Reading the Newspapers

Although I haven’t mastered the Hebrew newspapers yet, I look forward to reading the English editions of the Jerusalem Post and Ha’Aretz every Friday. Aside from the political news and cultural listings, they contain a wealth of indispensable information. Here, for example, are two items from last week’s Jerusalem Post:

➢ The city of Ashdod is planning a pre-Passover clean up campaign that will have the city’s streets “as spotless as its freshly scrubbed homes” by the time the residents sit down to their seders on April 8.
➢ A resident of Tel Aviv who requested cancellation of her numerous parking fines will get an apology and a bunch of flowers to make up for the official letter of response she received from the head of the parking department which began, “Ms. Cohen the bitch.”

I especially enjoy two regular weekly columns: “Family Affair” in HaAretz Magazine and “Arrivals” in the Upfront section of the Post. They profile, respectively, families and new immigrants from every conceivable background. The interviewees share their personal histories, how they met their spouses, where they live and work, how they manage childcare, where they educate their children, their political and religious beliefs, daily routines and hobbies, dreams and happiness quotient, and, in the case of the olim (new immigrants), how and why they made aliyah to Israel. These stories are fascinating because they highlight the incredible diversity of people and circumstances that exist here. Some examples include:
➢ Uri and Geraldine, in their sixties, emigrated from Brisbane to Tivon near Haifa. He was born in Berlin and survived the war hiding with his mother in a village on the Polish-German border. In Australia he helped develop the government’s multiculturalism policy and also served as a rabbi to small congregations. She was born in New Zealand and converted to Judaism when she married her first husband, a Hungarian born Jew. They attend a reform congregation and are involved in progressive social causes.
➢ Nira and Onni,42 and 51, are a couple with two children who live in Holon, an urban area just south of Tel Aviv. She’s a sabra who joined a left-leaning youth movement in high school, served in Northern Command after the first Lebanon war, attended university in Haifa and traveled in India, Thailand, Japan, Africa and Europe. He’s Nigerian, a former teacher with master’s degrees in physics and mathematics, who now has an Israeli i.d. card and works as a controller at a plastics company. Earlier he spent some years working in menial jobs while evading the immigration police. He votes Likkud.
➢ Daniel and Osnat ( in their 30’s) and their two young daughters live in Ramot Menashe, a small kibbutz between Zichron Yaakov and Rishon Letzion . The husband, an administrator for a youth national service program, was born in London but moved to Israel as a child. He comes from a “traditonalist” family. The wife, a high school teacher with a master’s degree in literature and education from Hebrew University, grew up in Jerusalem where her mother is the principal of a school in the Old Katamon neighborhood. Her Moroccan-born father, an automotive engineer, currently manages a factory in Shenzhen China and commutes home every third week.
The permutations are endless and fascinating. I hope to meet many more Israelis, through these columns and in person, and hear many more stories.