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Avi Rockoff

I Will Always Dream in Fahrenheit

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New places bring surprises. When the new place reads from right to left, there is more to get used to than reading Hebrew. Using the metric system instead of miles and ounces, for instance. Or inverting polarity. That’s a fancy way of saying that you keep looking or turning the wrong way. It’s what happens when brains wired for 110 meet a 220 world.

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ORIENTATION

Israelis drive on the right. This is familiar if you come from the US. Other things, not so much.

  • You’re on the main floor of a Cineplex and want to take the escalator down one flight to watch a movie. You turn to the escalator on the right, only to see people coming up at you. So you go left.
  • Across the street is a shopping mall. Doors face you for entry and exit. People are entering on the left, exiting on the right.
  • In restaurants the napkins and the cutlery are to the right of your plate.
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  • One flight up from a theater lobby, you watch most people coming upstairs hugging the banister on their left.
  • Likewise, when passing a path from one street to the next with a railing in the center, you see….
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  • The number on your barber’s business card is always “out of service.” The barber explains that you’ve been calling his fax. Where I come from, the first of two numbers is for the phone, the second for the fax. Here too. But in Hebrew the first number is on the right.
  • A friend of ours prefers old-fashioned booklet daily planners to on-line calendars. Planners here show Sunday on the right and Shabbat on the left. Your brain tells you that two columns from the right is Thursday. But no, it is Tuesday. This is disorienting. Plus, you miss appointments.
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“Orient” comes from a Latin word meaning, “light,” and refers to the east, where the sun rises. If you don’t know where East is, you’re dis-Oriented. (See: Columbus.) I like the Hebrew word for orientation, namely hitmatze’ut, finding yourself. Those who cannot find themselves suffer from disorientatzia. Never mind.

MEASURING

Turning to measurements, newcomers have to adjust to going from miles, ounces, and Fahrenheit to kilometers, cubic centimeters, and Celsius. These are just different numbering systems, and numbers are objective and inert and don’t mean anything, right?

Wrong.

I don’t find kilometers a problem. If the neon light in the tunnel says your lane’s speed limit is 70, so does the odometer on the car, and both mean kilometers. No math needed. (Of course if you obey the sign, Israeli drivers zip past you on both sides, and drive up behind you, flash their brights, and honk. But that’s another story.)

When it comes to temperature, though, Fahrenheit paints a picture that Celsius does not.

  • “Is he tall?! He’s 6-3 if he’s an inch.”
  • “She’s petite all right. Without heels, maybe 4-10.”
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The Celsius equivalents: 1 meter 90, and 147 centimeters, paint nothing. Not to me, anyway.

Because I worked in the medical field, I got familiar with cc’s and milliliters. About 30 to an ounce. But temperature is another matter.

I think back. I am four years old. I feel terrible. Mom notices and rests the back of her hand on my forehead, then kisses it. “You’re burning up!” She says. And takes my temperature. Rectally. (You remember that.)

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She wipes the Vaseline off the thermometer and reads it. “103!” She exclaims. She lies me down in bed, puts a cold compress on my forehead, and lapses into Yiddish. Mayn urim kind,” she says, “mayn shufel kind.”  My poor child, my lowly child. (Shufel is from the Hebrew shafal.)So what is 103? 103 is sick. 103 feels lousy. 103 conjures memories of deep expressions of maternal love, concern, and reassurance. All that feels vivid and quite wonderful.

In Celsius 103 is 39.4. What does 39.4 signify?

Nothing. 39.4 signifies nothing, to me anyway. It evokes nothing. It conjures nothing. You can do the math, but when did doing the math ever evoke anything connected with experience and emotion?

Other examples:

  • “The damned landlord keeps blasting the radiators. It must be 85 in here! Open the window!”
  • “Today it’s going down into the single digits. Better wear your parka.”
  • “I like to keep the temperature at 68°. Everyone feels comfortable.”

Fahrenheit: 85 degrees. 5 degrees. 68 degrees.

I can feel them. I can see what I’m wearing. I can picture myself setting the thermostat.

Celsius: 29.4 Celsius. Minus15. 20.

What can I picture and feel? Zero. For all they evoke, they could be integers on an expired lottery ticket.

It would be different if I grew up Celsius. But I didn’t. You get to grow up once, which is quite enough.

If polarity gives you problems, you can try to adapt by hearing your brain tell you to go one way and going the other.  That might make you a standing duck in the middle of the street; with no crosswalk to protect you. Not recommended.

But when it comes to mental images, sensations, and emotion-laden responses, baked in over a lifetime, there’s really not much to do, for me anyway, but to stick with what’s already coursing through my synapses.

Which is why I will always think and dream in Fahrenheit.

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I like to take walks in the morning. In the summer, once the mercury starts to hit 105 every day, I know I have to be back in the A/C by 6 AM. Even worse, it may not even start to cool down till 19:30, whenever that is.

About the Author
Avi Rockoff came on aliyah with his wife Shuli in March 2022. They live in Jerusalem. His new book, This Year in Jerusalem: Aliyah Dispatches, has been recently published by Shikey Press.