Considerations

Sixth in an ongoing series

RAMAT GAN, Israel -- So I was sitting in one of my International MBA classes at Bar-Ilan University the other day, and I realized that I had forgotten to bring a pen. The student next to me had an extra one sitting next to his notebook, so I took it without asking. When I had finished taking notes, I put it back on the table.

Then, a few minutes later, I realized that it had been a very Israeli thing to do. I guess I had started to adapt to the culture here.

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Israelis are frequently stereotyped as being very rude, pushy, argumentative, and obnoxious. Sometimes it is warranted. Just boarding a bus involves a lot of shoving and elbowing because everyone wants to be first. The next person to be served at a food counter or bank teller is the one who pushes his way to the front. Israelis have no tolerance for waiting in line -- everyone tries to "jump the queue," as the English put it.

But much of Israeli behavior is understandable when one looks at the culture in the context of three specific traits. First of all, Israeli society, like the Jewish people as a whole, views itself as one gigantic tribe in which everyone is a member of a single, large, extended family. (Some would say it is quite the dysfunctional family as well.) Secondly, many of the European Jews who settled the land that became modern Israel in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were socialists. They built communal farms -- the term in Hebrew is "kibbutzim" -- in which everyone shared everything while they tried to build a new country out of nothing but sand. Even the children were raised by the community as a whole. People needed to work together to survive the harsh conditions. Thirdly, Israelis feel that they are alone in the Middle East and surrounded by hostile Arabs and Muslims who only want to kill all of them. So everyone sticks together to defend themselves against a common perceived enemy (one can argue whether it is real or imaginary).

As a result of these collective mentalities that have trickled down into day-to-day Israeli culture, what would be viewed as rude in the United States is considered normal here. America is individualistic; Israel is communalistic. The community is more important than the individual. When people go out to restaurants or bars, people take food off of each other's plates without asking. If a person wants to try another person's beer, he will simply grab the glass and take a drink. If a person needs to borrow a pen, he takes it. And no one minds. It's not that people are rude; it's that everyone is expected to help everyone else with whatever they need. People rarely ask someone to pass the salt; they just reach over the table and take it. In a communal culture, everything belongs to everyone.

But there is more to the culture than sharing food. Despite the intense social, political, and religious divisions that exist within Israel, people genuinely care about each other. If someone drops something or needs help, six people will run over. Every time I go to the supermarket, I get frustrated because it seems to take twenty minutes for a person to check out even if he only has a few items. (I think I picked up impatience in Boston.) The customer and cashier spend the whole time talking to each other. At first, I thought it was because the customer was arguing over the price of each item. (This would not be a surprise.) But then an Israeli friend of mine told me that cashiers often have conversations with everyone. When a cashier asks how a person is doing, the customer will not merely respond with "fine." The person will actually talk to the cashier about his problems that day, and the cashier will try to offer some helpful advice to a complete stranger. I've never seen that anywhere.

Whenever I go to a store with an Israeli friend, he always tries to tell me what to buy. I'll get one brand of orange juice, and then he will take it out of my hand, grab a different one from the shelf, and then give a bottle of the other brand to me. "You don't want that one; this one is better," he will say. And then we will get into a friendly argument over which one is better. It's not that my friend is being pushy or bossy; it's more that my friend genuinely cares and wants to help.

Here's a common occurrence (recounted from this book): A boyfriend and girlfriend go to a restaurant. The girl tries to order a salad, and the waiter starts criticizing her choice. "You should get something bigger!" he exclaims right in front of the boyfriend. "You're so skinny! If you had some more meat on you, I'd date you myself!" And no one usually minds because it's just part of the culture. If I had said something like this while working as a waiter in high school in the United States, I would have been fired. Israelis are a very practical people, and they have a bluntness that is refreshing but occasionally tiresome.

The desire to help everyone even occurs in love lives. Whenever I meet someone, I always get the same three questions right at the beginning of the conversation: "Are you hungry?" "How old are you?" and "Are you single?" (In response to the first question: whenever an Israeli offers you food, you take it.) Everyone is always trying to set someone up with a date. Being single is viewed as a travesty in Judaism and something that needs to be corrected as soon as possible. When I went to a recruiter to find my first job in Tel Aviv, she mentioned that she thought I might like a girl whom she had placed earlier at a company. If I got a job there, the recruiter said she would introduce me. (I ended up going somewhere else.) Friends and family members of friends are always keeping an eye out for someone who might like me. And everyone does this for everyone. (In addition, women do not mind if you ask for their age because everyone does it.)

The attention that Israelis give to each other also extends into daily life here. One of the first things a person notices in Israel (as well as in much of the Middle East) is that people are always talking,
arguing, gesturing, and shouting. People are much more emotive here than in the West. Part of the reason is that people are more irritable because it is extremely hot. Another part of the reason is that people are generally more stressed out as a result of the conflicts. But I think the major reason is that Israelis care so much about everything that they feel a need to argue about it. (If one thinks that the country might be invaded or that he might die in a suicide bombing tomorrow, then every little aspect of life is meaningful today, and everything matters. This attitude is the complete opposite of the philosophy of nihilism, in which everything is meaningless and nothing matters because we will all die someday.)

When I lived in Jerusalem, I once asked a man at a bus stop what time the next one was arriving. "Ten minutes," he said. Another guy standing ten feet away walked over. "No, it's twenty minutes!" he replied. Then the two men started arguing over whether our bus was coming in ten or twenty minutes! When the bus finally arrived in ten minutes, the first man slapped my back, pumped his fist in the air, and grinned. "I was right!" he exclaimed. In Western culture, people generally try to avoid conflicts and arguments in their interpersonal lives out of a sense that it is uncivil and impolite; in Israel, people run towards conflict. People argue over politics, religion, business and sports all the time. (It's almost like the idea of the marketplace of ideas in capitalism: if everyone debates everything, then the best ideas will rise to the top. Endless argumentation can help a society.) To paraphrase New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in this book: Two Israelis having a calm discussion sounds like four Americans having an argument.

But fierce debate is not just a result of modern Israeli culture. For thousands of years, Jewish religion has generally encouraged argument and conflict. Yeshivas (religious schools) are filled with tables of students who read the Bible to each other and then talk back and forth over the meaning of a particular passage. Within minutes, the entire room is full of people yelling and shouting over the personality of Moses, the nature of Creation, or the commandment not to mix meat and dairy in the same meal. It's quite the surreal sight. In fact, the second most-important book in Judaism after the Bible is the Talmud, which is essentially a collection of arguments and debates between famous rabbis over countless centuries on Jewish law and how one should interpret the Bible.

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In many of the letters I've written, I've focused on the negative and political aspects of life in Israel because that is mainly what most of you see on the news. In this essay, I wanted to show some of the endearing traits of this occasionally-anarchic-but-always-exciting country. I imagine that living in Israel is like living in a small town -- after all, this is a very small country, and there are probably only two or three degrees of separation between any two people. But it would be a small town with a lot more sand.

Now, I don't mean to say Israelis are perfect. As I wrote earlier, they can also be extremely rude. In fact, I'd say that Israelis are paradoxically the nicest -- and the rudest -- people I've ever met. But that's the topic for my next letter.

Next Letter: No Way Out (or, Stuck in the 1970s). Prior Letter: All About the Palestinians

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Now Available: E-Book download: "Let­ters from Israel: An Amer­i­can journalist’s adven­tures in the Holy Land."

Related posts:

1. Letter from Israel: Stories from the Desert I
2. Letter from Israel: The Great Religious Divide
3. Letter from Israel: No Way Out (or, Stuck in the 1970s)
4. Letter from Israel: All About the Palestinians
5. Letter from Israel: The Meaning of Israel