Softening the Blows of Day-to-Day Cultural Collision.

I was waiting in line at the bank. Yes, I still wait in lines, contrary to the minhag-ha-makom (accepted local practice).

 My teller, a mainstream-looking Israeli man of 20-something, informed me that his window was available by exclaiming,"GIVERET!" (this is Hebrew for LADY!)

I try to use my Hebrew as much as I can, but it's just not ready for bank transactions. I recently tried to be cool and do an entirely-Hebrew ATM withdrawal (who needs that English option anyway?), and...I had to re-do so many times that the machine ate my card for security purposes. Another time I mis-read the outside of the machine and put my card into a card-shaped slot that actually spits receipts, and needed to have the machine opened and the card retrieved (this included rebuke from the bank staff, in case I didn't already feel stupid and late for the class I was teaching). So I no longer play around- especially when it requires bank vocabulary.

With this in mind, I walked over to the teller's window and immediately asked if he spoke English. He said, "Ehm...ken" (which means 'um, yes' and is usually a sign that he knows English like I know Hebrew) and so I started to state my request in English for depositing a check and withdrawing a certain amount from what I had deposited. This was my actual bank branch, so I thought I could get away with such a transaction.

He listened to the first 1/2 of my request while printing out a deposit slip, and interrupted the other 1/2 by saying "SIGN!" I signed the slip, giving him the check. He then looked at me quizzically, as if to say, why are you still here? I repeated the second half of my request (to withdraw a portion of said check), and he said "I HEARD YOU, BUT THE CHECK'S...'ow you say....NOT READY".

Since he hadn't verbalized that, I had been a little in the dark about his inner monologue regarding my money's availability. I asked him when it would clear, and he said, "SOON, WHAT DO YOU MEAN?" And then he started helping the next person, who had elected to push rather than wait, and that was the end of my turn. 

This exact exchange, especially with bank employees, government employees, bus drivers, and medical personnel (anyone whose help you need on a regular basis) is so utterly commonplace that my auto-pilot was almost uninterrupted on this particular errand. Like most things in this country, I knew that if I just waited a few hours, or a day, and then tried to withdraw the money, it would somehow be fine.

That was pretty much an uneventful trip to the bank.

But later, I thought about how the teller had said 'SIGN!' and realized-
Hebrew has a command form that is not used in English (unless you want to sound like someone's gym teacher). He was just translating his Hebrew word-for-word into English. It's like when I want to give an semi-affirmation (as in 'does this bus go to Geula?' 'I think so') and I do so by saying, "ani choshevet" (this is a literal English translation of 'I-Think', and not a normal Israeli way of expressing 'I think so'). And his complete lack of explanation about how I could not withdraw part of the check upon deposit was probably due to his inability to find the words in English, so he skipped it (I know because I do this all the time with Hebrew).

So my new American-In-Israel survival tip, culled from this experience, is:
When people seem to be barking at you, they might be perfectly nice, they're just translating the command form literally. And they may seem callous towards your need for further information because they can't explain it in your language, not because they want to make your life hard. 
I can relate to that. Hey, I sometimes stick my watch into people's faces if I am too tired to translate the accurate time into Hebrew.