The Seven Good Years (5 page)

M
y visit last week to the Gothenburg Book Fair in Sweden got off to a stressful start. Several weeks before I arrived in that peaceful city, which boasts northern Europe's largest amusement park, a local tabloid published a story accusing Israel of harvesting organs from Palestinians killed by the IDF. The story managed to make an impressive quantum leap in logic by linking an unproven accusation against the Israeli army for something it had allegedly done in the early 1990s to a New Jersey rabbi accused of trafficking in human organs in 2009, as if the gap of more than a decade and thousands of miles were merely a trivial detail. The only thing missing in the article was a recipe for matzos made with the blood of Christian children.

The absurd report received a no less absurd response from the Israeli government, which demanded that the Swedish prime minister apologize for the story. The Swedes refused, of course, claiming freedom of the press, even if in this specific case, the press was not of particularly high quality. And Israel responded immediately with the unconventional weapon it keeps hidden away for conflicts of just such magnitude: a consumer boycott of IKEA. In the midst of this hyperventilated political storm, yours truly found himself spending Rosh Hashanah with an audience of polite Swedish readers who generously thanked him for his stories but also kept an eye open while he autographed their books to make sure he didn't take advantage of the moment to snatch a kidney or two.

But my real Swedish drama began when I realized there was a danger that I might not get back to Israel before Yom Kippur. Over the past few years, I've spent quite a few holidays outside of Israel, and despite the self-pitying, whiny face I always present to people around me, I have to admit I've often felt somewhat relieved to spend an Independence Day without an aerial demonstration of air force planes right over my head, or a Shavuot eve minus aunts and uncles who are insulted because I've refused their invitations to a holiday dinner. But I always did everything I could to be in Israel on Yom Kippur. All these years, all my life.

The night after the problem of my flight back was solved—with the help of my host's savvy travel agent—I invited everyone to celebrate our success at a local Swedish restaurant called, for some reason, Cracow, which is famous, of course, for its huge selection of Czech beers. “Now that it's all been worked out, maybe you can explain to us what the hell is so special about that holiday,” my young Swedish publisher asked. And so I found myself, with a stomach full of cold potato salad and draft beer, trying to explain to a few half-drunk literary Swedes what Yom Kippur is.

The Swedes listened and were fascinated. The thought of a day when no motorized vehicles drive through the cities, when people walk around without their wallets and all the stores are closed, when there are no TV broadcasts or even updates on websites, to them sounded more like an innovative Naomi Klein concept than an ancient Jewish holiday. The fact that it was also a day when you're supposed to ask others for forgiveness and do moral stocktaking upgraded the anti-consumerist angle with a welcome touch of '60s hippiedom. And the fasting bit sounded like an extreme version of the fashionable low-carb diet they'd talked to me about in such glowing terms just that morning. And so I began the evening trying to explain the ancient Hebrew ritual in my broken English, and found myself doing PR for the coolest, most sought-after holiday in the universe, the iPhone of all festivals.

At that point, the amazed Swedes were consumed by envy of me for having been born into such a wonderful religion. Their eyes darted around the restaurant, looking at the patrons as if they were searching for a mohel who would cut them a deal to join up.

Twenty-six hours later, I was strolling with my wife down the center lane of one of Tel Aviv's busiest thoroughfares, our little son behind us, riding his bike with the training wheels. Above us, birds were chirping their morning birdsong. I've spent my whole adult life on that street, but only on Yom Kippur do I get to hear the birds.

“Daddy,” my son asked as he pedaled and panted, “tomorrow's Yom Kippur too, right?”

“No, son,” I said, “tomorrow's a regular day.”

He burst into tears.

I stood in the middle of the street watching the kid cry. “C'mon,” my wife whispered to me, “say something to him.”

“There's nothing to be said, love,” I whispered back. “The child is right.”

W
hen the fighting in Gaza began last month, I found myself with a lot of spare time. The university in Beersheba where I teach was within the range of missiles fired by Hamas, and they had to close it. But after a couple of weeks, it reopened, and the next day I found myself taking an hour-and-a-half train ride from Tel Aviv, where I live, to Beersheba again. Half the students weren't there—mainly the ones who commuted from the center of the country—but the other half, the Beersheba locals, showed up. The bombs were dropping on them in any case, and conventional wisdom among the students was that the university's classrooms were better protected than their dorms and housing projects.

While I was having my coffee at the cafeteria, the bomb-shelter alarm started blaring outside. There wasn't time to get to a proper shelter, so I ran with some other people into the thick-walled, almost windowless entrance of a university building nearby. Around me were a few frightened students and a grave-faced lecturer who went on eating his sandwich on the concrete steps as if nothing were happening. A couple of the students said they'd heard an explosion in the distance, so it was probably safe to leave, but the lecturer, his mouth still full, pointed out that sometimes they shoot more than one missile and that we'd be better off waiting a few more minutes. While I was there, I recognized Kobi, a crazy kid from my childhood in Ramat Gan who liked fifth grade so much he stayed in it for two years.

At forty-two, Kobi looked exactly the same. It's not that he looked especially young; it's just that, even in elementary school, he seemed to be approaching middle age: a thick, hairy neck; powerful body; high forehead; and the smiling yet tough expression of an aging child who had already learned a thing or two about this stupid world. In retrospect, the malicious rumor among the kids at school that he was already shaving was probably true.

“Well, what do you know?” Kobi said, hugging me. “You haven't changed a bit,” adding, by way of accuracy, “even the same height, just like elementary school.”

Kobi and I caught up a bit, and after a while people around us felt safe enough to start making their way out of the protected space, leaving it for us. “That rocket was a stroke of luck,” Kobi said. “Just think: If it wasn't for that Qassam rocket, we could have walked right past each other and never met.”

Kobi said he didn't live nearby. He came to sniff around. Now that Beersheba's in rocket range, it has opened up quite a few real estate possibilities. Land values will drop; the state will hand out extra construction permits. In short, an entrepreneur who plays his cards right can find great opportunities.

The last time we met was almost twenty years ago. There were missiles then, too—Scuds that Saddam Hussein rained down on Ramat Gan. Kobi was still living at home. I'd gone back to be with my stubborn parents, who refused to leave the city. Kobi took our friend Uzi and me to his parents' apartment and showed us what he referred to as his Weapon and Matchstick Museum. There, on the walls of his childhood bedroom, hung an impressive collection of weaponry: swords, pistols, even flails. Beneath them stood a huge Eiffel Tower and a life-size guitar he had made out of matchsticks. He explained to us that the museum had originally been devoted to weapons alone, but after he was convicted of stealing grenades for the exhibition, he took advantage of his eight-month sentence to build the Eiffel Tower and the guitar and added them to the collection.

In those days, he was especially worried that an Iraqi missile strike would shatter the Eiffel Tower, on which he'd spent most of his jail time. Today, his matchstick creations are still at his parents' place, but Ramat Gan is outside the effective range of the missiles and rockets. “As far as the matchstick Eiffel Tower goes,” Kobi said, “my situation over the last twenty years has definitely improved. I have my doubts about the rest.”

On the train from Beersheba I read a paper someone had left behind on a seat. There was an item about the lions and ostriches at the Gaza Zoo. They were suffering from the bombing and hadn't been fed regularly since the war began. A brigade commander wanted to carry out a special operation to rescue one particular lion and transfer it to Israel. Another, smaller, item, without a picture, reported that the number of children who had died in the bombing of Gaza so far had passed three hundred. Like the ostriches, the rest of the children there would also have to fend for themselves. Our situation at the level of the matchstick Eiffel Tower has indeed improved beyond recognition. As for the rest, like Kobi, I have my doubts.

W
hen I was three, I had a ten-year-old brother, and deep in my heart I hoped that when I grew up, I'd be just like him. Not that I stood a chance. My big brother had already skipped two grades and had an enviable understanding of everything, from atomic physics and computer programming to the Cyrillic alphabet. Around that time, my brother began to develop a serious concern about me. An article he read in
Haaretz
said that illiterate people are excluded from the job market, and it bothered him very much that his beloved three-year-old brother would have a hard time finding work. So he began to teach me reading and writing using a unique technique he called “the chewing gum method.” It worked as follows: My brother would point to a word, which I had to read out loud. If I read it properly, he would give me a piece of unchewed gum. If I made a mistake, he stuck his chewed gum in my hair. The method worked like magic, and at the age of four, I was the only kid in nursery school who knew how to read. I was also the only kid who, at least at first glance, looked like he was balding. But that's another story.

When I was five, I had a twelve-year-old brother who found God and went to a religious boarding school, and deep in my heart I hoped that when I grew up, I'd be just like him. He used to talk to me a lot about religion. And I thought the midrashim he told me were the coolest things in the world. He was the youngest pupil in the school—because of all that grade-skipping he did—but everyone admired him. Not because he was so smart—somehow, that was less important in the boarding school—but because he was so good-natured and helpful. I remember visiting him one Purim, and every pupil we met thanked him for something else: one for helping him study for a test, another for fixing a transistor so he could listen secretly to heavy metal, still another for lending him a pair of sneakers before an important soccer game. He walked around that place like a king who was so modest and dreamy that he didn't even know he was regal, and I followed in his wake like a prince all too aware of his royalty. I remember thinking then that the whole business of believing in God would be part of my future, too. After all, my brother knew everything, and if he believed in the Creator, then there had to be one.

When I was eight, I had a fifteen-year-old brother who left religion and went to college to study mathematics and computer science, and deep in my heart I hoped that when I grew up, I'd be just like him. He lived in an apartment with his bespectacled girlfriend, who was twenty-four, an age that, from my childish perspective, seemed ancient. They used to kiss and drink beer and smoke cigarettes, and I was sure that if I played my cards right, in another seven years, I'd be there too. I'd sit on the grass at Bar-Ilan University and eat grilled cheese sandwiches from the cafeteria. I'd have a bespectacled girlfriend, and she'd kiss me, tongue and all. What could be better than that?

When I was fourteen, I had a twenty-one-year-old brother who fought in the Lebanon War. Lots of my classmates had brothers who fought in that war. But mine was the only one I knew who wasn't in favor of it. Even though he was a soldier, he never thrilled to the idea of shooting guns and throwing grenades, and especially not to the need to kill the enemy. Most of the time, he did what he was told, and the rest of the time he spent in military courts. When he was tried and found guilty of “behavior unbecoming an IDF soldier” after he turned an aerial antenna into a giant totem pole with a head and eagle's wings, my sister and I sneaked into the remote base in the Negev where he was confined. We spent hours playing cards with him and another soldier, Mosco, who was also confined, but for slightly less creative reasons. And as I watched my brother in his army pants, his torso bare, paint a watercolor picture of the wadi that ran below the base, I knew that that's just what I wanted to be when I grew up: a soldier who, even in uniform, never forgets his free spirit.

Years have passed since I sneaked onto my brother's base. In that time, he managed to get married and divorced, and married again. He also managed to work at successful high-tech companies and leave them so that he could dedicate himself, together with his second wife, to the kinds of social and political activities that reporters like to call “radical”—things like fighting against biometric records and police brutality and for human rights and legalizing marijuana. In that time, I have also managed to grow and change so that, apart from the love we've always felt for each other, the only constant in our relationship has been the seven-year difference between us. Throughout that long journey, I never got to be more than just a little of what my brother was, and at some point I guess I even stopped trying. Partly because my brother's strange route was a very difficult one to follow and partly because I've had my own personal crises and confusions to deal with.

For the past five years, my big brother and his wife have lived in Thailand. They build Internet sites for Israeli and international organizations that are trying to make our world a little bit better, and with the modest fee they get for their work, they manage to live very well in their cozy apartment in the town of Trat. They don't even have an air conditioner, a bathtub, or a toilet with running water, but they do have lots of good friends and neighbors who make the most delicious food in the world and are always happy to visit or host them. Four weeks ago, my wife, Lev, and I flew to see their new home. While we were there, we took an elephant tour, and on it my brother's elephant was a few steps in front of mine. Both were being driven by experienced Thais. After we had gone a few hundred yards, I saw my brother's driver signal that my brother should take over leading their animal. The Thai man moved to sit to the rear of the elephant and my brother began taking charge. He didn't yell at it or kick it lightly the way the local driver had done. He just bent forward and whispered something in the elephant's ear. From where I was sitting, it looked as if the elephant nodded and turned in the direction my brother wanted. And at that moment it came back to me—the feeling I'd had throughout my childhood and teenage years. That pride in my big brother and the hope that when I grew up, I'd be a little bit like him, able to drive elephants through virgin forests without ever having to raise my voice.