Table of Contents
Big choices to make…
When I first moved back to Israel, I lived in a real dump of an apartment. It was in an area of Jerusalem called Nachlaot, which is usually quite expensive due to its proximity to the city center. The apartments are often in terrible condition, and the landlords for those place are the absolute worst. Why? Because there aren’t any laws to protect renters, and there’s always going to be someone stupid enough to rent their crappy apartments. So they’d rather let the place crumble to the ground than waste any time and money dealing with their annoying tenants. If the tenant leaves, they leave. But there will always be someone willing to spend the money.
Sink or Swim
My apartment was small. There were only two sinks: One in the kitchen and one in the bathroom. When the kitchen sink broke, it left us in quite a pickle. I contacted the landlord, who sent a second-rate guy over to fix things. He was not even close to successful. He made a huge mess, left our place with pieces all over the floor, no functional sink, and no stated plan as to what would happen next.
What followed was a three-week ordeal, with me constantly reaching out to the landlord, constantly getting promises that went unfulfilled, and two total trips from the guy who couldn’t do anything except make my apartment messy.
So how’d the story end?
After I couldn’t handle anything anymore, I tracked down and called my landlord’s boss, the owner of the apartment. He tried to sidestep any conversation, but I wouldn’t have any of it. We had a yelling match with lots of anger and threats.
And the next day someone came out and fixed our sink.
Becoming a Worse Person
After I got off the phone with the owner, I remembered my son was in my apartment, potentially listening to the whole ordeal. It made me sad. On one hand, I felt like in some ways I was giving him a life lesson necessary for someone who wants to survive life in Israel. On the other hand, I felt like I was teaching him to be a lousy person.
You can’t yell and carry on like that without it having an impact. It changes you. I guess you can argue it makes you stronger. But it felt like it just made me more stressed. And it made me a worse person.
I’ve thought about that day a lot lately, as I realize I’m getting trampled over like crazy at the moment. It’s very easy for that to happen. If you just try to go about your life here in Israel in a carefree manner, you are ripe for getting kicked around. Someone will try to overcharge you. Someone will slip extra things in a bill. And someone will give you less than stellar service, forcing you to need their service again.
So ultimately you’re left with just three choices. In my opinion, three unsavory choices. And I’m honestly not sure which one of them I need to take in order to live the life I want.
Unsavory Choice #1
The first choice is to conform. To recognize that this is just how it is. I need to improve my Hebrew, walk around every single day of my life on the lookout for those who wish to harm me, harden myself, and be ready at all times to fight. I need to be ready to push back hard when someone tries to get the upper hand.
That guy would have called the apartment owner the first day the sink was broken. He would have shouted from the offset. He would have threatened to not pay rent, to involve lawyers, to start an online campaign to defame the company.
And you know what, he likely would have gotten his sink fixed much quicker than mine was.
But at what cost?
If that’s me, am I even myself anymore? I’d be an angrier, more aggressive version of myself I wouldn’t particularly like to see at when I looked in the mirror.
So choice number one seems to be a rather tough one.
Unsavory Choice #2
Choice number two is to stay true to myself, but recognize that this means people will take advantage of me. I will get ripped off in stores and by the bank. The bus driver will occasionally close the door in my face. People will walk into me everywhere I go. But if I make this choice, I cannot just put up with all of this. I will somehow have to learn to be content with my life despite the fact that I’m getting beaten up by my surroundings every single day.
And the truth is, I don’t know if I could ever get to that place.
When I’m yelled at or someone speeds through a crosswalk forcing me to jump backwards or my boiler breaks for the fifteenth time because the startup nation can’t figure out how to make caps that stand up to cold, I feel it in my soul. I feel crushed. I feel intense pain. And it all exhausts me.
So choice number one (conforming) or choice number two (accepting getting beaten down) both seem equally unpalatable to me.
Unsavory Choice #3
And that only gives me one choice left: Get the hell out of here.
But at what cost?
My children live in Israel. My wife’s family lives in Israel. And even though I feel like I know how to survive the America experience better than the Israel one, I’ve still spent 16 years of my adult life here. It’s beginning to be the only thing I know, for better or for worse.
And my nation’s at war.
When the war began, there were lots of people who fled the country. I tried not to judge them, but there was a part of me that just couldn’t understand. Loving Israel means being here for the goods, the bad, and the uglies. Everyone played their part. Leaving at that point didn’t feel like an option, or at least not one I was comfortable with.
But the feeling has waned. And here we are.
I left Israel 19 years ago. There were many reasons to go at the time. One was this profound feeling like the country wanted me gone. Like I was being spat out.
It pains me that I feel that way once again. And I have no idea what to do with that feeling.
