Old/New World Discourse: Anti-status: Part II

In "Anti-status: Part I," I shared that Israelis view material goods differently than do citizens of many other nations. I cited pragmatics as the rationale for this cultural norm. In Part II of this exploration, I will share some of the ways in which this view of possessions affects my family.

Before aliyah, for instance, Boy-Getting-Taller dressed "New World;" shoes, socks, and a dark suit for Shabbat and hagim. It was his full intention, as well, that his parents would invest in the blackest of hats as part of our contribution to the celebration of his becoming Bar Mitzvah.

As a full-fledged local, however, this teen wears light colored pants to shul (citing to his folks a certain mystical rabbi's warning not to wear dark colors during holy times), sandals, and no socks. He was called up to his first aliyah, a few years ago, at the Kotel, as originally planned, but he was called up in a kippa;  having been acculturated out of his desire for a hat.

Analogously, an equally New World-style Yeshiva friend, upon visiting our boy for a few weeks, too, transformed from dark clothes and covered toes to sandals and a hatless head. Before any reader objects that head covering necessarily refers to level of religiosity, please realize that if anything, we and Boy-Getting-Taller have become more machmir (observant), not less, since arriving here; it's just that, simultaneously, our means of signaling what we value have changed.

Meanwhile, Missy Oldest, who has been intermittently working on her "settler-not-yet kallah" look, has given up Shabbat suits. When we are not trying to apprise her grandparents that in our current circles, girls marry at eighteen and nineteen (we truly have moved to the right), we are trying to steer them toward a new mental picture of this daughter, since her use of scarves and bracelets is more typical of the Middle East than of places like London or New York.

Indeed, this change in our eldest's styling has become so overarching that recently a friend asked if our family, in general, was having money problems, and if Missy Oldest, specifically, needed assistance in buying clothes. I think we have no more financial challenges than the friend in question, but I am not yet sufficiently Israeli to feel comfortable talking about her and my respective salaries.

I know, as well, that my daughter would be insulted if someone tried to tamper with her wardrobe. To that end, when Missy Oldest returned to the New World for a visit, she did not elect to borrow "formal" Shabbat clothing from friends for the services which she davened in shul and I did not urge her to do otherwise.

Then there's Missy Youngest, who does not love the dust-preventing invention of head and neck fabric as much as does her sister, but who thinks that facial piercing is a local habit to be emulated. Whereas no child of mine will copy Rivka Emanu and wear a bracelet-sized ring in her nose, let alone be permitted to receive a hole that can accommodate such jewelry, during the past year, Computer Cowboy and I did capitulate enough to make possible Missy Youngest getting single holes punched in each of her ears.

Now our ear ring-bedecked daughter seeks to take other steps to be like her school friends. Namely, she has been campaigning to replace her healthy food habits, derived from her parents’ New World sensibilities, with Israeli fondness for sweet and salty snacks. It matters not to this little lady that all of the fruit and vegetables we buy for the family, especially in this shemittah year means we don't pay for other luxuries; she wants her Bamba and her Krembos.

When her father or I, out of parental love and duty deny her such social normalcy, this young one audibly shutters herself away, finding the thought that her Em and Av would cause her to be at such odds with her peers as unconscionable. I refuse to bribe her with bleached flour bread or with chips; let her relate to her friends by clear plastic covering on her school books and with leg warmers.

Then there is the case of Boy-Who-Needs-Books, a well acculturated child who comprehends that standing is not attained via a collection of electronic devices or by an array of logo-embroidered shirts, but by the breadth of variety in one's collection of teabag covers, and by shear quantity of one's assembly of stones from fruit. Wisely, this child has come to realize that both the paper beverage wrappers and the peach and plum pits are vital to his playground survival. I've been trying to convince him that baths, too, are essential, but thus far have not gotten him as interested in washing as I have in whether I am sipping chamomile or raspberry.

Ever since we began to integrate ourselves into the local culture, Computer Cowboy, too, has become a bit edgy about material things. Although he's not yet ready to relinquish a New World-type mop for the more prevalent sponga, my man insists that all six of us can fit into a five seat car and that we don't really need to turn on the hot water.

Further, he has been trying to convince the rest of us to read all of our periodicals on line and to look into electronic means of communicating with the folks we left behind elsewhere in the world. This same man feels no remorse at being fed a good pita and a schmere of hummus, rather than a piece of cow, but he's still fence sitting the fence when it comes to giving up his knit shirts in favor of button-downs that need ironing.

As for me, although I have ceded to using the dryer sometimes and not just the line and although I frequent bakeries that make much better challah than me, I have shifted, too. I reserve our baby wipes for guests’ babies, constraining myself from my former habit of using those conveniences for cleaning messy fixtures and appliances.
I shrug when I buy dented, but neither oozing nor otherwise discolored cans of food, instead of turning up my nose to them. I bargain with contractors. Plus, I use toilet paper to wipe my nose.
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Little Smile:

Recently, I had the opportunity to share some sufganiyot with a friend. She called to show appreciation, saying "I thank you from the bottom of my stomach."