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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Dec 26, 2016 14:24:31 GMT -5
So, the emigration AMA is pretty dead, and I just wanted to talk about the stuff I'm learning, like the language, history, culture, etc. I'm sure this will get much more interesting when I actually get there.
Today's subject: Things I will not miss about America: anti-enviro-asshats.
Did I mention recently that while driving a friend to the airport last week, I was cut off by a monster truck with a coal-rolling smokestack? And that I still don't know why this violates like six different laws?
Today I'm struck most by how Israel has always had a consensus on the environment. I guess that's one of the nice things about being in a country with no fossil fuel reserves or crazy anti-government weirdos, but I suspect it will be very refreshing. The country really is leading the way in renewable energy and water conservation– the latter has been part of the national fabric since the Second Aliyah on the eve of World War I. 70% of the water in Israel (and the Palestinian Territories, totaling 11 million people) get their water from the Sea of Galilee, and 30% is from the Mediterranean. And while California farmers post signs on the highway saying "GOVERNMENT-CREATED DUST BOWL," Israel still manages to produce food at full capacity and protect its wildlife, and now maintains a water surplus. Fuckin' A.
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Dec 27, 2016 16:57:43 GMT -5
Things I Learned: David Ben-Gurion's Complicated Legacy
One of the things I find striking about Israel is its unapologetically frank and critical historiography, and nowhere in my reading has that been made clearer than in the depiction of founding father David Ben-Gurion. Ben-Gurion was the founder of the Haganah, which became the IDF, the first Prime Minister, and likely deserves credit for his country's early survival. He was also my inspiration to start keeping a daily journal in high school, as he did. He was also an asshole.
On the one hand, he was a dedicated Social Democrat who instituted the country's social safety net, which makes Sweden look like the United States. On the other, he passively endorsed the segregation of newly arrived Mizrachi Jews (who quickly became the majority of the population) because he thought they were uneducated and insufficiently dedicated to "western" values. He also placed Arab Israelis under martial law for over a decade.
On the one hand, he maintained the unity of Israel even when it looked like Civil War might break out between the Haganah and its (comparitively) right-wing rival the Irgun, led by Menachem Begin. Begin was definitely worse than Ben-Gurion, but that doesn't really excuse Ben-Gurion's bitter partisanship, refusing to allow Begin's idol Ze'ev Jabotinsky to be re-buried in Israel. At the same time, he was so deeply contemptuous of the Communist Party that he wouldn't allow them to join his goverment. Instead, he reached out to the National Religious Party, and gave painful concessions that enabled ultra-Orthodox Jews to live on the dole, dodge the draft, and study in schools with exclusively religious content. This is literally the most contentious social issue in Israel today, and it exists purely because Ben-Gurion wanted to spite the Communists. He also banned television. Most of his policies were reversed by his successor Levi Eshkol.
Ben-Gurion also completely loathed American Jews, whose support for statehood had been mixed at best (my family nonwithstaning) and almost none of whom emigrated after independence. Most Americans who have moved to Israel have been Orthodox, but since the election of Trump I'm starting to wonder how many others there will be like me. |
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Dec 30, 2016 23:15:58 GMT -5
Here's a question: "California State University, Los Angeles" and "University of California, Los Angeles" have the same translation in Hebrew (אוניברסיטת לקיפורניה, לוס אנג׳לס). Should I figure out an alternate translation, or just let them think I went to UCLA film school? (Leaning toward the latter)
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Dec 31, 2016 17:41:04 GMT -5
So, Minnie is in India, and the Israeli government issued an urgent terrorism warning for India on New Years' Eve, particularly Goa where I last heard she was. Luckily she was back in Delhi celebrating with her friend's family.
Anyway, relieved by this news, I decided to do the most stressful thing imaginable, which was read a shit-ton of online literature about emigration to Isrsel, which caused me no end of anxiety. This will be a long and difficult process, especially having to learn a new, non-Indo-European language.
However, somehow last night I found the Export Office's directory of film and television companies, so my Aliyah just became a million times easier!
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Post by Albert Fish Taco on Jan 2, 2017 18:26:55 GMT -5
Here's a question: "California State University, Los Angeles" and "University of California, Los Angeles" have the same translation in Hebrew (אוניברסיטת לקיפורניה, לוס אנג׳לס). Should I figure out an alternate translation, or just let them think I went to UCLA film school? (Leaning toward the latter) My brother went to New York Law School. A professor there told his class that if anyone assumes they went to NYU Law, DON'T CORRECT THEM. |
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Post by Albert Fish Taco on Jan 2, 2017 18:34:20 GMT -5
Things I Learned: David Ben-Gurion's Complicated Legacy
One of the things I find striking about Israel is its unapologetically frank and critical historiography, and nowhere in my reading has that been made clearer than in the depiction of founding father David Ben-Gurion. Ben-Gurion was the founder of the Haganah, which became the IDF, the first Prime Minister, and likely deserves credit for his country's early survival. He was also my inspiration to start keeping a daily journal in high school, as he did. He was also an asshole.
On the one hand, he was a dedicated Social Democrat who instituted the country's social safety net, which makes Sweden look like the United States. On the other, he passively endorsed the segregation of newly arrived Mizrachi Jews (who quickly became the majority of the population) because he thought they were uneducated and insufficiently dedicated to "western" values. He also placed Arab Israelis under martial law for over a decade.
On the one hand, he maintained the unity of Israel even when it looked like Civil War might break out between the Haganah and its (comparitively) right-wing rival the Irgun, led by Menachem Begin. Begin was definitely worse than Ben-Gurion, but that doesn't really excuse Ben-Gurion's bitter partisanship, refusing to allow Begin's idol Ze'ev Jabotinsky to be re-buried in Israel. At the same time, he was so deeply contemptuous of the Communist Party that he wouldn't allow them to join his goverment. Instead, he reached out to the National Religious Party, and gave painful concessions that enabled ultra-Orthodox Jews to live on the dole, dodge the draft, and study in schools with exclusively religious content. This is literally the most contentious social issue in Israel today, and it exists purely because Ben-Gurion wanted to spite the Communists. He also banned television. Most of his policies were reversed by his successor Levi Eshkol.
Ben-Gurion also completely loathed American Jews, whose support for statehood had been mixed at best (my family nonwithstaning) and almost none of whom emigrated after independence. Most Americans who have moved to Israel have been Orthodox, but since the election of Trump I'm starting to wonder how many others there will be like me. To be fair on his hostility to the Communists, hadn't that been around the time a lot of Jews were being violently purged from Eastern European governments on bogus charges of being secret Zionists (which they weren't since generally the Jews that had joined the Communists had specifically done so because they were not on board with Zionism), as well as the Doctors Plot hysteria in Russia. |
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Jan 2, 2017 22:21:15 GMT -5
Albert Fish Taco Oh, most definitely. In fact, the Communist Party today is entirely Arab. But the country has been paying for it ever since. And now on to Etiquette!Israelis in the west have a reputation for being rude. Mainly, I think, this is because of the Hebrew language, which doesn't have any degrees of formality, or even any vestiges of it. Plus, it has a lot in common with other Mediterranean cultures. But there are things that are rude in Israel: 1. Using the imperative tense. When you tell someone to do something, instead of commanding them, you tell them what they're going to do. Future-tense. Imperative is only used in the armed forces. 2. Walking backward during a conversation. Israelis are close-talkers. Much like Italy. 3. Making excessive small talk. 4. Declining an invitation. 5. When dining in a personal home, eating everything on your plate. Like in China, the implication is that they don't have enough for you. 6. Coming to a home-cooked dinner without a gift. Usually wine is fine, or any alcohol really. 7. Making a business deal without exchanging gifts, just like Japan! 8. Making a fist with one's thumb between the index and middle fingers. Our "got your nose" is their middle finger. 9. Being more than 30 minutes late to a social occasion. Also, men greet men by shaking hands, women greet women with a kiss on each cheek, and men greet women and vice versa with a kiss on each cheek, unless they're Orthodox in which case no touching. Another thing that's oddly like Japan, I've seen news anchors greet each other and bow at the beginning of each broadcast, but can find no information on this behavior. Basically, the culture values familiarity and hospitality, even in situations where Americans wouldn't. I start to get what William Friedkin meant when he said being In Israel was like being surrounded by family (and not in a good way), but it sounds conducive to my own personality.
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dＬᵒ
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Post by dＬᵒ on Jan 2, 2017 22:33:10 GMT -5
Hey Monty, I'm sure you've heard of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, right? I've been catching up on BBC witness and it was interesting to hear about but not surprising that the USSR trying to copy something outside its borders was unsuccessful. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Autonomous_Oblast |
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Jan 2, 2017 22:55:06 GMT -5
Hey Monty, I'm sure you've heard of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, right? I've been catching up on BBC witness and it was interesting to hear about but not surprising that the USSR trying to copy something outside its borders was unsuccessful. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Autonomous_OblastOh, yes. By far the weirdest thing about it, though, is that it still exists, while the Karelo-Finnish SSR, Far Eastern Republic, and Tannu Tuva have all faded from memory. Yes, it also existed to attract settlement on the border with China, but that failed and the Soviets won that war anyway. It's kinda interesting that the Russians so consistently failed, because Israel has a heavily socialized economy and Daniel Gordis says in his history of Israel that the country's emergence as a tech superpower was entirely due to Soviet émigrés who'd been raised with universal college education. |
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Jan 9, 2017 17:58:37 GMT -5
 Hebrew is Hard, Part I
Allegedly, I took four years of Hebrew for my Bar Mitzvah. I've since discovered that my education was uncommonly rigorous; my uncle never learned the Hebrew alphabet when he prepared, and my girlfriend only learned to read phonetically without knowing what she was saying. And in spite of this, I basically retained nothing.
The reason I need to get this done now, before I go, is because I've read that those who go over without knowing the language are basically condemned to graveyard telemarketing jobs. Plus, while most educated people speak English, there's something of a cultural stigma against it. This was a language that had been extinct except in prayer for two thousand years, and the people of the Second Aliyah, people with jobs and lives who mostly already spoke a common language (Yiddish) and could've blown off this whole language revival thing stuck to it and forced themselves to make Hebrew their own, so if they could do it, so can I.
However, Hebrew is very hard.
1. Different alphabet
Hebrew uses a 22-character abjad, which is an alphabet in which vowel sounds are not indicated in the spelling. There are 2 1/2 letters that only make vowel sounds, but they could potentially be any vowel. There are some patterns, like letters at the beginning of a word usually making a different sound than they would in the middle or end, but there are exceptions, and lots of words that are spelled the same can sound different and mean different things. The real problem with this alphabet is twofold: first, that Hebrew text doesn't immediately register to me as words, and second, that you kinda just have to know what a word is from context and memory to know what is being said.
2. Everything is gendered
In English, gender is pretty much gone, except for a few words, and even those are stylistic choices rather than grammatical rules. In Spanish and French, nouns and adjectives have gender, which I can wrap my head around. In Hebrew, verbs are also gendered. If I want to ask a man if he speaks English, I say "haim atah m'daber anglit?" For a woman, though, I have to say "haim at m'daberet anglit?" The words for "you" and "speak" are different. Even the cardinal numbers are different depending on gender (cardinal numbers also vary depending on whether they're being used as a noun or adjective). But I'm getting used to this, and it's not as big a problem in practice as it seems conceptually.
3. I have not occasion to use it
The only reason I haven't lost my ability to speak Spanish is because 54% of people in my city speak it. This is not an option with Hebrew. Furthermore, Hebrew is my first non-Indo-European language. I'm trying to get around this by watching IBA's evening news as often as I can. I get about 1% of it now, and as a result now know the words for "president," "prime minister," and "pardon." I often fall asleep doing this, but the way the people interact on the news has been enlightening socially.
But I am getting used to it. |
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Post by dＬᵒ on Jan 10, 2017 23:03:49 GMT -5
Is/was Borgore a big deal there?
Do you know anything about the music scene?
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Jan 11, 2017 1:25:55 GMT -5
Is/was Borgore a big deal there? Do you know anything about the music scene? I have no idea. Israeli popular music is stereotypically awful to American ears, though I suspect they're thinking of Mizrachi music, which has been the subject along with all Mizrachi culture of elitism by the historically ruling Ashkenazi elite. This is why the left is no longer in power and why the current, Moroccan-born minister of culture has declared open war on the Ashkenazi/hypersecular/europhile/classicist culture industry in Tel Aviv. I suspect my ability to reason with a person like that may help me get ahead in the industry there. But I digress. On the other hand, musicians and poets enjoy a cultural status far beyond what we can imagine in America, with many popular artists taking the Al Green path later in life and becoming rabbis. Bob Dylan would be fairly typical had he been from there. |
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Jan 28, 2017 13:10:35 GMT -5
dＬᵒ By complete coincidence, I am sitting next to a coworker who is from the Autonomous Jewish Oblast. He's learning English from his own handwritten notebook while I learn Hebrew from mine.
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Feb 2, 2017 23:22:59 GMT -5
 Hebrew Is Hard, Part II
Since practical use of Hebrew has been hard to come by, my practice consists of the following. I use a spiral notebook to make my own sort of textbook, going systematically from subject to subject. This has proved practically useful as, though I only retain a small part of what I write down, I often use it as reference. I tried using Jill Suzanne Jacobs' Hebrew for Dummies, but it was useless as Jacobs doesn't even bother using the Hebrew Alphabet and insists on using the arcane Ashkenazi accent (Adonai becoming "adonoi," etc. This is the way Ashkenazi Jews of my grandparents' generation and earlier pronounced Hebrew prayers, and is regarded by Israelis as a stereotypical bad American accent). I also have a handy 1964 Ben Yehuda Hebrew-English dictionary, but typically use Wiktionary to make sure that the pronunciations and conjugations are correct.
I've also tried watching the news in Hebrew. Oddly, the morning news is easier to understand than the evening news, from which I've learned the words for "attack," "President," "Prime Minister," and "pardon." And finally, I've actually started writing a screenplay in Hebrew. Some 70 days into my self-education, there have been several Arrival-esque breakthroughs. I now understand Hebrew grammar, morphology, and syntax. I've also discovered that conversational and literary Hebrew are functionally two separate languages, the former an analytic SVO language, and the latter a heavily inflected possessive VSO language. It's rather as if the people of Italy spoke to each other in Italian but wrote everything in Latin. Writing the screenplay ("HaHavera Shel HaHavera Sheli," or "My Girlfriend's Girlfriend"), I'm suddenly starting to see words instead of just letters. Screenwriting requires repeating words a lot, and in copying and pasting them I've actually begun to recognize whole words, accelerating comprehension. It's like learning to read the first time.
Style is still up in the air, but I'm making some contacts over there who might be able to help. For example, I was under the impression that Hebrew had no gerund form. As it turns out they do, but the fact that that wasn't immediately obvious suggests that it isn't used as commonly as in English. If there are any Hebrew-speakers here, feel free to take a crack at the script. |
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