She stopped her writing and asked me angrily why I am using the counter she was using for her writing. I apologized in German, I guess with some heavy accent.

“You are not German!!” she yelled at me. “What language are you speaking?”

I told her that we can speak in English, but mentioned that my Hebrew is better.

She paused for a second, and moved into quick German.

“You are not a Jew!”, she said angrily. “You are delivering food. You must be Turkish!!”. Then she started observing me, looking at my shoes, the clothes I was wearing.

“You can’t be Jewish”, she continued. “You don’t look like a Jew, you are not dressed like a Jew, you don’t have the manner of a Jew”.

It’s Berlin, February 2012. On the border of Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg. I feel the blood rushing to my head. I am thinking whether to undress myself to prove her wrong, or to ask her if I should wear some symbol to identify myself as a Jew. Like in the 30′s.

“But my nose sure looks Jewish,” I barked at her as I left the store.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I wrote here once about my visit to the job center office. I remember it being so funny, I couldn’t even get in touch of the humiliation of some officer who dared, in straight face, telling me that he will never look for a job for me, but still, that I am not allowed to leave Berlin, If there will be ever a job opening for me.

A couple of weeks after I opened my place, I found a letter in my mailbox. It was from the job center, maybe from the same person, asking me to inform them in case I would like to employ and train people on their lists.

I palmed the paper and threw it into the trash bin. Then I picked it up, and made it straight again, and put it neatly in the drawer where I store memories.

I think that the best medicine for being humiliated, is the feeling of pure, triumphant joy.

Maya likes being around older girls. She immediately joined them as they started to push the carousel round and round. One of them pushed Maya, and told her firmly that she is not allowed to play with them. “You are not Deutsch”, she told Maya, “you don’t even speak Deutsch”.

I can really lose it at these times. I ran to my wife and told her about the incident, and she came running and calmly explained to the other girls that there are kids who look different and speak different language, but all I could see is Maya at eight, or 12, or 18, and what I brought her into.

I know that some of you might dismiss it. “It is just a kid”, is a very often used as an excuse. Fine, it is just nice to be in the majority and look into things logically.

I went after the girls and asked to see their parents. If Maya was speaking like that to another girl, I’d appreciate her parents telling me. I told them. They looked confused. “We can assure you that we don’t think or say these things in our house”, they told me. I hate it when people defend themselves without being attacked.

I don’t believe them. I know exactly how I would react if I heard such thing about my daughter. I think that in order to think in such methodological way at such a young age, one must be exposed to it from his/her own very close surroundings.

Later, when two American mothers from New York left my restaurant, one of their child told her brother (they were five and three): “people here are so light-skinned”.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You can argue about the price, some will. Or the consequences. Or the preceding effect.

You can say what you want about PM Netanyau, but took the extra step in the holy promise given to every parent giving his kids to the army: that the state of Israel will do whatever it can to bring him or her back home safely. I can argue that Netanyau policy almost guarantee the opposite, but I have to give him credit where it is due.

You can argue and argue, but it breaks down to this: soon, Gilad Shalit will be back to where he belongs. Home, to his loving parents.

And then, after Israel will share a rare moment of unity, he will start to live with himself. free.

I did my best job trying to explain the concept of atonement, first philosophically, and then on the practical aspect. It went like this:

Her: “So it just like the Ramadan”.

Me: “no, we don’t eat at night. We don’t eat for 26 hours”.

Her: “but you are allowed to drink”.

Me: “no, we are not allowed to do nothing for 26 hours, just pray, and atone to ourselves, and ask for forgiveness from those we hurt in the past year”.

Her: “what do you mean you are not allowed to do anything?”

Me: “I will give you an example: if you leave the lights on before Yom Kippur, you are not allowed to shut them down until the end of Yom Kippur”.

Her: “wow, but this is such a waste of energy”.

Of course it would have been better if I was sharing the idea here.

I am in the middle of opening a new business. A lot to write about it. will try to write a series about opening a business in Germany. Probably will call it: “why is it better for an auslander to stay unemployed (rather of bothering to open a business)”. But I will need some time.

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Just want to say one sentence about the recent election in Berlin: I think the NPD is doing a great service for Berlin and Germany. I think that its recent campaign helps to define how much you can stretch a democracy.

However: It was a clear case for me of passion killing a “successful” idea. If the party would have stayed with its anti-immigrant motive, I am sure that more people would have jumped its wagon. Many Germans, I believe, stayed away because of the connection for the Jews and the past.

I am thinking about these culture gaps every time I am talking on the phone with a German. Actually, every time the call is reaching its ending. In Israel, we just say OK, and then the other side says OK, and we hung on the phone. Here, the ending is longer than the actual call. I mean it is a never ending series of exchanges. Sometimes I feel like if I won’t take an action, the goodbye will last forever. Lately, I have notices that I am always hanging up while the other side is still saying goodbye.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I first drove in Germany in the times when I used to come to Berlin for a weekend of partying. It’s was a toxic combination: I was so fucking high, and coming from a system where everything on the road is controlled by signs, I was completely unaware to the fact that I must give the right for the car coming from the right. This experience alone should have made me religious.

Nowadays, I am driving almost everyday. I am still amazed by the entitlement that rules the roads here, I am still amazed by the impossible angles drivers must look at in order to cross a crossing, I am amazed by how narrow the streets are (sometimes, it’s like to fat people trying to pass each other through a corridor as thick as a spaghetti).

But I think that what is most amazing for me is the discrepancy between the actual world and the world of driving. Sometimes it looks to me like Germans are losing all their inhabitants from daily life and offloading it on the road.

It is shocking, but, in context,  it is not a bad thing.

I should have written about it right after it happened. The only reason I post it now is that I promised myself to write about these incidents. The worst humiliation is to think that these incidents are normal and that I should get use to them.

I thought about it the other day when I drove near Alexanderplatz and saw the beautiful poster that Nike spread on one of the buildings. It has a picture of Dirk Nowitzki from his back, his right hand, with the fingers closed, in a celebration motion over his shoulder, and with the slogan above: “all dreams sound crazy, until they become true.”

It is a very touching poster, but only when I arrived home and looked on the pictures I took, I realized that in German, dream is a traume.