Home and Homelesness

"It’s because you’re finally feeling at home." Variations on this remark have been made by friends and relatives seeking to explain why my blogging has dwindled somewhat in recent months. Perhaps they’re right. The longer you spend in one place, the more its quirks and idiosyncrasies appear less, well, quirky and idiosyncratic. But “feeling at home” isn’t something to be taken lightly. Acclimation is not the same as assimilation. I have been in Israel for nearly a year now, and while I love my life here, anxiety over the question of “home” abides.

Yesterday I read a short yet powerful essay by Edward Said, entitled “Mind of Winter” (Harper's, Sept. 1987). I must admit, since my days as a Comparative Literature major on an often frustratingly politically correct, hyper-liberal Northern California college campus, I’ve shied away from reading Said because of his politics (and the politics in service of which his theory is often deployed). Plus, invoking reflections on exile by a self-proclaimed disenfranchised Palestinian seems ironic coming from a North American Jewish girl living in Israel, but, if you’ll excuse the pun, his words hit close to home.

Let’s be clear. This is no sob story. I am the farthest thing from a refugee, and I’ve hardly earned the requisite political or historical stripes to deserve the tragic-turned-glamorous title of “exile.” But living abroad this past year, living in another language and another climate (both social and environmental), has made me think more carefully about what home means, and more specifically, what home means to me.

I still bristle when people ask me when I "made aliyah," or, conversely, when I plan to “return to Canada” (which I left at the age of eighteen), or to Chicago (to which I have no plans to return). “Where’s home?” others have asked. I generally shrug, smile, and say something like, “for now I’m happy here.”

But do I really need an answer? That is, do I need one answer?

Said suggests that being homeless translates into the ability to be at home everywhere. Exile is as productive as it is painful. It both enervates and empowers. More importantly, exile carries with it moral promise, the capacity to cross borders to a broader worldview. It is not merely a privileged site for individual self-reflection but an alternative to the mass institutions that dominate modern life. For instance, exile may be understood as the opposite of nationalism. Nationalism, the assertion of belonging to a specific place, people, heritage, even destiny, “fends off the ravages of exile.” It is the antidote to estrangement, a kind of being in the plural. Exile, by contrast, is being in the singular. It means loneliness. But also independence.

Hugo of St. Victor, a twelfth-century Saxon monk, expressed the blessing and curse of exile with these hauntingly beautiful words:

“The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land. The tender soul has fixed his love on one spot in the world; the strong man has extended his love to all places; the perfect man has extinguished his.”

The ability to see “the entire worlds as a foreign land” is the ability to see everything in a fresh light. Daily habits, expressions and activities in the new environment always take place against the memory of these same things in another environment. New and old are vivid, actual. I have experienced this time and again here in Israel. The most banal events -- taking the bus, filling a prescription, buying cheese (all cataloged in this blog..."catabloged"?) -- suddenly become more interesting… at times hilarious. The way "we" do things “at home” is no longer taken for granted. Said suggests, “There is a unique pleasure in this sort of apprehension…. There is also a particular sense of achievement in acting as if one were at home wherever one happens to be."

Of course, as much as this experience makes us stronger, it is also unsettling. Hugo of St. Victor suggests that “perfection” is a heavy cross to bear. In the end, exile is the opposite of being satisfied, placid, secure. On the one hand, by crossing borders into unfamiliar territory one begins to be at home everywhere. On the other hand, one will never be at home anywhere. When I’m here, I labeled Canadian (or American)…yet growing up in Canada I always felt that part of me was in Israel, where my relatives lived. Here in Israel, I find myself longing for the politeness and order of North America. When I’m there, I miss the directness and the warmth of Israel. A question mark looms over the word "home."

I agree with Said that this sense of simultaneous comfort and discomfort – home and homelessness – carries a moral imperative. Seeing the world as foreign involves the capacity to critique each and every space we inhabit. Theodor Adorno summed up this idea up with a lovely paradox: "It is part of morality not to be at home in one’s home."

I suppose this anxiety of home and homelessness is what drives my interest in Jewish literature, the quintessential literature of exile. After reading Said’s article, a poem came to mind by the wild child of Yiddish poetry, Peretz Markish:

I don’t know, if I’m at home

Or I’m away —

I’m running!...

My shirt is undone,

No bridle restrains me,

I’m nobody’s, I’m stray,

Without a beginning, without an end…

My body is foam,

It smells of wind;

My name is: “now”…

I throw up my arms,

They reach the world from end to end,

I leave my eyes alone,

They drink the world from bottom up!

With eyes open, with shirt undone,

With arms extended, —

I don’t know, if I have a home

Or have an away,

If I’m a beginning, or an end…

IKEA...just like everwhere else only more...um...Israeli

90118670. Karlstad two-seater sofa.
30118135. Sivik upholstery.
40063632. Docksta table.
70103085. Expedit shelving system.

The only excuse I can offer for having neglected my blog is that for this past month my sole means of communication has been the international language of IKEA. Believe me, I know that friggin' catalog off by heart! August was devoted first to apartment hunting, then to moving and finally to the joys and frustrations of furnishing a new home.

Apartment-hunting in Tel Aviv is indeed an all-consuming affair. It usually begins with www.yad2.co.il or www.homeless.co.il, two websites that resemble Craig's List. Last month I reached the conclusion that absolutely EVERYONE in Israel and beyond was scouring both sites EVERY minute of EVERY hour of EVERY day with the sole aim of SCREWING ME out of a good apartment. What, you think I'm paranoid? Virtually every apartment that I inquired about turned out to be (a) no longer available, (b) a short-term rental, or (c) available for viewing together with 35 other prospective tenants today between 3:15 an 3:45, and no, not a minute earlier nor later. One day I went to an Open House that was advertised for 7:30pm, arriving around 7:15 at the doorstep of a fairly shabby, rundown building, where I proceeded to count the throngs of people already waiting in line to view the same apartment. I promptly ran away and sought comfort in a plate of hummus.

But, as they say, it all works out in the end! I found a charming, nicely renovated apartment in the northern part of the city, steps from Hayarkon Park (translation: the view from my window is actually GREEN!!!), in a building with a cute little garden out front and one of the cutest cafes in town located just around the corner. I moved August 1, and am now a proud resident of Shlomtsiyon Hamalca Street, named for Queen Salome Alexandra, the only female ruler of Judea. The cross-street, Miriam Hachashmonait (Mariamne the Hasomnean), is named for the second wife of Herod the Great, whose great beauty, legend has it, was responsible for the downfall of the Hasmonean dynasty. We're talking about the Sporty Spice and Posh Spice of ancient Israel... go Judean Girl Power!

IKEA is also an all-consuming affair. Every time I have planned an IKEA outing I have tried my best to prevent distraction and confusion by preparing a shopping list in advance, complete with catalog numbers, only to discover that at least 50% of the items on my list are out of stock and that the remaining 50% are (a) smaller, (b) bigger, or (c) uglier than they appeared on the website. Without fail. After 45 minutes of pure vertigo in the kitchen accessories department I ran to the cafeteria to seek comfort in a plate of hummus.

The fact that the Israeli IKEA actually serves hummus (as opposed to the standard fare of Swedish meatballs with lingonberry sauce) is one of two features that distinguishes it from IKEA everywhere else in the world. The other is the fact that Customer Service should actually be renamed Customer Abuse. When my new sofa arrived not at all in the condition promised ("What are you talking about, it's easy," said the condescending salesman, "you just attach the legs and slip the fabric over the cushions.") but in pieces and WITHOUT the upholstery, I immediately called to complain. I ended up having a totally unhelpful conversation with a representative who tried to convince me that the mistake was in fact MINE, followed by an irritating conversation with another representative who assured me that the upholstery would be delivered but that I may need to wait another two weeks (!), followed by an aggravating conversation with yet another representative who refused to let me speak to the manager but told me I was "welcome to send a fax" (what the...?!?!?!), and finally, an absolutely infuriating conversation with a purely evil representative who cut me off mid-sentence to vituperate me, saying, "Obviously YOU don't understand how Ikea works. This is SELF-service." At this point I found myself, in the middle of a crowded street, literally SCREAMING into my cellphone: "I HOPE YOU REALIZE THAT I AM A POLITE CANADIAN AND HAVE NEVER IN MY LIFE SCREAMED LIKE THIS ON THE PHONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Yes, I'll admit it, for a brief moment my Canadian politeness went out the window.

But, again, it all worked out in the end, and I'm sitting on my perfectly comfy and fully assembled sofa as I type this.

Today is the second day of Rosh Hashanah and I am happy to say that my new apartment is not the only marker of a sweet start to the new year. After having for weeks dedicated the camera feature on my phone to photographing nothing but apartment interiors, furniture and home accessories, I was quite excited to add a human face to my photo selection. A brand new face, no less. My friend Anat gave birth to a gorgeous baby boy almost exactly a month ago. Today marked Baby Michael's (a.k.a. Pitsy...meaning "tiny") first major restaurant outing and Anat's glorious return to sushi. That's right, for about 36 whole minutes we scarfed down salmon avocado rolls and Agedashi tofu at one of my favorite new local spots while the baby slept peacefully. Amazing. Loving life's little luxuries.