I wanted to write this week about a feature on This Normal Life that you might not have noticed yet. There's a special "podcast" category on the blog site. Podcasts are audio programs that you can listen to on your computer or copy to your portable MP3 device (like Apple's iPod - hence the name). For the past several months I've been posting a podcast/audio version of This Normal Life along with my written stories. But I haven't really publicized it...until now.

So for this week's post, I'd like to call your attention to a new podcast episode I'm uploading today. Actually, it's one of my favorite stories from the past couple of years, but one that you've never heard "read by the author" before. It's about my experience taking then six-year-old Aviv to the local English-language story hour.

One of the great things about podcasts is that you can "subscribe" to them, and then every time I record and post a new show, it will be automatically downloaded to your computer.

To listen to a program right now, click on the paper clip icon that's at the end of this story. You'll then see the name of a file called "Story Hour from Jerusalem."  You can click on the link of the .mp3 file to listen straight away, or right click to download it to your computer and listen later.

To subscribe to the podcast so you can receive all This Normal Life audio without having to visit the blog site, look over on the right side of the blog where you'll find a link reading "Subscribe to the Podcast" with an orange "XML" button. It's below the "Subscribe by RSS" and "Subscribe by Email" links (but that's the subject for another column...) Just click the orange XML button and follow the instructions that appear.

(BTW - if you're reading this via an RSS News Reader or via email, the direct link is http://feeds.feedburner.com/ThisNormalLifePodcast)

From the link you'll find options for subscribing via all the major music applications that support podcasting: iTunes, Odeo, MyYahoo and more. While you're at it, you can check out some of the podcasts I've already posted. They're all listed here.

I hope you enjoy listening to This Normal Life as much as you enjoy reading it. As always, please send me any feedback on this new endeavor to brian@ThisNormalLife.com.

I look forward to "hearing" from you!
-- Brian

There was nothing I could do about it. I knew that. Still, no one enjoys living next door to a construction site. Especially when the two dwellings in question share a common wall and the noise is so loud you literally have to go into the stairwell to make a phone call.

When the drilling first started, I figured our neighbors were probably doing a little touch up work. Putting in a new light fixture or something. Happens all the time in this nation under perpetual renovation.

When it went on for another day, then two, I went to check out the scene.

The house was full of construction workers. Large moving trucks were packing up the existing contents of the apartment – furniture, appliances, paintings, you name it. The apartment’s residents had clearly left for quieter pastures.

I saw a man talking on a cell phone. His body language had a bravado that could only be associated with the position of kablan – Hebrew for contractor or foreman.

I mustered up my best construction worker Hebrew. “So, you’re putting in a new kitchen, or…” It was more of a statement than a question.

“Guttin’ the whole thing,” he finished my sentence.

“Upstairs and downstairs?”

He managed a slight smile. This obviously wasn’t the first time someone had asked this question.

There was one more thing I needed to know. “Um, how long do you think it will take?” I asked, waiting in dread for the reply.

“Three months.”

Ouch. Because everyone knows that whatever a contractor in Israel says, multiply by a minimum of two. Or three.

There was a time when I looked forward to construction. One of my very first Israel experiences was in 1984 when I signed up for the Livnot U’Lehibanot program in the old city of Tsfat.

Known in English as “To Build and to be Built,” the program placed a couple dozen twentysomethings in a centuries-old stone house where we spent mornings doing construction projects around town and studying our Jewish roots after lunch. It was the very first Jewish reality show…albeit with a very different payoff (in my case, I decided to stay in Israel where I later met my wife Jody – in Tsfat no less - and we subsequently chose to do a little building of our own).

The next morning, the drilling jolted me out of my reverie – and out of bed at 7:00 AM. I turned to wake Jody, but she was already up.

“Do you think there’s a law governing how early they can start?” I said bitterly.

“What?” Jody mumbled, unable to hear me over the ongoing din. Yes, it was that loud.

We called “106”, the Jerusalem municipal hotline. The response was not encouraging.

“They can start as early as 6:00 AM,” explained Shmulik, the friendly but perfunctory clerk on the other end. “And they don’t have to stop until eleven at night.”

The Hebrew word for renovation is shiputz. At this point, it sounded more like a curse. Shi-pootz...Shee...poootzzzzz....

Feeling like a condemned man, I stepped into the stairwell to think. I wasn’t alone. Two other neighbors were also looking for escape.

“We should do something,” one said, apparently in a more militant mood than me.

“Like what?” I said, not wanting to sound as defeatist as I felt. But logic was not in our favor. “They do have a right to fix up their place.” Indeed, I knew that it would not be that long before Jody and I would be doing the same thing with the apartment we had recently purchased.

“We could ask them to limit the work to certain hours,” one neighbor offered. “Get a break in the middle of the day, maybe?”

Israeli law actually defines the time between 2:00 PM and 4:00 PM as “Quiet Hours.” Kids playing ball on the street are routinely chastised by napping neighbors. How much more so then would be knocking down walls with several sledgehammers simultaneously.

“No…that would just extend the whole nightmare by another month.” I sighed.

“Maybe we should talk to a lawyer. I bet they don’t have all their permits in place…”

Which was undoubtedly true. No one in Israel starts a construction project by asking questions that might receive a negative response. There’s even an army term for it – “she’elah kitbag.”

A soldier asks his commanding officer if they should wear their heavy fully-loaded backpacks – in Hebrew their kitbags – on the upcoming 25 kilometer hike. As soon as the question is asked, the answer will undoubtedly be “of course.”

I shook my head. Kitbag or not, I knew I’d have to see the owners of that apartment in our shared courtyard or on the street for years to come. And anyway, I’m not the type who likes to make waves. There was only one thing to do: grin and bear it.

Or maybe…I could work on my own attitude. There must be some way to see some good in all this.

Jody, as so often is the case, provided the positive-thinking ammo I needed. “At least they’re here,” she said.

Say what? But she was right. Our noisy neighbors had just returned from several years in the States. Many Israelis who head out to North America never return. They get jobs in hi-tech or they open a kosher burger joint. They say they’re coming back someday, but then the kids get settled in school and, well…

But this family had gone, made some dough, and decided to come back. Whether by conscious intention or not, they were making a courageous commitment to stand with the people of Israel, to be a part of this society despite all the tensions and dangers…and apparently to do it in style. I might not like the inconvenience, but at least it was patriotic. That had to be some kind of silver lining.

But don’t turn to me now and tell me how wonderful it that I’m no longer tearing my hair out, how I’ve learned to embrace the noise.

I mean come on, I’m not that noble.

It was only a matter of time before one of our kids demanded access to what may be the most rebellious, dangerous and terrifying activities known to parents in Israel.

In this case, the culprit in question was twelve-year-old Merav, and her act of teenage defiance? She wanted to ride the bus.

In normal circumstances, this shouldn’t cause fits of apoplexy. But these past five years have not been normal times and no one in our family – nor most of our friends – has taken public transportation since September 2000 when suicide bombers began regularly targeting buses, making getting from here to there a matter of life or death…literally.

Merav didn’t set out to deliberately challenge our value system. She simply wanted to go see the latest Harry Potter movie at the Malcha Mall. She had gotten together a group of friends, but our five-seater Toyota Corolla wasn’t large enough to schlep them all. None of the other parents were available to drive at that hour.

“All my friends are allowed to take the bus,” Merav argued. Not an entirely convincing argument as far as I was concerned. If their parents don’t mind them taking a chance at getting blown up, how is that my fault?

But the truth is, it was more than just Merav’s wanting to experience the joys of standing packed like a jar of gefilte fish at the kosher mini-market the night before Passover while a surly driver yells “nu, chevre…get to know your neighbor and move on back…beseder?”

At twelve years old, Merav was tentatively trying on a tad of pre-teen independence.

The unspoken subtext to her request was that, if granted, she and her friends would be loosed on the mall on their own with no parents hovering nearby, no chaperone at the theater, no one handing over the money to the pizza parlor cashier and suggesting that maybe she forego super-sizing that Coke and take a swig from the bottle of water she had sensibly carried with her from home instead.

Taking the bus, then, was part of the overall package, the first link in a chain of freedom. This was more about girl power than confronting terrorists.

As I mulled over how to respond, I thought about a lecture I had heard only the night before by David Horowitz, Editor-in-Chief of the Jerusalem Post, given at the Moreshet Avraham synagogue in Jerusalem. His thesis was that Israelis managed to cope with the last five plus years of violence by creating entirely imaginary but mentally manageable "red lines" of what was or was not a permissible security risk.

Some of us stopped going out to eat in restaurants and cafes entirely for awhile, and when we returned it was only to those that had armed guards posted outside. Mahane Yehuda, Jerusalem’s colorful fruit and vegetable market, became off limits after a spate of bombings there. And most of us thought twice before taking the bus, justifying tedious carpools and expensive taxis before stepping foot again on Egged, our national carrier.

Despite the fact that, statistically, one always remained in far graver danger of winding up in a traffic accident while traveling in a private car, Horowitz characterized our pastime of picking and choosing as ultimately essential. The situation of this last half decade has not just been one of inconvenience, he said, but of a true existential conflict.

Had our resolve broken; had Israelis either retreated to cower indoors afraid to confront the reality which was forced upon us…or fled entirely to what we perceived as safer shores someplace else, we wouldn’t be sitting here having a conversation about Harry Potter or pizza at the mall at all. We shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves, Horowitz concluded, if creating these fictional red lines helped save our sanity, if not the State itself.

But maybe it was time. After all, security has improved dramatically. Downtown Jerusalem, which for a time had become a depressing ghost town, is now packed with tourists and locals alike. One block of Jaffa Street alone sports a brand new Aroma Café followed by a Café Hillel next door to the first Jerusalem branch of the American chain Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf.

Our synagogue just voted to remove the volunteer armed guards that have protected the entrance to the building during Shabbat services for the past five years. My wife Jody and I are once again traveling on roads and to places we wouldn’t have deemed passable just a short time ago.

And riding the bus in Israel is not just a means to an end; it’s been a source of national pride. Before September 2000, it was common to see kids as young as six years old alone or with a group of friends on their way to and from school, clutching their cartissia (or monthly pass). Adults would look out for the kids; drivers would go out of their way to make sure no one got lost. It was part of the Israeli mystique of freedom, where walking through a public park after dark poses scant danger of a midnight mugging.

And I thought: was it now time for us to drop the public transportation taboo too?

But Merav had already decided for us. At 4:30 PM, she headed out to meet her friends at the corner from where they would walk to the bus stop. One of the girls was planning to meet them at the mall. At 5:20 PM, the girl called us at home. Where were Merav and the other girls, she wanted to know? They hadn’t arrived yet.

We told her to wait at the entrance to the movie theater while I immediately checked the Internet. No news of a bombing.

But 20 minutes later, the girl called again. Still no sign of them. We had been trying to give Merav a little independence (as long as we’d let her go in the first place) but at this point, Jody broke down and called Merav on the cell phone she’d borrowed from me.

“Where are you?” I heard Jody say to Merav. Then to me: “She’s still on the bus…stuck in traffic.” Then back to Merav: “Call us when you get there, OK?”

We didn’t hear from Merav again until she arrived home at 10:30 PM.

“How was it?” I asked innocently when Merav strolled in the door still flush from her big night out.

“Disappointing,” Merav replied.

“Really?” I said.

“Yeah…they changed too much of the movie from the book.”

“I meant how was the bus ride.”

“Oh, that...it was a little boring.”

“So you won’t be doing it again?” I asked, my hopes rising slightly.

Merav looked straight at me and with a slight downtown of her lips coupled with an almost imperceptible narrowing of her eyes, she shot me a look that could wither the muggle Prime Minister or perhaps Professor Dumbledore himself.

“Really, Abba…” was all she had to say.

I guess that’s one more red line we’ve marked off.

I was leaving a meeting at about 9:00 PM on a Thursday night when I heard my cell phone beep. It was a text message from my wife Jody. It read: “Did you get my other message?” And I thought: uh oh…that meant I had missed something important.

I saw that there was indeed another message waiting for me. I opened it and read. “Please pick up a dozen eggs from the supermarket for Shabbat.”

Well, it could have been worse. Still, I groaned. It was late Thursday, a night notorious for the worst in Israeli supermarket behavior - wall-to-wall customers pushing and shoving then depositing their carts in the checkout line and leaving for a half an hour to continue shopping (see my article "Save My Spot" or listen to the podcast version for a more of the not-so-funny details).

I picked up the phone, called Jody, and started making excuses.

“Nu...how do you expect me to make the cakes for Shabbat?” Jody replied, rather curtly I might add.

“Can’t we get the eggs tomorrow?” I responded. “You’re not really cooking any more tonight, are you, sweetie?”

"Tomorrow you wanted to go on a tiyul with the kids, remember?"

Now, the entire time this conversation was taking place, I had already been on my way to the store. That’s the thing about me. I complain royally but I always do the right thing in the end.

As I headed home, eggs in hand, I couldn’t stop my internal monologue: If you know you’re going anyway, why does it have to be such a pain to get there?

Fourteen-year-old Amir and twelve-year-old Merav were both still awake when I got home. Amir was furiously fingering his Nintendo DS while Merav was in front of the computer watching the blooper reel from the final season of Friends on a DVD.

There were two bags of garbage waiting by the front door plus a smaller bag of recyclables.

“Can one of you guys please take out the trash?” I heard Jody ask as I lay the eggs on the counter.

“Do we have to?” Merav snapped back.

“Yeah,” Amir added, “Can’t we wait until tomorrow? We’re busy!”

That sounded way too familiar...

How did we get to this point as a family, where everyone is seemingly out for themselves? Where we don’t know – or never learned – the meaning of the word "teamwork?"

And what could we do to turn things around?

When I used to work in a big office, we had all manner of team building exercises: treasure hunts, climbing walls, sushi nights. But these seemed more like gimmicks. They might produce some short-term results, but we needed some serious behavior modification.

No, there was only one real choice: brutal, disarming honesty…mixed with a little reverse psychology.

On the walk to shul the following night, I announced “I have a confession to make.”

Now, my kids love a good sob story, so I had their rapt attention…for at least a few seconds.

I started in and related the story of the eggs in all its self-centered glory. “So has anything like this ever happened to you guys?” I asked.

Amir and Merav looked around nervously but said nothing. Seven-year-old Aviv was the first to respond.

“Hey look at that rock over there. It looks like a face, right Abba?”

How does he do that? Change the subject so deftly? No matter. I was ready with my curve ball. I stepped up to the blame plate.

“Listen guys,” I said. “I know it’s all my fault. It’s me. I am the cause of all our bad un-team like behavior. If I wouldn’t kvetch every time your mother asked me to do anything, you wouldn’t either.”

“Don’t be silly Abba,” Amir said at once. “We’re kids. That’s what we do. Even if you weren’t around, we’d still complain.”

“OK, sure. But maybe if you had a better model you’d at least complain less,” I countered.

“We need to be able to count on each other,” Jody added. “Not only with chores.”

“Right,” I continued. “Like, if it’s raining, Amir. Don’t you count on either Imma or me to pick you up from school?”

“Yeah…”

“You know what I would love when I ask you guys to do something,” Jody said. “I’d love to hear you say ‘with pleasure, Imma. Of course I would be glad to clear the dishes.’”

“But it’s not a pleasure to clear the dishes,” Merav said quickly.

“But you could say the words,” Jody said, “even if you don’t mean it.”

“What’s the point of that?” Merav shot back.

“I’m going to do it,” I announced with a flourish. “From now on, whenever anyone asks me to do something, I’m going to say ‘with pleasure’ and just do it.”

“So, can you give me 100 shekels,” Merav jumped in. I glared at her.

“Anyway, just think about it tonight when you're davening in shul, OK?”

The next night during dinner we tried out our new approach.

“Amir,” Jody asked. “Can you get the hummous out of the fridge?”

“Only if I get some first,” Amir barked.

“Amir…”

“OK, with pleasure.”

It didn’t sound so genuine. You know, this might not go as smoothly as when we went total cold turkey a couple of years back and snapped our addiction to television. Yes, it might take time.

But if we stay the course, if we as parents are consistent, maybe there can be some trickle-down behavior.

“Come on,” Jody said. “Let’s get to bed. We can talk about this more…under the covers.”

“Ah ha,” I said. “With pleasure!”