Dateline Jerusalem – I do not know why midnight is such a magical hour for me, but I tend to start writing my articles at that time. After research and a few catnaps, I finish in the early morning hours, just in time for my deadline. Sometimes I feel like I am still a university student at UCLA, pulling all-nighters, cramming for my exams.
I would start my school essays or term papers with a quote from the famous opening phrase of a soliloquy in Shakespeare's play “Hamlet,” “To be or not to be…,” regardless of the subject. It served me well. Just as a friend used to start his essays with “A famous person once said…”, and he was the famous person, I will continue my tradition with this week's topic “To be or not to be … a fryer.”
Fryer is an Israeli term meaning sucker, patsy, fool. Usually it refers to new immigrants since they often fall victim to situations that a native Israeli, or sabra, would avoid. Fryer aptly describes me, although I have been in Israel for six years and no longer am an “olah kadasha” (a new male immigrant would be “oleh kadash”). A fryer is so naive that paying double is taken for granted, even expected. I have been a fryer most of my life.
I do not consider myself naive. Someone naive essentially is stupid. I am trusting. I have faith in humanity, although often I lose faith. Perhaps that is why I belong to a religious women's charitable organization in Israel called Emunah, which means faith. It keeps me grounded. Whether naive or trusting, I am the typical fryer Israelis joke about. How humiliating. An Israeli avoids at all costs being a fryer. A slang word that has become part of an Israeli's daily vocabulary, members of the Knesset (legislature) speak of how to avoid being a fryer.
Therefore, when Israelis are perceived as aggressive or rude by those outside of Israel, think nothing of it. This behavior is explained away as having a non-fryer attitude. It is ingrained into the Israeli mentality. When I am charged more when I speak English or wait patiently in line for my turn, and someone rudely pushes ahead of me, and if I do not stand up for my rights, I am a fryer.
Once in line at a government office, an old woman asked me for my number. I showed her my ticket. She opened her purse, took out a stack of numbered tickets and pulled out one number ahead of mine. I was too stunned to say anything when she lined up in front of me. Now I was a fryer. Another time at the post office, I had been patiently been waiting for my turn when a woman ran up to the clerk and insisted she be serviced first. That time, however, there were others in line, and a balagan (a chaotic mess) ensued with yelling and screaming going on among the clerk, the woman and the Israelis in line. Once a clerk at city hall actually called me a fryer. He said I should go back to the States because I was “too nice to make it in Israel.”
To answer the question, “to be or not to be…,” I am a fryer, stupidly naive and/or trusting, and proud to be. It makes me unique in Israeli society.
L'hitraot. Shachar
