People on the bus go up and...

I am self-banning the words ‘awesome’ and ‘amazing’ from my blog. I have been abusing them. But I need to find synonyms, or maybe even more powerful words because each day truly feels that this place is both amazing and awesome. Oh well. There I go again.

'Sunday is Monday' here (this still feels odd) and on Sunday I met with Efrat and Joe from Moshav Sde Nitzan, in the western part of the northern Negev.

(A Moshav is a type of Israeli cooperative agricultural community of individual farms. Like a kibbutz, a moshav emphasizes community labour but, unlike a kibbutz, farms in a moshav tend to be individually owned. Workers produce crops and goods on their properties through individual and/or pooled labour and resources and use profit and foodstuffs to provide for themselves. In other words, like a capitalist kibbutz)

I was introduced to Efrat and Joe by M. who asked if I would give them a hand developing a value proposition for their new business. Efrat is a very accomplished artist and she and Joe design, manufacture and market Judaica, like tallises and kippas and Shabbat tablecloths. They are a wonderful and enthusiastic couple and I enjoyed meeting them immensely.

Joe & Efrat

Efrat and Joe met me at Café Masarik (I am thinking of having cards printed with their address), having driven 2 hours from their moshav, which is located about, oh, 4 km from the Gaza border. I asked them if they were affected by the recent shelling of Ashkelon.

“We see missiles fly over our heads daily” was their reply. "You get used to it." And they were actually smiling when they said that.

They have invited me to visit them when I go to Eilat, and I am hoping I can make it.

In the afternoon I took the bus to Rishon LeZion, about ½ hour away, where I visited with Meira, a childhood friend of my mother’s. I met Meira about a year ago when she came to Vancouver. She and my mother hadn’t seen each other in over 60 years.

Meira and I enjoyed a late lunch of Shakshuka

Rishon is the fourth-largest city in Israel, with over 220,000 people. Founded in 1882 by European Jewish immigrants it opened the first Hebrew school in the country in 1889.

My mother's childhood home - a few years later...

Rishon original main Synagogue

Meira very generously drove me around town where she pointed out to me the places where my mother’s family had lived and the school they had gone to. It is all still there, but (as my mother told me over the phone) sadly it is a bit run down. 

 We ended the visit at Meira’s  beautiful apartment on the 7^th floor (they call it the 6^th floor here, as the ground floor is “zero”) overlooking Rishon.

View of Rishon on a hazy day

On my way home, Meira (who had fed me all afternoon, first at a restaurant where we had delicious Shakshuka and then at her place, where we had poppy seed cake) packed me a bag full of burekas with many (delicious) fillings to take away with me.

Started early Monday by having breakfast with Idan Zait. Idan is married to my Israeli cousin Anat. They now live in Vancouver but are moving back, along with their kids, in June. It was interesting to ask Idan about what’s going on here. After 10 years in Canada, Idan has a great perspective.  

Idan (note the two cell phones)

He believes business people here are way tougher than at home. In Canada, things are just simpler and deals are more straightforward. People aren’t always trying to get one past you.

I asked him my now-standard question: Why don't people here worry about Iran/Hezbollah/Hamas?

“Of course they worry”, he said. “Why do you think they are all stressed? It is just that they don't realize this is what they worry about.”

But I am not so convinced (sorry Idan). Israelis seems to share a lot of the characteristics of other Mediterranean folks. And Italians don't worry, at least not immediately, about being hit by Iran. 

With Idan at cafe Landawer

Later that morning, I spent time at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art visiting with old friends Vincent (van Gogh), March (Chagall), Camille (Pissarro), Wassily (Kandinsky), Jackson (Pollock), Mark (Rothko; Hello Bernard!) and many more. It was crowded in there.

Museum of Tel Aviv

(At the Museum, I rented one of those devices you carry with you to play a recorded description of what you are looking at. Unfortunately -and this isn't unusual in Israel where often they fall short on the "last inch"- not all paintings and sculptures had a descriptive recording but those that did weren’t properly marked and so I spent too much time trying to match the overall map of the complex with the exhibit halls with the exhibit groupings with the exhibits themselves and then, all that with the device I was carrying.)

After over three hours walking slowly and trying to take it all in, it was time to head out. When I returned the device, the lady working there asked me if I had enjoyed the visit, and then asked me if I had seen the new wing, which opened just a few weeks ago. 

New wing? I hadn't noticed it was there (The website said nothing about it, and there were no signs; did I mention Israeli’s weakness on “the last inch”?). So she came out from behind the counter and personally walked me over to the new wing.

New wing? It is a whole new full and complete museum! 

Too much for one day, so I took myself to the cafe (hadn't had a coffee for about 4 hours) and decided the new wing was going to happen for me another day.

New wing of the Museum, on the escalator going to the cafe

From the Museum I headed to Holon, to the meeting of Angel investors and start-ups David Assia had invited me to.

Holon is about 10 km south of Tel Aviv and, true to my intention to “act like a local” whenever possible, I took the bus to get there. I often take the bus now and sometimes I even know what I am doing.

On my way there, a man got on the bus. He was in uniform but looked older than the conscripts you see everywhere. He also looked rather scraggy, which in my observation is unusual for older soldiers. He was wearing an unusual-looking kippah and carried a large backpack.

I could see from my seat on the third of fourth row that this man and the bus driver were discussing something animatedly and suddenly, and for the first time in almost 4 weeks here, I started to worry.  

What is in his backpack!?

I was relieved when the man got off the bus. This wasn't the right bus for him.

This whole exchange took, maybe, 3 minutes. Was I the only person who worried? Did the bus driver go through the 999 tell-tale signs he is trained to look for when he is about to unmask a suicide bomber -- and dismissed them all? What about the other passengers, did they look up from their iPhones and notice the man? Probably not.

And this, it occurred to me afterwards, is also a way for Israelis to win this stupid war against people wanting to meet their 72 virgins right now: Don't give them power by worrying. At least don't show fear to them. Just build a fence and try and keep as many out as possible.

Their strength astounds me.

I wanted to see a bit of Holon, so I planned to arrive about 1 hour before the meeting was to start. The city, with about 200,000 people, has the second-largest industrial zone in Israel, after Haifa. In the early months of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Holon was on the front line, with constant shooting taking place. In the 1950s, the city was populated by Jewish immigrants from Arab countries but I would guess -- from what I saw, anyway-- that the city has a large Russian population now.

I asked the bus driver to drop me off “downtown” and walked about for a while (I also learned that a freshly squeezed glass of Orange Juice costs precisely half in downtown Holon than it does in downtown Tel Aviv).

In Israel, when you want to know how to get somewhere, you stop any passing stranger and immediately 3 or 4 people gather round and all discuss your question and tell you the best way to get where you want to go. So that is how I figured out how to get to my destination.

The meeting I went to took place at the Holon Institute of Technology (HIT) and was co-sponsored by an investment company, with the goal of promoting networking between investors and start-ups looking for funding. The format is the same as a “Speed Dating event” so 20 start-up executives presented in 5 minute time slots (with a big buzzer going off at the 5:01 mark). It was actually a lot of fun as it never went on for too long – and a few times I wished the speakers had been allowed to go longer.

The event started at 5:30 pm (or “17:30” as they refer to it here) and ended at 8:30, including a break with burekas with many (delicious) fillings..

At the end of the event, as I was saying goodbye to David Assia and others I met there, I abruptly realized that (1) I was somewhere in Holon, and (2) I had no idea how I would get back to Tel Aviv, because (3) I could not remember where the bus had dropped me off (mum, Inge, don’t worry: I always have enough cash for a cab ride home, even from Holon).

So I asked the organizer, Tuvia, whether he knew where the nearest bus stop was. He gave me the look of a person who hasn’t been on a bus in a very long time… and then smiled and said “Just wait!”

Tuvia walked over to the podium, grabbed the microphone  and in a booming voice announced in Hebrew for all to hear that Rachel from Canada was here and needed a ride to Tel Aviv and it would be a mitzvah to give her a ride (the mitzvah part I did not get…).

Needless to say, I had a choice of rides tonight.  Plus, not only did I score a free ride in a luxury vehicle, I had more captives to interrogate!

With Tuvia M., organizer

Gad, my friendly driver, works for a start-up and, after exchanging pleasantries (this is always the short part of socializing with Israelis) I told him the story about the man with the backpack on the bus. He completely understood. He told me he felt something like that for the first time in his life a few months ago when he took his 18 month old son to the train station to show him trains. He had never felt that before but now he feared for his son. But, he said, this is how things are. That is it.

Next month he goes to do Miluim to the Lebanese border. He says he will miss his son.

(Miluim is army reserve duty and one of the remarkable characteristics of life in Israel: men, after completing regular army service at age 21, are called up for a MONTH of miluim each year until they hit age 40; it used to be 55. Imagine what that does to labour productivity!)