On the eve of my family’s departure for Israel, I was duly cautioned that Israelis are impolite, insolent, ill-mannered, ill-tempered, unpleasant, uncivil, discourteous, curt, coarse, rude and crude; that they are irritable, irascible, petulant, peevish, prickly, touchy, testy, huffy and puffy – not to mention moody, mercurial, temperamental and downright persnickety. So, armed with this helpful sketch of Israeli basic personality structure, I came here fully expecting no end of ‘colourful’ behaviour and day-to-day displays of Cro-Magnon social interaction.
Philippines RPCV Carl Hoffman challenges the stereotype about irritable Israelis
Ever so easy-going
Carl Hoffman challenges the stereotype about irritable Israelis
Carl Hoffman | Autumn 2005 - Number 199
On the two occasions in my life in which someone has angrily hurled food against the wall, I was with my father. Now, while it is true that my father – as he would be the first to admit – tends to have that kind of effect on people, on each of these occasions he was, like myself, an innocent bystander, watching the spectacle with mute fascination. The first time I saw food hurled against the wall more than four decades ago, while my father and I were having lunch at Warmuth’s, a long-gone Yankee restaurant in the heart of Boston’s old downtown.
A heavy-set, florid-faced waitress, of the type for which Boston’s restaurants were once notorious, was tromping around the dining room, harried and overworked. Struggling after God knows how many hours on her feet, trying to keep up with the demands of some ten tables full of cranky, crotchety Boston diners, the poor woman finally lost it. A guy at the next table called her over – he actually had the chutzpah to snap his fingers at her – and grumpily complained that his dinner rolls were stale.
I will never forget what happened next: the waitress, her face an expressionless mask, raised her beefy arm and, in one fluid motion, swept the basket of rolls off the table and hurled it over her shoulder. The basket hit the wall about 15 feet away, stale rolls ricocheting off in every direction. My father later expressed his disapproval of the waitress’s loss of self-control by leaving her a five-cent tip, which I’m sure must have brightened her outlook on life even further.
The second time this happened, my dad and I were standing at the counter of the old Premier Delicatessen on Dover Street in Boston’s South End. On this occasion, the offending item was a plate of meatballs which, against all logic and to the customer’s evident disgust, had been made with raisins. ‘Who ever heard of meatballs with raisins?’ inquired the customer, in a series of throaty grunts.
‘They’re Jewish meatballs,’ the counterman replied. ‘Jewish meatballs got raisins. Don’t you know from Jewish meatballs?’
‘Jewish, schmu’ish,’ cried the customer, ‘they got raisins, and I say to hell with them.’
‘You know what,’ said the counterman, ‘you don’t want them, don’t eat them.’
And with that the beleaguered counterman grabbed the plate of meatballs and, yes, hurled them over his shoulder against the white tile wall behind him. What has stayed lodged in my memory, after more than 35 years, is the fact that the meatballs did not bounce; they actually adhered to the wall, and slowly slid downwards - leaving streaks of raisin-spotted gravy in their wake.
I haven’t seen anything like these incidents since, and I simply cannot understand why. For the past six years I have lived in a country where everyone is reputedly in a permanent bad mood, and where angry screaming is said to be the dominant mode of conversation.
Before making aliyah to Israel, I was led to believe by numerous concerned friends – many of them Israeli – that I would be witnessing spectacles of this sort almost every hour of every day. On the eve of my family’s departure for Israel, I was duly cautioned that Israelis are impolite, insolent, ill-mannered, ill-tempered, unpleasant, uncivil, discourteous, curt, coarse, rude and crude; that they are irritable, irascible, petulant, peevish, prickly, touchy, testy, huffy and puffy – not to mention moody, mercurial, temperamental and downright persnickety. So, armed with this helpful sketch of Israeli basic personality structure, I came here fully expecting no end of ‘colourful’ behaviour and day-to-day displays of Cro-Magnon social interaction.
Imagine my surprise, then, to arrive in this country and discover that Israel is inhabited by some of the calmest, most easy-going, laid-back, live-and-let-live, imperturbable introverts on the face of the earth. Exhibiting virtually no resemblance to his kvetching, complaining, argumentative stereotype, the average Israeli turns out instead to display the unflappable serenity of a Zen Buddhist monk, the patience of Job, and the silent stoicism of a Buckingham Palace guard.
Case in point: I board the Number 247 bus to Ra’anana on Ibn Gvirol Street in Tel Aviv. The bus is crowded; the air conditioning, unaccountably, is off. As the hot, crowded vehicle wends its way across the Yarkon River, passengers raise their hands to poke idly at the air vents, hoping the driver will notice and switch the air conditioning on. He does not, so the passengers lower their heads and let out soft sighs of quiet resignation, each absorbed in his or her own thoughts. One or two shake their shirt collars in a vain attempt to stimulate a breeze; others blow air into their shirts. No one says a word, makes a gesture, sends a signal or even attempts to communicate with the driver telepathically.
Finally, a voice comes bellowing from the back of the bus. It is an unpleasant voice, gruff and nasal, the product of years of cigarette smoke, air pollution and, I suspect, way too much talking. It is a voice laden with anger, impatience and an utter lack of etiquette. ‘Nahag,’ the voice bawls, ‘mazgan b’vakashah!’ I know this voice – it is, in fact, my own. As I once again find myself yelling for air conditioning, wondering yet again why I am always the one that has to do this, the driver shrugs his shoulders and obligingly switches it on.
Or consider this: one of my wife’s closest friends is, like my wife, a native of the Far East, hailing from a land that bills itself as ‘the Pearl of the Orient, Where Asia Wears a Smile’. And, nurtured by warm sunshine and gentle breezes scented with fragrant jasmine and lush bougainvillea, smile she does. Her voice is soft and gentle, her face is tranquil, her eyes are hypnotically soothing, and her overall demeanour is as calm and unruffled as the indigo-blue water of a sun-kissed tropical lagoon. Except when she has been overcharged.
A number of years ago, her son returned home from an errand on Ahuza Street, having been dispatched to a jewellery shop to pick up and pay for a wristwatch that my wife’s friend had brought in to be repaired. When the boy came home with the watch and virtually no change, my wife’s friend angrily examined the receipt and decided that her son had been charged around twice the agreed-upon amount of money. Swooping into the shop like an avenging fury, this little Asian lady, brimming with righteous indignation, brought down curses and imprecations on the heads of the salesgirls with a voice the shook the store’s plate-glass window. Customers in the store made ‘tsk-tsk’ noises with their tongues as one or two, their fingers outstretched with their palms down, made gentle calming gestures with their hands. After weathering a typhoon of fire and brimstone, one of the salesgirls quietly advised my wife’s friend that she would accomplish more – both at that store and in life – by being more polite.
If the people in that shop had reacted the way Israelis are supposed to behave, the screaming would still be going on, years later, with only time-outs for meals, visits to the bathroom and the occasional wedding or barmitzvah. The truth, however, is that Israelis seem rarely to behave like they are supposed to. The aggressive, angst-ridden screaming matches that many American Jews are convinced go on here all the time are, in fact, rarely seen. Most people here seem to develop, at an early age, some sort of invisible shield that protects them from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune – from lackadaisical salesgirls, harried waiters, swelteringly hot buses that don’t come on time and a host of other annoyances that would drive most Americans insane. If I am ever again to enjoy the poignant drama of someone angrily hurling food against the wall, I will apparently have to go somewhere else to see it.
Carl Hoffman grew up in Boston and was educated in New York and Philadelphia. He has worked as a university lecturer in the United States, an anthropologist in Indonesia, and as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines. He currently resides in Israel with his wife and two children. He is an occasional contributor to the Jerusalem Post.
