’40 years ago, going to Gaza was like going to Tel Aviv. We would go shopping there’

Read More

Etti Ben Israel, 49, and Shimon Maman, 53; live in Be’er Sheva, flying to Tallin, Estonia

What’s in Estonia?

Shimon: I’m taking part in the Ironman competition after a year and a half when there were no competitions because of the coronavirus.

Are you a couple?

Shimon: Yes. Eight years together. Suffering in silence.

Etti: Delete that in the editing. We’re both in “Chapter 2,” and sports is what’s connected us. We met in a gym.

What is the Ironman competition?

‘I took part in an Israeli-Palestinian peace program. I left it filled with hatred’

‘They choose one person to kill, and then the protest is over’

This scientist isn’t warning of impending disaster. She’s proving it’s already here

Shimon: Before I turned 50 I said I would give myself a present and do it. A sort of wacky present: You swim four kilometers, bike for 180 kilometers, and for dessert you run a full marathon of 42 kilometers. In succession. The world champion does it in seven hours. I do it in 13.

How do you train for that?

Shimon: It takes a year; less than that is impossible. Four to six hours a day you swim, bike, run. When it rains I have equipment so I can work out at home. Of course it also requires special nutrition, you can’t go wild. Cakes are out, chocolate is out; you have to watch your weight so you stay light and also build muscles.

Etti: You also need a supportive and accommodating partner…

Shimon: … a partner who prepares all the things I like and says, “Eat, eat.”

What do you think about while training?

Shimon: It’s a living nightmare. While doing it you suffer. During the competition itself you’re also alone the whole time. You swim alone, you ride 180 kilometers; you have no one to talk to. And you run alone and a lot of thoughts come up. You try not to crack. You always hit walls – and you say, “There’s a wall? I’ll get past it. On to the next wall, and the next.”

Etti: I’m really proud of him. It takes determination, persistence to get up at 4 A.M. every day, in the rain, in the heat. And there are a lot of crisis moments. I certify him as an Ironman every day anew.

Is a Chapter 2 relationship different from Chapter 1?

Etti: One thing I understood is about communication: He has to be your best friend. If I feel a need to talk with a girlfriend instead of him, that shows there’s a problem. It’s important for each side to give the other some space, parallel to the relationship. We also strengthen our common areas of interest, and we learn not to gloss things over and to deal with whatever’s stressful. We’ve had some pitfalls along the way and even went to couples therapy when there was a problem that we couldn’t solve.

Can I ask what the problem was?

Etti: That’s up to him.

Shimon: I claim the right to be silent.

So what do you do when you’re not training?

Shimon: I work at Teva (the pharmaceutical company).

Etti: I’m an Arabic teacher, I prepare students for matriculation.

Shimon: I only want to say that I salute her. It’s not easy to be a teacher.

Etti: I have the most amazing students in the universe, and it’s an incredible language with huge cultural importance. I think it’s the best profession there is.

Explain.

Etti: We can’t ignore the fact that 25 percent of the country’s inhabitants are Arabs. When talking about coexistence and peace, if you speak in the person’s language the walls come down and you feel a lot more comfortable and confident. I organize gatherings of Jewish and Arab youth. You just can’t grasp the changes of perception that happen there. Some [Jewish] kids think they all live in tents. Afterward they all understand that at their age, one wants to be a singer, another wants to be a doctor – and that they all fight with their parents. Beyond that, these are our roots and the roots of most of the people who live in this country. Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria.

How did you get into teaching Arabic?

Etti: My father, of blessed memory, was a police officer in the Gaza Strip. He spoke fluent Arabic and I caught the bug from him. I saw the confidence you have when you speak a language. It’s a mistake to say that knowledge is power; knowledge is power when you know how to use it. All his friends from Gaza used to visit us. Back then, 40 years ago, going to Gaza was like going to Tel Aviv. We bought clothes and things for the house there. I saw how he resolved disputes between people in Arabic, it was amazing.

When he died, did his friends from Gaza call?

Etti: Yes, yes, my mother got calls from his friends.

Shery Assayag and Tai Portnoy.Tomer Appelbaum

Shery Assayag, 22, and Tai Portnoy, 25; live in Afula, arriving from Santorini

What was it like in Santorini?

Tai: Total relaxation, a pleasant stay, three days. We wanted a bit of a vacation and it’s been a long time since we went abroad.

Shery: And the prices are better now.

Let’s talk about a different place: What do people in their 20s do in Afula?

Tai: I’m originally from there and, without any connection, Afula is convenient because it’s cheap. A four-room apartment in the center of town with a balcony, two bathrooms and an elevator for 2,700 shekels [$835] a month. That makes a difference. I prefer to pay less, because then you can use the money for other things.

Two people in four rooms?

Tai: We have a roommate.

Shery: We did preferential work [jobs for discharged soldiers] in a hotel in Eilat, and the employees’ housing there is like that: two people to a room. I roomed with my best friend, a guy from Rehovot, and then Tai and I met, and we ended up in the same room all the time, the three of us, so it became logical for us to live together.

Tai: In October it’ll be a year of being together. In Eilat I was her shift manager at the hotel we worked in. It was insane, so we went to Afula.

Shery: And it’s not like moving to a second-rate apartment in Tel Aviv, paying a lot of money and not enjoying it.

But then – no offense – you go outside and it’s Afula.

Tai: Yes, but it’s an hour and a half from Tel Aviv, and there’s Haifa and Ramat Yishai for going out. For hikes there’s the Valley of Springs, Lake Kinneret 40 minutes away, and we love nature. It’s not like you’re giving up so much. The LGBTQ community has come into its own in Afula lately, and the city is really developing, except in terms of work. The usual jobs are in factories and stores and things like that.

So where do you guys work?

Tai: I do tattoos, and Shery is unemployed right now.

Shery: I worked as a reception clerk at a plastics factory, and I don’t like plastic. I even have a tattoo of a fish in a plastic bottle, that Tai did. Working there was hard, so I stopped. Now I’m trying to find a more challenging job. The coronavirus crisis made me less motivated to do anything with myself.

From what I’ve heard, you’re not alone in that.

Shery: Yes, and the jobs in Afula aren’t so brilliant. Rent is cheap, yes, which is what attracted us to the area, but I’m from Rehovot originally, so I have certain standards about jobs.

Tai, how did you get into tattooing?

Tai: I liked to draw from age zero and always wanted to engage in art, but no one says, “Yallah, I’ll be the next Picasso,” because it doesn’t work like that. So you think about other fields, and by chance I got into tattooing. It attracted me something fierce, and Shery bought me my first machine. Well, I bought myself a machine from AliExpress and it was a real drag, and then she bought me a serious one that I tattoo with to this day.

What do you like about it?

Tai: You inscribe something on a person that will stay with them for life. Even if someone does a portrait of their dog that died, it remains with you your whole life.

What kind of people ask for which tattoo?

Tai: In Afula a lot of people don’t understand tattoos so much, so they ask for banal things. Names, expressions like “You only live once,” “Only God can judge me,” things like that. People who do more daring things – you see they are more complex and deeper. There was one guy who wanted the drawing to represent five values he believes in. In the end we came up with a heart with a gazelle with an aura of light coming out of it. That was my first serious tattoo; I’ll never forget it.

How do you start tattooing?

Tai: I started to practice on friends, do small ones at home. I organized a portfolio and went to a studio. They saw that there was potential, and since then things have flourished. The basics are taught to you, but in the end it’s up to you. To me a line I tattooed may seem perfect, but afterward people told me it wasn’t. So the next time I’ll do it even more perfectly. I’d like to tattoo in Tel Aviv, but am taking it slow. I work with amazing people and wouldn’t switch them for anything.

Do you remember the first tattoo you did?

Tai: It was a small heart, a small cat and a bee – on my closest female friend, her mother and her sister.