Ayelet on Tour

 As a tourist, it is difficult to escape spending a certain amount of time actually on tour. While instructive and orienting to the average adult, tours can be quite the opposite to the average two-year-old, who seems to learn best through a seemingly random exploration of the territory around her, without much regard to spatial or chronological order. Here are some of our experiences taking Ayelet on tour:

Caesaria: I had envisioned Ayelet scrambling happily amidst the ruins, following in the footsteps of Romans and Crusaders of yore. What I had neglected in my imaginings was that these ruins are not exactly child-proof and thus, considering the distinct possibility of tumbling down stone cliffs, not the ideal stomping ground for a two-year-old.

We decided the tourist center might be a safer (did I mention air-conditioned?) bet, and ended up in a lecture/video presentation on the legendary building of Caesaria.

Ayelet happens to be a big fan of videos. In fact, her favorite word just might be “DVD.” The problem is that in her vocabulary “DVD” is reserved exclusively for usage with DVDs of Sesame Street (or, as Ayelet refers to it as a baby-in-the-know, simply “Street”).

Never mind; we viewed this not as a problem but rather as an opportunity. “DVD!” we enticed Ayelet, “Do you want to watch a DVD?!”

The ruse worked, for approximately 5 minutes, during which she waited in anticipation for her favorite fuzzy friends to materialize. When presented instead with diagrams of port construction, she began questioning, “Ernie? Elmo??” and then lost interest entirely. Lesson of the day: Apparently historical thrillers don’t make the “DVD” cut.

Zichron Ya’akov: We had the treat of being led on a wine, beer, and dairy tour by Esther Cohen of myisraelwinetours.com. The finer points of wine-making – which my husband now thoroughly enjoys touting to our Shabbat guests – might be a little lost on a two-year-old. In fact, from her perspective a lot of the processes we went over must seem a little opaque, even for products she enjoys. For instance, we looked at some cheese; then we looked at some cows. Connection? Unclear.

“Moo!” she said. That much she knows cold.

I can’t wait until she hits the science fair stage.

In the meantime, there were some unexpected occurrences, even for those of us familiar with the ways of the world. The dairy was hopping, and apparently not just because people like cheese. There was some kind of festival going on, and… President Shimon Peres?! Check (off the item in the itinerary: See random famous person).

We went on to a lovely lunch and wine tasting under grape vines at the Tishbi Winery. Lunch: now there’s something we all can relate to.

Tirat Tzvi: We spent Shavuot at Kibbutz Tirat Tzvi, a religious kibbutz near Beit She’an. While enchanted by beautiful views of Jordan in the distance, where we were was currently hot! And extra-buggy. This made more sense when we figured out that the land used to be entirely swamp, the religious kibbutzniks not having been allotted the most choice of the properties available (Tirat Tzvi is one of several religious kibbutzim in the area).

See, history can shed light on the present! I tried to explain to Ayelet. She wrinkled up her nose at the bugs and looked hot.

We took a walking tour of the kibbutz led by an old-timer who was born there in the early days. We learned the story behind the tower (the Tirah) and saw the room with the hidden weapons cache where school groups now come.

However, I personally spent much of the tour chasing after Ayelet, who had some questions, but mostly relating to why she was being asked to sit in the stroller for so long and where was the best place to run around wildly and evade one’s Ima.

Ayelet and the Animals

Ayelet loves animals. At least that’s what we tell ourselves. I’m not really sure, honestly, why a girl growing up in the suburbs has to be drilled on “What does a cow say?” “What does a goat say?” But she has a whole barnyard of these animal sounds down to rival any farmgirl (except when she’s presented with an animal whose sound is outside her area of expertise, say a camel, in which case she’ll take the educated guess of either ‘woof’ or ‘quack’). She even has books teaching her more exotic animals that she certainly wouldn’t encounter in New Jersey, lions and tigers and bears and the like, and an iPad app that schools her, “This is the sound a zebra makes: ‘woot woot woot! woot woot woot!’”

Our principle of animal ed is strongly affirmed by Israeli theories of child entertainment, which seem to suggest: if in doubt as to whether a place of attraction will be attractive enough to a child, you can’t go wrong with a couple of farm animals. Ein Zivan’s fruit picking fields have an adjacent petting zoo. Kibbutz Tirat Tzvi has a petting zoo – not just for farm animals, mind you, which might be logical on a farm, but owls and peacocks and other exotic birds labeled in Hebrew. Continuing with the bird theme, the Israeli Air Force Museum in Be’er Sheva has a formidable collection of squawking wonders, with the tenuous connection that airplane designers have learned much from these expert fliers – which doesn’t really explain the ostriches.

The Jerusalem Biblical Zoo is definitely the place to go if you’re actually on an animal hunt from the get-go. It’s got satisfyingly humungous brown elephants, exotic monkeys, even some woot-woot-woot zebras.  How did Ayelet react?

“Zebra,” she said, pointing definitively.

Then, she turned around and walked away. Clearly, when you make a zebra a household item, it gets treated as one.

Ayelet was more captivated by the goats in the petting zoo. In Israel, it seems a “zoo” is a place where the animals are enclosed and the people are outside, whereas a “petting zoo” is a place where the people go in and roam about with the animals. Ayelet has been trained by my mother, who has a dog, to do “nice to Gloria” patting her gingerly on the side. So Ayelet felt compelled to go up to every single goat, pat it and say “niiice…” and then move on to the next one. Until the goats started nibbling on her dress. Then she started crying and held up her hands to be lifted out of the enclosed area.

On the Alpaca Farm in Mitzpe Ramon, I was given a bag of food to feed the alpacas. Actually it ended up only going to one alpaca, who almost knocked me over with his persistence and appetite. “This guy is really hungry,” I hinted at the staff.

“Oh, he’s always like that,” they told me.

While I had meant to give Ayelet a turn at the feeding – she loves feeding people and Gloria the dog significantly more than feeding herself – I was too busy keeping the hungry alpaca at bay to delegate. They offered to allow Ayelet to participate by riding a llama. But, given Ayelet’s not-too-stellar and rather squirmy performance riding in my lap on the plane, I thought I’d better decline.

Touching, handling, or being in close proximity to livestock? I think Ayelet would answer the US Customs form: ‘woot woot woot! woot woot woot!’

Playgrounds of Israel

When my husband, who left Israel at age 5, gave me a tour of his hometown Holon, it was comprised mostly of where he used to frequent: the playgrounds in the area. If you ask Ayelet to detail this trip, I speculate her review would consist largely of playgrounds as well.

With a child in tote, it suddenly enters your consciousness how very many playgrounds you pass, and in the most unpredictable places – mostly because you feel a little tug on your arm, which means that your route is about to be detoured for a while. Here are some highlights of the playgrounds of Israel:

1. Ayelet Has No Pity on Babies: In a Jerusalem playground in Katamon, Ayelet encountered Shoham, who at the tender age of 1 was content rolling around in the sand, waving his fat little legs in the air. But not Ayelet – she immediately seized upon a pail and shovel his babysitter had brought.
   
   As soon as she had made herself busy with it, Shoham wiggled over and started crying pitifully. Alas, Ayelet continued industriously. And then I uttered that troublesome word: “Share!”
   
   Now, a note on Ayelet and sharing. Ayelet understands perfectly well what “share” means. In fact, she has been known to go over to kids with toys or food she wants and demand, “Share!” However, her enthusiasm for sharing entirely diminishes when she’s on the other side of the pail and shovel.
   
   I somehow pried the items from Ayelet’s grasp and delivered them to the baby, who immediately quieted down just as Ayelet started screaming her head off. Then the babysitter persuaded Shoham to give up the toys, and he started crying while Ayelet started shoveling. And so it went, alternating playing and crying, until we had to go.
   
   If anyone has advice on teaching sharing, I’d appreciate if they… shared… Also if anyone has another pail and shovel.

2. Girls Have No Pity on Ayelet: In a beautiful and very crowded playground at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo, Ayelet had barely marched onto the scene when a group of Israeli 7-year-old girls fell in love with her. That sounds nice, but in reality it meant that they picked her up and carted her away into a swarming blur of children on the move. I darted under bridges and over slides after them, trying in vain to think of words, in either Hebrew or English, that might be able to communicate my sentiments. Finally I caught up. The girls were alternatively carrying her around, giving her kisses, and pushing her down slides while she made mild complaining noises and generally looked confused. I chased after them a bit, and then tried explaining to the girls that Ayelet really, really had to go, while they looked confused and made mild complaining noises.

3. Playing with Danger: Ayelet found a children-oriented oasis in the desert, in the form of a playground on Kibbutz Ein Gedi. But as she played happily on it, we began to notice troubles in paradise: protruding screws, rust and splinters, and… missing planks in walkways? Then we noticed a sign: “This playground has been inspected and found to be NOT SAFE!” We whisked Ayelet away quicker than we could contemplate what a condemned playground was doing in the middle of an otherwise not-too-shabby kibbutz where it could still bait innocent children, or to realize that perhaps that was why there were in fact no other children to be found there.
   
   Far away in the Golan, on a Shabbat when Ayelet was feeling a little too restless to stay in the synagogue (let’s be honest, that’s every Shabbat), a local recommended a nearby playground for distraction. But Ayelet was more interested in some nearby attractions: two pretend cars and a swing. I was relieved that finally something was holding her attention – until some boys came over and started whining to me and gesturing wildly at some signs, which I previously hadn’t noticed, appended to the play equipment in question.
   
   From what I could gather, it was not OK, forbidden, in fact, to play on that equipment. But with my Hebrew I didn’t really understand why – it seemed perfectly OK to me, and was, furthermore, still keeping my baby busy, which made it seem downright fantastic. So I let her keep at it until she eventually lost interest.
   
   Then I noticed that the boys had returned and not only were they now playing in the previously “forbidden” area, they also had torn down the posted signs and were saying in a sing-song voice, “Now it’s OK, now we can play.” I looked away, a tad embarrassed by the mayhem I had caused, and then saw one of their mothers march up and start trying to explain the difficult concept that tearing up a sign doesn’t make its meaning go away. She sternly smoothed out the wrinkled offending sign, as if it held any weight at this point.
   
   Moral of the story: playgrounds have ground rules, and when you don’t quite understand them, you change the playscape for everyone.

Shopping, Arguing (is there a difference?)

On the way to Jerusalem from the airport, I was attempting to use my rented Israeli cell phone to juggle coordination with the rental apartment, my dinner meeting, and my babysitter – until the door next to me suddenly opened, revealing the highway racing beside us. “Ayelet!” I yelled, still on the phone with the babysitter, and through the haze of jetlag tried to activate the appropriate muscles to close the taxi door my daughter had somehow opened.

“Get off the phone!” the cab driver started screaming at me. Even after I managed to get off the phone, his screaming rampage continued, questioning my priorities (and sanity) in not immediately hanging up when all this transpired. I could have answered that I was a) used to multitasking, or b) giving my babysitter a taste of what was in store for her, but instead I simply asked him to lock the door and spent the remainder of the trip worrying that I was being driven by someone genuinely angry at me.

“Thank you very much! It was a pleasure. Have a good trip!” the very same cab driver said to me upon arriving at our destination. I took a double-take to determine whether drivers had mysteriously switched at some stoplight. Observing that they had not, I watched him drive away in a daze, contemplating the finer points of Israeli arguing etiquette.

Apparently, however, I hadn’t learned much. After settling into the apartment a little, I ventured out to a nearby Mister Zol, where Ayelet, exercising her freedom after so many hours of airplane confinement, proceeded to knock down entire sections of beauty products. “Next time you’re going to have to pay for all this!” a supermarket employee screamed at me in Hebrew. Still holding all the products I had selected for purchase in my hands, trying to steer Ayelet away from everything she had knocked down, and a little dismayed by the level of customer relations, I told her, “I’m sorry, I can’t hold everything at once. Do you know where the shopping carts are?”

She chose to completely ignore me. I wish I could believe that it was because I didn’t know the Hebrew word for shopping cart and just said “cart,” but somehow I don’t.

I made a beeline for checkout.

And the haggling continued. On a future shopping occasion (this time with a cart), after selecting items based almost entirely on what was on sale, I was asked by the checkout lady for my Supersol card. “I don’t have one,” I said. “How do you get one?”

She told me that it was entirely possible – I just had to go over to the customer service booth after I checked out and ask for one.

Sure enough, customer service gave me my very own Supersol card. “Can I apply it to what I’ve already purchased?” I asked.

“Not possible,” she said definitively.

I know in retrospect that in all of these situations I should have argued more, defended my turf, insisted on my point of view – but really, does every small incident demand a confrontation? If you must know my perspective, it’s that life’s too short to spend it fighting against the details. Yet it seems that in Israel, if you don’t, you end up losing money, respect – and ultimately, your patience.

The Flight

Ayelet burst into tears practically the minute we entered the airport. Helping me with the luggage, my husband exchanged looks with me to the effect of, “Well, what did you really think was going to happen?”

She screamed the whole way through check-in, bag check, and security. The cause of all the aggravation seems to have been an unwillingness to be tied down in the stroller while so many interesting people and pieces of luggage rolled by. Ultimately the only article able to keep her at bay was her elephant blanket Ears, to which she clung fiercely, including while going through security. It hadn’t exactly occurred to me to pry him from her arms and put him on the security belt along with her little baby sandals, her stroller, and, well, everything else, but never fear, Ears was subject to a strict wand-test instead.

Amidst the ordinary ordeal of laboring our way past security, I suddenly witnessed the extraordinary: the proud Israeli flag on the tail of our airplane sticking up in the air. “We’re going to Israel!” I told Ayelet.

I’d need that sense of purpose to get me through the next 10 hours. The highlights of holding a 2-year-old in my lap for that length of time included dinner, during which I attempted to shovel food above Ayelet’s head with the hope of getting it into my mouth, mostly unsuccessfully as much of it fell onto my lap and onto the other logical place, Ayelet’s head, while Ayelet sprayed rice over us both as she tried her best to eat herself. The plane’s bumpiness at that particular juncture didn’t help the process much either.

Finally Ayelet fell asleep on me, and I discovered something. Ayelet is a very mobile sleeper. She shifted on me from position to position, trying her best to keep comfortable, which ensured that I definitely was not. But better that I watch her sleep than the other way around.

One way or another, we made it! Crusted with airplane food and sleep-deprived, I felt underprepared to meet what the day had in store for me. Still, the first step is showing up!

En Route to the Airport!

The day has come - we're almost off to Israel!

My experiences: Amidst some chaotic packing, I review the trip itinerary over and over, trying to process all the logistical details and contemplating the fact that the trip I have so long held in my head will soon be playing out in reality, in some more logical order of space and time.

And without further ado, what you have all been waiting for, my itinerary!

Day 1: Arrive in Jerusalem

Day 2-5: Jerusalem

Day 6: Natanya, Caesaria

Day 7: Wine Tour with MyIsraelWineTours.com

Day 8: Kibbutz Tirat Tzvi

Day 9: Shavuot at Kibbutz Tirat Tzvi

Day 10: Ein Gedi/ Dead Sea

Day 11: Modi'in

Day 12: Shabbat in Modi'in

Day 13: Holon, then down to Be'ersheva

Day 14: Mitzpe Ramon

Day 15: Tzuba

Day 16: Tzuba, back to Jerusalem

Day 17: Avnei Eitan (via Tiberias)

Day 18: Day trip to Ein Zivan

Day 19: Shabbat in Avnei Eitan

Day 20: Tel Aviv

Day 21: Tel Aviv/ Back home!

You will be proud to know that I just did that by heart, just to test myself. Whew! I think things are under control...

Ayelet's experiences: She's a little bewildered as to why she's being ignored, as I dart past her trying to put away various items that I've forgotten or that she's moved. I can tell she's ready to be on the road and on our way (from the fact she keeps saying "Outside! OUTSIDE!!!")

And now, I'm off, to the outside and the other side... the Israel side!

What’s it like to be a mother? (Belated Mother’s Day Thoughts)

Of course, it’s a lot of hard work—when you think you’ve ended the day, only to discover there are no clean bottles, only a pile needing cleaning. It’s a lot of messes that Ayelet mostly creates, like when she threw the potted plant she “gave” me (via daycare) for Mother’s Day on the floor—the one that came with her handprints on a poem about how I sometimes get frustrated with her, because she’s so small, but soon her hands will grow bigger, and I won’t remember the small hands at all!

It’s kind of funny, to see her discovering the world—like the Shabbat lunch when I looked over at the kids’ table and saw her downing the juices of a bowl previously holding pickles (she looked rather relieved when I handed her a glass of water). It’s kind of funny how she wrinkles up her little nose, the exact same way I did when I was a baby, or so I’m told.

It’s such a miracle, to hear her little voice developing a vocabulary—even though no matter how many words she learns, the one I love the most is, “IMA!” It’s such a miracle finding tiny baby diapers in the back of my closet and realizing how much she’s already grown.

It’s kind of scary that she has wants and opinions, especially when those opinions opt for “ELMO!” when I could already play the role of Elmo in that video or “OUTSIDE!” when a trip to the playground wasn’t on the agenda.

It’s kind of scary, because while planning a trip like I’m planning, I have to realize that no matter how “kid-friendly” I think I’m making it, I’m really just doing it for myself. How can I presume she’ll even like the “kid-friendly” parts at all? I remember the first time we put her in a swing when she was an itty-bitty baby and she just sat there staring at us, like, “This is supposed to be fun?” Or that first year when we put her in a Purim costume and she was screaming her head off. I want Israel to be fun, but honestly I can’t really know how it will compare to, say, an empty soda bottle, or Ima’s purse to walk around with, never mind “ELMO!” (let’s not set our sights too high here).

As far as I figure it, the best I can do is strike some kind of a balance between my desire to roll full steam ahead through my fast and furious itinerary and Ayelet’s desire to toddle the other direction, holding my purse, an empty soda bottle, and pushing her own stroller too while she’s at it—and somehow turn that into teachable moments where we learn about each other, Israel, and the big wide world around us, and have a good time, too, while we’re at it.

And that, in a nutshell, is what it’s like to be a mother.

Hebrew

My husband, who was born in Israel, when subjected to listening to me hobnobbing on the phone with various hotels, expressed his disapproval of my pronunciation of “yesh.” I say it really old-school (i.e. learned in Hebrew School): “yeish.” All that did was make me terribly self-conscious about my yesh’s. “Yeish, er, yaish, ahh, yesh!” I would say, while the person on the other end of the line waited – rather impatiently, I imagined – for me to just get out with it already.

After frequent experimentation, I’ve found as a general consensus that Israelis are much more receptive when I at least attempt communication in my broken Hebrew. I’ve gotten my grammar corrected, I’ve had people finish sentences for me, and yes, there is the occasional switch to English (Her name was Harriet! She spoke fluent American English! Of course she’d switch to it!), but in general, I get more patience and less of the feeling that I’m a gullible tourist out of those with whom I at least try.

You can chalk it off to coincidence but... Top occurrences that happened in English that never happened in Hebrew:

1. From a man: Getting chatted up. “Wherre in the U – S arre you? Oh, I know someone in [insert random place nowhere near where I live here].”
2. From 2 women: Being told really curtly that they’re busy now and I should call back later.

Top Hebrew-only experiences:

1. Being told by the guy who I was told could take me around the Golan (who I was theoretically willing to pay to do so) that it would be better for me to rent a car.
2. Genuine surprise that I’m calling from the US – every single time. With the rather simplistic and highly accented state of my Hebrew, I’m not sure what this says about the minimally acceptable level of Hebrew of Americans in Israel. Nothing good. Then again, at least I won’t be alone.

Cars vs. Buses

After some deep meditation on the theme of where in Israel I should go, somehow I feel strongly compelled to visit both the Negev and the Golan. We could sit around discussing why exactly I feel this way. Or we can concentrate on getting me there!

Inevitably my line of thinking has raised a fierce internal debate: the respective merits of car and bus travel in order to cover relatively vast distances within Israel.

Merits of driving: Getting quickly from place to place; hence, the ability to see many more places. That’s less time attempting to keep an inquisitive baby confined to a bus stop and more ease in stowing away the litany of luggage that comes with her.

Merits of riding a bus: That whole part about driving being faster and more direct is nice in theory, but if you a) don’t know where you’re going and b) are a bit challenged when it comes to following directions, it may be argued that these results may not be experienced. In a bus, on the other hand, you get to sit back, relax, and enjoy the countryside (disclaimer: unlikely to occur with a baby). The company also adds some local flavor. Last summer in Jerusalem, for instance, an older man sat down next to us and started up an extensive conversation in Hebrew, which culminated in him offering Ayelet a wafer cookie (containing nuts, open package, not to be refused). Upon seeing that she readily ate it, he gave us the remainder of the package to take home.

In short, I made the decision that buses are the way to go. As such, I had to mentally release some of my half-baked, driving-intensive plans (We can go to the Museum of Bedouin Culture! And a spa! And the burial site of Ben Gurion! All in half a day!) Instead, it looks like I’ll have to resign myself to a few dedicated locations for longer periods of time – places that are bus-accessible, at that.

I spent several frustrating hours playing games on egged.co.il, such as randomly inputting various cities and pressing “Find trip!” only to find that the trip entailed three transfers, or wasn’t traversable by bus at all. Eventually I determined that Katsrin is a major hub in the Golan; that getting from the South to the North inevitably means stopping in your choice of Tel Aviv or Jerusalem; and that it inexplicably takes twice as long to come back to Tel Aviv from Mitzpe Ramon than it does to get there, even though the way back has no transfer. Maybe there are more stops on the way back because everyone wants to get to Tel Aviv and no one wants to leave? I ignore the logical conclusion of this theory.

I keep coming back to wondering how Ayelet is going to survive multi-hour bus travel. Only one way to find out…

To Find a Place for Shavuot

On a mission:

To find a place (no, a chavaya!) for Shavuot!

What I do:

Like any resourceful individual, I scour the Internet, in Hebrew – OK, I cheated, Google Translate – and English too. I feel on the one hand like a total outsider: I find lots of articles complaining about how it’s become so popular to travel in Israel on Shavuot and how all the hotels up North in a certain year got completely booked up, yet, frustratingly enough, a lack of detail as to exactly which. On the other hand, there’s a certain ease of accessibility. At the click of a mouse, our reservation at Beit Maimon for the days leading up to Shavuot is booked! What people did before tripadvisor.com is unclear. It adds an air of concreteness to know Real People stayed there, all the more real when they describe all the imperfections: “The service is *Israeli*!” I can relate to that.

I find on a “Kosher Holiday” website that the Haon Holiday Village offers a “Shavuot Holiday,” yet after repeated calls and emails, I finally hear back that, however promising it appeared, this “Kosher Shavuot Holiday” somehow includes neither special Shavuot programming nor dairy meals. No blintzes?! Next…

Then somehow I find it: Kibbutz Tirat Tzvi. The concept of The Kibbutz has completely captivated me since my days watching Shalom Sesame – it’s a big farm! All the kids get to live together! Just when it couldn’t get any better, Tirat Tzvi is a Religious Kibbutz. Separate men and women swimming hours! A petting zoo! And… it so looks like a Kibbutz!

Excited, I don’t really think things through as I reach for Jajah.com and the phone. So there I am, attempting to communicate with this kibbutznik named Devora – who somehow thinks I have an 18-year-old. “Um… she’s between one and two,” I try in Hebrew. Except I forget the whole “shana,” “shanatayim” thing. “18…months?!” Anyway, once we get through that, she asks a harder question: for my Israeli phone number. I manage to communicate I’m actually in the US. But I think she heard “Mars.”

“Really?” she gasped. “Why didn’t you say something?” she asks in Hebrew.

Because that would take out half the fun!

After several intermediary calls attempting to divine each other’s email addresses, I called back probably about a fourth time – except someone answered the phone who wasn’t Devora. And she spoke English!

“You do?” I asked, a little too incredulously, trying to hide my disappointment.

Yet, even more devastating than the deadly Hebrew-English switch, I had just started in with, “This is Deborah” – and yet she knew exactly who I was! The whole kibbutz is talking about me! I imagine I’m the incompetent-yet-well-meaning American who has no clue what she’s getting herself into… all of which is true, of course…

I can teach things too, I try to justify to myself – like English! The girl-who-wasn’t-Devora didn’t know how to say “expiration date.” Well, I thought as she repeated it slowly after me, it’s not like a financial transaction is going to solve Global Peoplehood fair and square (Tourist versus Authentic Kibbutznik?) But maybe it’s a start?

Secretly I want to call Devora back at odd hours, just to chit-chat. Alas, moving on…

What Ayelet does:

Well, not much. Plan-making isn’t her forte. Plan-breaking probably is. But I try to forget that.

I had the thought, after the fact, of what Ayelet would think, when she’s a little older, of my conversations with Devora if she could hear them played back (as long as I couldn’t, because that would be terribly embarrassing). Will she be an American who is inordinately proud of her mother and how she’s able to get by in the tongue of our people? Or will she be proficient enough in Hebrew, perhaps even herself a savvy Israeli (?) who would probably not even let it get to the end of the recording before exclaiming, “Nu, ima, really??”