You Can Date Boys When You're Forty: Dave Barry on Parenting and Other Topics He Knows Very Little About (10 page)

I
am not a religious man, but there is one passage in the Old Testament that has always spoken to me. It’s in the B
ook of Ruminations, Chapter 4, Verse 2, Row 2, Seat 6, which states: “In thy sixty-fifth year, thou shalt go into the Land of Israel, and thou shalt travel around to every place in a tour bus filled with Jews.”

And so it was that one day in June I set out with my wife, Michelle, and our daughter Sophie from JFK airport, flying to Tel Aviv on El Al.
*
We were going to join a tour of Israel sponsored by our synagogue, Temple Judea of Coral Gables, FL. This is a Reform congregation that is open-minded enough to allow even me to be a member. I’m not Jewish. Michelle and Sophie are, but I’m not religious at all. The most spiritual thing I do is sometimes, in times of crisis, quietly ask for a Higher Power, if one exists, to intervene in certain crucial field goals. Other than that, the Higher Power and I pretty much leave each other alone.

Michelle and I were both a little nervous about going to Israel, which we viewed as a potentially dangerous place. This is pretty funny when you consider that we live in Miami, which is (a) a place where motorists routinely use firearms as turn signals and (b) the only major U.S. city that has in recent years experienced both a massive Burmese python infestation
and
a cannibal attack.

But Israel seemed scarier to us because it’s located smack-dab in the middle of the Middle East, which is not one of the world’s mellower regions. Here are some newspaper headlines you will never see:

HO-HUM! ANOTHER QUIET DAY IN MIDDLE EAST

Everybody in Middle East Getting Along Great

And the headline that you will
especially
never see is:

ISRAEL VERY POPULAR WITH NEIGHBORS

So we were wondering whether the Israel trip was a wise move, especially when we got to the El Al check-in area at JFK and saw a uniformed man carrying a large military-style rifle, wandering among the passengers as if prepared to obliterate anybody violating the three-ounce limit on carry-on shampoo. Before we checked in, a serious security man asked us a bunch of serious questions about our trip, which we—desperate to convince him that we were not terrorists—responded to like the von Trapp family on cocaine, speaking in unnaturally perky voices while smiling enthusiastically for no discernible reason.

Eventually the security man concluded that we were harmless tourist idiots and let us check in. After passing through several more levels of security we reached the concourse, where I stopped at a change booth to exchange some dollars for Israeli currency. To my surprise, this turned out to be called shekels. I had always thought “shekel” was a jokey slang term for fncy“money,” like “moolah.” I wondered if I was being made the butt of a prank played on clueless travelers by bored airport change-booth personnel. (“The moron actually accepted ‘shekels’! Next time let’s see if he’ll take ‘simoleons.’”)

I pocketed my “shekels” and we proceeded to our gate, where, after one more security check, we boarded an El Al 747 along with what appeared to be the entire population of the East Coast. The flight to Tel Aviv took eleven hours and was uneventful, unless you count the actions of the Airplane Lavatory Blockade Unit (ALBU). This is a highly trained group of operatives who travel on every overseas flight I have ever been on. They wait until everybody else is asleep, then they go into all of the lavatories and close the doors, and they do not come out for the remainder of the flight. I don’t know what they do in there. Possibly their income taxes. All I know is, the ALBU does a crackerjack job of preventing me from using the lavatories, which is why I always arrive at my international destination feeling as though I am carrying a mature water buffalo in my intestinal tract.

But the important thing was, we made it to Israel safe and sound, eager for adventure. I would have been less eager if I had known that one of the adventures would involve walking backward off a cliff. But I’m getting ahead of the time line. Let’s start at the beginning of my Israel trip diary:

DAY ONE

We take a taxi from Ben-Gurion Airport to our hotel. Tel Aviv turns out to be a lot like Miami: It has condos, palm trees, beaches, and drivers who do not believe the traffic laws apply to them personally. Also, nobody is speaking English. But here, instead of Spanish, people speak Hebrew, a language featuring many words that are pronounced as though they are only nanoseconds away from turning into a loogie.

We’re staying in a large, modern hotel right next to the Mediterranean. It takes me several minutes to check us in and during this time the water buffalo is making it increasingly clear that it yearns to roam free, if you catch my drift. I really,
really
need to get up to the room. But when I look around, I cannot find Michelle.

Finally, I track her down in the hotel gift shop. I don’t mean to reinforce an unfortunate gender stereotype here but my wife is the Navy SEAL Team 6 of shopping. She can strike anywhere, anytime, at a moment’s notice. Strap a parachute on this woman and drop her into the remotest part of the Amazon Basin, a place populated only by headhunters still living in the Stone Age, and she will, days later, emerge from the rain forest, staggering, emaciated, bleeding and covered with leeches, but clutching a primitive shopping bag containing a set of souvenir shrunken heads. She will then insist that (1) she got the heads at a good price and (2) they will go really well with our living room.

What Michelle has found in the Tel Aviv hotel gift shop are menorahs, which are ceremonial candleholders used in celebrating the Jewish holiday of Chanukah. At this point, I become cranky because (1) Chanukah is six months away and (2) thanks to Michelle’s relentless efforts over the years, we already have (this is a conservative estimate) seventy-five menorahs at home. We could open up our own store, called Menorah World. It does not seem to me, there in the hotel lobby, jet-lagged to a near stupor and with the water buffalo rampaging around in my bowels, that purchasing still
more
menorahs, in the hotel lobby, at this
particular
moment, is an urgent need. Reluctantly, Michelle agrees to leave the shop, which is fortunate because we reach our room just in time to avert a seriously disgusting explosive medical development that would have rendered the entire Middle East uninhabitable for decades.

A short while later, feeling kteris theless cranky and, in one case, considerably lighter, we leave the hotel. We have the afternoon off—our organized tour starts tomorrow—so we head for the beach, where we sit down for lunch at an outdoor café. As we gaze upon the beautiful blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea, which has played such a significant role in world history, Sophie makes an observation that reminds us why it is so important to take children along on trips to foreign lands.

“They have free wifi here,” she says.

Instantly we grab our phones to check texts, e-mails, tweets, Instagram, Facebook, etc. I know we should be ashamed, but this is what every tourist does. The Messiah could ride a unicycle through a crowded tourist area wearing nothing but a set of bagpipes and if there was free wifi, nobody would notice.

After lunch we walk along a scenic seaside promenade to Jaffa, an ancient port city containing many fascinating historic sights that we ignore because there is also shopping. I personally am in the market for some cheap rubber sandals because we’ve been told that at some point our tour will involve wading in an ancient underground water tunnel. I find a sidewalk stall where an elderly man is displaying many kinds of footwear, including sandals. I pick up a sandal and show it to the man.

“Forty shekels,” he says, in a heavy accent.

At this point, I’m supposed to bargain. All the guide books say so. I’m supposed to offer the man, say, fifteen shekels, and then, in the ancient Middle Eastern tradition, we’ll haggle for a while, and finally we will agree on a price. Or we will kill each other’s entire families. But the rule of buying in a Middle Eastern market is
never pay the asking price
.

However, I come from a long line of WASPs. Our tradition is to pay full price, then get revenge by starting an exclusive country club. I hate bargaining, and I am terrible at it. Also, forty shekels is around eleven dollars, which to me seems very reasonable for the sandals. So I say OK to the man and hand him a hundred-shekel bill. It is only after we have walked back to our hotel that I realize two things:

(1) The sandals are defective.

(2) He actually charged me eighty shekels for them. Apparently, when I held up the sandal, he quoted me a price for just that one sandal, as if he believed I planned to hop around the Middle East on just the one foot.

I consider marching back to Jaffa and confronting the sandal man or—this would be truer to my heritage—building a golf course and refusing to let him play there. But it’s getting late and we have to meet for dinner with the rest of our tour group, which totals twenty-five people. We eat at a restaurant featuring cuisine from Yemen (National motto: “Even We Don’t Know Where It Is”). The dinner is delicious. If for some reason that I cannot personally imagine you ever find yourself in Yemen, my recommendation is: Try the food.

DAY TWO

We start at the hotel with an “Israeli-style” breakfast buffet, which is a vast array of fresh salads, fruits, vegetables, fish, breads, cereals, cheeses and on and on and
on
. Israelis take food very seriously. This is another area where Jews and WASPs differ. Your typical Protestant breakfast buffet consists of a dense mass of scrambled eggs that could have been scrambled during the Clinton administration; for side dishes there will be bacon, potatoes and—for variety—some other kind of potatoes.

After breakfast we lumber outside and board our tour bus. Finally, after months of planning and anticipation, we are setting out on our tour of Israel. There is a feeling of excitement, almost giddiness, among the members of our group, because it turns out that
the bus has wifi
.

Our first stop is Indepe ktopiness, ndence Hall, the building in central Tel Aviv, where, on May 14, 1948, with the ruling British about to pull out of what was then called Palestine—an unstable mixture of Arabs and Jews—Israel declared itself to be an independent state. Almost immediately the new nation was attacked by Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. Basically, the Israelis were fighting all their Arab neighbors at once; it’s amazing that that hostile Arab jellyfish didn’t crawl out of the Mediterranean and start stinging them.

Israel won that war and survived, but there were more wars in 1956, 1967 and 1973, as well as many other periods of violent conflict, continuing right up until today. Generally the way these conflicts go is . . .

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

GROSS OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF COMPLEX ISSUE AHEAD

. . . Israel, which has a kickass army, wins the conflict and in the process captures a bunch of new territory. Then, after international pressure and lengthy negotiations, there is some kind of historic peace agreement, which usually involves Israel giving at least some of the captured territory back. This agreement is traditionally signed in the presence of whoever happens to be the president of the United States, whose traditional role is to beam ecstatically over the proceedings as though he is at that moment being serviced by an intern. This is followed by a lasting peace that lasts anywhere from fifteen to twenty minutes. Then there is conflict again.

A major source of the conflict is the issue of what to do about the Palestinian Arabs, who want—not without reason—to have their own nation on territory that Israel currently controls. Polls show that most Israelis would be willing to give up land if it meant there would be permanent peace; the concern is that there would not be peace and that a diminished Israel—which even in its current incarnation is about the width of a regulation volleyball court—would be less able to defend itself from its enemies, some of whom have made it clear that the only kind of peace they want with Israel is the kind the Death Star wanted with the Planet Alderaan.

So security is a very, very big issue for Israelis, even bigger than food. They know that any day could be the day another war starts. Most young Israelis, men and women, serve in the army. (The exception is the ultra-Orthodox, who generally do not serve in the army, a fact that causes a lot of resentment.) Everywhere you go, you see teenagers in uniform carrying assault rifles, which they never set down, even when they’re eating. I had mixed reactions to this. On the one hand, I’d think:
We’re
safe because there are all these soldiers around.
On the other hand, I’d think:
Wait a minute:
Why are all these soldiers
around?

But getting back to our tour of Independence Hall: The highlight is an emotional talk about the birth and desperate early struggles of Israel, given by a tough Israeli woman guide—she
shushes
a boisterous group of American college students and they shut right up—in the room where Israel’s independence was declared. At the end of her talk, she plays a recording of Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, proclaiming the establishment of the Jewish independent state, his voice being broadcast to the new nation via the microphone that still sits today on the long table at the front of the room. Then we stand, and those who know the words sing the Israeli national anthem, “Hatikvah” (“The Hope”). At this point, Michelle is (1) bawling and (2) ready to join the Israeli army. She would serve in the elite Shopping Corps.

After leaving Independence Hall, we travel to a town just outside Tel Aviv, where we tour a secret munitions fact kuniShopory that was operated from 1946 to 1948 by Haganah, the Zionist paramilitary organization that was fighting for an independent Jewish state when the British controlled Palestine. Haganah could get guns but had trouble obtaining ammunition, so it built an underground factory, hidden beneath the laundry of a kibbutz that was essentially just a front to fool the British. There, forty-five young people, working under harsh and dangerous conditions, manufactured more than two million bullets. Had they been caught, they would have faced the death penalty. It’s a fascinating tour. Some of us don’t even check to see if there’s wifi.