2. chetah

These past few days have been a whirlwind of settling down. After I met all of the kids, Ofri escorted me to Amir's room, where I would be staying. It was a cramped room, but they somehow managed to fit two beds in it. As I later learned, Israeli mattresses are more foamy than springy and they're super thin. But I'm a polite American, so I of course haven't brought up the issue. Amir has a pretty standard room, despite its lack of space. He's surprisingly fine with me staying with him, because he's barely there. His girlfriend, Inbar, is basically his top priority, along with his friend Gal, who I've met twice now.

Gal dresses just like Amir and sometimes I get a little confused between them because they're so alike (even though Amir's English is way better than Gal's). There's just this air that they both possess and I can't really seem to place what it is. Zohar called them "arsim," whatever that is. But they're chill enough, and they've continuously offered to share their cigarettes with me, even though I've made it as clear as I can that I don't smoke. They're big on smoking. Everyone is in this place. One night Gal and Amir also gave me this whole explanation about how since I'm an American, I won't have any trouble with girls here. That was reassuring, I guess.

Yesterday Amir left with Gal and some of their other friends to a place called the Golan to go camping or whatever. They invited me along, too, but Ofri said that since his friends suck at English, it wouldn't be that fun for me. Amir countered, expressing how beer and hookahs were universal. Jack wasn't too thrilled with that, so I'm stuck here for the next few days, on their "moshav", without Amir or Gal or anyone else of real interest.

Nana left on Saturday night and so did Shaked. Apparently, they go to the army during the week and come home on weekends. Which, in this country, happens to go from Friday afternoon to Saturday night. Sunday isn't a part of the weekend. It's a weekday. Which sucks for them, because as Amir told me, it means that school goes from Sunday to Friday. Six straight days. I'd die if I had to go to school for six days in a row. Five is already hard enough.

I didn't really see much of either of the older sisters this weekend. Nana was out with friends, doing whatever it was that hot Israeli girls in their twenties did. And Shaked hung with Amir, surprisingly. I'm pretty okay when it comes to reading people, and even though they fight and screw with each other constantly, Shaked and Amir are a package deal. They're closest in age to each other and their friends overlap and even though they've each told me individually that they hate the other, it's not true. They're the worst siblings ever, but they're the best of friends.

And as for the youngest daughter, Zohar, well, I haven't really seen much of her at all except for at meals (which are basically just a combination of chopped vegetables and dairy products) and when Ofri sends her to check up on me. She's so quiet in contrast to Amir and Shaked. But from what I can tell, her English level rivals Jack's and she's pretty smart. Always reading books, seeming intellectual. She hasn't really tried to engage with me—not like Shaked or Amir—but it's fine. This whole thing has actually been fine so far, which is a major surprise.

I thought that I was going to hate every second of being here, but the weather is great (sometimes even a little too great), and the people are nice, even if the language barrier is kind of a b*tch. It sure beats working at Harvey's Hardware Store for another summer. Shit, was the most boring job I've ever had. There were absolutely no girls around and it was just a bunch of Carhartt-loving contractors and handy dads. The monotony also kind of killed me. The same thing, day in and day out. This isn't even close to that.

When my mom first told me that she wanted me to "get in touch with my heritage," I thought she was nuts. I still do. She wanted me to go to Israel for the summer so I could tap into my Jewish identity or whatever, which is stupid, because we're just about the least observant Jews ever. We also live in a place where Jews are like four-leaved clovers. They're not lucky, but they sure are hard to find. But anyway, no one in my family is even from Israel, which was what confused me the most. If my mom wanted me to connect with my heritage or some shit, then she should've sent me to New York or one of those places that doesn't exist anymore because it's part of Russia or for the summer. Instead, I get sent to Israel. Ask me in three years how that makes sense and I still won't be able to tell you.

Point being, I don't really know why I'm here. It's pretty damn random, but so far I don't really have any complaints except for the whole bed thing and the jetlag and the time difference. Otherwise, it's been chill and easy and nice.

So it's Monday today and I'm just sitting at the kitchen table with Jack, Ofri, and Zohar. Then all of the sudden Ofri suggests that Zohar should take me to hang out with her friends for the day, which Jack agrees with. Zohar doesn't object and neither do I, which is how I end up walking around the moshav with Zohar until we get to a pretty kickass playground. There are a few little kids climbing on this giant jungle gym made out of red metal and bungee cords and I totally want to join them, but instead I follow Zohar over to a series of benches, shaded by an awning. We're both silent and then some teens walk over to us and animatedly start jabbering away in Hebrew.

There's a boy and a girl. The guy is a ginger with pale skin that probably doesn't agree with the desert and the girl is tan and petite. She has glasses and wild hair. The dude asks me something, so Zohar goes, "This is Jesse. He's staying with us for a month. He's from America, and he doesn't speak Hebrew."

"None?" wonders the girl.

Zohar shakes her head.

"That's okay, practicing our English isn't the worst thing," she says. "I'm Eden."

"Eh, and I'm Dolev," the dude tells me. He isn't dressed like Amir or Gal. Nah, instead he's got on these shorts that stop at his mid-thigh and a horizontally striped T-shirt. I can't tell if he cares more about his outfit than Gal and Amir or less.

"They live on the moshav," says Zohar.

Then Eden inquires, "Where in America are you from?"

So I say, "Nebraska," which causes her eyes to squint skeptically. As I've deducted from my few interactions with Amir and his friends, Israelis only really know about New York, Florida (maybe Miami), California, sometimes Texas, and Boston. That's it. To them, the rest of the country might as well be a mystery. But to be fair, I can barely find Israel on a map and they're required to take English in school, so they get some credit.

"It's near Texas," Zohar adds, picking up on a line that I used when explaining where I lived to her family during a dinner.

"You have cowboys?" Dolev sits down next to Zohar and Eden plops down onto his lap.

I laugh. "Kind of."

"What's that thing they say?" Eden racks her brain for what I can only presume is propagated Americana. "Ah! Yee-ha!"

Ignoring his friend's discovery, Dolev continues with his determined interrogation: "Do you ride a horse?"

"No."

"And, eh, why are you here?" Eden flicks him and I let out a laugh, because Amir has already asked me the same thing, though with an expletive or three thrown in. Amir wanted to know because he thinks that Israel—specifically their moshav—is the most boring place in the world, to which I told him that considering I live in the most boring place in the world, Israel is incomparable. But I got why he asked it. It is pretty weird for some random American kid to be like, "You know, I really want to spend my summer in Israel," especially when all of the Israeli kids just want to be in America.

So I tell Dolev that, "My mom sent me."

"I'm sorry," he says.

Completely switching topics, Eden suddenly asks Zohar, "So he doesn't know any Hebrew at all?"

"Sababa," I interject, "but other than that, no."

Eden giggles and says, "Eizeh haval!"

"'What a pity,'" Dolev translates. "It's a useful phrase. You say it."

"Eizeh haval," I repeat, but I don't make that throaty sound on the "H" because I'm incapable of doing so.

"Ha-val," Eden imitates me. "Yofi, achi!"

"What's that mean?"

"Yofi is like...good," explains Dolev, "and achi is, eh, like 'bro,' but unless you want to be like Zohar's brother, don't say it."

"Why not?"

"Because her brother is an ars," Eden puts plainly. I of course have no idea what this is, but Eden thankfully elaborates as best she can. "So, eh, an ars—or arsim, for plural—is like this type of boy that is obsessed with how he looks. He wears like a, eh, gold necklace and tight jeans and he has tattoos where you can see them. His favorite music is mizrachi—which means 'suckish'—and he likes to take selfies and smoke cigarettes and act tough. For example: Amir is an ars."

I still have no clue what an ars is, so Zohar sums it up in a single sentence: "They're like Israel's version of those guys on Jersey Shore."

"Oh," I nod, kind of getting it but not totally.

"And the arsim date the frechot, or fakatziot, which are the girl versions," resumes Dolev. "They wear the necklaces with their names in English and the leggings and they love their iPhones and they say 'mami' and Shaked, Zohar's sister, is one."

"They're like the girls on Jersey Shore," is Zohar's solid model.

"But you don't ever use the words ars or frecha to their faces, because it's not nice," Eden informs me, adding, "frecha is, like, 'slut,' kind of."

"Speaking of frechot," Dolev laughs, jutting his arm out to a girl walking our way. She's in a tank top and jeans and it doesn't quite look like the type of thing that Shaked would wear. "Yo! Mami!"

"Makoreh, achi?" she shoots back, approaching us.

"Anglit, bevakashah," Zohar sighs.

"Why?" calls the girl.

"Because this is Jesse," says Eden, "and he likes English."

When the other girl finally reaches us, she gives me a once over and then smiles politely, saying something superfast in her native language that I don't even try to process. Zohar says something back and then Dolev adds in a word or two. The exchange ends as the girl looks back at me and goes, "Hi, my name is Reut. Nice to meet you, Jesse."

"Hi," I return.

"We were just explaining to Jesse about the arsim and frechot," Dolev shares. "Frechot like you, Reuti."

"Ohmigosh shut up!" exclaims Reut. "Shakran!"

"That's a good word to know," Eden comments. "It means 'liar,' Jesse."

"Shakran," I try it out, but of course it sounds like "shock-ran" instead of an elongated A, because I just don't do that. I dropped out of Spanish in seventh grade because my accent was so bad, and that at least had the same alphabet as English. But I'm trying, which is what counts, right?

Eden and Reut burst into laughter and Dolev drops another word into my growing repertoire: "Bevakashah is also a good word to know—it means please."

"Bevakasha," I mimic quietly, still unable to make the A sound. The "vak" part comes out like "vuk" when I say it, which of course makes the girls giggle and Dolev crack a grin.

"How long are you here for?" asks Reut.

"About a month," I say.

"Well," she goes, "that should be enough time for us to show you Israel—the parts that matter, at least. Are you Jewish?"

It's kind of a weird question because if I weren't Jewish, what the hell would I be doing in the middle of an Israeli desert on a moshav. But one of Amir's friends asked me the same thing, and I think it's because they're just not used to meeting American teens that aren't with their camp or on some family trip or whatever. I'm just a lone teen who was exiled to Israel for the summer to get in touch with one part of my untapped cultural roots. For them, that's a pretty wacky concept to take in. For me, too.

So I'm like, "Yeah, I'm Jewish, but, like, secular."

"Ma zeh?"

Dolev translates: "'What's that?' It's a good one to know, too."

I internalize that information as Zohar then translates, "Chiloni," for Reut, which I then find out means "secular." It puts me in Reut's good graces, because apparently they're not really fans of religion themselves, either. Eden then tells me that some moshavs are religious ("dati"—or "chareidi" for the really extreme ones), but this one isn't. That then segues into Dolev suggesting that they give me a tour of the moshav. So we leave the nice little park and we walk all around the property of the moshav, passing an orchard of olive trees and some barns that house cattle and a chicken coop. It's a farm, but it isn't like the type of red barn farm that I'm used to seeing. No, it's more industrial and less homely. The farm is a business, not some place that parents can take their kids to for an afternoon of apple picking. Especially because this farm has no apples.

When we come to the edge of the olive grove, Eden tells me that olives are one of the seven species—"shivat haminim." I obviously have no clue what these supposed "species" are, so Reut and Dolev jump in to explain. They tell me that they're basically these seven special foods that come from the land of Israel. Zohar adds that they're mentioned in the Bible—the Torah—which is why they're so super special. Aside from the olive (ziet), there's barley (seorah), wheat (chetah), pomegranate (rimon), fig (teanah), grapes (gefen), and honey (dvash). Eden says that you can find all of the species all over the land, which is one of her favorite parts about Israel. Reut counters that by saying that if there were anything great about Israel, it'd be the people and the parties that they throw.

I just look over at the bunch of old olive trees, standing sturdily in the midst of the desert but defying the biome and living. As Eden, Dolev, and Reut spark up a conversation that I can't understand, I notice that Zohar stares, too, not saying a word and just taking it all in. I don't know what her MO is, but I'm pretty sure that it doesn't involve breaking hearts or kicking puppies. And even though I don't know her, I kind of like that about her.