A lil’ Russian Israeli literature for your Shabbat

I get sent links from Dina Rubina on an almost daily basis, because all the Russian Jewish ladies read Dina Rubina.  (By the way, that biography of her is horribly translated.) In Israel via both Uzbekistan and Moscow, she now writes in Russian in Israel, often about Israel, and has published many, many novels.

What I love about reading her stuff is that I get a glimpse into how Russian Israelis view Israeli society’s minutiae, which you don’t get a lot with the sweeping  “Oh the joys/horrors of the Russian aliyah” style of writing in JPost and the like.

Here’s an excerpt I translated from a piece I was recently sent, called, simply, Deti (children).  You can read the rest via Google Translator here.

So, cranky immigrant or keen commentary on the state of Israeli kids today?  You decide, reader.

Israeli children are nightmarish.

That is, they are, of course, lovely, beautiful, and uninhibited, but God forbid you are to wind up in the back seat of a bus, surrounded by five or six of these beauties.  I suspect that your strongest feelings in the duration of this journey will be one of thankfulness to fate that you are a member of the health insurance system (kupat holim?)

No, they don’t have anything particularly malicious or murderous in their thoughts.  The fact that they are strongly stomping in your general vicinity and on you is just that they jump out like kangaroos on a prairie, all over the seats. It’s possible that they could land on your knees and, lifting their feet in size 42 sneakers and laugh very indiscreetly.  It’s just that they’re happy and uninhibited!

That you will go deaf for the next seven years of your life -don’t let that inhibit you either.  Because no criminals traumatized you. It’s just that our children love to sing together as a choir in public transport, squeal happily at exorbitant acoustic volumes and yell like fifty Jericho trumpets.  What else is there to say?  Our children are happy and uninhibited.

Imagine to yourselves that you are coming from, lightly said, not an easy country-Russia, where one of the problems is that of the younger generation’s juvenile delinquency, the loss of morals, and other delights.  That is true.  But still,… If we ignore the extreme cases, it should be recognized that in Russia still exists, how shall I put it more succinctly?  An exact distance between the ages and a separation between those generations, a difference in attitudes.  It’s not the first time it’s been said: Fathers and Sons! We’ll say it simpler: A gangly youth will still give up his spot on the bus to a grandmother.  And if he doesn’t want to, he’ll be told and shamed.