"DON'T 'GIVERET' ME!" - The Story of an Innocent Israeli Chicken

Disclaimer: I DON'T regret moving back to Israel.

On Tuesday, May 5th, my friend Patti and I went to the massive Tiv Tam grocery store in Be'ersheva and she offered to buy me a chicken. This was quite the offer, as my landlady had finally bought me the new oven she promised, which was delayed by a month due to her inability to travel here due to the war, and then a two-week delivery delay.

Patti could finally travel back to Israel from the US after her flights got changed a billion times due to said war. She is one of many friends I have made since October 7th, thanks to my writing about the hostages and her incredible involvement abroad in the cause to raise awareness about the hostages and many other things, and she is amazing - traveling here with heaps of goodies for my new apartment including a lavender garbage can for my bathroom, tons of No. 7 serums and moisturizers and even bubble-wrapping three bottles of my impossible to find alcohol-free red wine!!!

The chickens were about $20, and we were quite the spectacle trying to pick one, asking two workers to go to the back to check if they had a smaller one, but the guy said he would do this and then didn't and the enormous Russian woman pretended to not understand us.

At one point, Patti asked me if I would prefer salmon, but I had just prepared salmon for myself, so I said no - I really wanted chicken, as in my shipment from America I finally accessed on April 1st, was the black roasting pan with white speckles on it that reminds me so much of my mom and one envelope of Lipton onion soup mix - so I bought apple juice at the store to make my mom's incredible recipe - "Melanie's favorite chicken" which is quite literally - onion soup mix, apple juice, black pepper and just a dash of paprika. So, just imagine the look on my face a week ago tonight when I went to prepare myself an actual Shabbat dinner, took the chicken out of the fridge and was met with a stink to high heaven! For ten minutes, I tried to convince myself that I was imagining it and that the chicken was just fine...but eventually I checked the date and even the day we bought it, it was expired - the date read May 4th! Please don't ask me if this was the expiry date or the sell by date because of course the entire label was in Hebrew and there was only one date - all that mattered was that Patti had bought me this 50 NIS gift - and I had either messed up by not freezing it immediately for the sake of three days - or more likely - it had been bad when we bought it.

So here it was, after 5pm Friday evening, me and my growling stomach, and I realized I was boiling water for a cup of noodles. I don't have a car, so I knew I would not even attempt to bother with this until the next time I was genuinely at that store - because I also of course knew the miniscule chances of anything being done about this complete travesty.

My bigger dilemma was whether to tell Patti this had happened, as if I wanted a chance in hell to win any argument, I would need a picture of her actual receipt, if she still had it.

Patti eventually decided this dilemma for me, because she asked me about the chicken the other day. "Do you by any chance have the receipt? As even with it, the chances of my winning any argument are slim to none..." Patti: "Well, they should just give you a new one, once you explain the situation." So, Patti had not learned anything from her Misrad ha Panim experience. Shocking, but not surprising - and she cannot be blamed....

Patti had come out to Israel after the Yom Kippur war in a frighteningly similar way as I had done immediately after the October 7th attack, and I know from things she has shared with me that she has always wrestled with her decision to have not made Aliyah at the time and settled here...

So, on her visit to Be'ersheva, I decided to help her with these regrets, by dragging her along to my bureaucratic day from hell. In my attempt to have my American driver's license switched over to an Israeli one "the easy way" - I had embarked on what turned into a 20-step process that would ultimately fail, but until I knew that, I was going from the Ministry of the Interior, to the Ministry of Absorption, to the Ministry of Taxes and round and round and round I went...so I decided to take Patti along for the ride, to see "The Real Israel..." But this experiment didn't work - because Patti couldn't actually understand what was being said - which led to my anger steadily increasing by 25% as we left each office with instructions to go to yet another one...and this is why she thought I could just walk in to this store and get a free replacement chicken.

Well!

Here we are - the following Friday - and I returned by bus to the gigantic Tiv Tam supermarket, and there she was! The gigantic Russian woman with the chickens! "At zocheret oti?" Do you remember me? I began with my most adorable smile, to which she stared back coldly and blankly, so I continued.

"I was here last week with my American friend - and she bought me a chicken for 50 NIS. It was bad - the date on it was the day before we bought it - and she has the receipt--" "Ani lo mavina otach!" I don't understand you.

Sigh. Here we go...

The female customer next to me grabbed her husband, now on board, and dragged him over to me, so I told him exactly what I had told Sergeant Chicken in exactly the same Hebrew words - and incredibly - he understood me - and said it to the woman in Russian.

She started barking a few things, and the next thing I knew, an extremely tall Russian man with rosy cheeks appeared out of nowhere and began yelling at me. Now it was two against two as the man next to me was sort of on my side, but he knew it was a losing battle, as he was like "Kacha ze ba aretz" - "This is how it is in Israel. NEXT TIME - smell it when you buy it..." The fact that he didn't just say to "Next time CHECK THE DATE" - was telling.

The worker with the rosy cheeks was going on and on as I was trying to argue with him.

"Giveret - giveret - ze lo oved kacha!" Lady - Lady - it doesn't work like this.

Now he had done it.

"Don't GIVERET me!" I said, to nobody's understanding, ("Don't 'LADY' me!"), and is there a way it does work?

I told the customer trying to help me that I was going to go to the manager of the entire store as it was my birthday on Sunday, but I of course changed my mind the moment I walked away, as without a receipt - (and even with one - in someone else's name - in the US - HELL even with one in MY name) - this was going to be an epic EVENT - and who has energy for this? This is Israel - where the customer is always wrong - and the sooner you just accept this - the better off you will be.

Truth be told, I am lucky, because this is my second Aliyah, so I have muscle memory, and this is very helpful lately as I can admit there has been a shift since my first Aliyah.

I used to think that if I could just grow a penis and have perfect Hebrew that I would win every argument hands down in five minutes flat. But now I know that if both of those things were true, I would just be in Gaza or Lebanon covered in dust, trapped in long sleeves in 120-degree weather...and if I think I am frustrated now with the New York Times' gaslighting the universe that we in Israel are training IDF dogs to rape Palestinians - on the day that the truth finally came out about what was done to women, children and men on October 7th and since...how frustrated would I be if I were lying on my stomach with sand blowing in my eyes, when at any moment a sadistic psychopath terrorist could appear to kill me - and if that were to happen, the entire west would do the laughing emoji when my name and picture were published? So, I'll just do what I did last time I lived in Israel. Eat eggs for dinner, with lots of cucumbers and hummus.

Shabbat Shalom from the Negev Desert.

Me, Patti and a lot of wind

Melanie Preston is a Jewish writer who returned to Israel after eleven years immediately following the October 7th attack. To support her work, her writing and her new documentary about a released child hostage and her family (coming out soon), please donate to her GoFundMe. Thank you and Shalom from Israel.