Death and Taxes
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I remember when I said goodbye to all my Israeli friends back in Boston.
We were having a barbecue about a week before I made aliyah and they were arguing with each other about what was the worst part of living in Eretz Yisrael and would drive me the craziest.
“Israelis! No doubt it’s the Israelis” said my dear friend Lior.
“Israelis can be tough” affirmed Uri “but you know something Yaakov it’ll be the post office that kills you.”
I thanked them for their sage advice and asked them if there was anything I should be excited about.
Ami — always positive — told me that I could visit his family in Netivot and go to see the kever of the Baba Sali. “That’ll make it all worthwhile Yaakov.”
Six months later and they were right. I had survived the culture shock for the most part but was pretty much broken down after a morning at the post office. As surreal as it sounds they were right in that the experience could have killed me.
The sign on the door says that the post office opens at 8 a.m. so that’s when I arrived. At 8:15 a.m. the guy smoking a cigarette next to me flicked it in my direction and then took out his keys to open the doors. When I tried to follow him in he asked me in Hebrew “Where do you think you’re going?”
“To the post office ” I responded naively.
“No you aren’t it’s not open yet. Do you think you work here or something?”
I shook my head.
“Then you can come in after it opens at 8 a.m. ” he told me and promptly shut the door and locked it.
I figured I’d go grab a coffee and try to relax a bit. By the time I came back at 8:30 a.m. there were already 20 people waiting in line ahead of me. At 9 a.m. when my number was finally called the same gentleman who’d flicked a cigarette at me less than an hour ago refused to speak Hebrew this time. He explained that he wanted to practice his English. Little did he know that his English was infinitely worse than my Hebrew and it took a solid eight minutes before he was able to explain that my package was located in the other post office across town.
I tried to hold on to my sanity and almost succeeded — until I realized that I was now late for my patients at the psychiatric clinic and would have to run the next mile and a half.
Luckily my first appointment was also late that morning. While I waited I talked with the secretary about my crummy experience at the post office. She told me to toughen up and in walked my appointment: a young man in his early 20s a giant of a human being — at least six-foot-six and with a huge bushy beard. The secretary pointed him in my direction and I offered to grab him a cup of coffee before we sat down in my office.
In Hebrew I asked him what had brought him into our clinic.
“Do you speak Yiddish?” he asked in return.
“No ” I said. Then with a smile I told him that perhaps we could speak English together.
“No ” he said. Then he asked me if I spoke Portuguese and told me he was from Brazil.
I responded in Hebrew “I don’t speak any Portuguese either so sorry.” But I was even sorrier when this giant of a man started crying hysterically in front of me. I handed him some tissues and sat quietly wondering if there was anything I could do for him today besides smile and daven for him.
And then I remembered from my time traveling around South America a few decades ago that sometimes folks from Brazil will begrudgingly speak Spanish.
“Podemos hablar en Español?” I asked him. Can we speak in Spanish?
He smiled and nodded. We had finally found a way to communicate.
He began to talk about his situation and it certainly rang a bell. After a few minutes it was clear. He didn’t have mental illness or any psychiatric condition; rather it was that he had recently made aliyah and missed his family back in Brazil. Sometimes it got overwhelming for him especially since he didn’t speak the language and oftentimes he would find himself crying at night. His wife was concerned and wanted him to see a psychiatrist because he was normally a strong and manly man. She had finally told him “How could such a giant with such a majestic beard cry? You must need a doctor or medications or something!”
He started laughing and told me “I’m not crazy you know. I still love life it’s just hard here and I don’t have any of my family to support me — except my wife whom I love dearly.” I nodded and encouraged him to continue. “Of course I’m glad that I came because it’s amazing to live here but it’s just that I’m sad sometimes and miss my family. Sometimes I want someone to talk to just to talk about how it’s hard sometimes. I know it’s stupid but people back home just don’t know how crazy it can be here even to do simple stuff like going to the post office to pick up a package.”
I jumped out of my chair and gave him a hug. “Habibi ” I told him “You can come here to talk to me any day about how crazy this country is especially the post office.”
So we schmoozed for half an hour and felt better together. And at the end of our session we walked out together smiling.
The secretary looked at me and laughed. When I asked her what was so funny she told me in Hebrew “New olim are so funny they think that just because they’ve survived the post office they can call themselves sabras. Just wait until you have to file your taxes here Dr. Freedman.”
My patient asked me to translate for him so I told him “She says we’re going to be just fine and that we’re already basically sabras.”
Then I made sure to book him a follow-up appointment in March right when tax season would hit.
Jacob L. Freedman is a psychiatrist and business consultant based in Jerusalem. He serves as the medical director of services for English-speakers at Bayit Cham a national leader providing mental health treatment and outreach within the religious community.
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