Double Life

By Daniela Fubini*

My theory is simple: Israel is a drug. Once you start taking it, your judgment over reality and manners is twisted forever. When moving to Israel, it’s best to embrace this new status soon, and the new life will become a chain of pleasant surprises, with some puzzling moments easily past with a shrug and a “lo nora” (it doesn’t matter).

People like me, the Olim Chadashim or new immigrants, have layers of stories, languages, lives lived on various shores of Oceans or of the Mediterranean sea. When we settle in Israel, some of us become over-critical and poisonous; others embrace a brand new “Zen” take on life and traffic jams. I most often belong to this second type, and when I slip into the annoying first type I am grateful to the ones who make me notice, so I can instantly re-focus and get back to the bright side of life. Life as an Israeli.

People like me, have made a choice: here and not there. Israel, and not elsewhere. It seems obvious, and almost all the time is it: except when we are at war, like now. Now it’s the time of the social networks fury, when most of us live a double life: working during the day, writing and posting at night. It is exhausting, but we all do it, in all the available languages. If we could win a war based on the amount of energy we put into responding to infuriating, anti-Semitic or idiotic posts, we would never need an army on the ground again.

And so it goes, the People of the Book have become the People of the Post. I am proudly one of the many new Israelis living the double life, in the hope that our own experience translates well in the short Tweets of superficial Facebook lines. And if Israel is a drug, I am happy to be one of the many dealers. At your service.

*Daniela Fubini lives and writes in Tel Aviv, where she arrived in 2008 from Turin via New York. Follow her on Twitter, @d_fubini