November 2008 Archives

Bat Yam, Israel is really hot. Like really, really hot.

            I spent my first month here sleeping in just underwear with a fan on its highest setting shooting right at me, and using no blankets or sheets of any kind. The second month was marked by my adding a thin sheet, but the the fan stayed in its place. Finally, in my third month, I turned off the fan but still used just a sheet, pretending that it was a blanket. In the scorching world of Bat Yam, that meant that fall was upon us.

            In the United States, with the autumn season came the president election. For a bunch of Americans in Israel, it meant watching Obama and McCain spar from thousands of miles away.

            On the night of November 4, how I would sleep would not be an issue as I wasn't planning on doing anything of the sort. To understand this, we'll need to do a little math, kids. If Israel is 7 hours ahead of the United States (EST), then with polls closing on the eastern seaboard at 7:00 PM and results continuing to come in until roughly 11:00 PM, what time would those of us in the holy land be able to see the map fill up with red and blue? If you said 2:00 AM to 6:00 AM then you are correct, and if you said anything else then you need to review your third grade arithmetic.

            And so, some friends and I set out to spend our night sitting in front of the television in my apartment watching Fox News tell us who was winning which states. Yes, you read that correctly. Because of some complicated contractual issues, the only U.S. news channel that airs in Israel is the Fox News Channel. There I was, a nice, liberal, Jewish boy from New Jersey watching the media wing of the Republican Party tell me how McCain might still pull an upset. (I must admit that watching Karl Rove, their newest anchor, and Brit Hume, seemingly their oldest, inform viewers through gritted teeth of Obama's victory was true schadenfreude.)

            Now the contradiction of my American compatriots and I watching this from Israel was obvious. On the one hand, we had not been in the U.S. to witness the election really get heated up. We knew from what we had heard that the hot temperature in our apartments in Bat Yam barely compared to the heat of the election in its final weeks. In addition, we will not be around for the inauguration or the first hundred days of the new presidency, which are said to be the most important. On the other hand, we are still Americans and will experience most of the new presidency at home in the U.S. In some ways, we were even a little saddened by the thought that we were missing our first election as voting citizens. Most of us submitted absentee ballots, but we still felt that we were sort of missing it.

            The more we talked that night, the more we realized that being this far away has given us a chance to really reassess things. We have been sizing up our lives endlessly and thinking about our priorities. Also, we have been able to see how non-Americans perceive the U.S. We have been able to think, to truly think, about how we feel about American politics.

Sometimes in order to understand something, you have to take a step back. Sometimes in order to feel the heat, you have to move away from the fire.

Three eight-year old boys rushed past me and cut in front of me in line, dressed in blue and yellow hats, blue and yellow scarves, blue and yellow shirts, and wielding blue and yellow horns. Where else could I be but a Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball game?

On November 10, the Sports Track went to the MTA vs. Nahariya basketball game at the Nokia Center in Tel Aviv. Though it was the third basketball game we had attended since arriving in Israel, it was the first featuring the famous, Eurocup-winning Macabi Tel Aviv team. Needless to say, I think everyone on Sports Track was pretty excited to see the game and cheer along with the raucous and emphatic MTA fans.

Upon entering the stadium we were initially disappointed, because according to our tickets we were supposed to sit up in the nosebleeds. That was before we remembered that tickets don't really matter in Israel and you don't have to sit in your assigned seat. So, we moved down into first section, right behind "Gate 11," the title given to the fanatic MTA supporters who come to every game, sit behind the basket, play loud bass drums, and lead crazy cheers. The section they sit in is entered via, just guess, Gate 11!

When the game began it was incredibly exciting, featuring plays like an over-the-head, ally-oop pass from Lior Eliyahu to D'Or Fisher for a slam-dunk. Unfortunately, by the second quarter things had quieted down, and we were relying primarily on the fans and the cheerleaders for our entertainment. The fans' antics, whether it was throwing their scarves in the air, waving giant blue and yellow flags, and screaming out any of their manifold cheers with their arms around each other's shoulders, were definitely impressive. And the cheerleaders... let's just say that dancing, popping, and jumping in short silver skirts never ceases to amuse the crowd.

In the end, Maccabi Tel Aviv won 84-78, letting the game get closer than it should have at the end of the second half. But, what interested me about the game was observing the differences between Israeli and American basketball. So, just for fun, I've compiled a short, comparative list.

• Line violations are never called; a player can literally have a foot on the court when they throw the ball in from out-of-bounds after a dead play and it won't matter.
• Players rarely try to take the charge when defending a player driving to the basket.
• Ball handling is generally less fancy, with a lot more passing.
• The court is smaller, or at least seems that way, and has a weird-shaped, diagonal lane that slants away from the basket.
• The fans don't actually watch the game and cheer in reaction to what is happening. Example: There is no organized shouting while the other team shoots free throws and observed silence while your team shoots. Everybody just keeps shouting all the time.
• Finally, basketball is a great sport, no matter where you are.

Democracy is a government by the people, for the people. Throughout my education, I have learned the ins and outs of American politics and government. While I may be a citizen of the United States, this year Israel is my home, and today, I had the opportunity to sit down and learn about the framework of the Israeli government as both a democracy and a Jewish state. At the Ulpan, the building where we meet for Hebrew language courses, we had a "Lunch and Learn" titled Israel as a Jewish State and a Democracy. Every week, Young Judaea offers an optional lecture or class on various topics ranging from Jewish law to Israeli Current events to how scribes write in the Torah and pretty much anything that has to do with Jews, Israel, or all of the above. Also, as the title implies, the courses speak to our minds and our stomachs by providing us with delicious lunches.

            Today we learned about Israel's paradoxical government. By nature, democracy allows each person one equal vote, with no guaranteed majority party. However, Israel is a Jewish state, implying that governance and laws should be based on that of the Jewish people, and that the Jewish people can and will always be the majority. So how do the two coincide? That's where things get difficult. I have always found politics to be interesting, compelling, and a great way to polish my debating skills so I was in just the right place at Lunch and Learn today. As my madricha, Adina, explained to us the basics of the Israeli government, we all tried to apply the skills we learned in American government classes to make our assumptions and arguments, but it did not quite work out just the way we'd like. The Israeli government functions entirely differently. For example, I learned that education is a very heated topic in Israel. The government provides a basic set of guidelines for the schools, but whether or not the schools chose to comply are in their hands. A school can get government funding and only teach Jewish history, but every school that is funded by the State is required to teach Tanach (or Bible), even to non-Jewish students.

            Life in Israel is truly a world apart from America. Everything about everyday society in Israel is completely different, but when I moved here, I didn't quite think about the political aspect. Moving countries, whether you think about it or not, means moving governments, and today I learned about the inner workings of the country I now call home.