A long road to employment

EMILY SINGER

In this continuing series, Emily Singer shares her family’s aliyah experiences and stories from their first year in Israel, where they live on Kibbutz Maale Gilboa, a small religious community in the lower Galilee.

Before we made aliyah, my husband, Ross, already had employment lined up. With him working, there was no pressure for me to rush to find a job, so I decided to take our first year in Israel to organize the house and help the kids get adjusted.

Some well-meaning friends asked me what I would do all day while the kids were in school. Apparently, these guys had no idea.

First of all, there is paperwork to deal with, and my Hebrew is not entirely fluent. It takes me an hour just to make sense of a credit card statement, and it’s sometimes difficult for me to tell the difference between someone asking for charity and someone threatening to shut off our water if I don’t pay the bill.

Second, in addition to unpacking, I need to order a house worth of furniture and appliances, each piece a project that involves research and communication in, you guessed it – Hebrew. My Hebrew is apparently too good for an ulpan, but not good enough to understand the newspaper or to argue with the guy at Home Centre about why he needs to fix my heater that is under warranty.

I try to improve my Hebrew by listening to the radio. I understand about 85 percent, meaning that I usually get everything they are saying … except the main point. For example, Ross comes home and I declare proudly, “Netanyahu announced that he is expanding the West Bank settlements ... or maybe dismantling them... or doing something about them that is apparently very serious, as they have been talking about it all day! Oh, and someone fired a rocket from Gaza into Israel ... or maybe from Israel into Lebanon! And Avigdor Lieberman was fired ... or pardoned ... or maybe appointed chief of staff! And the weather will be hotter than usual!”

The weather is usually easy to understand. They give the forecast for the entire country in one report, so it’s always very vague, like, “There will be a rise in temperature today,” or “It will be unseasonably cold.” Every once in awhile they will add the highs and lows expected in the major centres – Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Eilat – but they never mention what it will be on our little Gilboa Mountain. They tell us when they predict rain, but I have discovered through exhaustive personal research that the occurrence of rainfall is directly related to when I have hung laundry out to dry.

My favorite part of the radio day is a show called Beni Baradio (Beni on the Radio). Beni is not your typical radio program. The closest thing he ever did to news was when he tried to convince the 120 members of Knesset to participate in a group hug last year. He likes to interview people about such subjects as what do they like to do in the rain and to describe their best shower ever.

There is a segment of Beni’s show in which someone, whose favorite song is the 1986 hit “The Final Countdown,” calls in to say what is the best song in the world, in their opinion. Every day, he screams excitedly when they respond, “The Final Countdown.” Then he plays the song and sings along, “Eets zee final countdown! We’re leeeeeving togezzzzer....”

At precisely 2:22 p.m. and 22 seconds, regardless of what else is happening in the show, Beni interrupts to count from 10 to one. Then he shouts, “Happy 2:22 and 22 seconds to all!”

My favorite part of Beni’s show is the bit he calls Chush Hanichush. Halfway through the program, Beni sings a song – in his head. On the radio, what you hear is a few minutes of silence. At the end of the show, people call in to guess what song he was singing. The callers are usually very confident about their guess: “I am sure I have it this time,” or, “This is my first time calling, but I have a really good feeling about it!” The other day, someone calls in with a guess. Beni says that no, sorry, he is wrong. The guy replies, “OK, but, anyway, you sang it really nicely!”

My kids beg me to phone in to the show. I finally cave. In my moment of radio fame, I tell Beni I think the song sounds exactly like John Cage’s “Four Minutes and Thirty Three Seconds” (which, if you are not familiar, is a concert piece that consists entirely of four minutes and 33 seconds of silence). Beni gets a kick out of my answer, but alas, it is incorrect. It is around this time that I decide I should start looking for a day job.

I wasn’t planning to work until September, but it made sense to start the process before the summer, since I had absolutely no idea what I might do. I have a master’s degree in social work, but I haven’t done anything with it since we moved to Vancouver in 1996 and I began teaching Judaic studies at Vancouver Talmud Torah. The good news about practising social work in Israel is that, in response to a massive strike they had when we first moved here, social workers’ salaries were raised by 50 percent. The bad news is that the new salary still puts most social workers under the poverty line.

I could teach, but it feels daunting to try to sell myself as a Judaics teacher in Israel, where my Hebrew isn’t as good as the kids I’d be teaching. I am told there is a need for English teachers, especially around where I live. Though I have no actual teaching degree and I have never taught English, this seems like a good place to start.

I travel to Upper Nazareth to meet with the woman in charge of English teachers in the north. The journey would have been long even without getting lost in downtown Nazareth (because the tunnels to the Jewish suburb are closed and there are no signs suggesting an alternate route). My main thought is that I can only be an English teacher if it does not involve ever driving back here again.

When I arrive, the woman begins by explaining that, in order to teach in Israel, you need very specific qualifications. I will have to get a certified teaching degree and take a special course in Israeli subjects for new immigrants. My more than 20 years of teaching experience will account for nothing. She asks if I would like to open a file. I tell the woman honestly that I am just starting to think about what I want to do with my life, and I am not really looking to work just yet. She suggests that if I give her my information now, it might save me a trip back in the future. I ask where to sign.

The woman asks me all kinds of questions, including how far I am willing to travel for work. I tell her I could go as far as Afula (about a half hour away from my house). As she is typing Afula into the computer, she pauses to think. She opens a file from her desk, and studies it carefully. Finally, she says, “There is a position opening in Afula in April. Are you interested?”

I am confused. I thought I needed a degree and supplementary courses. But I am not going to argue with the lady. Perhaps teaching from April through June would be a good opportunity to see how I like the work. I agree to consider it.

Later that week, I receive a phone call from the head of the English department at the Afula school. She asks me to prepare a model lesson for the next day. The adventure begins.

The following day, I am standing before a class of nearly 40 unruly eighth graders. The head of the English department and the vice-principal are sitting at the back of the room. I wait patiently for the students to quiet down. They don’t. I wait some more. They get louder. Finally, the department head stands up at screams at the kids, “Quiet! Can’t you see this teacher is waiting for you to sit down and shut up already?!”

She sits down, and the vice-principal stands, adding helpfully, “What’s wrong with you? Who taught you to act this way in school? What are you, a bunch of animals?! Do you belong in a zoo? All of you, sit down and shut up – now!”

The room quiets down. The vice-principal turns to me with a smile, and waves her arm in a gesture that says, “Please proceed.”

I spend the next half hour teaching the kids a song. They actually participate nicely and many of them sing along with me at the end, but both the vice-principal and the other teacher have to intervene several times to keep everyone under control. I am clearly not going to be able to do this.

After the class, the department head asks me how I think the lesson went. I can’t believe she is even talking to me about it. I tell her that I will clearly never be able to control the kids well enough to teach them. I don’t bother mentioning that I would never in a million years yell at them or call them names.

The teacher chuckles knowingly and tells me she understands my concerns. She explains that discipline is a subtle skill that is developed over many years. She tells me that she is only so good at it because she was a general in the army.

Finally, to my relief, the second bell rings and she has to run and teach. But before she goes, she asks me, “When can you come in to sign the papers?”

What? Is she really offering me the job? Don’t we both know my teaching here would be a total disaster? I tell her I will have to get back to her. She says OK, but the papers need to be signed by the end of the week.

As I start to walk out thinking to myself how I will phrase my rejection, I am greeted by a group of girls from the class. They gather around me and tell me they loved my lesson. They really hope I will come teach.

And, just like that, I have my first job in Israel. I have no education degree. No one has asked me for any references. I have no idea how I will control an Israeli classroom. But, I’m hired! I start April 1.

Emily Singer is a teacher, social worker and freelance writer. She is currently working on two books. Singer and her husband, Ross, were rebbetzin and rabbi of Vancouver’s Shaarey Tefilah congregation until 2004. The Singers spent two years in Jerusalem and then moved to Baltimore, Md., where Ross was rabbi at Congregation Beth Tfiloh and Emily taught Judaic studies at Beth Tfiloh High School, until they moved to Israel in 2010. They have four children.

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