Shalom Kulam

By Dnoll
Shalom kulam,
I haven’t written for a while because I have been a bit under the weather. Yes it has been cold and rainy here but that is not what I meant. My first few weeks of work have evidently taken it out of me a bit. The second week of work I caught a cold but either was able to hold it at bay or it was really just nerves. The third week of work I got the stomach flu and had to call in sick for two days. The fourth week of work I got a full on head cold along with Adele and Zach. We have been snuffling around trying to get better. I think that the sicknesses here must just be a lot more virulent for us tall and soft white people from North America.

At work I have been making friends with Israelis, Russians, Canadians, Germans and one or two Americans and Brits. They all have such different accents and it is sometimes hard to understand their Hebrew. One of the Israelis that works in the aluminum area is crazy to be a pilot. He is a bit old to be a pilot but doesn’t seem to be phased by it. The Jets fly over all the time when they practice and he goes running out of the room to see them when they do. Another guy, one of the Russian guys that works at the factory, was asked to help me on the “Krisig”, German for sliding table saw, and wanted to jump into the drivers’ seat right away. He, evidently, watched how I did it and decided that he wanted to give it a try. He said, “Ani Aosey et ze acshav”, while sweeping me away from the saw with a broad arm gesture. I didn’t let him and later, when I told my boss Yochanan about it, his eyes got real big. He just shook his head and we moved on, no big deal. Yochanan showed me the bomb shelter in the Nagaria (woodshop) the other day. We walked into this storage room with shelves of parts from the floor to the ceiling. My mind kept thinking, in an earthquake the shelves fall over and squish everything around them. Maybe it is all bolted down, or maybe it doesn’t really matter because that is different than a missile landing nearby, I don’t know. Then he showed me the chemical and biological filtration system in the shelter. Now that is state of the art! These are the machines that the factory manufactures for people and companies all over Israel and the World. A group of people from Singapore were at the factory recently and it was a big deal. I guess they are worried about China and North Korea.

One of the Germans from the factory told me a disturbing story about something that happened to him while he was on a camping trip in the North. He was trying to make a fire and needed some paper to get it going. Some Arabs were nearby and he went over to ask them if they had anything to help. They turned out to be drunk and since the German man spoke Hebrew they replied with,
“Sure, first you take our country and then you ask us for paper for your fire?”
The German was taken aback at their response and immediately began to impersonate a German tourist for fear of being attacked or something. When they understood this the Arabs started to congratulate him on the Holocaust! He told me that he was very upset by what they said because he was so ashamed of his Country’s history. What a crazy mixed up world. How can anyone celebrate death? …Enough of that for now.

The power is out here now. I am writing this on the laptop. The power goes out a lot. This time it is lightning near the house. Sometimes it is just rain or wind or something. The first time it happened we were all worried and called someone on the cell phone. They just said it will come back on and not to worry. It did. The power flickered in the factory once last week too. I am getting used to a lot of things now. I was looking at some pictures of our house in Boulder before we moved and had so many memories. After I looked at some pictures of our life here and realized that I am building memories here too. It is starting to feel like home in a physical sense now as well as just being spiritual or instinctual. We are really just starting to feel moved in now. Adele and I walked on the beach on Shabbat. It was amazing. Tel Dor is an ancient port that has ruins spread around it. We walked on the bluff for a couple of hours. It was great. So, Hope to see anyone and everyone here sometime. Love from the Holy Land,
The Zichron Nolls.

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