat, and he has studied Israelis as very wild life since his arrival, summing them up with a great deal of wordplay.
He notes that “like recipes in a cookbook that a gourmet collects over the years, some of the wisecracks are original, others are variations of someone else’s originals and yet others ‘borrowed’ intact from other sources.” Consequently some of the material sounds familiar (and possibly I wrote some myself).
In a phone interview, he says the book was basically conceived decades ago when, as a new immigrant in the pre-email days, he wrote letters to his parents every other week in which he “told them about the funny things to stop them worrying. That was the nucleus, and slowly over the years it grew into a collection of poking fun at the incongruities and people here.”
In the book, for example, he contends that Hebrew was probably revived “to satisfy the Israelis’ deep need to complain” and that “everyone speaks simultaneously, which obviously saves time.”
His chapter on language offers the insight that “the only thing less intelligible than spoken Hebrew is handwritten Hebrew.... The only thing less intelligible than Israelis’ handwriting is their signatures. While a signature often reveals a person’s character, the natives’ signatures do not reveal even their names...”
THERE IS one name that stands out in this book and in Israeli life, and I don’t know why I hadn’t realized it before reading Colorni’s guide.
“Etty is not just the diminutive of any Esther. Etty is a national institution. Etty is the name of the girl you find behind the teller’s window at the bank, post office, police station, telephone exchange or behind the desk of practically any government office. If you stood for an hour in a long line and your turn has finally arrived, Etty is the person who informs you that you have been standing in the wrong line or that you should have filled out a different form, and sends you back to the end of the line.... Etty is the clerk who sees better luck in the future (‘Tavo mahar!’) [‘Come back tomorrow!’]. Etty’s negative attitude is aimed at those few Israelis who take ‘no’ for an answer.... In fact, every native knows that ‘no’ is not quite the opposite of ‘yes,’ but rather the opening position before the real negotiations begin.”
Some of the author’s observations are clichéd (and possibly dated – he concedes that we’ve improved with time). Nonetheless, he presents them with obvious affection: “Tourists and new immigrants should be made aware that good manners are used in Israel in wartime and situations of emergency only. There may be nothing to lose by being polite, but many natives are obviously afraid to take the risk.”
Or: “When the natives begin to feel the world is moving too fast, a line at the bank counter or supermarket checkout is sufficient to offer them a much needed reassurance to the contrary. Israelis are a people of notoriously strong ideology and standing in line is seen as a violation of their principles.”
Each chapter commences with a biblical quote, and holy references are scattered throughout this unholy book: “The reluctance of the Israelis to accept any numbering system [such as boarding cards or numbered cinema seats] probably has its roots in the Bible: King David incurred the wrath of God by insisting on having his people numbered.”
Our (bad) habits are on display in this book, such as the need to crack sunflower seeds while reading the paper or watching TV: “For a non-native, spewing out the empty shells on and all around him unaffectedly without making use of his fingers may be taken as a strong indication that metamorphosis has been completed and he has turned into a real Israeli.”
In fact, as Colorni notes, “the natives don’t have any bad habits. They might be bad habits for other people, but they’re all right for them.”
Not surprisingly, the chapter on driving – “technically speaking, the most unreliable part of the car is the nut holding the wheel” – was among the best received among most readers. His comments on Arabic music and religion in other chapters have been criticized as offensive, however, for which he apologizes.
Regarding the economy, he notes that it is the ambition of most Israelis to actually be able to afford what they spend, “since it is now costing Israelis twice as much to live beyond their means as it did twenty years ago.”
The guide is unabashedly Zionist and pulls no punches when describing the threats the country faces: “For Israel losing a single war would simply mean being erased from the maps of the region (which has already been done, fortunately only in schoolbooks, by most of the Arab countries).”
The author admits over the phone that he has “inevitably acquired many of the Israelis’ bad habits.”
The married father of two, whose chapter on the IDF and reserve duty is written from personal experience, says: “Although I described the Israelis in a vaguely derogatory manner as ‘them’ and ‘us,’ today I identify unquestionably as one of ‘them.’”
And he sounds proud of it.
The book is illustrated by prizewinning artist Avi Katz, who made aliya from the US in 1970 and whose work regularly graces The Jerusalem Report. He, too, has obviously put a lot of personal experience in his sketches of Israeli life.
Israel for Beginners might not be an essential guide to understanding the country and its citizens, but it is a (generally) funny and “punny” read.
It is dedicated “to all those who made the right choice and came back home to Eretz Israel.”
Although life here is not always easy, it is definitely good for more than a few laughs.
liat@jpost.com