3. Today is not Yesterday
As I envision and write these memoirs, I’m frequently asking myself — are they still relevant, 40 years on?
I’m not convinced either way, but one thing is for sure: Today’s Israel is a different country than the one I first experienced in 1983. To my mind, the biggest change has been in the realm of personal space and privacy.
In the early eighties, Israel was a somewhat abrasive, too-close-for-comfort sort of collective. The second question that somebody asked you (after asking your name, of course), might be “How much do you earn?” or “Do you have a girlfriend?” A privately-owned car was an unaffordable luxury for many families, and everybody crowded onto the bus.
There was a positive side to all this, I must add, which was the genuine warmth and hospitality that I experienced. Every year, I would receive dozens of invitations for the festive Passover meal, many of them from total strangers.
Informality was the order of the day. Home phones were a relatively new phenomenon, and families maintained an open-door policy — no appointment necessary! Just knock and enter. I was frequently chided by Israelis for my quaint displays of formality, such as:
· Standing up when being introduced
· Turning off the TV when guests arrive
· Raising my hand at meetings and waiting to be recognized — rather than blurting out what I wanted to say
So much has changed since then! Israel’s sizzling high-tech economy enabled the widespread adoption of car ownership, which became an absolute necessity during the COVID pandemic. Add teleworking, heightened awareness of western cultural norms, and social media to the equation, and you get a society that is less abrasive, but also far less tightly knit.
