Dating Tips for Girls
By Jeffrey Goldberg
The Jerusalem Post, July 10, 1992
Men are bad. Women are good. Men, bad. Women, good. This is, more or less, my philosophy. There are some permutations to the rule, as well as some exceptions. For instance, I am a man, but I am not bad, because I am engaged. But that’s another story. Let’s talk instead about Israel.
The Middle East is a region of the world not known for sensitive, deferential men—it may have something to do with the chemical makeup of olive oil, or possibly humous. While it is true that Israeli men are generally more progressive in their dealings with women than are their Arab neighbors, the difference is equivalent to the behavioral gap between, say, Viking pillagers and Mongolian highway robbers—except for hair color and culinary preferences, it’s difficult for an outsider to distinguish between the two.
Many women traveling to Israel for the first time don’t understand this. Most believe the stereotype that all Jewish men are gentle nebbishes, so grateful for female companionship that they wind up fulfilling the punchline of the old joke: A boy comes home from school and tells his mother he’s been cast in a class play. “What role did you get?” the mother asks. “I’m going to play a Jewish husband,” the child replies. The mother nods sympathetically and says, “Don’t worry, son, next time I’m sure you’ll get a speaking part.”
Many women have also been led to believe another stereotype, that Israelis look, act and smell like Ari Ben-Canaan as played by Paul Newman—rough-edged men, cynical romantics, riding bareback into enemy villages at high noon to smash terrorist cells and work on their tans.
It’s a dangerous convergence of misconceptions. Take a wimp accountant, mix in a freedom-fighting guerrilla, and what you have is a noble warrior who gets permission from his wife to go raiding after 6 p.m., seven on weekends.
In other words, most outsiders don’t really understand that the average Israeli male is not a gentle warrior—he’s a pig. It’s true, it’s true, it’s true. I’ve been observing this phenomenon for years.
LET’S TAKE a fictional woman and place her in a fictional setting for demonstration purposes. Linda is a junior at Cornell and has decided to spend the year at the Hebrew University. She arrives at the introductory ulpan, and immediately becomes entranced by her counselor, a 23-year-old student named, for demonstration purposes only, Dudu. Dudu tells Linda that he served in a top-secret commando unit, Sayeret Haticha, until he was wounded in a battle that has not been declassified to this day. The two go out “for coffee,” he says, and she tells him about the senior thesis she hopes to write on Beduin handicrafts. He looks as if he’s paying avid attention.
Somehow, they both wind up in his apartment, “for more coffee,” he says. The apartment hasn’t been cleaned since the Israeli withdrawal from Sinai. Linda finds it charming. He kicks off his sandals, deftly picks the lint out from between his toes, and they sit on his bed, 24 cinder blocks tied together with cord and covered by a mattress the thickness of a proton. He looks deeply into her eyes. She nearly faints.
Linda’s thought process: “I don’t know what to do—he’s so handsome I could just die. But I promised Neil I would be true. But Dudu’s sooooo handsome! A commando! I’ve always wanted to go out with a commando! But Neil’s so nice to me. And he’s going to be a dentist. He’ll make a nice income. But Dudu … Look at him. Look at his eyes. He loves me, I can tell. Are those poetry books on the shelf? Oh wow, he’s so sensitive. He’s like, a warrior and a poet, all wrapped up into one. Oh, I think I could fall in love. He’s so
… so spiritual.” …
Dudu’s thought process: “I don’t believe this. I bought her coffee and she still hasn’t taken her shirt off. What’s wrong with her?”
As you can see, Dudu is interested in Linda, but not in her theories about nomadic macrame. And herein lies the nub of the problem. Israeli men are like jackals, hunters of weak flesh.
What should Linda do now? Unfortunately, Linda will probably stay with Dudu, who will grow bored with her in 48 to 72 hours and dump her for her new best friend Stacey from Brandeis.
If she had only known the warning signs, she would have fled the apartment and called Neil, who was at home in New York memorizing interesting facts about gum disease.
And just what are the warning signs?
1) Avoid men with certain names. This is a basic protective maneuver. Never trust someone named Dudu. Also, Shuki, Koby, Motti and Tzvika. People named Mendel are okay, and, of course, Yorams are usually safe.
2) Check watch size. Many Israeli men believe that the size of their watches is directly related to the size of their … watches. They also believe that women believe this. Therefore, young males tend to wear the largest, bulkiest, most gadget-packed watches in existence. Remember, the bigger the watch, the bigger the jackal.
3) Know dangerous pick-up lines. “Hi. Will you have coffee with me?” or in Hebrew-English, “Hi, you want to have a coffee wiz me?” is one of the most dangerous pick-up lines a woman can hear. What it actually means is, “Hi, do you want to see my bed?”
Of course, avoid men who approach you and say, “Hi, do you want to see my bed?”
4) Understand misperceptions. The average Israeli man believes that European and American women like nothing more in life than to bed swarthy men with nicotine-stained teeth and excessive back hair. This faulty perception is generally blamed on the influence of American movies, but I can’t remember seeing a movie in which a hairy-backed chauvinist named Shuki successfully wooed a blonde woman from California.
Following these tips does not preclude an unpleasant encounter of the Dudu kind, but it should give you a fighting chance. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go—Motti and I are going to raid a terrorist encampment now—he didn’t want to go at first, but I told him he needed to work on his tan.