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Sunday, June 24, 2007

Habibi, Gimme a Filet O’Baseball!

It’s here.  American baseball is here.  They’re calling it “Opening Day” just like in the States, but the games are set to take place this evening.  I guess Jewish Standard Time is like gravity.

The Modi’in Miracle versus the Petah Tikva Pioneers.  The Bet Shemesh Blue Sox versus the Ra’anana Express.  The Netanya Tigers versus the Tel Aviv Lightning.  How many of the players are actually Jewish or even Israeli, I’m not sure.  We may have to continue to scratch our heads when we try to come up with that list of the Great Jews in Sports, arriving inevitably at Sandy Koufax, who hasn’t played since 1966.  But, no matter; Israel has real baseball now. 

Well, almost. 

There will only be seven innings, instead of the good ol’ nine.  I don’t know if the reduction is a concession to the national lack of patience--what I call the “nu?” factor--or an attempt to get Sabras slowly used to the wholesome but foreign American sport.  A tie score at the bottom of the seventh will result in a home run derby to break the tie.  And all of those expatriate National League fans will have to adjust to the fact that the IBL will be using designated hitters, just like in the American League.  You see, the paradigm of a true Jew is an ex-Brooklyn Dodger fan, and what self-respecting Brooklyn Dodger fan would root for an American League team, when the closest local team is the New York Yankees?  But that’s just galuti; Israel is all about subverting Diaspora Jewish paradigms.  Hence, the acceptance of American League rules.  Hello, I’m making a joke…

A quick perusal of articles and opinion pieces related to the advent of baseball here revealed a certain discomfort that American immigrants to Israel feel with the return of this phenomenon to their lives.  Writing in the Jerusalem Post (6/14/07), Brian Freeman stated, “I did not make aliyah to promote American culture in Israel or to live in an American ghetto, but to become part of the Israeli landscape. In the ensuing decades living here I have found new interests, including in other sports, that connect me to this place, such as rooting for our national soccer team, cheering on Maccabi Tel Aviv in the European basketball championships or in general backing one of “our guys” as he/she performs on the world stage. Baseball is no longer on the list.”

What is ironic about Brian’s internal conflict is that Israel has, in so many ways, openly embraced American culture, like so many other countries in the world.  American culture is like a juggernaut that consumes everything in its path.  There is not a proper city in the world that does not boast the entire continuum of American output, from low- to haute-couture.  McDonald’s restaurants dot the Earth’s landscape from Jacksonville to Jedda; even the most top-tier Al-Qaeda operative has probably eaten a Big Mac.  Movies.  Swing, jazz, rock ‘n’ roll--these call out from every radio on the planet.  Books, trends, everything.  There is nowhere to run. 

If you think that Israel has not already co-opted American culture, you should know that the Israeli Mickey D’s offers “McShwarma”.  Check out this ad, which is a couple of years old already:

As an American immigrant, I watch with fascination how different people react to things American.  Most seem to harbor a love-hate relationship with it, disparaging it and holding it at bay, while buying it wholesale.  I’ll never forget my year as a student abroad at Hebrew University, when I came to this country assuming everyone on my program and in Israel would embrace each other as long lost brethren, the exiled remnants of Israel.  Boy, was I mistaken.  My Canadian counterparts feverishly sewed small Canadian flags on their backpacks so that nobody would mistake them for Americans.  The Jews from Europe and from Latin America seemed to detest Americans, even Jewish Americans, viewing them as spoiled, presumptuous and superficial colonialists, as if we were an army of swashbuckling Stuckey’s Pecan Log Rolls.  There was even a non-Jewish German student who had the hubris to sling insults at my national origin.  Everything bothered him from our superficiality and politeness to the fact that we seem to like ketchup on everything.  At a certain point, I pointed out that, as much ketchup as we might eat, we never systematically murdered 10 million people in the span of a few short years.  He shut up.

I have to admit that I watch with a certain twisted glee when I see the familiar icons of my native country roll out to the farthest reaches of the planet, because I know that most of the world takes itself way too seriously, and if there is anything Americans are good at, it’s having fun.  Here in Israel you can get a kosher Happy Meal, or a KFC bucket with a hekhsher, and although I am a religious Jew with the same ideals as my co-religionists, I know the value of downtime as a recharge, and much of this world does not. 

You know how the saying goes: when a Jew moves to Texas, he becomes more Texan than the Texans.  Actually, that is not a saying; I just made that up.  But there is a similar saying.  A lot of Jews, American ones included, who move to Israel--a very idealistic act--feel obligated to be very rigid in their idealism.  They want to shed all of their particularisms in order to become the “typical Israeli”.  They don’t want any foreign influences polluting the perfect laboratory conditions of the Israeli Experiment.  What they may not realize is that this country has been, from its inception, an amalgam of many cultures; even the revered Modern Hebrew language may only be a Jewish version of Esperanto, a Semitic veneer with a deep structure that is essentially Indo-European--utilized as a unifying force to enable the vast diversity of peoples here to communicate. 

Guess what? That’s what American culture is. 

So kick back and enjoy the Cracker Jack and hot dogs tonight, dude.  It’s all over.  Draining swamps is, like, soo 1885. 

PLAY BALL!