Twentieth in an ongoing series
JERUSALEM — As much as I love working and writing from home during the day, there is one negative: The children next door.
No, I don’t hate kids. Let me explain.
Israel is a small, dense country. As a result, most people live extremely close to each other. The picture at the top of the post is from my neighborhood — there are three large apartment buildings right next to each other. This is extremely common — most people and families live like this unless they live in a few affluent areas or on a communal farm (known as a kibbutz). It is relatively rare for families to have houses unto themselves — most live in multi-room apartments in complexes similar to the ones pictured above.
Where it gets extremely aggravating is when children are yelling during the day. Imagine that a child on the third floor of the building on the right has a friend on the building in the center and wants to talk to him. He will not walk down a flight of stairs, go across the way, and walk up another flight of stairs to knock on his door. He will not even call him on the phone. He will just yell out the window until he gets a response.
It sounds like this:
“Danielle!” No response.
“Danieeeeeelleeeeeeee!” No response.
“DANIELLE!”
“WHAT?” she will shout back from the other building. And then a conversation will ensue amid more yelling. Now, imagine that this is repeated with different names and different children every few hours. I have been so close to shouting from my balcony in Hebrew: “Quiet! If you want to talk to him, call him on the phone!”
But I do not because I know the reason. It is not that the children are necessarily being rude — as I wrote in a prior Letter from Israel, Israelis are naturally more emotive, argumentative, and loud than Westerners. To them, such behavior is normal. Families will have entire conversations by yelling through the house to each other rather than by walking into another room.
Still, it really stems from the fact that the families of the local children are likely poor. Jerusalem is Israel’s largest city as well as the one with the highest rate of poverty. It is partly because many of the ultra-Orthodox Jews here work little (or not at all and survive on charity and government aid) in order to study the Torah as much as possible. It is also because most of the good jobs are located in Tel Aviv and other locations.
As a result, many people and families here look for any way to save a shekel (roughly twenty-five cents). Why spend money on telephone minutes when it is free to yell out the window?
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The attitude even extends into more-affluent parts of Israel since the country has a gap between the rich and poor that approaches the American level. In addition, items like electronics and fast food are more expensive than in the West even after converting currencies. A typical McDonald’s “value meal” costs the equivalent of $12 (the kosher meat, I hear, is shipped from Argentina). Electronics from the West have expensive tariffs. A beer at a pub is at least $7 because most brands are imported from Europe.
In addition, salaries are lower — a job that pays $50,000 in the United States may pay the equivalent of $24,000 here when one works for an Israeli company. However, items like groceries and clothing are cheaper here than in the United States (if you know where to shop). One can purchase five stylish, name-brand T-shirts — Israeli brands, that is — at a mall for $20 during a sale.
For all of these reasons and more, Israelis are very cost-conscious, and they love to haggle. The longer that me and my friends have lived here, the more we have begun to adopt their methods out of habit. Here are just a few:
- No one I know uses a dryer because electricity is expensive — instead, they hang their clothes outside. In the middle of summer, an entire load of clothes will dry in thirty minutes. (Just add more fabric softener so they do not become too stiff.)
- Many people save cell-phone minutes by making their personal calls from their work phones. Israelis love to talk — if a boss would ever ban personal phone-calls at work, the employees would just laugh at him. Besides, the bosses do it themselves.
- Few men I know go to a barber. Many have shaved or extremely-short haircuts because, after all, it is hot — and they likely became used to the style during their mandatory military service after high school. After all, it is free to run a shaver over one’s head (or to get a friend to do it). Why pay $10 for something that is free? As I wrote in a prior post, people in Middle Eastern countries have different attitudes towards beards — and no one has a problem with anyone who is not clean-shaven or has a scraggly beard. Razor blades are just as expensive here — if not more so — than in the United States.
- If a person has a car — and that is a big if — it is likely at least ten years old and would be viewed in the Unites States as a “piece of junk.” The exception is usually if someone has a good-enough job that provides a car and free gas. (It’s a common managerial-perk here.) The reason is that taxes on new cars nearly double the sticker value, and gas costs the equivalent of $8 per gallon. (Israel, interestingly enough, imports gas from Egypt and water from Turkey.) Besides, one of the benefits of living in a small country is that the public-transportation system is pretty good. Unlike in the United States, a car is not viewed as a status symbol — it is merely a device to get someone from Point A to Point B.
- Just like in my example of the children next door, another frustrating thing here is how Israelis pick people up. If a friend picks me up to go out, he will not park the car, walk to my door, and ring the doorbell. He will park on the street as close as he can — and honk. And if I am not there within five seconds, he will keep honking. (A joke that I tell Israelis: “How can you tell that I am American? I have patience.”) My friend will rarely even call to say he is down the street — after all, that costs minutes and money.
- Outside of a few posh areas of Tel Aviv and Haifa, Israelis hate anything that smacks of pretentiousness — and it is revealed in the clothing here. Most people wear things like casual, cheap jeans and T-shirts. Sometimes even with holes and whatnot. I have seen many Israelis in pubs that if they would walk into a downtown bar in Boston, people would likely think that they were homeless. Few bartenders even bother to dress to impress (for tips) — although the female ones, of course, often wear revealing tops. Just like cars, clothing is often viewed in practical terms — especially since no one wants to wear fashionable layers in a hot desert.
- Since poverty is relatively widespread in Jerusalem, most people run tabs in their local neighborhood markets. The owners of the kiosks keep handwritten ledgers of who owes what amount.
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Now, my point is not that Israelis live like paupers. Rather, they merely watch their shekelim and argurot (dollars and cents) intensely. I think it stems partially from the modern history of the country. After all, the early Zionists who came to Israel toiled for years to drain swamps, plant crops, fight invaders, and build cities literally from the sand up. No one bothered about status and symbols because there was always hard labor to be done. And no one was anything resembling rich.
In recent decades, the subconscious “bunker mentality” of many Israelis — whether right or wrong — further made luxury laughable, especially when the economy nearly collapsed during the intifadas of the early 1990s and 2000s. (What’s the point of buying a sports car if a bomb might explode tomorrow? Why spend money when you should save it because you do not know what the future may hold?) Most Israelis live with their families until they are married because rent and mortgages are expensive. (Property values in Jerusalem, for example, are extremely high because many Jews in other countries buy homes and apartments here even though they only live in them for part of the year. Every market is now global.)
Now, this is not to say that Israelis glorify poverty as something noble. Far from it. (In my experience, most people who think in this manner are so-called “limousine liberals” who have never actually been poor.) I imagine that many Israelis would agree with Sophie Tucker: “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Believe me, honey, rich is better.” Still, the tribal aspect of Israeli culture is helped by the fact that everyone is generally poorer than people in the West. After all, if everyone is poor — then no one is poor (at least as far as social standing).
But Israelis, like everyone else throughout the world, are still entranced by the so-called American Dream. Many Israelis have never been to the United States because the process to obtain a visa is bureaucratic and a round-trip ticket costs at least $1,000, so they only know about the country through movies and television. I would not be surprised if many think — after watching the sitcom like “Friends” — it is actually possible to live in a nice apartment in New York City while working as a waitress or masseuse. People here seem disappointed when I tell them that the gap between the rich and poor in America is even worse than in Israel and that millions of Americans do not have basic health-insurance. (Israel has universal health-care.)
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In light of the ongoing economic crisis, I cannot help but wonder if this is a sign of things to come in the West. Frequent readers of my blog know that I am pessimistic on the U.S. economy for various reasons that I will not repeat here. If the times do not improve, then people in countries like America, England, Italy, and Spain may start to live like Israelis because they have no other choice. But we will have to wait and see.
Now, for my readers who know me personally: Do not worry. I am not living like a pauper. I am lucky enough to work in online marketing for a U.S. company in addition to publishing this blog. So I am doing pretty well compared to most Israelis. A salary in dollars goes a long way in country like Israel or a developing one like India.
At least at the moment, it is easier to have a good life here in Israel than it is in the United States. It is little wonder, then, that more American retirees are voting with their feet, taking their (decreased) savings, and moving to places like Mexico. In an era of globalization, every country and every market is competing with everyone else for everything — even people. And sometimes I just wish the kids next door would move as well.
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