My latest column from the
Miami Herald
In Israel you always have to be vigilant about security
issues, which is why my wife Ora brought from Miami four carry-on bags full of
rocks. If Arabs didn’t start a new intifada, there was always the chance that
Orthodox Jews would throw rocks at you for driving during the Sabbath. It’s
good to be ready for any kind of multicultural aggression, especially if you
carry within you millennia of Jewish persecutory paranoia fueled by
multilingual crusaders and dictators, which is what led me to be a little apprehensive
when my brother-in-law took me to the Muslim quarter in the old city of
Jerusalem.
We were roaming around the Muslim quarter, trying to find
the Nablus Gate to meet our family. As we approached the gate we discovered
there were 23,556 people in 10-square feet trying to exit the Old City through
the Nablus Gate: 23,554 Arabs and two Jews. Feeling a little claustrophobic and
a little paranoid, I had an irrepressible urge to shout “Let’s be friends. I am
in favor of returning all the territories, including Brooklyn .
..
.. and
Miami!”
Blame it on 5,774 years of persecution, 3,370 pogroms, 4,898
forced migrations, seven wars, two intifadas, Hitler, and Bernie Madoff.
Israel has changed a lot since Ora and I lived there in the
early eighties. Something that never changes, however, is the heat in July. I
found myself missing Miami’s humidity in July. We had a very well-planned
itinerary to avoid sitting around and talking on the cell phone, which, as
everybody knows, causes all sorts of maladies, including testicular
evaporation.
The only problem was that our itinerary included being
outside, which was many degrees hotter than Miami. We had to stop every five
minutes for water or pomegranate juice, which turned out to be much better than
Metamucil. I discovered that three gallons of pomegranate juice is the
equivalent of a teaspoon of Metamucil, which meant that I had to find bathrooms
among the many ruins we visited. It turns out that the Romans and Greek did not
build many bathrooms for the colonized Jews, which explains why my people have
so many digestive regularity problems.
Looking forward to restful nights after exhausting days
outside, we would wake up early every morning to the sound of Arab laborers
picking up construction materials right outside our door. Ora, who is no less
paranoid than I am, would wake me up in a panic. Turns out that the unit we
rented belonged to a contractor who kept his tools in a shed next to our unit.
Despite knowing this, every morning Ora thought that we were going to be the
victims of a terrorist attack. “Isaac, there is a terrorist attack, bring your
Metamucil!”
It was so hot outside that I could not go for a run, so I
returned to the gym I visited last year. The only problem was that the rules
had changed and now they required a doctor’s note. I tried to explain to the
Russian fitness instructor that I was visiting and could not get a certificate,
to which he replied, in Hebrew, in a heavy Russian accent, that since I was
wearing such nice clothes I must not be homeless and I must have access to a
physician.
Although my Hebrew is excellent, I could not understand
whether he was serious, joking, or using Russian sarcasm, which we all know
where it led the Soviets. I went for the jovial side and told him in Hebrew that
it would be “a pain in the a¬@!” for me to get a health certificate from my
doctor in Miami, to which he said, “they must have a fax machine in Miami,” to
which I repeated, in Hebrew, that it would be “a pain in the a@!,” at which
point I discovered that he was not joking because he lectured me about civics
and the proper use of the Hebrew language.
Not only could I not exercise, but I got chewed out by a
humorless, smoking, KGB sympathizer turned fitness instructor who told me to
wake up my physician at 2 a.m. in Miami and ask her to fax a health
certificate, at which point I went out for pomegranate juice.
