On Friday, Julia and I went to the Bezalel Art School craft fair that is held weekly on King George Street. We stepped into the outdoor space, immediately overwhelmed by the various art offered by the different stands. Artists were selling their crafts, which ranged from scarves and pillows to ceramics, photographs, and jewelry. We stopped at a ceramics stand, to admire, and eventually purchase, the beautiful mugs, bowls, and mezuzahs. The artist was a very nice woman who was fairly fluent in English, and we talked about her work and her studio. In the meantime, an older, rather large, American woman came to look at the work as well. She began picking up one of the small plates and Julia, not realizing that the woman was there, and thinking that the wind was blowing over one of the lighter pieces, grabbed for the plate. The woman dropped the plate, which immediately split in half. There was a silent split second of shock, after which the woman began yelling at Julia and insulting her. Julia apologized profusely, both to the artist and the woman. The artist tried to calm the woman down, explaining that ceramic breaks easily (and that she, in fact, had broken something just that morning), and that it wasn’t worth getting upset about. The woman continued to yell, however, ignoring the artist’s pleas for her to keep her voice down. She stormed off, and the three of us stood for a moment, recuperating. As we began to feel better, and Julia and I continued to peruse the pieces, the woman came back, from a different direction, looked at the stand, and huffed, “I don’t even feel like I can look at these, in case some idiot decides to knock them out of my hand.” The artist, this time, got angry at the woman and told her that her behavior was inappropriate. The woman left, and we, again, took a minute to resettle.
We then had a short discussion about the woman’s attitude. The artist asked us how long we had been in Jerusalem, and when we answered a month and a half, she answered, “Oh, so you’re familiar with this type of aggressivity.” We answered that we had never experienced anything quite so extreme, and she replied, “Yes, well, I find that Americans living here, who have made Aliyah, are the worse. They’re a little crazy, you know?” We talked a bit about why that might be, after which Julia and I bought a few mugs and bowls and left. We were left to ponder our encounter with the American Jerusalemite, and the woman’s opinion that the Americans who move here tend to have the worst attitudes. Perhaps, as wonderful as many aspects of this country are, one must indeed be a little crazy to choose to move here, given the tensions and politics. Or perhaps Americans living here, in order to deal with the sabra, tough on the outside, attitude of Israelis, overcompensate by trying to be even more aggressive and loud than native Jerusalemites. I’m sure that this woman was particularly bad, but the artist did imply that this kind of encounter is not uncommon. Why are these Americans so angry?
-Carole