So I’m the only one in the First Class of El Al’s flight 007 to JFK. (Modern times sure bring us odd-looking integers and initials, don’t they?) I sleep on the floor on a futon for a week and a half, covered with an old red comforter with pink stitching, and I learn to walk down the dusty street past the construction equipment, and the butcher’s shop getting ready for the day’s business with loud chopping sounds, to the local convenience store to buy a 2-liter bottle of pre-chilled orange Fanta for breakfast. Seven shekels they charge the shiksa for this.
Am I still a shiksa after I convert?
Anyway, I sleep on the floor on a futon in Jaffa for a week and a half, with goats (which entered the restaurant we were dining at last night, but were discouraged from getting much past the front door) and loud-mouthed, inbred, imported, domesticated southeast Asian jungle-fowl (chickens) and a pony (whose hoof-prints I saw in the dust this morning on the way to the store) as neighbors, so of course the proper re-introduction to American society is First Class on El Al. I got my embroidered slippers on (they came in their own little ultra-suede pouch) and my baggie-o-toiletries (in a separate little ultra-suede pouch) in the empty seat beside me. Fluffy the Laptop is plugged in, the foot-rest is up, the Maccabi Beer and plate-o-cashews is beside me.
Lunch. Michal the stewardess and I discuss the philosophical underpinnings of our two countries (very similar) while feeding me beef tenderloin on a great big mushroom. “Can I tempt you with ice cream?” Oh, yeah. I trust it was a rhetorical question.
white pebble 