Is there anything good in Israel?

Glory Shifrin

On the third day of our stay in Israel, Zama’s “old” relative invited us to his home for dinner.

Zyama in our family was considered a dissident who suffered from the communist regime. He left for Israel in 1975, literally two months before an extensive revision in his supermarket. According to the results of the revision, the director of the supermarket was given 10 years, the deputy director was given 8 years, he managed to withdraw from the party and suffered a heart attack, and the modest merchant Zyama at the time of the trial had already drank warm vodka on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea and mourned the wealth earned by hard work and left for preservation to not very reliable people.

Sitting at the head of a table filled with unfamiliar food and exquisite alcohol (Gold vodka, brandy brought by Zyama “from America” and two types of wine – White and Red), Zyama presented to us his vision of the Israeli reality.

The climate here is terrible. This heat is totally unbearable for us Europeans.

Zyama, of course, considered himself a carrier of the great European culture.

Probably because he was born in the very heart of Europe - in the town of Baranovich of the Brest region.

Or because he taught German at school and could construct the phrase in German, “Woman, if I take 4 pieces, will I get a discount?”

Israel’s economy is falling. There is nothing of its own: no metallurgical plants, no oil, no coal, no aircraft, no aircraft carriers. “No ice breakers,” added one of the guests. Without American aid, this country could be closed tomorrow.

The army is one big myth. A couple of times defeated the stupid Arabs and joy. Look at how the soldiers here look like the Belarusian partisans who came out of the forest. They can’t go through the building normally, I’m not talking about the song.

Medicine in Israel is a disgrace. My aunt (he pointed to the fork on the old lady, concentrating on chewing the sandwich with new, apparently not in the Soviet Union inserted toothprotheses) for the third month stands in line for cataracts (he said so and said “the row for cataracts”). We would give the doctor 100 rubles and my aunt would have been operated yesterday, and today I would drink an oxygen cocktail in the prophylactory “Green Pine”.

Is this education? They do not teach anything at school: neither physics, nor mathematics, nor this, like her. The chemistry. I read all the literature by the age of 16 (“I listened to all the music by the age of 18, I reviewed all the paintings by the age of 20,” I thought). And they don’t know the world literature at all: neither Drun, neither Senkevich, nor Mopassan (Zama’s brother was the director of the maculature collection point, so Zama’s home always had the freshest literature).

Is there anything good in Israel? I asked with hope.

Zyama silenced, poured a glass of vodka into himself, with a precise, trained movement threw it straight into his stomach, without rushing to snack a champagne chewed with a goat baking, thought a little and replied:

The clothes will dry quickly.