Street Names Part One

Many of the streets here in Israel are named after famous Jews and Israelis.  All the biggies have the big streets.  Ben Gurion.  Moshe Dayan.  Menachem Begin.  In Tel Aviv I live on a street called Levi Eshkol, named after the third prime minister of Israel a and the first who died in office when in 1969 he died of a heart attack.  His successor, Yigal Alon also has a fairly large thoroughfare named after him.  The cross street I live on is named after Marc Chagall, and there is a street behind me named after Arthur Rubinstein.

The street names are also repeated in different cities.  I suppose there just are a limited number of names to choose from.  There’s a Ben Gurion street in a lot of Israeli cities.  According to ynet.com, the distinction for the most streets named after him goes to Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of the Irgun with a total of fifty-seven.

Sometimes non-jews get the honor, but usually it’s for championing Jewish or Zionist causes. People like David Lloyd George, who was quoted to say things like “Of all the bigotries that savage the human temper there is none so stupid as the anti-Semitic” and “It will be long ere Canaan becomes once more a land flowing with milk and honey. The Jews alone can redeem it from the wilderness and restore its ancient glory.”  Edmund Allenby, who defeated the Ottomans in Palestine.  And Lord Arthur Balfour, who authored the Balfour Declaration of 1917.  More about them later, but they all have streets that take their name in Tel Aviv.  But sometimes the streets are named after simply admired people.  Like Abraham Lincoln who also has a street named after him in Tel Aviv.  It’s not a particularly big street—I mean he’s no Menachem Begin—but it’s there, sitting between Menachem Begin and Yehuda Halevi Streets.  Although here his name is pronounced Lin-ko-lin.

Just as it is spelled.  Link-ko-lin.

I was on Lin-ko-lin street one day, and somehow I got to talking to this guy, and I said something to the effect of “that’s not how you pronounce his name.”

The man scratched his head and said, “Avraham Lin-ko-lin?”

“No.  It’s Abraham Lin-kun.”

“Avraham Lin-kun,” he repeated.  Then he scratched his head again.  “But he was Jewish, no?”

I think I said something like “maybe.”  I didn’t have the heart to tell him that probably the moshiach would come before Americans would elect a Jewish president.  I mean we like Jews, but we don’t like them that much.

Oh, by the way, many Israelis I’ve talked to seem amazed that I know this kind of information.  Like I know who Levi Eshkol was.  I have discovered that some Israelis are just as ignorant about history as many Americans are.

Ignorance of history must be a global problem.  It needs to be stopped now.

 

Funny Names

Okay, folks, new entry. You can say I’m back with a vengeance.

Well, maybe vengeance is too strong a word.

Back with a?

With a?

Hmm. Well, I’ll think of something.

Funny Names Part One

When we first stayed in Israel, we stayed at the Absorption Center in Ra’anna. It was near a street called Pines. Now, being an English speaker, you would think of pine trees or pine cones and pronounce it like pines.

But that’s not how it’s pronounced here in Israel. I’m afraid not.

It’s pronounced like penis.

Yep. Oh, the thoughts that went through my mind.

Where do you live, son?

I live on Penis Street, sir!

Jaysus, Mary. If there were a street named Penis in the States, I don’t think I would ever want to walk down it.

I’m hearing Beavis and Butthead snickering their oversized heads off right now.

But what makes it funnier, I suppose, is that most streets in Israel are named after famous Jews and Israelis, so there are guys walking around Israel with that name. In fact, there is a television show here—back in the States it would be called a “magazine show”—called Good Evening with Guy Pines. Because the poor dude’s name is Guy Pines, again pronounced like penis. There is Penis, and then there is Guy Penis.

Poor guy.

Good Evening with Guy Pines doesn’t do hard news. Hard. Hehe. I’m sorry.  Anyhow. It does entertainment news. Soft.  Soft. I just can’t stop it, folks.  I think I just made Beavis’s head explode. 

Anyhow. Guy is smart enough to have figured out the cultural and humorous impact of his name, and he frequently interviews Americans—actors, musicians, and the like—and one of his running gags is how they react to his name. He cracked up Samuel L. Jackson one time, who said, “Really, dude? Your name is Penis? Guy Penis?”

He just laughed and laughed and laughed. Oh, the fun we have here.

Hebrew and Me Part One

All the Hebrew I knew when I came here was Shalom. I was trying to teach myself the alphabet, and I had perhaps a third of it down. But that was about it. Shalom and Alef through Vav. Well, Lamed, too. Lamed was easy to remember. Shin, too. But I was clueless with everything else. The text was indecipherable, and it all sounded like throat-clearing noise when I heard it spoken.

Now, a year and a half later, I’m still pretty lost when it comes to Hebrew, but I’m slightly less lost. I know the alphabet now—although I still have a hard time putting the letters in alphabetical order. If someone out there knows the Hebrew equivalent to the alphabet song, send it to me.

I still can’t read Hebrew worth crap—save for the easy Hebrew newspaper, and then only a few words at a time—and it still sounds a lot like throat-clearing noise when I hear it, although now I can pick out a word or phrase here and there. If someone asks me for a cigarette or a light—or the time even—I can respond. I can order my coffee now in Hebrew, and when I do, I get Hebrew back. That’s supposed to be a good sign that your Hebrew pronunciation is good. If you get English back, or a weird look, then you screwed it up. My wife whose Hebrew is far better than mine, usually gets Hebrew spoken back to her, but she has had her moments. She once made the mistake when she was ordering coffee of transposing the last two letters of the Hebrew word for milk. If you do that, you’re saying pity, not milk. She ordered coffee with pity.

Because she always wants pity with her coffee. Don’t you? The pitiable coffee.

Anyhow that is nothing compared to the potential embarrassment I’ll face if I mix up the word for cup with the word for a certain part of the female anatomy. You know which one I’m talking about. The one down below. And it’s the vulgar word, too. The really really bad one for it. Four letters. In Hebrew it’s three, and it’s just a matter of saying the wrong vowel (and don’t get me started about the lack of printed vowels in Hebrew; that’s a whole other entry). So far I’ve only flubbed it in front of my wife in the privacy of our home and fortunately, not in a public place.

Can I have a c*&! , please? Yikes.

Homina, homina, homina, homina, homina. I should introduce that expression to Israelis.

Homina, homina, homina, homina, homina. Ed Norton goes to Israel. Actually I would like to introduce a lot of expressions to Israelis. I bet I know a lot they don’t know.

As always, more to come.

P.S. About the throat-clearing noise. As you may know, Hebrew pronunciation uses a certain sound fairly liberally. The throat-clearing one. In linguistics it’s called the dorsal velar fricative.

Dorsal velar fricative. Oooohhhh. I know these things.

There are even two letters for it in Hebrew. Not just one, but two. Khaf and Khet. Or is it Chaf and Chet? Doesn’t matter I suppose. But I mentioned this to one of our Israeli friends. I said something about the necessary amount of phlegm that the average Hebrew speaker needs, and she laughed. But she did agree, although perhaps with a degree of self-degradation. If I made her a little self-conscious of her language, I apologize.

Food Part One

The food is good here and rich in the healthy traditions of the Mediterranean diet.  Humus everywhere.  I like hummus.  I used to make it myself back in Seattle, but there’s certainly no need to do that here.  Traditionally eaten with pita bread, but it’s good with potato chips, too.

Henry Rollins likes hummus, too.  I saw his little spoken word tour thing he did in Israel on DVD, and he was gushing over hummus.  Gushing.  He called it “sex in a bowl.”  His words.  Oh, Henry.  Thou need to get laid more.

But I’ve eaten a lot of hummus here, although I stopped eating it for a while after I saw Don’t Mess With the Zohan.  Horrible, horrible movie.  One of the running jokes in it was about how much hummus is eaten in here.  I got it.  Everybody eats hummus in Israel.  I was even eating it as I was watching the movie.  Hummus on everything,  hummus in everything.  Then I saw the Zohan himself brush his teeth with it.

He was actually brushing his teeth with hummus.  Ewww.  Yes.  Ewww.

I couldn’t eat it again for six months.  I couldn’t even look at it.  But I’m better now.  Even though Adam Sandler almost killed me hummus for me.  But here you go.  Have some sex in a bowl. 

Then there is falafel.  I could eat falafel every day.

Falafel b’pita, b’vakasha.

Im salat?

Betach.

Chips?

Betach.

Tehina?

Betach.

Kharif?  Pelpel?

Oh, you better believe it, boyo.

All for fifteen shekels or less.  I hold it in my hands.  This fat pita stuffed with stuff.  True manna, my friends.  And wherever you eat it, the falafel never quite looks or tastes the same.  It’s like a new culinary experience every time.  The same goes with the hummus.  Always a little different.

Then we have the salad.  Or salat, as it is called.  Mostly chopped cucumber, chopped tomato.  Sometimes some parsley and onion.  All chopped.  I think we used to call this back in the States a chop salad.  Anyhow, it’s eaten at virtually every meal.  Including breakfast.  I first heard that and said, “Salad?  For breakfast???  You gotta be kidding me!”  But it’s good.  I didn’t even have to get used to it.  When we were here on our pilot trip—oh, that seems so long ago—and staying in hotels, we had a full Israeli breakfast every day.  Eggs, cheese, rolls, fish, and salat.  And I ate it and ate it and ate it.  No problem.  All that cucumber.  I ate more cucumber in the ten days of that pilot trip than I had eaten in my entire life.  That’s no exaggeration.  And Israelis love cucumber.  I’ve watched more than Israeli on the street munching on whole cucumber.  Here, have a snack.  Cucumber.

More to come.

T-shirts in Israel

I was on the 26 bus going down Ibn Gvirol one day—or Ibn Gabirol or Eben Gabirol, depending on the myriad of ways it is spelled in English on street signs here in Tel Aviv—and at this one stop was a girl.  She was fairly attractive as most young people in Israel are—let’s hear it for intermarriages!—but it was what she was wearing that attracted my attention most.  Tight fitting jeans and a tight fitting t-shirt.  What’s so remarkable about that, you ask?  Well, I will tell you.

On her t-shirt was an arrow that pointed down towards her crotch with the words INSERT HERE printed above the arrow in big black letters.

Yes, that’s what I saw.  I even read it twice to make sure.

INSERT HERE.

Now, mind you, this was at about eight-thirty in the morning.  The girl could have been going to work or school with that t-shirt on.  Now I knew nothing about this girl.  I didn’t know if she were as loose as her t-shirt implied, but I have a feeling that she knew what was to be inserted and where.

Here is another one.  Again, on the 26 bus.  Now I don’t know if the 26 has a reputation for being the bus of choice for sex maniacs or not—I just take it because it’s the one I usually have to—but on a Friday morning back on Ibn Gvirol, a guy got on.  He had to stand because the bus was full, and he stood perhaps six feet away from where I was sitting.  He was a muscular, weight-lifting sort of bloke, and he wore tight beige shorts and a tight t-shirt.  I could tell he wasn’t wearing any underwear, because I could see he had an erection the size of something a lumberjack could cut down.  As impressive as that was, what “sealed the deal” for him, so to speak, was what was on his t-shirt.  It had a photograph large enough to cover most of the front of it of what looked like an orgy scene.  Various nude couples in various sexual positions and in various throes of ecstacy.  Put two and two together, my English speaking friends, and draw your own conclusions.  Massive, whopping erection and orgy t-shirt.

I realize that Tel Aviv is probably the most liberal city in the entire Middle East, but Jaysus Mary, Jumpin Jiminey, what the hell is up with some of these people?  If either of these people wore these aforementioned articles of clothing anywhere back in the States, they would surely attract some unwanted attention.  On the back of INSERT HERE girl’s t-shirt it might as well have said I ENJOY BEING RAPED.  If she were raped, the defense attorney could say, “But she was wearing that shirt, your honor.”

I have seen others, too.  BLOW JOB IS BETTER THAN NO JOB.  With silhouettes illustrating the appropriate act.

BORN TO FXXXCK.  Spelled that way, at least.  But more about that Israelis and their use of that heavy duty word later.  This t-shirt was worn by a guy wearing a kippah, too.

And it’s not limited to English either.  I saw what looked like a fourteen or fifteen year-old boy wearing a t-shirt that said in Spanish TU MADRE ES UNA PUTA.  Which roughly translates to YOUR MOTHER IS A WHORE.  I used to live in Dallas.  If that kid wore that shirt in Dallas, well, let me just say, he’d have to learn to box pretty quickly.  Or run when the bullets start flying at him.

Seriously.  What are these people THINKING?  I have to assume that the language implications of these words just aren’t registering.  After all I haven’t seen any dirty t-shirts written in Hebrew, but then again, I’m not sure I’d be able to tell if they were dirty or not.

More later.