Ein Hod Part 2

We were late because it took so long for us to make the stained glass. Hagai and Vik were going to show us around Haifa but as it turned out Vik’s mom was coming by train to visit and they had to pick her up so our time was limited to less than two hours. We had spent the previous evening at the Ein Hod Café where Hagai was waiting tables and Vik, Nick and I had dinner. It was Indian food night at the café and Hagai had prepared a good portion of it. Hagai is one of those people with a high level of energy and efficiency in everything he does. Of the thousands of interviews and personnel hires I have made in my career there is a handful of people you just know intuitively will be a great worker. Hagai is one of those people. This afternoon we went to the restaurant next door to the café and over a spread of Middle Eastern foods, hummus, eggplant, grilled meats, rice, olives, pita, tomatoes and cucumber we picked up the conversation from where we left off the night before.

Joined by two of Vik’s friends late in the evening we were discussing the differences of life in Israel and in the United States. We sat outside in the courtyard where the hot day still lingered but a breeze made the night air cool. Cats and dogs wandered in and out looking for handouts or to lie on the cold tile floor of the café’s courtyard. The mosquitoes were out in force and cigarette smoke danced around our tables. This was without a doubt one of the most laid back settings we experienced in Israel and it was a great change of pace for us. We stayed late that night.
This afternoon the same dogs and cats were hanging out and flies swarmed the food as we sat outside in the shade. Nick looked a little disdained by the number of flies on his chicken but hunger pressed him ahead. Vik recalled growing up in Jerusalem, fearful every day of the threat of a terrorist bomb in the public market or on a bus or in a café. She moved downwind so her cigarette smoke would not blow on us. What were they going to do after graduation, Vik with her master’s in art and Hagai with his bachelor’s in photography? It’s been tough making things work with both of them going to school. The hope was that with their new degrees they could create opportunity to live without going into more debt. They are quickly finding the options are not there and they have little hope of being able to make things work in Israel. Hagai had a better opportunity before he went to school working as a DVD and CD distributor. Vik despite a very responsible job at a museum is not making enough to make ends meet. So they are considering moving out of the country, the UK or US maybe or New Zealand.

It would cost about $300,000 to buy a house in Ein Hod a cost way beyond Vik and Hagai’s foreseeable income. They would have to apply to the community and be accepted to live there even if they could afford it. They both feel their chances for success are better found elsewhere.
They were not the first to say to me that life is difficult in Israel. In fact I heard this quite often in my conversations with Israelis. It was in part explained to me that this is a new country that has grown and continues to grow quickly. Construction seems to be going on everywhere, from highway repairs to new public buildings and private housing developments. All of this seems to stretch the infrastructure and improve it at the same time. Like the US, Israel is constantly pressing the boundaries of success. It is not a laid back country. Even as a tourist you can’t help to see and feel it. In fact if anything it is a country on the edge of new technologies in high tech and bioscience. It could be said that the lack of opportunity for Vik and Hagai is equally common in the US for someone with a degree in art. But unlike the US, art as is life in Israel is also on the edge, underscored by unending fear and uncertainty of impending conflict.
Vik shared with us her Master’s project which is a multimedia art piece borne from her impressions and artistic interpretation of the Lebanon war in 2004. A very personal vision of soldiers with bags tied in a noose around their heads in the woods surrounded by innocent looking dogs, Vik recalled her fears of not knowing where Hagai was as he served in this campaign and amid public complaints regarding soldiers who had no idea what their commanders were planning or doing.

After Vik and Hagai left, Nick and I went out to dinner at Dona Rosa, definitely a non-kosher Argentinean restaurant and afterwards went back to the café to listen to a Spanish guitar player and singer who was joined by several other musicians and a woman singer in a jam session. We spent the next day touring the art galleries and the Dada Museum. For the moment we were taken away from the urgency of Israeli life.