It’s not easy, being Green. (And Clean)

As the title suggests, our struggle to live a vaguely responsible existence in this one-horse town (Karmiel) continues.  It seems the entire nation is united in it’s fight against environmentalism and social responsibility. Refuse a plastic bag at the makolet, for one carton of milk on the grounds of “caring for the environment”, and the shop assisstant just looks confused. 

And it seems other olim are no better.  I recently posted a question on a yahoo site especially for olim in Karmiel, asking if anyone could help us source good quality organic (or at least locally produced) fruit and vegetables, and would anyone be interested if I organised deliveries?  I did get a few interested people, which was encouraging. I also got a response from a ridiculous american BT (Bal Teshuvrah, aka Nuevo Religious Person) telling me that there is nothing wrong with the fruit and veg in Eretz Yisroel, that my primary concern should be terumah and maaser, that I should “take a moment and let the kedusha of the land fill me and I will feel the presence of HaKadosh Baruch Hu all around me”.  He even questioned my motives for making aliyah!! Can you imagine? Would he have had the balls to ask anyone else that??  (“And, same question to number 3 please, the Non-Jewish Russian Immigrant in the too-tight Jeans”).

Good grief.  On further research, I was unsurprised to find out that this chap was not just  BT, but what I term a Triple FM (Frum For Five Minutes).  This type are usually the most ridiculously over-zealous to the point where they turn judaism into a huge turn-off for everyone else around them.   Anyway I have since responded to him explaining that environmentalism and social responsibility are mentioned in the torah and are JUST as important as the halachic requirements of terumah and maaseh, and that God didn’t need to bother going into the details because it’s all, quite frankly, blindingly obvious.  I also made it clear that had I wanted a halachic opinion, I would have asked my highly educated and respected brother or 1st cousin for one. 

Haven’t heard from him since.  Can’t say I’m bothered.

In other news, I have finally that decided that being post-partum is enough of an excuse to hire a cleaner.  She turned up 45 minutes late on Thursday morning (allbeit, not her fault, as the agency chap drove her into town) bearing the look of someone you don’t argue with, and a set of very yellow teeth.  I clocked her as about my age. Her name was Amneh.  I showed her what needed doing, pointed her in the direction of the cleaning products, and herded the kids into the garden.  (By the way, have never understood the yellow teeth thing.  I mean I know healthcare is very expensive in Israel, and possibly more so, relatively, for Arabs, but surely just brushing would be enough to prevent that level of damage??)

After a little while, she makes an inquiry about my mop. 

“Where is the sponga?” she asks. 

“I don’t do sponga” I told her.  “This is what we use”, and I pointed out the merits of costco’s best squeezy mophead. 

“No, but I cant clean properly with this – this – thing” she said, holding it up like a dishrag.

“But it’s good” I demonstrated, “see, you don’t have to bend down to squeeze it out”.

“I can’t use this” she insists.  “Get me a proper sponga stick and cloth for next week.”

“Look lady (ok i didnt say that but you get the gist), I don’t have a sponga, so just try using this and see how you go.”

Half an hour later, she’s back down complaining that the thing had broken (to be fair, it had) and then complains to my vegetable delivery man (and and anyone else who would listen) about the rubbishness of my lovely mophead!  By this time I had given up and gone knocking on my neighbours door asking to borrow his sponga equipment.  I then watched him try to contain his laughter as my new arab cleaning lady slagged off my mop AGAIN.  I must say both he and the vegetable man were very good, patiently explaining to her that people outside of Israel do things differently, and she should probably try to respect our ways.  Brilliant.

Half an hour later, she’s complaining about my cleaning products.

“What is this?” she asks, holding up my ecovert cream cleanser at arms length.  “Where is the bleach?”

“I don’t do bleach.” I tell her.  “It’s bad for the environment, and for you.  Here we use prodcuts without nasty chemicals, unless we are cleaning something the equivalent to toxic waste”  (Which there actually was in this house when I first got ‘ere, but she doesnt need to know that).

She gives me a strange look, sort of like I might be the crazy one, and gets back to her cleaning.

Half an hour later, she’s just finishing off the floors with ecovert all-purpose cleanser and almost ready to go, when she decides to have one more shot.

“Have you heard of AJAX?  It’s very good on floors.” she ventures. 

I decided I had better just explain my stance on these things, get it over with.  If you have ever tried explaining environmental issues to an Israeli with a Live-For-The-Moment-and-Tomorow-will-take-care-of-itself attitude, then try getting through to an arab.

“Israel is a very small country.” I told her.  “We need to take care of it.  That means not polluting it with nasty chemicals.”

By this point, she is looking at me like I have 3 heads, so I gave up.

Anyway, in her 3 hours here she managed to tell me that my house was dirty and smelly (the former is the reason I hired her and the latter is not my fault as there seems to be a general issue with drains in Karmiel), that my mop is a disaster and that she was up mending the fire after she had her baby.  She did, however, momentarily stop being judgemental when she figured out I had only been in the country for 5 minutes, and come home to a pile of boxes after giving birth.  But only long enough to ask me why on earth I would move here. 

Had no idea how to explain that one to her.

(Bear in mind, these exchanges were all in both of our secondary languages, so that probably made the whole thing even more comic.)

Can you imagine a cleaner in England telling their employer that their house was dirty and smelly? Or even whinging about their cleaning products???

Anyway, is she coming back next week?

‘Course she is.