"We have a cat named Gingos too!" Ziv said.
I looked at him confused – thinking he was joking. But no, his family has three cats – one named Gingie (as in being a Ginger) and one of their nicknames for the cat is Gingos.
This Gingos – our Gingos (?) more or less owns my yard. And if he doesn't outright own it, he's definitely the local mob boss. In fact, he's the only cat of the approximately ten who have some part in the feline social ecosystem of my yard that sleeps in a chair.
In the summer of 2023 – our first summer with the house – the kids went on a naming streak and the first cat officially named was Gingos as a result of a compromise between "Ginger" (Ailyn) and "Catos" (Sennen). Many Greek male names end in "os" and Sennen wanted to bring some Greek-ness to the name. The compromise became "Gingos" – which I thought was unique. Apparently not….
According to Ziv, the Gingoses (Gingi?) even resemble one another – which I suppose makes sense given ginger coloring driving both names.
Somehow, it reminded me of August 2010 when Emily and I stayed with Ziv and Hila in their Ramat Gan apartment. They had challah and we thought it would be a nice thing to make challah French toast for them for Shabbat breakfast. They don't eat French toast for breakfast – the entire thing was rather foreign and got weirder for them as we used butter in the pan and brought out their maple syrup. Attuned to what she clearly saw as an impending disaster, Hila began chopping some vegetables and pulled her labaneh out of the fridge – lining up what a sane person would have for breakfast.
As I said at the time, we were four Jews divided by our breakfast – which is not a situation I'm used to among Jews.
In the end, the confusing part for me was why they had maple syrup in the first place. It turns out Hila used it to make coffee cake. Which is something you eat much later in the day or evening.
And here we are now – with two Gingoses leading different lives – one part of a family in a Haifa suburb and the other the kingpin of the front yard of a small house owned by a foreigner in Skala, Patmos. I highly doubt this Gingos is even Jewish – although my dad says the only Jewish animals are Katz.
The funny thing about having Israeli friends is that we're both the same and different. In theory, a country of your people – of the same ethnicity and religion – makes you all one. In a sense that's true. At the same time, every country has its culture. Similar to China and the Overseas Chinese (think Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore) – often scattered people hang on to the old ways and preserve them better than in the home country. In China's case, this is partly from the radical changes of Communism and the ravaging damage of the Cultural Revolution – leaving people in Penang and Hong Kong more in possession of traditional Chinese culture than those in most of China itself.
For American Jews, living in a culture designed to assimilate means ceasing to be Jewish is as easy as letting go. Marry someone who isn't Jewish, don't belong to a temple, skip Shabbat, don't host holidays… becoming secular is as easy as 123. Dissociating from your identity isn't much more difficult – especially if you don't actively raise your kids Jewish. In a generation, it's gone. In fairness, the ability to assimilate is what has allowed Jews to succeed. We can be American. We can engage in any career and walk of life we want. But if you want to be Jewish and successful in the secular world – then you have to work at it and find a balance.
Israelis don't have this. They have the freedom not to try to be Jewish – Shabbat is a day off. Holidays are national. Going to temple or not doesn't make you more or less Jewish. Even a Bar or Bat Mitzvah is easier – because it's all in your language. American kids have Hebrew School and tutoring. Reading from the Torah is scary and takes a lot of work. Not so much for Israelis.
Israelis also did some revising. Jews came from all over the world – so there had to be standardization of the language and a number of cultural norms. In the process, Yiddish gave way to Hebrew and Ashkenazi (Eastern European) cultural traditions by-and-large took the backseat to a more Sephardic set of norms. Which means many of the Yiddish phrases and the Ashkenazi foods and traditions that dominate American Jewish life – aka what I'm used to – aren't prevalent in Israel. In fact, Ziv knows ZERO Yiddish vocabulary.
Which means sometimes things that are easy to communicate to another Jew at home need a little more translation for Ziv – ie. my dad's joke of "Why can't you keep Jews in jail? They eat lox." – not only bombed but led to a much longer discussion than I would have expected. And there's always the fascinating aspect of what it means to be a Jew in a non-Jewish culture vs one in a completely Jewish one. We both have security problems – but in very different ways. I worry about security at my synagogue and there's the sadness of the increasing threat of antisemitism at home. Meanwhile, Ziv faces no antisemitism in the streets or from within his society – but occasionally rockets or missiles that threaten to annihilate his country – or at the very least destroy entire condo blocks of homes. The antisemitic threat is from outside. But its consequences are more lethal. They are different kinds of pain – yet both exist.
At the same time, Ziv and I both live in technologically advanced, first-world countries where we have good educations, professional jobs, live in a similar socio-economic strata and are raising families. There's a lot more that's similar than different about us – and the lives we lead.
As one would expect on Patmos, our time has consisted of beach, eating, talking, swimming, talking, riding motorscooters, talking, swimming, eating. It's an ideal situation for catching up and has been an incredible experience. Ziv may never come to appreciate a good noodle kugel, but we have a deep appreciation of one another and offer each other a lot of valuable perspectives.
Of course once in awhile we may bring each other down. Via an experience I won't detail here, I was in a situation where the best social decision was to buy a Cuban cigar. I chose the cheapest of the options – a Churchill for 12 euros. Since I don't smoke cigars or anything else, I offered it to Ziv. He had never smoked a cigar, which meant that I had more experience since I did attempt smoking one at a friend's co-ed baby shower many years ago. We capped yesterday evening by sharing a Cuban cigar. I can't say we were good at starting it. Or smoking it – although I think we got better as we went. We definitely couldn't finish it and I had to remember what I saw my former father-in-law do when he put out his cigars to save them for later. And I relied a lot on memories of my Grandpa when figuring out how to get the cigar started – not something Grandpa really meant to teach me and even if he had, not something I learned particularly well. All the same – between us – Ziv and I managed to smoke half a cigar. It might be among the wildest, craziest things we could do on Patmos – which Ziv says is the center of innocence.
We had hoped to go out on a day boat and swim at nearby islands and coves – but the winds and currents caused the captain to cancel today's trip. It's not unusual – the poor guy runs a business he has to gauge on a day-by-day basis.
Instead, Ziv and I had a long coffee and breakfast at a cafe by the water, visited some beaches and he tried his first taste of non-Israeli hummus. Unlike most of the Greek food, Ziv was no impressed. "It doesn't have tahini. I like my hummus creamy."
It's hard to step down from the Mt Sinai of hummus to the lowly Mt Olympus. 
