{"id":600,"date":"2007-06-22T15:27:37","date_gmt":"2007-06-22T13:27:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/?p=600"},"modified":"2012-08-15T22:58:45","modified_gmt":"2012-08-15T19:58:45","slug":"graduation-israeli-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/2007\/06\/graduation-israeli-style\/","title":{"rendered":"Graduation Israeli Style"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Fifteen-year-old Amir\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s school held a graduation party last week. Parents were invited. The event epitomized everything I both love \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and hate \u00e2\u20ac\u201c about living in Israel.<\/p>\n

First of all, the evening, which wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t limited to just the graduating class but included every year from 7th through 12th, was called to start at 7:00 PM. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153But we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to get there until 7:15 at the earliest,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Amir duly informed us. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Nothing ever starts on time in Israel.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Which is of course true. Punctuality is not one of the Jewish State\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s assets. Most of the time it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mildly amusing \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a bar mitzvah is scheduled to start at 8:00 PM but the guests don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t arrive until 9:30 PM \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but sometimes I wonder what kind of message we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re giving our kids. If they had to catch a train in a place like Switzerland, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be left yodeling in the station half an hour late.<\/p>\n

7:15 PM, it turned out, was being generous for Amir\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s party. When we arrived, students, teachers and parents were milling around in the school courtyard. There didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t appear to be any organization at all except for a table of boisterous 12th graders hawking \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Persian Rice<\/a>,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a concoction that was mixed with raisins, carrots, potatoes and appeared to have been deep fried \u00e2\u20ac\u201c at NIS 5 (about $1.25) a plate, it was delicious!<\/p>\n

The evening was supposed to be divided into two parts: presentations by the students and a festive concert. A printed schedule told us to go to the main study hall at 8:00 PM for the presentations. Foolish immigrants, we did as we were told, only to join just a half dozen other parents. After 20 minutes of waiting and wondering how the school was planning to cajole the growing crowd in the courtyard into the study hall, the students began their talks\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6to a mostly empty room.<\/p>\n

This was especially disappointing for us because Amir was one of the presenters. He had been working on a very important project all year interviewing two Holocaust<\/a> survivors and writing up the results. He and his partner Shai answered questions and their proud teacher highlighted a copy of their transcript on the overhead projector.<\/p>\n

Amir didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to mind. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not much of a public speaker,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he had told us sheepishly beforehand.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153What a strong presence your son has,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d our friend Maya told us after the presentation as we shepped unexpected nachas.<\/p>\n

By this point, people had started to take seats for the main performance \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Moshe Lahav<\/a> was presenting his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Big Tisch\u00e2\u20ac\u009d show \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a non-stop medley of classic Israeli \u00e2\u20ac\u0153standards\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c folk and rock songs from the 50s, 60s and 70s. We sat down and after another infuriating 20 minutes of waiting, the show got underway.<\/p>\n

Now up to this point, the disorganization that is inherent in Israeli events had been mildly annoying. It would have been more so, but after 13 years here, you almost forget that things could be different. OK, maybe not forget, but forgive a bit.<\/p>\n

The goings on at the performance, however, exacerbated my already fizzing frustration. Not the show itself \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that was fine and fun. It was the audience. Rather than sit politely in their chairs enjoying the music, on which the party organizers had obviously spent a lot of time and money, the mass of teenage boy energy in the space (Amir goes to an all boy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s school<\/a>) erupted into a near frenzy of circle dancing, whooping, waving, male bonding, chanting and singing along at the top of their lungs to the music (most of it written 20 years before these kids were even born but somehow they knew all the words to anyway).<\/p>\n

Students, parents and teachers alike all took the stage to boldly croon a few lyrics or an out-of-tune melody, tuning the show into a chaotic karaoke party with the musky air of Israel bravado. Song leader Moshe Lahav took it all in stride \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but then I suppose he knew what he was getting into when he agreed to perform at a high school graduation in the first place.<\/p>\n

About half way through the show, as Lahav was nearly drowned out by the cacophony of merriment encircling him, my wife Jody turned to me and said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It would never be like this in the States.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I started to sigh in empathy when she added unexpectedly, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it great!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

And that was the point, wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it? Because, despite all the aggravation, it is Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s chronic spontaneity that gives culture here its verve and spunk, an in-your-face intensity that you may love or hate but you can never ignore. The kids dancing and singing and enjoying life to the fullest \u00e2\u20ac\u201c not the least the graduating seniors many of whom would be heading to the army in just a few months time \u00e2\u20ac\u201c were a joy to watch, and a reminder of why we put up with all the crap: for such moments of sheer abandonment that only a society steeped in disorganization as an organizing principle can generate.<\/p>\n

Will Amir be part of the graduating class of chaos in another two years? We can only hope so!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fifteen-year-old Amir\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s school held a graduation party last week. Parents were invited. The event epitomized everything I both love \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and hate \u00e2\u20ac\u201c about living in Israel. First of all, the evening, which wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t limited to just the graduating class but included every year from 7th through 12th, was called to start at 7:00 PM. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2723,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600\/revisions\/2723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}