Black and White -- My Two New Least Favorite Colors

I wrote this post about 10 days ago (8/9), never finished it and never sent it, so I am posting it now. I'm not in a place today where I need to talk about black and white thinking, but trust me, being in Jerusalem will trigger feelings, probably in the next week, so stay tuned.

I've been in a bit of a slump since last week which is why you haven't heard from me I guess. The middle of last week I had a few days where I felt kind of homesick, lonely and sad. Part of me feels like it might have been a natural reaction to the acupuncture treatment I had just a day or so before, the first I've had in about two months. Since then I've been feeling incredibly bored. You might be thinking, well Amy, there's plenty to keep you busy in Jerusalem. I didn't mention the second part of how I was feeling: extremely unmotivated. So combine bored with unmotivated and you've got yourself an Amy who sat around a lot doing nothing, walked around the small apartment too much, checked my email every few minutes, etc. etc. The smallest task seemed too big, and I kept putting things off even though doing them would alleviate boredom to some extent and stop Rachel from nagging to a large extent. But I have been a consistently good wife, doing most of the cooking, cleaning, dishes, laundry, packing Rachel's lunch, etc.

So it seems like what happened is that I transitioned from homesick/lonely/sad to really feeling annoyed with and angry at Jerusalem society and culture, and now I'm kind of stuck there. Stuck on the black/white thinkers and sexism parts the most, although there are others. Here's a few examples of sexism that I have experienced. I posted an ad on Janglo (Jerusalem Anglo's), a Craigslist type forum for English speakers living in Israel, saying that I am interested in hourly or part time work. I got a response from "Schmoving" asking if I am a boy or a girl. I replied "a woman, actually, not that it matters" and then sent another reply asking if "Schmoving" means it is a moving company." He responds "Yes, and if you were a boy we could maybe hire you." I replied that "I'm stronger than many men, your loss" and his final response was "It is very simple; schlepping in a moving company is not suitable for women" and he said he couldn't figure out from my email what my gender is or he never would have responded to my post (Ami is a common name here for both males and females, and people equate Amy with Ami, thus confusing some people). Whatever. This pissed me off so much -- my immediate reaction was how can I start a women only moving company in Jerusalem and try to steal all of Schmoving's clients! Another example is how people, men mostly, react to me, a woman, wearing a kippah. Religious people don't say anything, or at least they haven't yet, they just stare rudely. Secular Israelis are another story. I guess it's been twice now that while in the shuk, I walk up to a kiosk and start talking to the owner and/or employees. They clearly know from the time I walked up to them and started talking to them that I am woman. Both times one of the men will ask me if I am a man or woman, I say back "What the fuck do you think" and they then look at my chest and say "Woman." It's amazing how backwards Israel is in some ways. I will say I've also had great experiences where, in the shuk, to stick with the same example, I've had many men acknowledge my kippah and acknowledge Reform Judaism, progression, modernity and a "the times they are a changin'" mentality. These are breaths of fresh air in a city that operates in many dominant ways in a black and white paradigm. There is so little gray here. And this is coming from a person who has a tendency to be very black or white, all or nothing. I feel that even though there are a lot of secular Jews in Jerusalem, they still allow the religious community to establish all of the social norms. In my opinion, Mea She'arim is like Disney World -- it's not really real, it's like living in a fantasy world and you can walk through and look at all the craziness but realize as you exit the park that it needs to stay behind, that it has no real place in the larger world. Would we let Mickey Mouse dictate our social norms?