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.