Aliyah 110: ‘Close Door’ buttons work!

Elevator Buttons Work

Just to see … just maybe … I pressed the ‘close door’ button thinking others in the elevator would roll their eyes at someone pressing the eye candy. The elevator door closed. Really? Must be a coincidence. I must have just happened to hit it when it was closing.

Four, five, six times later, I can confirm the ‘close door’ buttons works in Israel! I haven’t tested every elevator yet (and don’t intend to). The fact that it can work on any elevator is already a cause for joy. I have just that much more control over my destiny.

I checked why they don’t work in the United States – they do, though only after a set period of time (when the door is probably going to close anyway) due to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

There’s a balance between “laws to help people” and “well, doing something is better than nothing, right? Let’s do it anyway.” In truth, I’ve never had to wheel into an elevator, so I don’t know how I’d feel if I had to, though slowing down a billion elevator trips a year doesn’t seem like a good tradeoff.

Secluded Beaches

I had this idea in my head that cities line the coast of Israel so finding a secluded spot on the Mediterranean on a Friday was not possible. Very incorrect. First, you can find a large, beautiful, and completely empty beach at the end of the Sorek Estuary. Second, Hof Ga’ash. It’s North of Herzliya … to the ‘left’ of Ra’nanna… and beautiful.

The parking lot in true Israel style is way too small and while 50+ cars are parked along the road, when we came back, every one of them had a 250 shekel ticket!

Then walk down through a wide rocky path carved between mountains to a narrow beach with bathrooms (good to know) and civilization. Make a right past the people, walk for about 10 minutes and the beach becomes very sparse. No lifeguards, not wide, though beautiful and you know, be careful. Elevator doors close around here.

Feminine Language

Seems like a silly difficulty to have to have two version of every word … ‘geish’ and ‘geisha’ … to ‘access’ in masculine and feminine. (In Japanese it’s one of those female women in a kimono that serves you.) Or, as DuoLingo likes to translate, ‘baraz’ and ‘baraza’ as ‘drake’ and ‘duck’ which now becomes a problem for me not because I don’t know the Hebrew … I forgot which is which in English the first time.

The womenfolk around me have a different opinion – they like that conversation feels more directed to them. They are seen and made special for being women. Not being I woman, I think this might be like how in marketing you always want to say your customer’s name because it makes them feel a better connection to you. The further away you get from personal names, verbs, nouns, and pronouns, the more distant you become from one another with more walls. I wonder if the English language leads itself more to this concept in the United States of calling a single person “they/them” … more disconnection from people.

(My pronouns are “lord/master”. Also, speaking to some LGB people … the “T” isn’t a thing they seem to support around here. They think it’s disgusting. There’s a difference between man and woman – maybe it’s the language.)

Why do I know he’s American?

A guy was shilach tzibur … the guy leading the congregation in synagogue … I immediately knew he was American. How? I hadn’t heard him say anything yet. It was the stance … leaning on one leg with the knee bent on the other leg. I have some theories, though I don’t recall ever seeing a native Israeli stand any other way than with two feet planted on the ground. No storks or swagger here.

VAT At the Post Office

I ordered from an Israeli website – which has to include all taxes in the price. Turns out this website was a middleman and the item was shipped from China. It came to the post office and first had to go to a tax website, pay the VAT (as the item was over $130), and then come back to pick-up the package. They said with Amazon this never happens – it’s a China thing.

Geoguesser

… or Openguesser which is the free one. They drop you in a random place on Google Maps and you can move around and then have to put a pin in a map as close as possible to the actual place. I tried it out, limiting the places to Israel, and I learned a few things:

1. highway numbers here kind of make sense – odd are East/West, even are North/South (opposite of US highway system)
2. there’s a whole lot of dirt roads around here that most people never see
3. you should always have at least three things when you publish a list – as I don’t have a third thing I thought I’d share this with you.

Knowing When I Made It

There’s something special about the ability to know where multiple stores that sell what you’re looking for are, being able to select the one you want for this or that reason, walk right in, for the first time say you don’t need help, walk to the product that you want to buy, bring it back to the counter, tell them you have membership before they ask, use your credit card on the machine that you know how it will work, and walk out without ever having to speak English or fumble.

Rabbi Mykoff’s Shiva

In New Brunswick, New Jersey stood a synagogue from about 1905 that remained after the Jewish community had long moved across the river into Highland Park. Rabbi Avraham Mykoff kept the shul going decades after most other shuls in such a situation would have closed. My friend informed me that his two children were in Israel and it turned out Rabbi Mykoff had himself moved to Israel only about 1/2 hr drive away. It is a shame that we wait until people die for all that know them to get together and speak about them.

Thankfully, I was able to provide comfort for his son and daughter, as they did for me. This was the longest I had every spent at a shiva.

I have many-a-Rabbi Mykoff story that I had forgotten about, joining the 7:15am minyan every morning while in university – me and about 8 other Russians, on average, four times my age. Rabbi Mykoff found housing for them, some of whom had Jewish education just before the Soviet revolution, and all of whom received social benefits and free breakfast from a local bakery where Rabbi Mykoff would pick up the leftovers at the end of the day. English and other classes continued at the synagogue throughout the day.

Rabbi Mykoff advised me to finish a college degree that I was majoring in only because I didn’t know what else to do; I had wanted to just go to yeshiva and learn Torah, the only thing important. Rabbi Mykoff correctly told me that I might need that degree one day while I had little foresight about that.

Another time he wanted to connect with a pathologist – turned out he visited Jewish prisoners and he was sure this one inmate was innocent. Another time he had me digging at the bank of the Raritan River to make it steeper, as a wall of an eruv so university students wouldn’t be carrying. He was single handedly behind handling all the aspects with various government agencies to get this done and I learned about nailing planks to telephone poles pointed at the wire above (‘theoretical door’ as he called it). Yet another time we were in a Judaica store where he checked each and every lulav that he was buying for his congregants – each had to be mehudar, beautiful, even though those waving them wouldn’t know the difference.

Time after time I would come for minyan in the morning, and on Shabbos, at the better attended minyan, speak to the university professor who walked 40 minutes from Edison because he decided just to keep coming or Rabbi Mykoff was going to call him.

Each day, I forgot to bring a document I needed to fax. It was in the office, where Rabbi Mykoff kept money for tzedakah. Two Chassidish collectors had come and someone had left so we were short a minyan. One of the old Russians asked them why they don’t support Israel – this Russian’s grandson lived there. The rabbi shewed the Russian away … it’s irrelevant. They’re Jews here to collect money. They have a job to do. This led to another dilema. Rabbi Mykoff was keeping them in shul for the minyan and at the same time, preventing them from doing their job. So out of the office they received a nice payment for their services, staying until other came to make the minyan.

Back to that fax machine – the bus from one campus to another passed by the shul and it’d been probably a week since I needed to fax a document in the days when that was still the best way to send a copy of a piece of paper to another. I walked in at about 2:30pm and Rabbi Mykoff, from his seat, raised his arms up and started hollering. “What’d I do? What happened?”

I didn’t know it though he had a learning program with other people I had never seen before. Professionals? I don’t know. They learned every day, some days … I don’t know … at 2pm. I don’t think anyone knows all the things Rabbi Mykoff did because he was never one to brag – he just did these things. Sometimes something would come up in conversation while I ate breakfast or learned with him after the morning minyan.

So, what happened? The moment before I walked in Rabbi Mykoff resigned himself to saying, “well, I guess we don’t have a minyan.” I walked in at that moment, the 10th man, and he was more than happy (a phrase that rarely makes sense, though it does here) to let me use the fax machine.

In a final story, there was a cancelled party in my honor. I won’t go into details though point is another party to the party was quite upset. Rabbi Mykoff said, “what if I don’t get the message that it was canceled?” He showed up to the party just to speak to the upset party and help make things more civil between us.

In a final story (actually this time), when it came to burial of a relative who decided to be cremated, he did everything to make sure the relative would get a proper burial. He spoke softly and kindly to relatives about it, arranged with the funeral home, and traveled somewhere around 4 hours by car to officiate at the funeral, bringing a Russian with him (with no interest, I’m sure) to make sure there’d be a minyan. My wife went into labor three hours after the funeral arrangement were finalized, so I watched the funeral by video shortly after greeting my new daughter. We like to say that as one neshama went up, another came down.