Prove you've not been married since

"Siz schwer tzu zein a Yid"

In Yiddish, said with a certain intonation, a long sigh, a tone of resignation, a slumping or shrugging of the shoulders: "Siz schwer tzu zein a Yid" The usual translation is, “It’s hard to be a Jew.” But, literally, “It’s heavy to be a Jew,” as if one is a beast of burden.

Today, at the Misrad HaPnim, Interior Ministry, (almost a homonym for the Office of the face) the almost polite manager worked at driving home this Jew-heaviness. Things got complexer and complexer, like Alice Through the Looking Glass. To remember, I took notes as she talked. For, what she said drifted with time. Wafted with the breezes of time.

You ask, Why did I go there when I was there with Osnat just last week? Well, last week was to get me straightened out as a returning Jew. Back then, I thought that Osnat, my aide from the hospital, negotiated well with the trying-to-help bureaucrat, Osnat arguing that I had returned to live here again.

But, the bureacracy’s attitude seems to be, “Believe nothing.” Or maybe more like Reagan’s “Trust but verify.” A refresher: we spent over an hour pointing out that my registration in 2005 as divorced and living in Jerusalem was no longer valid. Or partially—I am divorced — and remarried: but it seems those two truths could not be held in the same head by the otherwise meaning-well bureaucrat. Finally, proferring my marriage license, she seemed to accede. But later, when I looked at my new registration, she listed me as…divorced. Although no longer living in Jerusalem: I showed her my lease for the apartment in Neve Oved. Not sufficient, she said. How do we know that you are really living there and not jusst paying the rent. We need a letter from the township of Neve Oved that you are really living there. Osnat, my dedicated Osnat, is on the phone to the township and they fax her a letter right there and then to show to the Ministry of the Face bureaucrat.