A [long overdue] silly post

For those of you who may not be familiar with the typical Israeli radio news format, each hour (on the hour) a series of short beeps emanates from radios around the country, and a final slightly longer beep compels people to look at their watches as they listen to the opening words from the somber-voiced newscaster.

The whole 'somber voice thing' must be some sort of job requirement in Israeli news circles because each one of the small pool of regular newscasters seems to try to out-do one another with ever greater levels of deep, deep concern dripping from every syllable (and everyone in the country seems to have their personal favorite).

When I first moved here I started worrying immediately upon hearing that terribly pained tone of voice as the newscaster slowly introduced him/herself (obviously in Hebrew):

"This is the Voice of Israel from Jerusalem, the time is [...]  and this is the news as reported by [name of newscaster]... 

By this point I would be thinking to myself, 'surely something tragic has happened for the newscaster to sound like that'.  I would brace myself to hear about a terrorist attack or a horrible traffic accident... I mean if he sounds like that, someone must have died!

Even during times of relative calm, people unconsciously stop talking on buses and in offices to hear the first few lines of the hourly newscast.  If something important (i.e. bad) had happened, it would be mentioned during the first 15 seconds of the news. 

If the lead story is something mundane, people unconsciously tune out and go back to whatever they were doing when they first heard the 'beeps'.  I would wager that most Israelis don't even realize that they pause each hour to catch these first few words of the news. 

So last week I was standing in a coworker's office when the radio behind his desk started to give off the familiar beeps.  I was pleased to see that by unspoken agreement we both broke off our conversation mid-sentence and glanced at our watches in unison as we waited for the newscast to begin.

Sure enough, the voice from the radio sounded as though he were broadcasting from a state funeral.  Instinctively I braced for the worst and listened carefully as he led off with a story about some internal squabbling in the Knesset.  I breathed a sigh of relief and began to turn back to my coworker when one of the next stories caught my ear.

"What did he say?", I asked my coworker.

I usually have to concentrate quite closely to follow the news, but the words that had caught my ear were vaguely familiar... even in Hebrew.  This happens frequently since there are many English words that have been adopted for use in modern Hebrew.  But in this case I was sure I must have been mistaken.

[I'll pause here to give a quick primer to people with no background in Hebrew.  Like many languages in the world, Hebrew has masculine and feminine nouns.  If there are more than one of a particular noun it takes on either a masculine plural ending; im (pronounced 'eem') or a feminine plural ending; ot (pronounced 'oat') depending on its gender.]

Anyway, back to the story:

The news story was about the reactions of the Israeli gay and lesbian community to the various countries around the world that have recently introduced or passed legislation allowing same-sex marriage.  What had caught my ear were the terms the newscaster had used for 'gays & lesbains': 'Homo'im V'Lesbi'ot' [the 'v' sound is the Hebrew word for 'and'].

I still don't know exactly why those words gave me the giggles.  I suppose it could be that the word used for 'gay' is a mildly pejorative term (unless, of course, the person using the term is gay) in English.  On top of that was the fact that this sad-voiced newscaster was attempting to inject the maximum amount of desperation and tragedy into every word as he read the copy, without regard to the actual content of the story... so it just sounded to my foreign ears like a bad joke. 

OK, maybe not such a laugh-out-loud funny story.  But it sure made me giggle at a time when I desperately needed the laugh.