Womenspeak

After six months I am still startled when Israeli women open their mouths to speak. Not so much with Israeli men - they are after all, men. Even when they speak English, they speak a different language, but the women look like women I know, like women I've grown up with like my cousins and my aunts, my friends mothers and my mother's friends, they look like they should sound like them too, but they don’t. Israeli men are different - they all look like members of the Mosad, or ex members of the Mosad. They wear dark glasses and jeans and walk around with attitude befitting a middle-eastern man who works for the Mosad. Even the softly spoken more evolved ones look like they work for the Mosad – in a different department – in higher intelligence.

The women however look the same, apart from their shoes they dress the same, they mother and shop and act the same, but when they open their mouths to speak, from deep within comes a gruff loud voice that scares the hell out of me. I look around to see who's fallen, whose run into the traffic, only to realize that they are talking to me, making very small talk in very big voices.

There's a woman I dance with who's had more roadwork done on her pretty face than is seemingly healthy - full lipped, long haired big boobed and skinny. Modeled on Stacy (as opposed to Barby) she moves around the dance floor in her own bliss, childhood patterns of ballet classes long passed restricting her free movement. She is tall and wide eyed and looks like a child who has not yet moved from innocence to power. Light and slight, awkward and fragile she twirls around blissfully in her own make believe world. We greet each other and smile, but she knows I speak little Hebrew and until last night we had never actually exchanged words.

Then after the teacher-DJ gave instructions for a new dance momentarily in English, she brushed passed me and turned to say " In your merit, he spoke in English" (Well that's not exactly what she said - what she said was " because of you he spoke English " but the word she used was 'schut' which in Chabbad-speak means merit. Its how you say 'because' when the outcome is positive). In the moments between hearing and understanding what she had said, I nearly jumped out of my skin. This beautiful sculptured childlike overgrown ballerina spoke in the deepest voice, and uttered the most guttural and loud Hebrew. She was simply making small talk and thank G-d I understood what she said or I might have left the class running.

There are others too, the homeopath who looks like the Rebbitzin, the woman outside drinking coffee who looks like my brother in laws mother, they all startle me when they speak. Perhaps it's the language itself, and perhaps when the time comes that I finally speak it, I too will startle. After all I look like I was born here; I walk the same, apart from my shoes I dress the same, mother the same and shop the same. People assume I'm Israeli, they ask me directions in the street, questions in the mall, and perhaps they too are startled when I open my mouth and meekly stumble out in my softly spoken foreign accent my apologize in broken Hebrew for not understanding or speaking the language of my face.

They turn to their friends and say – wow, I never expected that, she looks just like one of us.