After three years of writing these letters, I thought it is about time to write a letter about these letters themselves. I have to admit that when I started writing them I had doubts if I will be able to keep going. After all, literature had always been my weakest subject in school. Sometimes I look back and ask myself who wrote all this stuff. Since writing and posting a letter takes about two days, I now realize that out of three years I spent two months working on this project. People may think that I just sit here laughing on the whole world, and indirectly on myself. But even non-serious writing requires picking a subject, writing and revising. The hardest part is to pick the subject, since the longer I live here less things pop-up as unusual and worth writing on. Naturally, some letters came out much more polished than others. There was even once a complaint that I don't maintain the high standard. At least there are high expectations.
I am trying to think what genre these letters are written in. It is not journalism. They are too egocentric. It is not a blog, since I don't have time to write everything I am doing and it is not interesting. Although the language is sometime pseudo-scientific, there is no attempt to prove anything. The style is definitely Israeli. Canadians are very restrictive when it comes to criticism or humor. Someone may be offended. This is one reason why some Canadian enjoyed reading this, even though they didn't understand much.
So who is really reading this stuff? There are of course you, my old Israeli friends on the mailing list. But according to the logs, you are only about 10% of the visitors. Other visitors are graduate students at the department or undergraduate students spying after their teaching assistant. Sometimes at work I recognize the "I know everything about you" little smile. I usually smile back "you have no idea what you are smiling about". That's how communication works here, by smile interpretation. The majority of the visitors are in fact people who get here by coincidence. There are always people searching for "the meaning of Greek letters". Most of them skim 1-5 pages, but several times a year there is a visitor who reads every word on this site, which should take more than an hour. My conclusion is that most readers don't have the background to understand the fine points. For example, Canadians are not aware that their politics is a tea party. What happens in Israel in a week doesn't happen here in ten years, and they prefer it this way. On the other hand, it is hard to convey to Israelis an experience only by writing. Furthermore, there are some cryptic phrases here and there, mostly private army jokes, which only few readers can appreciate.
In many ways living here is like living in Disneyland, the land of the Disney-people, and they don't even know. When I moved here I thought it would be like placing one foot into the future. When my family and I toured the US in 1988, the gap compared to the rest of the world was huge. But it is been closed quickly, mainly because everything America had to offer was copied, and all the investments in technology, in particular the internet, benefit the entire world. When I came I was surprised to find that my foot actually landed in the past. People here remind me my grandparents, and many things in the environment disappeared in Israel long ago. It is not only that I live in a 100 years old house, or the large number of people who are still using Unix. Think when the last time you saw large-frame glasses was. When did you see nylon milk bags? When did you see a stopping cord in a bus? When did you see girls knitting? I guess if someone wants to put one leg into the future today he needs to move to China. Until the future comes I'll stay writing from here.
