Life in the Dira

Many people have asked me to write about life in the dira, as well as life in Israel in general. Personally, I think those people are - pardon my French - insane. I mean, you want to know about Israeli life, fine, I can understand that. But dira life?! Are you sure you want to know what it's like?! Do you have ANY IDEA what you're getting into? I'll give you a little hint: have you ever seen what the average teenager's room looks like? Good. Now multiply that by seven, twelve, maybe even twenty. Do you see what kind of mess we're dealing with?

But what can I do? I'm a mere journalist, whose job it is to keep the public informed. If the public wants to know, then I have to write whatever will satisfy the public's curiosity. I can, however, leave out some of the gorier details (such as what we do with the dead bodies of any Arabs caught breaking into and stealing from the dira). So here goes:

I live on the second floor of a three-floor dira on Rechov Adani in the heart of Yerushalayim. At least I think that's where I live - it's hard to tell since the roads (and especially the alleys) are so poorly marked, and all the buildings look alike. My policy is quite simple: if I walk into the building, and I get run over by seven little kids chasing a cat, then I've most probably entered the wrong dira. Personally, I don't have the slightest clue how the mailman can figure out which address is which, yet the pile of bills in front of our door keeps getting bigger, so he must be managing somehow (I suspect perhaps black magic is involved). To me, it's a jungle of stone look-alikes.

Which, by the way, brings up an interesting point: just about everything in this country is made of stone. And I mean everything: the walls, the floors, the ceilings, the sidewalks, a good deal of the food supply, etc. I guess I should be thankful the Gemaras are not made of stone, or I would no doubt sustain a massive hernia. (Insert corny comment about Artscroll's "The Stone Edition" of Tanach here.)

Anyway, my dira is located a short distance away from Meah She'arim, so shopping is quite plentiful - provided that you can find what you’re looking for. I base this statement on my trip there last week for the sound journalistic purpose of purchasing an alarm clock, which I figured would be useful for waking me up in the morning for at least four consecutive seconds until I ram the "snooze" button with a hammer (sold separately). I went through Meah She'arim, trying to determine which kind of store might sell alarm clocks. This can be quite tricky in Israel, since some vendors seem to have their priorities messed up. I mean, I saw a shoe stores selling tzitzis, and a barber shop selling (why not?) umbrellas. So I kept my eyes peeled, and with Hashem's help, soon found an electronics store.

Well, not really. The store I found actually sold soda, cartons of cigarettes, various knickknacks, and also some electronics and appliances - a rather eclectic mix. I ended up buying an alarm clock, a multi-outlet adapter, and two little power-plug-adapters for 80 sheks (20 bucks).

But getting back to my dira, it's actually a pretty decent place. My roommates so far consist of a human named Avrumy, and a turtle who we haven't named yet. We're also supposed to get a bird as soon as we find a pet store somewhere.

Either way, it's definitely a lot better than I expected. On the plus side, we have a standard Israeli dual-flush toilet. This means that the toilet has two flush handles, a big one and a small one. Being a rather tasteful individual, I will not explicitly describe the circumstances under which each handle is to be used, except to use the following high-class, tasteful euphemisms: the small handle is for "drive-thru", whereas the large one is for "full service". (For a real "act of Knesset" you can try both handles simultaneously, but I don't think it makes much of a difference.)

On the down side, we have no phone (not even a local Israeli line). Apparently, the previous occupants ran up a phone bill roughly equivalent to the US federal budget deficit. When they did not pay the bill, Bezek graciously cut the phone lines (presumably using a blowtorch), until such time as some selfless hero (hint: NOT me) will step forward and offer to pay the outstanding bill.

Another problem is that we do not have a kitchen - our kitchen has been converted into a bedroom (I suspect that one guy sleeps in each sink, and one more in the oven). Also, our refrigerator is broken. Someone is supposed to come fix it, but I don't think that's a good idea: since the fridge died, the interior has developed a very sophisticated (meaning "smelly") colony of mold that has already succeeded in capturing and eating the last so-called repairman. Personally, I think the best solution would be to tackle the fridge with a flamethrower, but the compressor might not like that.

My yeshiva is about a five to ten minute walk away from the dira. That's the easy part: the hard part is once you get there, you have to climb several flights of cement stairs that were clearly designed by some crack squad of pro-women-and-minority-groups masonry "designers": no two steps are the same shape and size. Some are tall, some are short; some are straight, some are crooked, etc.

Once you do reach the top, there is a large, open space divided into a beis medrash and dining room (using bookshelves and banks of lockers as partition walls), a tiny kitchen (probably the one they stole from my dira), some bathrooms, and an office. It's a relatively simple setup, but it seems to work.

Meals are served in the yeshiva, and they're usually edible, provided you like to eat chicken in all of its various possible incarnations pretty much every night of the week. And if you don't like what's being served, you can always go to one of the local establishments where you can get some decent American-style food for the low, rock bottom price of just an arm and a leg.

Okay, I believe I wrote enough for now. If you'd like any more information on anything else in my Israeli life, leave a comment in the comments section below. Or you can mail me your questions. And if you do, please tell the mailman to show me how he finds my dira, once and for all.