Two quick, and not entirely original observations.
Everybody here does what a friend of mine used to call "making eyes." And by everyone, I mean women. You walk down the street, it doesn’t matter where, and I’d say without exaggerating, half the women I pass make eye contact and hold it for about three seconds longer than is comfortable. In New York, we look at our shoes, or our iPhones, when we walk. If we catch the eyes of a stranger, 99 times out of a hundred the instinct is to immediately look away, or suddenly become really engrossed in the newspaper. I can’t tell if it’s typical Israeli directness, or some obscure Zionist mating ritual, but it’s about equal parts titillating and unnerving. Lately, I’ve been refusing to be the one to avert the eyes first, like some sort of staring contest smackdown.
Then there’s the constant running into people you know. The girl I know from the NYC scene who walked by as I was having breakfast at a Tel Aviv cafe. The couple who was visiting Hanaton last weekend I ran into coming back from the shuk. The hockey player from the Nefesh flight I passed strolling around Zichron Ya’akov on Saturday morning. Another guy from Nefesh I ran into in Jerusalem who invited me for Shabbos lunch. And yet another guy from Nefesh drinking at the bar at Mike’s Place on New Year’s Eve.
It’s like strolling around the neighborhood you’ve lived in your entire life, but the neighborhood is the whole country.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
