The other day I went to Netanya with my friends Elisabeth and Alessia to buy some furniture at Ikea. Now Ikea is a bit like McDonalds. You can go anywhere in the world and it will look exactly the same wherever you go. I don't know what I was expecting exactly, but maybe instead of the "Svenska" bedside table or the "Kumpfnot" cutlery range, I thought there might be a little localisation going on here in Israel. Perhaps I was expecting to see the "Yehonatan" sofa or the "Galil" cheese grater. Nope. Unpronounceable Swedish furniture reigns supreme here in Israel. For the life of me though, I have no idea how the Israelis cope with the pronunciation! They have enough trouble with my Anglo-Saxon sounding surname!

And one thing I have always wanted to know was where heck do all those Swedish books that they use to fill the display bookcases come from? Am I the only one who has ever stopped to browse through those weird books?

Now I realise that the whole ethos behind Ikea is that it's the self-service of furniture buying. You walk through the pretty little mock rooms, taking mental notes for your own interior decorating, you sit in every armchair, and check out the mattress on every bed because... well just because. That's part of the whole Ikea shopping experience.

You can even have Swedish meatballs for lunch (we did).

Ok. So I was a woman with a mission. I had to find a good sofa that a) I could afford b) looked nice and c) was comfortable enough to sleep on for possibly up to two months while I wait for my container to arrive from Australia.

Amazingly, I found a sofa that met all three criteria and although I know that Pink Sofa would be heartbroken if she found out, New Sofa is actually way, way more comfy. New Sofa is pristine and white and super fluffy (again, pick the single, childless woman. What woman with kids in her right mind would buy a white sofa?) The good thing is that New Sofa comes with a fully removable cover, so I see it as a good investment for the future should my marital or child status alter, I can always re-cover New Sofa with a more sensible, stain-resistant cover (plastic?)

Ok. So with my main mission accomplished, I was free to roam through Ikea to oooh and aaahhh at all the pretty little householdy things that I covet, but cannot have right now. I did, however purchase a bookshelf and matching CD tower which were pretty cheap and bought a bunch of very reasonably priced kitchenware that will tide me over quite comfortably until my lift arrives. I only bought stuff I have not got coming in the container, so it's not like I am doubling up on things. Ok, now I am sounding like one of those women who feels the need to justify all their purchases. "But honey, it was half price!" Oi vey already.

Right. So with my shopping list all ticked off, it was time to go to the checkout counter. Now, I will sidetrack for one second: in Australia, when you purchase a large item of furniture like a THREE SEATER SOFA, you simply write all the item information down and take that to the cashier and they process the order from that. You don't actually physically see your furniture until it gets delivered.

Ohhhhhhhhh noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. Not in Israel's Ikea. No sirrrreee! So, here's the deal.

1. The kitchen stuff I bought that fit into a trolley was put through the counter and paid for normally.

2. The bookcase and CD tower (flat packed in a cardboard box but really, really heavy!) I bought had to be physically picked up from the adjoining warehouse (ok, we got a cute Israeli boy to help us lift it onto the trolley) and then scanned with the barcode scannery thing. Not so hard.

3. The sofa, it turned out, had to be ordered upstairs in the sofa department itself. They would give me a piece of paper which printed out my order, but I couldn't pay there. I had to then take the piece of paper to another woman somewhere else on the floor who takes your payment and gives you a second piece of paper. Then this lady tells me that I will have to wait up to 60 minutes for the order to somehow make its way downstairs to the warehouse.

"What?" I asked. "60 minutes? But you process everything on a central database. How can it take 6o minutes to make its way downstairs? Does the little order form sprout legs, and walk downstairs while making a detour through Stockholm?"

The clerk looked at me with a vacant expression. This, clearly, was not her concern. "Next" she yelled.

So the three of us traipse downstairs once again and take the new piece of paper to another clerk at the entrance to the warehouse. We're told that they will call me when it is ready. "When what's ready?" I ask. "The sofa" comes the reply.

"But why are you bringing out the sofa? I need to have it delivered."
"Yes. I know. But you must take the sofa first to the delivery desk."
"You mean literally take the sofa all of 5 metres to another clerk?"
"Yes."
"Are you mad?"

Smile.

Fast forward 20 minutes.

"Tanya? Ha sapa shelach" (translation: "Tanya. Your sofa.")

So. Picture this: 3 girls. 3 massive trolleys. We maneuver ourselves to the delivery desk and I tell them I want them to deliver the lot.
"We can't deliver anything in bags. Only boxes and furniture." "But I don't have a car! I live in Jerusalem!" This kitchen stuff weighs a ton!" "Slicha (sorry) but you must to take it with you. We cannot deliver it."

(5 more minutes of please, buts and minor begging got me nowhere).

Finally, the order was complete. I was paid up. Delivery was sorted out and Elisabeth, Alessia and I each took a massive great Ikea carry bag and managed somehow to get back to the bus station in Tel Aviv (via taxi to the train station and then the train from Netanya to Tel Aviv). The girls helped me as far as the Jerusalem bus where I put everything in the hold below.

I spent most of the one hour ride back to Jerusalem stressing about how I was going to navigate my way through the hoards of crowds trying to make their way through security at the Central Bus Station. I knew they would ALL hate me - the girl with all the bloody bags holding up the line. Oh joy.

I am the last one off the bus. I grab all my bags from underneath the bus and the bus driver took one look at me and laughed. "What are you moving house or something? How are you going to manage all that?" "I need to get a cab" I reply.
"Don't move sweetie. Stay there. I will order a cab for you."

Five minutes later, a cab pulls into the station, which normally never happens for security reasons, and the driver got out and put all my bags in the boot for me. I got dropped right outside my front door and all I ended up having to do is get them up one flight of stairs to my room.

So. After all that, what did I learn?

• Well, as usual in Israel - if you think you need 3 hours to do something, set aside about 7.
• Israel loves its bureaucracy, but even more than that, Israelis love to bitch about it (it gives them something to do).
• Keep a cool head. Try not to get stressed (it gets you nowhere here!) and just know that in the end it will probably all work out (exactly how, I am not so sure!)

My lovely new sofa and bookcase/CD tower got delivered today to my lovely new apartment (that I can't move into for two more weeks!) because the current tenant still has to move out. It's fine though because I have a good friend I can stay with for a couple of weeks. When it is time to move in, I am going to have to enlist the help of a rocket scientist to help me assemble the damn things.

So. My lease is signed, the city municipality already have me on their system so I can start paying taxes (oh yippee!) and slowly slowly, I am becoming a real, bona fide Israeli.

I think it's almost time to pop the bubbly.

Ok, I have to explain the posting below. I have transcribed it from the notes I made this afternoon while I was in Tel Aviv without a notebook and a desperate compulsion to put my thoughts down on paper. I ended up resorting to the back pages of the book I am currently reading; The May Queen: Women on Life, Love, Work, and pulling it all together in your 30's. Edited by Andrea N. Richesin. Highly recommended gals.

I know that it’s near sacrilege to write in a book. It’s some form of minor desecration for sure. But I’m a desperate woman and these are desperate times and desperate times call for desperate measures.

As a writer, sometimes I worry what I would do without a pen and paper or my fingers and keyboard. As I left home this afternoon (well, actually my serviced apartment), I realised that I’d left my notebook behind. A sense of panic filled me and I spent over half an hour combing the streets of Tel Aviv looking for a shop that sold a cheap little notebook. Not much was open. It’s Shabbat. It proved to be a fruitless search. Hence after much deliberation and hesitation, I decided to write on the only surface available to me; (other than my body, but that would be weird in a café) this book. In some respects, this book is an interesting choice. It’s full of insightful, entertaining, often meaningful and very relatable stories by women in their 30’s. Women just like me.

I’ve been living in Israel for six weeks now. I’m sitting right on the border of my old life and my new life. The old life will be no more in a week or so. My Australian job will officially end. My work-provided (free) accommodation will also come to an end and I will be flung into a total state of newness. New job, new (empty) apartment…

For six weeks I have craved space, peace and quiet. Now that I have it I feel the total lack of noise in my head will drive me to distraction. Shabbat in Jerusalem for a largely non-observant, single girl is a bloody lonely place to be. Despite my earlier convictions that a whole day spent in bed in my pyjamas would be a fun and liberating thing to do, I soon felt like a slob and had to get up, have a shower, get dressed and clean my room (even though I am in a serviced apartment and there are people whose job it is to do that). It’s all about trying to feel normal. It’s all about my desperate need for some semblance of routine in my otherwise rudderless life.

I know that in a relatively short space of time life will be more structured than I would ever wish it to be. I’ll wake up, get ready for work, spend all day at work, come home, make dinner, watch TV, go to bed and repeat ad nauseam.

But right now, right this second as I sit in a café in the middle of Tel Aviv on this very cold and wet winter’s day, I feel lonely and so very far away from everything and everyone I know.

There’s an easy escape route from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. A maxi-cab service that runs round the clock, 7 days a week. For a mere 20 shekels (or 25 on Shabbat) you can be in the City that Never Sleeps in less than an hour.

Shabbat attracts an unusual crowd of people on the sherut (the shared maxi-cab). Today’s journey was shared with three Filipino foreign workers, three Arab Israelis, two monks in full habit complete with rope belt (although who the hell knows why they were going to Tel Aviv!) and me.

So anyway, back to me feeling sorry for myself. Ok, so it probably didn’t help matters that I rang my ex-boyfriend in Sydney and spoke to him for over an hour this morning. The truth is, we only broke up because I chose to board a plane to Israel. Had I not… well, let’s not play the game, “What if…?”

The thought of moving into an empty apartment in a week or two completely devoid of furniture (bar the sofa I hope to purchase tomorrow) also fills me with fear. I wrote some time ago about possessions and our natural human instinct to want to be surrounded by them, protected by all that is familiar to us. I know that feeling. Oh, how I miss that feeling.

We all make choices in life. I have made mine. I made the choice to leave my home, my family, my friends and a man I had huge feelings for to live in a foreign country with not much more than an unusually (some might even say unhealthy, but whatever…) large dose of optimism.

I might be a bit lonely, a bit rudderless today, but I am not unhappy. In my heart I know I did the right thing. You can’t expect to make such a huge life change and not experience some kind of emotional fallout. I am, after all, only human. A human girl of infinitesimally heartbreaking proportions.

I am glad it is cold and wet (and now dark). It suits my slightly melancholic mood today. I know I am not the only lonely soul in the world. I am sure that there is at least one other desperate person out there vandalizing a perfectly good book all in the name of literary therapy.

Labels: Diary

Where have the last six weeks gone? Have I already been here that long? Although, when I think about it, it also feels like I got off the plane yesterday. Tomorrow the AUJS Israel Programs for 2006-07 officially come to an end. Tonight, as I stood in the nightclub we hired out for this evening's farewell party, I looked at all the participants having an amazing time. You know what I felt? I felt really old!!

There have been the usual ups and downs with the programs - but definitely more ups than downs. There have been some wonderful stories too;

There was the young man who came up to me a couple of weeks into his program to tell me how much Israel already meant to him. He told me that before this trip he had never stepped foot in a synagogue. His first experience of a shul was in Safed and as he stood with his mates, one of them came over to him and discreetly turned his siddur round the right way. Yes, it's funny, but it is also touching and so real.

There's the girl who back home has never felt anything but an outsider. She never ran with the "cool group" and at times on her program she felt isolated and lonely. We sat and had a good chat one night and she messaged me one day to thank me for taking the time to listen to her and to tell me that things had turned around for her and she was having a great time. Tonight I saw her dancing with new friends and having a wonderful time.

And there's the guy who was not brought up with any Judaism at home whatsoever. With a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, he struggled to connect to anything growing up and revealed to his madrichim one day that he had never had a Bar Mitzvah. A few days later, his madrichim arranged for him to have one at a reform synagogue in Jerusalem. His madrich told me he cried and said it was the most amazing and meaningful thing that had ever happened to him.

Tomorrow afternoon it will all be over. The frantic pace will slow to a snail's pace. My phone will stop ringing off the hook and I won't get those horrible phone calls at 3am to inform me of one crisis or another. What on earth will I do with myself?!

Well in just over a week I start my new job at The Shalem Center and with it comes a whole new set of challenges. New people, new environment, new game with new rules.

I have also found a great apartment that I will be moving into in a week or two. It's in a great neighbourhood of Jerusalem called Talbieh. It's a 15 minute walk in either direction to either the city centre or my new work which is located in the very funky and rather bohemian German Colony. I couldn't have found a better place if I tried.

I am almost getting worried about the amount of good luck which has come my way so far. I am so superstitious (ptoi, ptoi, ptoi!!! she spits) I feel so unbelievably blessed and I wonder what I have done to deserve such wonderful things.

I can't wait to move into my new place, except it will be a challenge for the first couple of months as my container from Australia probably won't arrive until March sometime. In the meantime I will be living the minimalist lifestyle - a sofa (that I have to buy, mind you) that will double as my bed for some time... my laptop will double as my DVD player... and I can foresee that I will be getting artistic and creative with milk crates and sarongs.

I will be calling in some favours from friends and family to lend me odds and ends to tide me over until I have my things. Oh, how I miss my THINGS.

I know it is going to be a bit tough, a bit basic and at times downright bloody inconvenient, but at the back of my mind always, I realise that it is just a temporary state. Eventually I will be able to come home from work, walk through my front door, greet my (future) kitty cat, turn on my telly and chill out after a hard day's work.

Despite this temporary state of flux, of slight chaos, I thank my lucky stars every day that I am here. I am blessed to have so many wonderful friends and family around me, and I know I haven't felt this happy and fulfilled in a long, long time.

It's the best feeling in the world. That feeling that you know you have come home.

Last night marked the highlight for many of our AUJS Israel Program participants. It was the much-anticipated Taglit birthright-israel Mega Event.

Held in the enormous Binyanei Ha'uma convention centre in Jerusalem, the auditorium was filled with more than 3,000 young Jews from all over the world who are currently touring the country on their own birthright tour.

I glowed with pride as I saw our 250 strong contingent of Aussies (including a small, but very vocal bunch of Kiwis!) all dressed up proudly displaying their patriotic best. There were inflatable kangaroos, clip on koalas, Aussie flags sewn into dresses and many an Aussie Rules or rugby jersey. For a comparatively small group (compared to the approximately 2000 strong contingent from the United States) we definitely made our presence felt. Whenever one of the comperes mentioned Australia, our group yelled out till their throats were hoarse. At one point, our New Zealand friends took their shirts off (just the boys, mind you!) and performed the Haka, much to the excitement of many a preppy American girl who probably had no idea what she was watching whatsoever.

The concert itself was absolutely fantastic. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spoke, as did the founders of birthright, Michael Steinhardt and Charles Bronfman. The two hour extravaganza was a display of Israel's very brightest stars. The musical highlight of the evening was definitely Israeli super band, Shotei Hanevua who performed for close to 40 minutes. I am not sure how many of the audience realised how lucky they were.

I looked around at our group. I could not hide my joy and pride to see so many young people - most of whom have never been to Israel before - having the time of their life. They sang and danced with their new friends, even new loves (oh, how we love Jewish continuity ha ha!), and each face emanated the kind of genuine emotion that you cannot manufacture.

At the end of the concert the entire audience rose to sing the Israeli national anthem, Hatikva and it dawned on me at that very moment that I was singing MY national anthem. I was singing it in Jerusalem, which is now the city I live in.

At the beginning of the evening, we heard the impressive list of (predominantly) American philanthropists who give enormous amounts of money to Taglit birthright-israel. Each person in that room was the recipient of a FREE 10 day trip to Israel. There were 3,000 people there last night. There was another Mega Event earlier in the week, so double that figure. 6,000 people this winter alone. That's millions of dollars right there. Last (northern hemisphere) summer, birthright sent its 100,000th participant. I don't think I can even calculate how much money that comes to. The way birthright works is this: The Taglit birthright-israel philanthropic fund contributes a third of the cost, the Israeli government contributes a third and the final third is paid for by each local Jewish community. In Australia's case, this comes through the generous support of the United Israel Appeal (UIA).

What I did think of as I sat there last night was this: where are the Australian philanthropists? There are no shortage of very wealthy (and generous) Jewish families in Australia. Why didn't we hear Besen, Gandel, Gonski, Pratt, Sherman or Lowy being yelled out?

Birthright is so much more than a 10 day program in Israel. This program give our young people an identity. It empowers them, strengthens them, fills them with pride to be Jews, and teaches them to be powerful advocates for Israel. In this day and age, we need all the help we can get. Australia has had a long and strong connection to Israel, and I am sure it always will.
But I fear that this is not enough.

We need to put our money where our mouths are. It's not enough to depend on the generosity of others to send our kids to Israel. Come on Besen, Gandel, Gonski, Pratt, Sherman and Lowy. You can make a difference. You can personally affect the lives of thousands of young Australian Jews. Next year at the 2008 Taglit birthright israel Mega Event, just imagine how amazing it would be for our kids to hear the names of their own home grown Aussie Jewish heroes? If they were yelling loudly this year, I can guarantee you they won't be able to speak for a week next time!

In the meantime, for all those that missed out, you can watch the whole concert on the internet. Just click HERE!

Am Yisrael Chai!

ADDENDUM

Sometimes when us bloggers write something that goes online, we wonder if there is anyone the heck out there reading our material. Well, I have most definitely proved that point this week as I have had a number of responses to my article on the Taglit birthright-israel Mega Event held last week in Jerusalem.

I apologise profusely for any offence I may have causd by my mention of certain prominent families. In no way was it intended to be any kind of "public shaming". Quite the contrary. Having worked on the AUJS Israel Programs for the last two years, I am all too aware of the unbelievable generosity of so many individuals and families.

We all know that as a community we can always do more and all I hoped to achieve was to put such a major initiaive into the forefront of people's minds and hope that even one person out there who read the article, felt spurred on to become involved in the future. At the end of the day, it's about preserving our culture and our heritage - and that is a battle I will always fight.

The start of a new year never looked so good.

At 9.30am on January 1st, 2007 I got the call I have been waiting for with bated breath (not to mention my knotted stomach!) for the last couple of weeks. I have been offered a job. Not just any job, but an absolutely fantastic job, here in Jerusalem!

I have been offered the position of Campus Affairs Coordinator at The Shalem Center, which is a highly respected academic institution which was founded in 1994 by scholars and public figures from Israel and the Diaspora. The Center advances original research, publication, and teaching in the areas most crucial to the public life of the Jewish people, including Jewish moral and political thought, Zionist history and ideas, Biblical archaeology, democratic theory, and economic and social policy.

My position entails a number of things, but primarily I will be working to recruit top notch undergraduate Diaspora students in North America and the UK for an intensive summer program here in Jerusalem. I will also be promoting the work of Shalem on campuses across North America including securing speaking engagements for the many excellent speakers Shalem has at its disposal. Another area I will also be intrinsically involved with is the student journal project. Shalem financially assists, mentors and supports undergraduate students to establish student journals that focus on Jewish and Zionist themes. There are currently six journals being published, but Shalem aims to increase this number in the coming year.

This is a huge position, with enormous challenges, but I can't begin to express how excited I am about it. The Shalem Center has such a wonderful reputation and the handful of times I have been there to attend interviews have always been wonderful experiences. The people who work there are warm and genuine and clearly very passionate about their work. I have no doubt that it will be an incredibly exciting and intellectually stimulating working enviroment.

As I walked out this afternoon, signed contract in my bag, I sighed an enormous sigh of relief. I think that sigh had been building up for a long time. Finally, I exhaled months' worth of stress, panic and uncertainty about my future. Today, those feelings transformed into joy, excitement and relief. I officially commence my new job on January 21st, immediately following the end of the AUJS Israel Programs, so the timing is fantastic. I now have about three weeks to find an apartment (which hopefully won't be TOO hard!) and best of all, I can now organise to send my lift from Australia, which has been sitting in storage since mid-November. It might take a while until it actually gets here, so I will be living with fairly minimal furniture in the meantime, but in the big picture scheme of things, it's a small price to pay.

It's kind of ironic that I have ended up living here in Jerusalem, because before I left Sydney, friends and family asked where I thought I would end up and I always assumed it would be Tel Aviv. However, I have really developed a soft spot for this city. Jerusalem is full of hidden nooks and crannies and is inhabited by every type of person you could possibly imagine. It's colourful, frenetic, spiritual, historic, modern, utterly chaotic and now, it's my home.

So, here's to 2007! May it be a year of abundant blessings for us all.