worked.
She was twenty-five when she arrived in Israel. It was random that she landed there, another stop on a round-the-world plane ticket. She figured she’d work on a kibbutz, wake up at four in the morning to pick melons, then sleep away the afternoons with the other volunteers. She’d fall in love with an Israeli air force pilot, get up in the morning and put on his uniform and march like a soldier through the streets.
“Look at me.” Ari has dumped his pretzel twists into his ginger ale and is admiring how they float.
“Ari!” she says, then thinks better of it. It’s a twelve-hour flight; at a certain point you have to surrender.
“They look like fish,” Ari says, peering into his cup of pretzels.
Dov says, “You put pretzels in soda and you get Goldfish.”
“Not the food,” Akiva says. “Actual fish.” He looks up at his brothers. “Okay,” he says, “who can tell me what’s happening in Israel right now?”
“People are playing soccer,” Dov says.
“They probably are, but what I meant is, who can tell me what time it is?”
No one answers him.
“I’ll give you a hint. London is five hours later than Boston, and Jerusalem is two hours later than that.”
“In Israel, people are asleep,” Yoni says.
“The kids might be,” Akiva says. “But the grownups are eating dinner, or sitting at a café.”
On the screen above their seats, CNN is broadcasting NBA highlights, and Akiva snaps to attention. Like other Israeli basketball fans, he dreams that an Israeli will play in the NBA, though his real dream is to be that Israeli. He has memorized the names of the Israeli basketball players who almost made it to the NBA, and he has become a fan of the University of Connecticut, whose former star, Doron Sheffer, was drafted by the Los Angeles Clippers, only to accept a safer, better offer from Maccabi Tel Aviv. In a few years, the NBA will have its first Israeli player, but Akiva doesn’t know this yet, so it’s Sheffer who preoccupies him, Sheffer, who played for the University of Connecticut before Akiva was even born. But Akiva acts as if he’d been alive then, and at eight he, too, shares the burden of Sheffer’s failure. Akiva sees America as all-basketball-all-the-time, so when he meets an American who displays no interest in the sport he can’t help but feel that the person’s pulling his leg. He’s happy in Israel; it’s his home. Yet he believes that his parents, in moving to Jerusalem, voluntarily left heaven for the false consolations of earth. It’s as if in making aliyah they left the NBA itself, and so he inquires about their lives in the United States, thinking there must be something more than what his mother has told him, that they’re Jews and they want to live in the Jewish homeland.
Occasionally, Akiva will spot a tall African American on the street, a former NBA player extending his career and given, as Israeli law requires, a quickie conversion, and he will ask the player for his autograph. But he’s always being frustrated. Just last month, when Noelle told him about their trip, he said, “Why does it have to be during the summer?” Meaning why not during the NBA season when he could watch a game live? Another time, Noelle said. But when Akiva persisted, she explained to him about July Fourth, American Independence Day. “A long weekend,” she said, though this year July Fourth falls in the middle of the week. Every weekend in America is long, she explained. It’s one of the things she misses most about the States—sleeping in late on Sundays when she was a girl, bagels and whitefish, afternoons at her parents’ house sunning herself in the yard next to her mother’s bougainvillea—because in Israel Sunday is a workday like any other day of the week. Leo’s yahrzeit was coming up, she explained, which made it a more complicated occasion. “Bittersweet,” she said, realizing as she said this that Akiva didn’t understand what the word meant.
She was twenty-five when she arrived in Israel. It was random that she landed there, another stop on a round-the-world plane ticket. She figured she’d work on a kibbutz, wake up at four in the morning to pick melons, then sleep away the afternoons with the other volunteers. She’d fall in love with an Israeli air force pilot, get up in the morning and put on his uniform and march like a soldier through the streets.
“Look at me.” Ari has dumped his pretzel twists into his ginger ale and is admiring how they float.
“Ari!” she says, then thinks better of it. It’s a twelve-hour flight; at a certain point you have to surrender.
“They look like fish,” Ari says, peering into his cup of pretzels.
Dov says, “You put pretzels in soda and you get Goldfish.”
“Not the food,” Akiva says. “Actual fish.” He looks up at his brothers. “Okay,” he says, “who can tell me what’s happening in Israel right now?”
“People are playing soccer,” Dov says.
“They probably are, but what I meant is, who can tell me what time it is?”
No one answers him.
“I’ll give you a hint. London is five hours later than Boston, and Jerusalem is two hours later than that.”
“In Israel, people are asleep,” Yoni says.
“The kids might be,” Akiva says. “But the grownups are eating dinner, or sitting at a café.”
On the screen above their seats, CNN is broadcasting NBA highlights, and Akiva snaps to attention. Like other Israeli basketball fans, he dreams that an Israeli will play in the NBA, though his real dream is to be that Israeli. He has memorized the names of the Israeli basketball players who almost made it to the NBA, and he has become a fan of the University of Connecticut, whose former star, Doron Sheffer, was drafted by the Los Angeles Clippers, only to accept a safer, better offer from Maccabi Tel Aviv. In a few years, the NBA will have its first Israeli player, but Akiva doesn’t know this yet, so it’s Sheffer who preoccupies him, Sheffer, who played for the University of Connecticut before Akiva was even born. But Akiva acts as if he’d been alive then, and at eight he, too, shares the burden of Sheffer’s failure. Akiva sees America as all-basketball-all-the-time, so when he meets an American who displays no interest in the sport he can’t help but feel that the person’s pulling his leg. He’s happy in Israel; it’s his home. Yet he believes that his parents, in moving to Jerusalem, voluntarily left heaven for the false consolations of earth. It’s as if in making aliyah they left the NBA itself, and so he inquires about their lives in the United States, thinking there must be something more than what his mother has told him, that they’re Jews and they want to live in the Jewish homeland.
Occasionally, Akiva will spot a tall African American on the street, a former NBA player extending his career and given, as Israeli law requires, a quickie conversion, and he will ask the player for his autograph. But he’s always being frustrated. Just last month, when Noelle told him about their trip, he said, “Why does it have to be during the summer?” Meaning why not during the NBA season when he could watch a game live? Another time, Noelle said. But when Akiva persisted, she explained to him about July Fourth, American Independence Day. “A long weekend,” she said, though this year July Fourth falls in the middle of the week. Every weekend in America is long, she explained. It’s one of the things she misses most about the States—sleeping in late on Sundays when she was a girl, bagels and whitefish, afternoons at her parents’ house sunning herself in the yard next to her mother’s bougainvillea—because in Israel Sunday is a workday like any other day of the week. Leo’s yahrzeit was coming up, she explained, which made it a more complicated occasion. “Bittersweet,” she said, realizing as she said this that Akiva didn’t understand what the word meant.
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