Zero hour

In my never-ending quest for Internet access that actually provides me access to the Internet (shocking demand! shocking!), I had the privilege today of overhearing a conversation between the Netvision guy and the Hot chick that revealed a certain confusion on the part of said chick regarding the difference between Hebrew and English and did not do much to raise my estimation of her company as a whole.

Netvision guy Anan, the first Israeli I have encountered who bears the Hebrew version of the flower child/American Indian-sounding name Cloud, took me patiently through a whole lotta steps to figure out what the problem was and concluded that the router was faulty and needed to be replaced. Then he called back and said he needed to make sure it wasn't the modem after all, which entailed a conference call with Hot.

When he finally got the brains of tech support on the phone, he asked her to do an "ipus" (איפוס - pronounced ee-pooss) of the modem. Since she showed little indication of understanding what he meant, he changed the form of the word to ask her "le'apes" (לאפס - to reset) it. Both words come from אפס (effes), the Hebrew for zero. (Morfix translates לאפס as: to calibrate, to zero, to set on zero; to reset.)

The Hot representative clearly had no clue what the hell Cloud was on about (maybe she couldn't check the dictionary because she couldn't get online either?), so she insisted that whatever he was asking was impossible and attempted to make it clear that she knew just what she was doing. She did this by adopting that tone of righteous indignation, replete with a declaration of her experience in the field, that I can recognize from a mile away as a clear sign that the person doesn't have the slightest idea of what to do and, more dangerous still, will never, ever admit it.

"I didn't just start working here yesterday, and I can tell you that there is no such thing," Hot insisted. After a bit of back and forth along these lines, she finally figured out that Anan - whose name, despite its airy-fairyness, puts me in mind of a good cuppa joe, thanks to a certain unnamed world body - wanted her to reset the modem.

"Oh, la'asot [to do] reeeeset!" she said. And then, I kid you not, she went on to ask: "Why don't you speak in Hebrew?"

Anan sounded as taken aback as I was. "Ipus is Hebrew," he informed her. "Reset is English."

Not surprisingly, given the admirable personality traits she had already demonstrated, Ms. Hot blithely continued as though Anan had not pointed out what a total lamebrain she was, and finally accomplished the task.

Conclusion: It turns out that both the router and the Hot representative are faulty.

You win some, you lose some

On the one hand...

Givatayim and Ramat Gan have a style of Yom Ha'atzmaut decorations I never noticed in Jerusalem. In J'lem, there are flags decorating the windows of apartments, which are put up by individual tenants, there are decorations that companies or government ministries put up on their buildings, and there are the municipal decorations in the streets. Another type that I haven't seen over there but I've seen a lot in Givatayim/Ramat Gan (including outside our building) is blue and white decor put up by the va'ad bayit (building committee) of large apartment buildings - meaning that not only are the individual apartments all flagged up as per tenant discretion, but so is the facade of the whole building. For instance, the walkway leading from the street to our building's front door is festooned with blue and white ribbons, and the new 20+ story buildings across the street have blue and white ribbons running down the outside of the building.

Not sure if the increased va'ad bayit participation in Yom Ha'atzmaut that I am seeing in the TA region has any significance whatsoever, but it's been interesting to observe the differences. It's probably just because there are more tall apartment buildings here. It might also be a function of the va'ad bayit being more involved, kind of like a condo board maybe? (But fortunately without the selection criteria, for the most part.)

On the other hand...

I was rather surprised to see two Jews for Jesus guys handing out pamphlets on a corner in Givatayim yesterday. Didn't say anything to them. I always kind of feel like I'm supposed to say/do something, but what? Tell them Jews don't believe in human deities? Gee, I'm sure they've never heard that before. Once in NY I took their pamphlet and ripped it up in front of them and walked on, but what good did that do?

Final score: Laurel for the building decor, Dart for J4J (to use Targum terminology). Givatayim comes out even.

Getting a lift

We spent part of Pesach in Jerusalem, leading me to come up with a few counterbalances to my arguable over-sentimentalization of life in the Holy City (though I continue to stand behind everything I said here):

1. Doing things we would normally have done if we had still been living in J'lem (hanging out with friends and taking advantage of free holiday activities - which unexpectedly led to the acquisition of a shockingly purple necklace made out of melon seeds!) is relaxing and vacationesque when you're staying at somebody else's apartment (thank you, R&S and B!) - even if you know the very same activities would have been somewhat more mundane if you had been staying in your (alas, imaginary) Jerusalem home, complaining about having nothing to eat aside from matzah and jelly.

2. Speaking of that imaginary Jerusalem apartment, our stay in the big J brought home the unsettling realization that the roomy elevator we have started to take for granted in our building here in Yuppieville would be a mere wisp of a dream in most buildings back yonder. I used to scoff at those under-70s who purported to need an elevator merely to reach the grand heights of the fifth floor. Even when I was pregnant and the arrival of a little one loomed quite close on the horizon, I haughtily figured - to the minimal extent I thought about it at all - that we could just park the stroller at the bottom and carry the kid up, no problem. And also that all those wusses out there were making a big deal out of not very much.

That, of course, was then - before I knew about the magical sleep-inducing properties of strolling. Yes, I had heard stories about parents putting their baby in the car to get the kid to sleep, but I had not yet experienced up close the full power of Motion the Magic Potion. This is no theoretical concept anymore, but a very real law of nature - which, like gravity, just is, regardless of whether you understand it - and RP exhibits its sway on her at least once a day. But here's the key: If I'm to get anything out of her tendency to capitulate to the charms of what Warren insists on calling The Chariot, then I need to bring her back home and let her continue her slumber indoors, so I can eat lunch/do the laundry/check my email/take a catnap. This is easy when you have an elevator - but significantly less so, as I saw firsthand last week, when you've got a whole lotta stairs separating the snoozer from the house.

And elevator absence is just one element of the bigger picture: the serious tradeoff involved in living in a city, where - to relegate a huge quality-of-life issue to four words - space is sacrificed for location (unless you've got a few million bucks, in which case you can a) have both and b) probably don't even live in Israel, but just deign to visit during the holidays while insouciantly pricing actual Israelis out of Jerusalem... but that's another story).

3. Too many Americans in Jerusalem!!!!! I constantly complained about this when I lived there and was quite forcefully reminded of it upon my return. I did not leave America in order to feel like I never left!

A conversation I would never have had in J'lem

I'm still fielding calls from people who saw my signs looking for a babysitter, and I had a brief unexpected conversation today with a woman named Esther. After we discussed the kind of hours I'm looking for (since I can use as many backups as I can get) and I made it clear that I don't currently need someone for the regular gig, she added, in a kind of hesitatant tone: "Well, you should just know that I'm religious."

I was rather taken aback that she would feel the need to point this out and said, "Okay, so am I." She said that was good because some people were bothered by having a religious babysitter. What can I say but "??!!!" I am definitely going to interrogate her about this further - if she decides to keep our meeting, of course (see Tip #1).

Pretty wacked out, hey? I wonder if babysitters in Jerusalem feel the need to tell potential employers that they're not religious. I am saddened but intrigued...

Leave the lemon at the door

Recent experience (the direct result of my main babysitter being in the middle of exams) has led me to come up with a coupla hot tips for anyone looking to get paid to watch a kid (known in literary Hebrew as being a babyseeeeter [ בייביסיטר], though in a pinch an actual Hebrew word - metapelet [ מטפלת] - will do too.)

Tip #1. Show up.

This may be one of those things that seem kind of, well, obvious, but I have had no less than three women claiming to want to be paid to (in part) show up at a specific time, like for instance, when I need to leave for work. And yet they have proven this desire by... not showing up. And don't think they called to cancel, I might add.

Tip #2. It wouldn't kill you to smile.

So I admit it was a bit of an awkward situation. On Friday I agreed pretty much right away to take on the first babysitter I had spoken to who I really liked. She was at our apartment, where she had come so I could meet her and she could meet the kid. All was going well - and then the next interviewee showed up. I had thought I spaced them far enough apart, but the first one stayed longer than expected and the second came earlier than expected and, well, you know how it is (both of them apparently read Tip #1).

There are people who take a non-ideal situation well, but Applicant II was not one of them. In fact, I've never met anyone who fit the description "sourpuss" quite as precisely as she did.

She wasn't showing much of a happy face when I opened the door, and after I explained the situation in the most diplomatic way I could (including the fact that I had already picked the other girl to be my main alternate, but that I was always looking for other babysitters to keep in the pipeline), she went into serious bad sport mode, making these bitter comments the whole time. Like, "Well, I would have thought you'd want a mother." (The babysitter I chose is 20 and living with her parents.) And, after catching a glimpse of her: "She's obviously not very experienced, but whatever." And then, as she was about to walk out the door, "So do you think you made the right decision?" Well, if I hadn't been sure before you opened your mouth, boy was I sure as soon as you did.

Anyway, my new babysitter has only done her duty once as yet (tonight), but so far she's met both of my strict criteria. Not to mention, the kid didn't cry but did eat and sleep! Let's hear it for the first native Israeli (and an Iraqi yet) to be named Lynn! Eh, excuse me, Leeeeeeen. (No joke!)

Dreaming of strawberries

By all accounts, I have recently moved up in the world. In August, I left the poorest city in the country for a city considered to be fairly high up there on the socioeconomic scale, earning a Central Bureau of Statistics ranking of eight out of 10. Every Israeli who hears of my new hometown says, "Ohhhh, Givatayim!" – with much the same intonation a fashion aficionado might use in checking out your new sweater and exclaiming, "Ohhhh, Versace!"

And now that winter has arrived, I can take pleasure in leaving the house with no more than a light jacket, for even as residents of the Tel Aviv area complain about their low-key version of cold, I know that I have left behind some shivering friends huddled inside the stone buildings of the capital.

Why, then, do I miss Jerusalem so much?

Part of it has to do with the section of Jerusalem I used to inhabit: the colorful and constantly changing neighborhood of Nachlaot, whose narrow alleyways are populated by neo-hippies, art students and Mizrahi families who have lived there for decades. The neighborhood is enlivened, and perhaps even defined, by its proximity to the steaming-fresh pitas and pungent spices that form part of the intoxicating bustle of the Mahaneh Yehuda market, known as the shuk.

Back when I lived in Nachlaot, I had only to step five minutes away from my front door in order to scout out whichever fruit was in season, be it succulent green grapes or bright orange persimmons. Seduced by the heady aroma of blood-red strawberries as they lay heaped on their wooden beds in the vendors' stalls, we would feast on them for a scant NIS 5 a kilo, the cut-rate price they reached by the time the strawberry season was coming to a close. When the strawberries first hit my supermarket in Givatayim this year, I thought I would get two small containers – but when the price came to NIS 56, I left them at the cashier's counter.

Living so close to the shuk made me feel connected to the agrarian cycle in a way I never had when growing up amid the sterile supermarkets of New Jersey, where it seemed that almost any food item could be purchased at any time of year. When my husband and I were living near the shuk, our Shabbat meals often revolved around whatever was in season – making it hard to plan ahead, but easy to get inspired by particularly good-looking green beans or mango (or both, mixed together in a rice recipe conjured up on the spot).

As I did back then, now too I generally get my groceries at the closest available location; but now that means I have to step into the Givatayim Mall just to pick up some tomatoes, cucumbers and milk in the Mega Ba'ir supermarket, where everything seems orderly and plasticized. The rice and lentils come in standard plastic packaging instead of being shoveled out of burlap sacks; the mint leaves, sealed inside a plastic bag, don't threaten to inundate the other groceries with their scent. There are no vendors about to burst shoppers' eardrums with the sound of their price wars, and I have not yet had to swerve to avoid running into a man balancing a large tray of pita bread on his head. In short, doing the shopping has become a perennial disappointment, instead of an occasional revelation.

As I reluctantly make the shift from shuk culture to mall culture, I am regularly reminded of some of the other reasons I miss Jerusalem. The capital is much maligned for its failure to truly unite its eastern and western halves, despite insisting on pro forma unification - but for all that, there is a sense of heterogeneity in Jerusalem that is sorely lacking in the ostensibly more liberal center of the country. Walk through Sacher Park on a Saturday when it's not too cold or rainy, as I did so many times, and you will likely see several soccer games going on; if you go closer, you will hear that some are being conducted in Hebrew and others in Arabic. Keep an eye out for the Sri Lankan foreign workers playing cricket in the afternoon, and step between the secular families grilling kebabs and the religious ones out for a Shabbat stroll.

My all-too-frequent forays to the Givatayim Mall, by contrast, reveal a depressing sameness. It's not just that 97.3 percent of the city is Jewish, according to the statistics bureau. It is also that, unlike in Jerusalem, so many seem to fit the same mold. Well-groomed mothers in their 30s wheeling Bugaboos – in other words, upper-middle-class suburban Yuppies – proliferate, sipping café hafuch with a friend or browsing through expensive jewelry. And that's fine, for those who want it.

But went I left the stifling suburbia of my youth, I wanted to be in that Israel of old (or perhaps just of legend) where simplicity trumps materialism, where sun-bleached sandals are acceptable footwear for any occasion. And to some extent, that's what I found in Jerusalem, not because – as many Tel Avivians would like to believe – Jerusalemites are country bumpkins, but because the capital's population is so diverse that just about anyone can find a niche there.

For now, though, I'm making the best of my stay in Givatayim, and dreaming of strawberries.

Expecting the unexpected

Being pregnant in Israel comes with its own share of what feel like only-in-Israel moments - though I confess that not having gone through the experience in any other country, I'm not actually able to compare them with not-in-Israel moments.

Fortunately, I have yet to have random strangers reaching out to touch me, a hazard I have been warned to expect - though with a couple months to go, I'm not ruling anything out.

My first random stranger experience took place in the beginning of my sixth month, when I still wasn't sure if people I didn't know could discern my, er, condition. As I was waiting for a traffic light to change in Tel Aviv, a pregnant woman joined me on the sidewalk and asked when I was due.

Somehow, the rest of the waiting time and the actual street-crossing time were long enough for her to let me know that it seems everyone she was in school with is now expecting a child and, moreover, that now that she too has swallowed a watermelon, she's discovered pregnant women sticking out (belly first?) of every nook and cranny.

A friend told me she wasn't surprised the exchange took place in Tel Aviv, because there are so many pregnant women in Jerusalem (which, completely coincidentally, has a very high Haredi population) that no one even looks twice in the holy city.

All the same, it was in Jerusalem that I had what I consider to be my most Israeli pregnancy moment so far.

As I was standing on the corner of my block during a recent heat wave, trying to hail a cab because it was just too hot and disgusting to walk to work, an Israeli guy strolled by, felafel in hand, all prepped to display the "Don't worry, I know what's best for you" attitude that manages to beat the laws of supply and demand. (The supply of this attitude in Israel far exceeds normal per capita needs, yet there is no demand that I can discern - has the government considered export?)

"Sister, you should stand in the shade a little!" he exhorted in Hebrew. And then, because I had clearly forgotten: "You're pregnant!"

Forget retail therapy

Back in the old country, clothes shopping generally involved entering a store that was significantly larger than my living room and trying on clothes in a fitting room conveniently equipped with both a door and a mirror, so I could decide whether I wanted to purchase the clothing. And if I wasn't sure, I could always buy it and then return it if it didn't turn out to be what I wanted.

I'm not a huge shopper, but just thinking of such an idyllic scenario brings tears of longing to my eyes. That's because here in the Holy Land, if I don't time my shopping expeditions so they coincide with absolute wardrobe desperation, the only thing I end up getting is frustrated. Forget retail therapy - I need psychoanalysis just to recover from my shopping sprees, rare and often aborted though they are.

A couple of weeks ago, I was trying on some clothes in the designated fitting corner in the back of a store in downtown Jerusalem, which some depraved curtain-hanger had decided should pose as two dressing rooms - in much the same way that a tiny studio apartment I once saw in Nachlaot was being marketed as a 1.5-bedroom apartment because it had a bunk bed. (The reason should be obvious: the bottom bunk was the bedroom and the top bunk was the half a room.)

The two mini-cubicles of the dressing room in question, meanwhile, were more or less separated from the shopping area by two curtains, but were separated from each other by a curtain that ran only halfway down the changing area. As long as I didn't move around too much and practiced self-delusion really hard, I could almost sustain an illusion of privacy. On the plus side, I did not have to share arm space with a sink (definitely not something to be taken for granted). On the down side, there were, naturally, no mirrors on the inside of the fitting room.

I could not possibly overstate the degree to which I hate this absurd Israeli concept of walking out of the dressing room to parade around in an article of clothing that probably looks awful on you but you don't actually know because you can't see how awful it looks on you until you parade around in it in front of a whole buncha strangers, who - along with their husbands, children and pet rabbits - suddenly all seem to be staring at you.

In this case, though, I had an extra burden: Every time I stood in front of the mirror, I had to keep one eye on the clothing I had painstakingly picked out, in an effort to keep it from falling into the greedy hands of the hired harasser. Said harasser, who had the misleading title of saleslady, really, really doesn't like it when customers have the chutzpah to bring clothes into the dressing room to try them on, and was far more interested in putting away the clothes before I got a chance to figure out whether I wanted to buy them than in actually making a sale. It was like trying to eat at a restaurant when the waitress is standing with her hands on her hips in front of your table and snatching away your fork when you pause to take a sip of water. All in all, an experience I'm dying to repeat.

My sister tells me, though, that sometimes that much-desired mirror inside the fitting room can create more trouble than it's worth. She was once in a dressing room in a Jerusalem store that had a single mirror on the inside that was meant to serve two cubicles. Of course, the curtain separating the cubicles didn't quite reach the whole length between them, and to her surprise, when she looked in the mirror she found herself seeing the woman in the next cubicle undress.

But the highlight of my Israeli fitting room experience actually took place in the Malcha mall, not some hole in the wall in town. To my undying shock, a door at the back of the dressing room, which I hadn't noticed before, flew open without warning as I was changing, and a store employee strode through my cubicle and out the curtain before I could even comprehend what had just happened.

The obvious solution, of course, is to buy something without trying it on, see how it looks in the privacy of your own home, and return it if it doesn't fit right. The only problem with such a neat approach is that refunds are virtually unheard of in Israel. Most stores will, however, do you the favor of allowing you to exchange the item for something else in the same store - if, of course, you can be bothered to go looking.

And don't think it gets any better once you actually purchase something you like; the next hurdle is keeping your belongings both intact and looking new.

Take the purple flip-flops I bought Friday. It didn't take long for a bald spot to appear on the left shoe, as the decorative stripes under my big toe faded away after all of an hour or two of wearing them around the house.

I'm hoping my new flip-flops make it through the summer - but even if they don't, the good news is that at least I won't have to brave the dreaded dressing room to try on a new pair.

From black to white: the lifecycle of a mass email

An email circulating in Israel last week urged Israelis to wear black on Monday, May 14, to protest the fact that the three Israeli soldiers kidnapped over the summer have still not been returned home.

The Hebrew notice attached to the email I received reads, in translation:

"14.5.07 – THE ENTIRE STATE OF ISRAEL IN BLACK

"On 14.5.07, all residents of Israel, we will wear black shirts, to protest the ten months of abduction of the Israeli soldiers.

"In July 2006, 10 months ago, Ehud Regev, Gilad Shalit and Udi Goldwasser were kidnapped. ...
Almost a year has passed, and no one knows when the nightmare will end.
We won't let this subject come off the agenda!!
We, all the residents of Israel, will unite together and do everything so that the soldiers will be returned to their homes quickly!

"These are 3 soldiers who went to defend the state!! To defend us!!

"On 14.5.07, Monday, we will all be in black shirts, and we call on you, Ehud Olmert – return the soldiers to their homes, and to their normal lives as they were before!!"

I didn't pay too much attention at first, primarily because I tend to ignore mass emails, hysterical notices and the seemingly endless protests that Israelis love to hold. I did, however, point out to the friend who sent me the email, which she received from someone at her large Jerusalem company, that the three soldiers were not all kidnapped in July, as the notice said they were. Regev and Goldwasser were abducted by Hezbollah on the Lebanese border on July 12, setting off the Second Lebanon War, but Shalit was kidnapped by Palestinian militants near the Gaza border on June 25. I attributed this distortion to an oversight on the part of an overzealous protest organizer with a possible addiction to hand-lettered signs and megaphones.

But then came a twist that made the message much more interesting, by seeming to add a cleverly manipulative spin to the exhortation to wear black. A second email went around stating that the original message was actually one big hoax perpetrated by Israeli Arabs with the intention of tricking Israeli Jews into unwittingly identifying publicly with Naqba Day – the anniversary of the secular date of the establishment of the State of Israel, which is commemorated by Palestinians and other Arabs as a day of catastrophe ("naqba" in Arabic).

"The State of Israel was established on [the Hebrew date of] 5 Iyar 5708," reads the second email. "It was a difficult and traumatic event for Israeli Arabs. Every year they commemorate a day that's called Nakba. This day is commemorated on the secular date on which the state was established: 14.5.1948. Therefore, Israeli Arabs will be very 'happy' to see us wearing black on their holiday."

According to this theory, such patriotic exclamations as "These are 3 soldiers who went to defend the state!! To defend us!!" were merely a way of cynically playing on widespread Israeli feelings.

The email also said the official Web site for the abductees - which lists a calendar of events held to show solidarity with the missing soldiers and their families - mentioned nothing about the protest, and noted a couple of linguistic mistakes in the original notice that it said indicated that the writer's mother tongue was spoken Arabic rather than Hebrew.

I was left a bit puzzled, though, as to why there was a date discrepancy in the hoax theory too: Naqba Day is generally commemorated on May 15, not the 14th, even though the State of Israel was officially established on May 14, 1948. Israel, for its part, celebrates its Independence Day in accordance with the Hebrew calendar, and pays no attention to the secular date.

Lo Relevanti, an Israeli Web site that aggregates mass emails and gives the opinion of site author Hanan Cohen as to whether it's worth passing them on, appears to set everything straight.

It turns out, according to Cohen, that there was no hoax at all - only a lack of awareness of the possible confusion with Naqba Day and a lack of coordination with the abductees' families, who put out a statement saying they don't want a protest involving black shirts because of the association with death. The problem with the original protest notice was further compounded by the absence of a name or contact information, spurring apparently unfounded suspicions.

The claim that the protest was a hoax, writes Cohen, is "a great example of a mistake upon a mistake upon a mistake." According to his version of events, the initiators of the May 14 protest only made matters worse when they got wind of the email arguing that it was a Naqba Day hoax: They moved the protest to May 15, which really is Naqba Day.

But the problems have since been fixed. In response to the wishes of the families of the abductees, the protest organizer, who has since identified himself, is now calling on all Israelis to unite next Monday, May 21, by wearing white - "which symbolizes, most of all, hope," according to the revised text.

This time, the event has been coordinated with the non-profit association that runs the official Web site, and now appears on the site's activities list. In addition, the protest notice has been posted on a separate Web site set up for the purpose, which now notes the organizer's name - Ilan Spector - and his contact details. Spector has also fixed the linguistic errors that had previously cast aspersions on his intentions. The text does, however, still say that all three Israelis were abducted in July.

So what I have learned from all this? To ignore mass emails, hysterical notices and the seemingly endless protests that Israelis love to hold.

The great equalizer?

The Associated Press reported yesterday that a Virginia Tech freshman who had just returned home after last week’s shooting rampage on campus was killed in a car crash Friday. As the Yom Hazikaron (Israeli Memorial Day) siren is about to go off to commemorate soldiers killed in Israel’s wars as well as terror victims, such reports drive home once more the hard truth that death is not, after all, the great equalizer.

Would AP have bothered to report that a Virginia Tech freshman died in a car crash had his campus not recently been the site of a shooting? Obviously not. There’s that call of (perceived) irony that we the media can’t resist - to the extent that, on the other side of the notebook, I started getting excessively paranoid about dying in a terror attack in the weeks before my wedding, because the news reports at the time made it seem that just about every terror victim had been about to get married, just as every soldier killed in combat seemed to be on the verge of finishing his army service. (Back on the media side not long after, I contributed to the general impression by writing this article about a young woman who was indeed killed in a terror attack the night before her wedding.)

And so it is that a mundane car crash becomes a wire story somehow connected to the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history. Let’s face it: For all the heartache of the student’s family, from a media perspective, the car accident is not much of a national story - only one victim, and at that, one who’s not a child, a saint or a celebrity. Happens all the time. But somehow, that connection to a larger tragedy - or, more specifically, to the feeling that, Oedipus-like, this student evaded his fate only to encounter it as he attempted to flee - makes the accident (debatably) newsworthy.

I have often thought since moving to Israel during the intifada, when such thoughts were inescapable, that if I had a choice, I would much rather be killed in a terror attack than in a car accident - though my chances of the latter are far higher than my chances of the former. Of course, I hope my family and I live long and healthy lives (ptu ptu ptu), but perhaps this morbid thought is fitting on a day in which we are supposed to think of death.

The families of Israelis killed in terror attacks, as in combat, are afforded a kind of honor and prestige - not to mention the crasser element of financial assistance from the state - that the families of accident victims could never hope for. A family member dying in a car accident is a personal tragedy, while a family member dying in war or by an act of terrorism is a national tragedy. I often think that it must be harder for families of accident victims to deal with their loss because it just seems so pointless, whereas the others can at least comfort themselves with the knowledge that their loved ones sacrificed themselves to some more noble cause than the rehabilitation of a drunk driver.

As the national emotional manipulation machine goes into gear once again - the same slow songs on the radio that they play right after a terror attack, the TV movies about death - I join the country in mourning the loss of the men and women whose early departure from this world is commemorated today. All the same, I can’t help but entertain a sneaking, possibly heretical, sensation that due to the perhaps inevitable value society assigns to some kinds of deaths and not others, their families are - in a way that I certainly do not envy - the lucky ones.

El Al's secret code

I’ve passed it countless times before, but on my way back from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem today, the huge El Al ad plastered on the wall of a building at the main entrance to the capital caught my eye anew. It’s completely cheesy and maybe even a bit sacrilegious, but there’s something about how it embodies Israeli chutzpah that appeals to the over-analyzer in me.

The ad depicts a plane flying through a perfectly blue sky, so close to the Western Wall that in real life, fighter jets would have been scrambled to see what the hell that pilot was doing. Something about how the ad is on a wall made of Jerusalem stone and how the Western Wall is, of course, also made of stone almost makes it seem like the scene really is right in front of you – especially if you’ve spent most of the ride asleep and you’re in a kind of squinty-eyed haze as the bus rolls into town.

There are two other elements that make this ad stand out in my mind:

- The tacky use of an overexposed religious symbol for crass commercial gain, in a way that reminds me of my parents’ wedding album from the '70s, in which the photographer made even tackier use of the selfsame overexposed religious symbol by superimposing my parents on the Kotel even though they got married in Queens.

(This tactic of El Al’s, by the way, does not seem to have had any effect on the Haredim who only want to patronize airlines that fly on Shabbat as long as the airlines are not named El Al.)

- The dual message for Israelis and for tourists. In English, on the central portion of the ad, it says, “El Al – It’s not just an airline, it’s Israel.” On the bottom of the ad, below the picture, it says in Hebrew, “El Al is bringing tourism back to Israel” - "אל על מחזירה את התיירות לישראל."

The English tagline is fully comprehensible and meshes with the visual message, in which El Al, apparently, hopes that the next time people think of the Western Wall they will automatically think of El Al as well and book a ticket.

The second, Hebrew message – and the fact that there is one in the first place – is what really makes me stop and think (and not just because of the traffic that almost inevitably clogs the main entrance to Jerusalem - right in front of the ad, conveniently enough).

I see the Hebrew message as a kind of (not-so-)secret code hidden in plain sight, one that makes reference to the ad almost as though it weren’t part of it. The English message targets tourists, but the Hebrew message doesn’t really target Israelis so much as it explains the ad to the local audience. “You see?” it says. “We’re not just a company; we’re your source of rich Americans. See above.”

I think that what ultimately strikes me most about the ad is that El Al’s secret code, like many Israelis, seems to simultaneously welcome tourists – and their money, of course - while talking about them behind their backs and assuming they won’t understand.

The concept raises all kinds of possibilities for unexpected (if not entirely straightforward) honesty. Maybe the downtown Jerusalem store with the English sign saying "Welcome brave tourists" should take a lesson from El Al and tack on a Hebrew addendum: “We’ll only charge you twice as much, habibi.”