Earlier this morning we were waiting at the Strassebahn station with another dozen passengers. When it arrived a young guy with headphones plugged into his years–he couldn’t have been more than 18–entered first, made two steps and just stood there, blocking the enterance and not letting anyone else get in. Which was weird: he had like five meters to step in, but he couldn’t care less and just stood there.

When we arrived at the station we were supposed to get off, I started to pull the Kinder Wagon toward the exit door, but there were at least six people who stood outside and very close to the door, eager to get in. I had to tell them in broken German that maybe they want to try the breakthrough concept of letting people out before the get in, and that the Bahn isn’t going to run off, and only then they parted a way for me to step out.

In general I would like to send all the residents of Berlin to New York for one week of studying the etiquette of riding the public transportation, the whole thing: how to treat oldies and pregnant women, how to behave so everyone would be comfortable, how to maximize the space to fulfill the part of “public” in the ride, how to be considerate toward the other.

But what I want to touch here and what I really don’t understand is why people in Germany are standing on passageways. I don’t just talk about the Strassebahn, it is narrow anyway, but about everywhere. When I walk to the Kita in the morning there are always three parents having a conversation and they will always stand in a circle at the gate, or on the U-Bahn platform where a group will always stand spreaded, blocking your way , and mainly when I go out. There are always people having conversation at the exit, between the rooms and mainly on the way to the toilets.

Can anyone explain this behavior to me?

It is time to say the obvious: After ten years we can come to the conclusion that these two kids, Israel and Palestine, can’t solve their problems on their own. They have been in this sandbox for too long and they have been hitting each other too hard that by now both are almost bleeding to death. It is time for the referee to step in and tell the sides: you must stop. Your bloodshed is staining the entire universe. Maybe you want to consider Chess instead of boxing?

But who can become this referee? I am counting out France and Italy. I mean, look who these people voted to lead their respective countries. I can’t trust them. England? Didn’t they make the mess to begin with? Besides, sometimes I read and see England’s and Spain’s action toward Israel and I think to myself: If Goebbels was around he would probably telegram them to cool off. So, in my opinion, we are left with Germany. I think its schizophrenic case is a perfect balance: its guilt will write off its tendency to support the underdog.

But what should Germany do? If I have learned something about German people it is that they are very calculated with their money. they earn x amount of money and they know exactly how much they will spend on bills, rent, food and vacations. Maybe a few can allow themselves to live above their means, but in general It is a very responsible system, no credit cards to run your dreams on.

So how come Germany (and the EU and Japan) is not accounted for the money it pours into the Palestinian hands? for two decades now the world had invested billions in Palestine, and it seems like nobody seems to care where are this billions are going. It is obvious that Israel carry some of the blame with its restrictions, control of the borders and its horrible bombing of Palestine, but Israel should also be the example. It was built by people who held a rifle in one hand and worked the fields with the other. There are many negative things to say about  Israel but no one can take away the miracle of how it built itself, and how it functions as a normal democracy with all the infrastructure in place.

I expect Germany to say: look, we gave you all this money, but we can’t see any infrastructure here, we can’t see any seeding for the roots of building your own country. No welfare system, no education, no functioning healthcare system, no civil servants to serve the people.  And then I expect Germany to reach the most humanist conclusion and freeze most of the money it gives to Palestine and invest it in German companies.

It should give these companies huge tax breaks and other encouragements and ask them to open new factories in Palestine. The Palestinians will have work places, the companies will have cheap labor force. I understand that this is not so easy, that, just like in Africa, this idea can run and killed by the local bureaucracies, but isn’t worth a try? didn’t we exhausted all the other great ideas of “let’s sit down and talk” and giving unfulfilled ultimatums?

But why do I call it humanist solution if this is pure economic? because I believe that the people who live in Gaza or Nablus are not different from me or the average citizen in the West. That all they want to have is a decent job, with a decent salary. That just like me they just want to go to work, come  back for dinner with the family, sit down on the balcony or with friends in a cafe, have two vacations a year, secure the future of their kids. In my mind, anyone who have job and normal life will tell the extremists: “I pass on heaven and the 70 virgins, you can go to hell”.

I think that last night’s game between Germany and Argentine should leave many Germans worried. Not only their team played an awful game and their goalkeeper made an idiotic mistake, but their best striker is black!! What would happen in the NPD nation (mean the supporter of this party, not all of Germany) if this striker will score the winning goal in South Afrika? how are they supposed to celebrate? didn’t they have enough of Klose?

The game reminded me of the World Cup four years ago, when the Germans really made an effort and pretend to be nice to foreigners. What a wonderful month and concept that was. I remember that midway through the Welt Meister I completely was rooting for the German national team and even wrote about it for a local newspaper. It was the new Germany, Klinsman Germany, Berlin Germany of opneness and multi cultures as opposed to the previous, depressing and industrialized German national teams of the past, the Bavarian Germany.

There were two things that happened in the quarterfinal game against Argentine in Berlin in 2006 that I remember very well. At half time I went to buy beer for me and three more friends that were sitting in the stadium. I waited on a long line and after 10 minutes it was my turn. I asked for four beers, but the lady behind the counter answered that they can sell only three at a time. I didn’t understand the rule but there was no time to argue as the second half was about to start. I asked for three beers, paid, kneeled below the counter, got up and asked for one more beer. The woman gave me the puzzled look of  “I know him from somewhere”, and made the sale.

The second and more resounding memory happened after Klose made the equalizer and tens of thosands of people stood and shouted in unisom: “Sieg, Sieg, Sieg”. I was staring at the empty section in the Olympic stadium and I can’t even start to describe how terrified I felt. I promised to root for any other team, even the Italians, just so I wouldn’t have to witness this again.

Anyway, after yesterday’s game I think  that the German fans should really be worried. In this shape I can’t see Germany getting over the semi-finals.

One of Maya’s favorite things to do–that is other than insisting on walking when we exit Kita (therefore making our trip back home ten times longer then it supposed to be) and insisting that I will carry her on my hands three flights of stairs when we finally reach our flat-is reading. She reads everything, reading makes her very calm, and, I must admit, reading babies are great gifts for their parents. As a young parent you learn how to evaluate buying things for your babies by how much time it gives you piece of mind. Books get top rating in that category.

One of Maya’s favorite books is one she got from my family in Israel. It tells the story of a young elephant who is depressed over the fact that he is grey, boring grey. A little bird watches the little elephant, ask him why he is so sad and even though the bird finds the elephant to be beautiful, she decides to help him. She flies around, borrowing some colors from flowers, put them in different buckets and paint the young elephant.

The Elephant now is very happy, proudly he walks back to the rest of the elephants to show them how colorful he is. They see him and all they can do is laugh about him. The young elephant is very confused and he asks the rest of the elephants to spray him with water so he will be grey again.

I am sure that there some morals to this story. Live in piece with who you are or something like that. Or that elephants are not very open to gays.

Anyway, today I walked with Maya to the Turkish store to buy some vegetables. We walked with her new sled tied to her McClaren stroller, we were dressed in our cool Prenzlaurberg clothes, I was wearing my earring, and we talked a mix of English-Hebrew-German. Though we were as dark as the people who were running the store and the customers in it, we stood very much in contrast to them. I could see them staring at us.

Later, we went home, and Maya was asking me to read for her the elephant book. I did, and all of a sudden I felt that I am also telling her a story about myself.

It’s been almost four months now that my mother, as well as a few ex-girlfriends, started bugging me. For years, they suffered silently my twin passions, journalism and sports. For years, they had to read all about match-up zones, safety blitzes, strikeouts. About how football is being played 90 minutes and at the end the Germans always win. They knew nothing about any of these things. But Omri? Omri they know. So they leave messages on my machine, or send me emails and text messages, all with one simple request: write something about Omri.

Omri, of course, is Omri Caspi, the Sacramento Kings rookie and the first Israeli ever to make it to the NBA. The media in Israel cover the world’s best basketball league, of course, but for most journalists back home, Omri is his own beat. Every one of his shots is covered. Every penalty discussed. Every squabble with his coach dissected. Israeli journalists, apparently, are not alone. Recently, Sports Illustrated ran an admiring three-page article about Caspi; when it was posted on the magazine’s website, readers posted elated comments. His game, said one, mirrors Israel’s human face. Each of his points, said another, brings honor to the Jews. A third claimed that he checked Caspi’s stats every morning before praying.

What, then, is wrong with me? Why can’t I bring myself to say anything nice about Caspi? He is, to be sure, an excellent player, with an average of 12.2 points and five rebounds per game. So why is it that every time I write about him, I feel obligated to remind my readers that Caspi’s in the NBA in spite of Israel’s corrupt sports culture and not because of it, or that his percentages from the foul line are abysmal? What the hell is my problem?

I’ve been thinking about this question a lot lately, and I’m convinced my issues have less to do with basketball and more to do with identity. As an Israeli-born Jew who had left Israel two decades ago and now lives in Berlin, I spend a lot of my time thinking about just what it means to be Jewish. A while back, the question came into sharp relief: I landed in Israel for a brief visit, and as I was clearing customs I ran into a group of students who had just returned from a visit to Auschwitz. Listening to them speak, I could tell exactly what lesson they had learned from witnessing the death camp’s horrors—almost all of them spoke of the importance of being a soldier and said they hoped to join the Israel Defense Forces’ most elite combat units.

Listening to them talk, I thought about my own visit to Auschwitz, many years ago. A snow storm hit town, and I was forced to spend three days in that sickening place. As soon as I landed in Israel, I didn’t even bother going home. I took a cab to my military unit’s headquarters, and told the officer in charge that I refuse to put on a uniform ever again. To me, the lesson of Auschwitz was simple. It was a message of humanism and of non-violence. Too often, when I read the Israeli papers, I can’t help but think that this perspective has all but disappeared from Israeli culture.

This week, I had a chance to read the greatest fantasist in Zionism’s history. Theodor Herzl imagined a socially progressive nation at peace with its Arab neighbors. But nobody in Israel reads Herzl anymore. For most Israelis, Herzl is a weakling, a Diaspora Jew, sick and a Socialist. We, on the other hand, are the New Jews, muscular and superior and unbound. We’re all Ehud Baraks. We export weapons and make fortunes. We’re ready to die in battle, but not to negotiate with our neighbors. The bravest of these New Jews, the ones willing to sacrifice themselves for their country, are buried—irony of ironies—on Mount Herzl.

I can’t subscribe to this reverence of might. Which is why I can’t bring myself to care about Omri Caspi. I don’t want my children to watch with awe as another muscular Jew elbows his way to power and glory. Instead, I’d much rather they spend their days reading about all those Jews who perished in Auschwitz. And when I wake up and check out some sports statistics before the morning prayer, I read about another Israeli athlete, Boris Abramovich Gelfand, winner of the 2009 World Cup in chess.

On Sunday, in one of these days that the weather in Berlin, just like a girl before an important date, didn’t decide what it wants to look like. I was alone and went out to our balcony on the fourth floor, overlooking the flatness of Mitte. My neighbor was out smoking a cigarette. I apologized for any noises that our baby Maya was making in weird hours. He told me not to worry about it. I told him where I come from and so did he. I told him that my wife is German and works as a journalist. He told me that his wife is also a journalist working in PR. I swollowed my saliva. As a journalist, lately, we have to carry a lot of insults.

He told me that they read two newspapers every day, and about his brother who went to visit Israel only to meet people with the same family name as theirs.

He asked how I like the apartment, and I answered that we really like the two balconies, and it is not as noisy as our old apartment and that we were looking for a bigger place, but we found this place OK. He asked and I answered that we didn’t have enough money to afford bigger flats that we saw.

“But you Jews always have a lot of money”, he said.

The few rays of sun were completely completely defeated by the moving clouds now. I looked down and told myself to shut up, to let it go, to take a big breath.

“And you know we are hiding it in our noses”, I said.

Just came back from  a visit in Israel (it was February, 31 degrees and everyone was at the beach—no wonder all three religions are willing to kill to have this place), where I had an extended conversations with my niece—she is 14 going on 20- about her life, growing up, Facebook, and how does she sees the situation. 

She told me two stunning things. The first was about her trip to Barcelona and how she felt so unsecured that she forced herself to wear a coat over her t-shirt that was emblazoned with some Hebrew words. “It’s weird to know that everyone hates you”, she told me. I tried to comfort her by telling her that when I was 14 I also thought that the entire world hates me, but I knew it wasn’t the same.

 The second thing she told me shocked me even more. She was telling me that her real fear is not the Iranian bomb, the missile from Lebanon or suicide bombers from the West Bank, not even the pimples that started to build a settlement around her cheeks. “The violence in the streets, in our school, the violence every where. That’s what really scares me”.

 I looked at the police reports and statistics from the past five years, and by sheer numbers one can’t really trace the increasing violence in Israel. But it is not in the numbers, but rather in the cruelty of the acts and by how cheap life became in Israel that you could feel the unease walking the street, driving the car, waiting in line.

 A sample from just the last couple of months: one man murdered three generation of one family and set their house on fire after he was fired by the father from his workplace; a 12-year-old stabbed his 10-year-old sister after she insisted on turning on the fan in their room; a young mother was murdered on the beach near Tel Aviv after two groups were shooting at each other; a family man was beaten to death for no reason by some young people while walking on the Tel Aviv boardwalk; a teenager was murdered over an argument over a cigarette, another one over an argument over a parking space.

 Every time I went out this past vacation my mother reminded to not argue over anything. One guy skipped the line in the bank and my friend forbade me from lecturing him. People are losing their nerves over anything. At some point I started to think where all of this is coming from.

 I will start by saying that, given the fact that so many Israelis are carrying weapons legally, Israel haven’t reached an American level of violence, but as I have already written it is not in the numbers, but in the atmosphere. I think that partially it has to do with Israel maturing into itself (crime, unfortunately is one aspect of a maturing community), part of it is the screaming headlines in the newspaper, a major impact is the increased alcohol consumption and its availability, and most certainly, the continuous tension with our neighboring countries doesn’t help relax nobody’s nerves.

 But the more I am thinking about it, I keep finding myself remembering something that happened to me exactly 20 years ago. I remember it very clearly as it happened one day after the collapse of the Berlin wall. It was a Friday and we were awarded a weekend vacation from our army service. We were young soldiers serving for a month in Nablus. It was in the height of the first Palestinian uprising, and my friend told me that I must join him for a warm meal. Since he was living nearby and the prospect of spending the few hours I got on traveling the roads to my house didn’t appeal to me, I took him for his offer.

 When we arrived, he hugged his family, we hid our rifles in his room, took a shower and sat on the table. He ordered his little sister to pick up our clothes to the laundry, to clean after us in the bath and then asked her to see what is going on with the soup. I knew him from our first day in the army and we became friend right away. He had a gentle soul and his behavior shook me with surprise. When the soup bowls came we took one sip and my friend completely lost it. He threw his bowl on the floor with anger and was screaming in the general direction of the kitchen that “if I wanted cold soup I would stay in the base”.

 One day later, as I was hitchhiking my way to my parents’ house, I was thinking about this a lot. Actually I never stopped thinking about it since. It was the first time that I personally encountered how the occupation occupied our life, our souls, our nervous system. I remember thinking about how what happen there can never be locked and stay there. That all of this telling people what to do, when to be home and when they can go out and work, the absolute power of controlling people’s life, having them answer our orders without any argument, someone must be very naïve to think that we could have leave it in the Western Bank and the Gaza strip, return to Israel, declared it on the red path of the custom, and be normal, accept a negative answer, a refusal, a contest to one’s wishes.

 There is no easy solution for this situation. It must start with the acknowledgement that the ongoing Israeli occupation is a national suicide. It should go on with leadership that can steer Israelis to a new road. Israeli leaders in recent history were too busy covering their legal problems (the spreading corruption is another tumor brought by the cancerous occupation), or patching temporary solutions to problems, finding that their blanket is always too short to cover it all. What Israel need is a leadership that can sell and promise its residents new vision and hope.

I believe that that’s what Israel miss more than anything—vision and hope. Someone’s crazy enough to think about the next step, just like Jewish leaders were crazy enough to think about Israel as the state for Jews early in the 20^th century. I can live peacefully with the notion of some Arabs who wants to throw the Israelis into the sea—at least it is a clear vision. Our window to the future is so rotten we can’t see one day ahead anymore.

 They say that hope is the last thing you lose before you die. Jews had a common hope for thousands of years: “for next year in Jerusalem”, they used to bless each other. This hope has been fulfilled—Jews can be in Jerusalem now within a day, hour, they can even live in Jerusalem. It is time for a new hope, it is time to prove that Oscar Wilde quote that “When the Gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers” is wrong. Otherwise we are just killing ourselves.

The first problem I had with eco-systems and global warming happened when I was traveling throughout the United States, in heavily democratic states. Outside the houses there were five or six garbage bins, each one for a different kind of garbage. It was a noble idea if it wasn’t for the fact that there were always five or six SUV’s parking in front of these bins. It made me feel that being “green” is just a fashion. What is the point of recycling every piece of garbage if afterward a person is climbing a car that helps pollute the air like it was a small industry?

But in Germany they take ecological matters seriously. People are telling you to shut your car off and freeze to death if you wait more than 60 seconds in your car for someone to come down, and in many regions in the East, the leading panoramic view are the white huge wind turbines. And, unless you are shopping in a Turkish supermarket, you have to pay for the bags. In our house we have huge signs in three languages explaining to me what is going where. We actually had to move three times already in order to accommodate our need to place four different garbage bins in the house.

The other day, my wife came back from work, said hello, kissed me on the cheek, asked what’s for dinner and if I remembered to buy new bulb for our garbage room. I said hello, pasta with Bolonese sauce and that I forgot but I will go down to get one. She asked that if I don’t mind she really would like me to buy energy saver bulb.

I went down and grabbed a 60W energy saver bulb, the cashier scanned it and initially I thought her barcode was broken: the bulb cost 7.89 Euros. For this price I can buy us another two bins so we can separate the broken glasses from the glass bottles and the newspapers from the magazines. I called my wife and told her that it is 7.89 Euros, but she insisted that I should buy it.

(Just a quick note: is it just me or everything that is good for us is so expensive? How many people can really afford a 7.89 bulb, and is it hard to understand someone who refuses to buy 300 grams of bio chicken breast for 7.33 Euros? I mean, you add that cost to whatever you need to cook with the chicken and what you want to eat with it, and you ending up saying: “next time I am going to McDonald’s”).

Anyway, I bought the energy saving bulb (ESB) and went back home. I took the ladder, and changed the bulb. My wife was eating pasta downstairs when I switched the Schalter to turn the bulb on. Nothing.

 ”The 8 Euros ESB doesn’t work”, I screamed”.

“Just give it a second”, she screamed back at me in this voice that she uses when she wants to point out that there are two worlds separating us by birth.

I waited a few seconds and then a light flushed our garbage room. I went back to the kitchen and came back to the room with bags of garbage to separate.

“I can’t see nothing! The eight Euros ESB is a piece of shit”, I screamed to my wife.

“This is why it is called Energy Saver Bulb”, she screamed back. “Stop being ignorant. We must contribute to the global effort. Don’t you know what is going on? Icebergs are melting!”

I hate it when she is lecturing me. It is true that I am coming from a third-world country, but she knows very well that I fell asleep 474 times trying to finish one of Al Gore’s lectures in “An Inconvenient Truth”.

“It is a great concept to save energy”, I told her, “the eight Euros ESB doesn’t provide any light. It doesn’t use any energy”.

“You can be such an idiot”, she answered with a mouth full of bio meat.

I went out to the balcony. I am really trying, my newspaper even sent me to the big conference in Copenhagen a couple of months ago, but in the last couple of months in Berlin I can’t really understand what is all the fuss about global warming.

I remember my first time shopping in a German supermarket. It was at Kaiser’s in the west part of the city, it was a Saturday afternoon and I was buying all sorts of stuff in order to cook on the weekend. Naturally, coming to Berlin after 10 years in New York, I didn’t carry cash with me, so by the time the cashier finished bar coding me I just handed to her my credit card. She looked at me strangely and said: nur EC.

As I said, it was in the west so the people behind me were really patient when I apologized and left everything on the counter to go to the ATM to get some cash. I took out 50 Euros which were enough to make the purchase and even to get 6 cents back. Then I grabbed two bags from beneath the counter and was planning to throw the groceries in when the cashier looked at me strangely and told me something in German. I was puzzled so someone behind me explained to me that in Germany bags also cost money. I was shocked: not only there was no one packing the stuff for me, but I even have to pay for the bags.

Since I didn’t have sufficient funds to buy the bags, and since the people behind were getting really irritated (west west, but I was eating into their weekend time), I just rolled my shirt up and threw in the drinks, stuffed things in my pockets, and managed to juggle the rest in my hands. It took me about 40 minutes to get to the flat I was staying at then, which was no more than 100 meters away from Kaiser’s. Things were rolling off my shirt to the floor, and when I tried to pick them up, things started to fall off my pockets. I am sure that I looked like an idiot, but I am used to that.

This incident helped me understand that by moving to Germany I will have to learn things from scratch. I am telling you this because I never woke up from my first supermarket nightmare experience. I always forget to scale my fruits and vegetables, I always forget that I am not allowed to try one of the grapes before I buy the whole bag, and, worst of all, I am always get stuck in the register, never able to throw all my purchases inside the bags before the cashier is starting to scan the next customer’s ingredients.

So now, before I go to the supermarket I always have a plan: make sure to get a cart (you can just put the groceries in the cart and worry about the bagging later). I always pay with EC (13 seconds extra time), and I always say yes when the cashier ask me if I want hearts. I never get embarrassed nowadays, but if someone need a heart, I have a drawer full of them