Isaac
How does a young Israeli experience America?

By Cristina Lucas

There is no question about it: young people are much more flexible, malleable, adaptable, easy to adjust, accommodate, and acclimate. Well, what is “young,” you may ask. And we could launch into a theoretical heated argument that “it’s just a number.” That part I actually agree with. But there is no denying the biology of the human body: the brain of a three-year-old absorbs languages as easily as a sponge soaks water. Kids, adolescents and most young adults, though aligned somewhat to the culture in which they happen to grow up, do not come with baggage. The bones are not solidified, calcified. They can still be reshaped without being broken. My point here is that young people adapt more easily to immigration.

I interviewed one of my Israeli friends at the beginning of 2004. He has requested that his identity remain anonymous, so I will use a different name. I’ll call him Isaac, after one of my favorite Jewish writers. We both agreed that even though we are not trying to make politics or create any type of heated argument, immigration is, nowadays, a dirty word. Not always, but often. I, for one, have no desire to get mixed in policy debates or cause trouble for any of my friends who offer their opinions. What I do care about is how people lead their lives once they are here. Interviews such as this one might even be useful to people overseas who are considering immigration.

We met at a restaurant in Beverly Hills, of all places. I remembered the dingy Communist restaurants from the old days and couldn’t help myself from drawing a comparison. Even after all this time. The glitz, the glamour, the plastic surgeons and the prim wives, the wealthy lawyers and investment bankers… and me. Go figure. Me and my young friend, dressed as college students, casually eating burgers at half price during a happy hour. And, of course, nobody minded us.

I went through the ritual of setting up the tape recorder, and right when I was about to turn it on, a look at his face started me laughing.

Isaac: I become weird when these things come on.

Cristina: You experience some sort of personality change?

I: Alright… I’ll get over myself.

I am happy to report that he did get over himself, and nothing was “weird.”

Laughing again, trying to make him comfortable (go figure; he is the most socially comfortable person I know, but stick a tape recorder under his face and he freaks out) I threw a towel over the machine and started firing questions. Fast. It’s called “confusing the enemy."

And before we roll the tape, there is one other thing I want to add: though it is very obvious that Isaac’s preference is to live in America, he very reluctantly gave (what may seem like) negative opinions about Israel. I think I need to add that. The point of discussing differences is not to berate or minimize a country in favor of another. It is simply to expose personal preferences. After all, there isn’t one of us who does not have favorites. About anything.

C: So you were born in Israel?

I: No. I was born in the States, went to Israel at the age of two with my parents and came back here at age twenty-one planning on staying.

C: You didn’t come to the States at all during that time?

I: I came once for four days, and I wouldn’t have visited if it weren’t for the fact that I needed to get some business done and I knew I was going back.

C: Your mom is American, and your dad….

I: My dad is from Czechoslovakia. He went to Israel when he was eighteen; then he came to the States when he was around twenty-three or twenty-four. He met my mom in Israel (she was there for a year on some course) and came with her to the US. They moved back to Israel ten years later. Now they’re back in America.

C: How did you grow up? You were born to two parents from different cultures, living in a country with a third culture that wasn’t common to either one of them.

I: My dad got very Americanized in those ten years in New York before moving to Israel … maybe his personality had a bit of Eastern Europe in it. I am not sure what I mean by this. I didn’t really feel too much Czechoslovakia growing up; I felt mostly America.

C: You spoke English in the house?

I: My brother was born in Israel and he had a thing with English. Here’s how it worked: my parents would speak English amongst themselves; I spoke English with both of them; my father and my brother would speak Hebrew; my mother would speak English to my brother and he would respond in Hebrew. My brother and I spoke Hebrew and it was all completely natural and automatic and no one became schizophrenic and now everyone speaks English. My father and my brother still speak Hebrew to each other, but my brother and my mother speak English. For my brother it’s much more his language now. When he was growing up it was his parents’ language, his mother’s language, and he was rebelling against it because he was an obnoxious teenager. So he would rebel against his mother’s stuff.

C: Did you have American friends in Israel?

I: No… well, one, but he was really Israeli. I had one friend whose mother was American. There was an American girl in high school that I was in love with and I never spoke with.

C: How about these cultural differences… when we are children we don’t even realize, because we don’t know any different. But were your parents different from other people’s parents?

I: They were different – and I liked them so much better, actually. They were Americans. Israelis are a different type of people. I never felt like I completely belonged there, personality-wise, to be honest. Plus my mother always had a very strong American accent.

C: Why?

I: They are more… I’m too calm by nature to belong there. No, that’s not true. It’s not that they raise their voices and are all loud, speaking over each other…

(Pause)

I don’t know. They lived there; they had family and friends, and it’s just that they didn’t speak English so they were different. My dad was more assimilated; you could see that. He didn’t have an accent and he got into the culture a little bit more.

C: So you came to the States and lived in New York for a little while… what was that like?

I: Very, very easy. It was the easiest possible acclimation… it was very easy to acclimate to the American culture because I always felt American. But looking back now, four years later, I realize that there was a gradual assimilation. It wasn’t as quick as I thought. When I came, I felt comfortable right away. When I look back now, I realize that getting more comfortable takes some time. It takes a while to really understand the social structure, how it works, and be a part of it.

C: Can you articulate that more?

I: I’m talking about getting a sense of what people are like. By social structure I don’t mean hierarchy of class or anything like that. What dating is like, what friendship is like, what people are like in America. As opposed to in Israel or in Europe where it’s totally different. I think Americans are more guarded; it takes longer to get close to people than it does in Europe. But it’s not only close, it’s… different; this never bothers me; it just took me a while to understand how it works and how to play into it…

C: … and accept it…. and not be frustrated by it…

I: I was never frustrated by it. During my first couple of years of being in New York I was so mesmerized with being in New York that I really didn’t care about anything else. Plus you have your friends from home anyway; you have your Israeli friends and your little Israeli community.

C: Did you hang out with them a lot?

I: Um… it depends. I went through phases. Sometimes I did hang out with them a lot, sometimes not. It depends.

C: So the magic of New York had a very strong grip on you.

I: Yeah, I always planned on moving there, ever since I was a kid. I wanted to move there in my twenties, and I did, and loved it. I got very, very comfortable there so I really didn’t have any problems, social problems. I got used to it very quickly. I got used to it in about five seconds.

C: With the mind that you have now, how is life different in America as opposed to Israel?

I: Israelis open up pretty quickly. Israel is a place where the neighbors have screaming arguments in the building, then walk up to your apartment, open the door and take food from your kitchen. Just like that. I’m exaggerating a bit, but I’m trying to make a point.

C: I know you don’t consciously think about these things, but how about daily life, from going to the grocery store to…

I: It’s calmer here and it makes more sense. Life makes more sense in America. You don’t have the same political thing that you always have in Israel, so it’s a bit less of a pressure to live here. It’s a bit more cultured. Art is more important here than it is over there. The institutions are more established and operate better.

C: Do you think that applies to art mostly or other things too?

I: Most other things. Israel is a young country; it’s got so much trouble to deal with all the time that it’s almost like the daily aspects of life are all intruded upon by everything else. All the other trouble, the military and the political. And here that stuff has been resolved – kind of… it still exists but it’s… no one is at war with the Indians. People are free to live their life, to do whatever they want to. It’s not really like that over there. And that creates different types of people: people who are more goal-oriented here and more interested in what they want to achieve, and they develop a thick skin about that. In Israel it’s a bit different – I need to think about that more.

C: Okay. Swift change of subject. How about relationships? Is there such a concept as “dating?”

I: It’s a bit different. That’s not a good question for me because I had a girlfriend up to the time that I left. I don’t think there is really dating: it’s either a little fling or there is a relationship. The concept of dating the way it is here, like you try new people and you go out on ten dates and you are still not together yet, you go on twenty dates and you are still not together yet, that doesn’t really exist back there. You kiss someone and you are with them for four years. I’m exaggerating a little bit – but not really.

C: Let’s talk about friendship.

I: That’s hard to judge when you move somewhere when you are twenty-one. You grow up in a place and you have the friends that you grew up with. Friendships you form when you are in your twenties are different than friendships you form when you are a child or an adolescent. It’s a little bit hard to say. My guess is that it’s pretty much the same all over the world.

C: I heard many people who grew up in a different country say that they have troubles forming that close connection we were talking about earlier. Some of these people have been here twenty years.

I: It’s difficult when you’re older rather than when you are a kid or a teenager, when you go out and you meet people that you are going to be with for the rest of your life. In your twenties and thirties that happens less. People get married, have children. It’s a different life. I don’t know exactly how. But I don’t really have an accent and I really don’t have much of a “different place” mentality so I don’t completely relate to that. I don’t really feel like I’m looked on differently.

C: You never felt like an outsider?

I: Not at all. Maybe a little. I didn’t grow up here but not in a way… I don’t feel like I’m part of – I can’t go to a frat party and have fun. I’m not an American guy who grew up here.

C: But you can live just fine as an outsider.

I: Yeah… I’m comfortable with people who are like-minded to me. I’m hanging out with people who are still in that kind of college kid mentality. That’s when I feel like I’m a bit different. And also, I’ve been through three years of army, which a lot of people don’t relate to, so there is a bit of a difference in the levels of experience.

C: Do you think you’re more mature than people your age who grew up in America?

I: Sometimes I think there are different experience levels. I don’t think the army makes you more mature than someone who didn’t do the army. I think it’s all about what you experience in your life. People who experience some kind of hardship in their life tend to be a little bit more mature. You can be sixty and be immature. It depends on your experience, so no, I don’t, as a rule, feel more mature than anyone.

C: How about mannerisms? I think in every culture there is a sense of “We do things this way.” They are not expressed but most people know them. When you move to a different country you don’t pick up on these things right away and sometimes you blunder. Not because you are a moron, but because you don’t know. And nobody thinks of even telling you because they don’t realize it themselves. They are not obvious. They are the foundation of life that nobody talks about. Did that happen to you?

I: No. I had that a little bit but it never got to the point where I felt I couldn’t take it or was impeding on my life here. It still happens to me sometimes, for instance with the occasional word that I don’t know, or a cultural reference. I always ask.

C: And people are nice and helpful?

I: Oh yeah. You ask a question, you get an answer. If someone laughs at you, then… the heck with them. If anyone looks down at you for asking a question, that person doesn’t deserve to be looked at.

I’ve been to high school in America for half a year. I didn’t quite adjust. I really didn’t try to make friends, because I wasn’t sure if I was going to go. It took me a while. I was fifteen. I liked it here, but I didn’t understand it yet, the American thing.

C: What do you mean by that? It’s hard to put a finger on it and verbalize it. But what does that mean?

I: Americans are very good at sitting around the table talking, just like Romanians sit around their tables talking. When you are in that environment, surrounded by people from the same background, you are part of that. If you move to another country – and it doesn’t really matter whether it’s France, or Germany, or the USA – and you are sitting with five people from the new country, they have a completely different experience. And they are the many, so they have more power than you. And you kind of need to learn how to become part of that.

C: But how do you learn to become part of that?

I: I don’t know. I didn’t mind it as much. I was perfectly okay with it. I took to the environment. But I think I was just allowing myself time to adjust, at my own pace.

C: How about work?

I: Israel is a small country – and I think this is true for many small countries, of very provincial mentalities. A provincial mentality says, “We don’t like anything from outside but we will try our best to imitate it completely.” Israelis tend to scold everything American and at the same time try to be everything American. Corporate Israel tries to be what corporate America is, only in Hebrew. A lot of times it succeeds. That’s more of the mentality of the people than of the workplace. It’s really in the people. Whatever is going on here seems to work. If capitalism is the model, it seems to work here. Whether it is good or bad is not even an argument. It makes the most sense to be here if you are able to.

I grew up in a pretty well-off town, but most people there worked in high school. Even people with money worked. Not all of them. I actually never did. I had a couple of little high-paying gigs. I was paid $50 a day. A lot of money for a sixteen-year-old.
C: What could you buy with $50 in Israel?

I: Well, that was nine years ago. I really don’t remember.

C: Someone said to me once – and it was an American guy – he was talking about America and he said that he loves this country so much partly because he grew up here, but also, and this was the bigger reason, because in America you can fulfill your dream. More so than anywhere else in the world. Do you relate to that?

I: Absolutely. Depends what your dream is, but yeah, definitely. If your dream is to live in Paris it won’t work. You can go to school, build a business in Western Europe also but… probably a lot easier. America is designed to make it easy for you, the whole American dream. I totally connect with that; that’s part of the reason why I came here. I do connect with it and I like it.

C: What was the other part of why you came?

I: I felt like I was a displaced American in Israel and belonged more in America. I came to visit New York for a few weeks after the army and I knew immediately that I needed to move. I went back to Israel, got my life organized and moved a few months later.
And the rest, as they say, is history.

 

Thanks to a dear friend for participating in this project. The world in general, and I in particular, will be eternally grateful.This interview first appeared in www.sentimentalrefugee.com.


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