By Chava Ewa
Last Updated 10/17/2017 at 2:30 PM
Judea and Samaria: A Canadian-Israeli Olah has petitioned the American government for U.S. citizenship claiming that all the Israelis on her yishuv already believe that she is American anyway. Rivky K. has lived in a town 15 minutes north of Jerusalem for over 5 years and is known to everyone as ‘Rivky ha-Amerikait’ …even though she is not actually American. “Everyone thinks I’m American and all they want to do is kvetch to me about President Trump.” Rivky noted. “If I have to put up with that every day, I want all the other benefits of U.S. citizenship…isn’t that fair?”
Rivky explained that the misunderstanding happened shortly after she moved to the yishuv. “I went to get my mail, nothing much… just 10 or 12 parcels from Next and Amazon. Svetlana, the doar [post office] lady spoke a bit of English and told me about “all the other nice Americans here” who she knew: Sarah, who had a baking supply store [editor’s note: Sarah is Australian] and Rabbi H. [yep…. South African] and Malka the seamstress [British… of course] Svetlana started calling me ‘Rivky ha-Amerikait’ but I didn’t have the language skills to correct her… so the nickname stuck”
“It’s not my fault! I just wish there was a way I could communicate better with the Israelis here… you know, like if they improved their English or something.” she griped. “But I’m working on it! I have a great idea about setting up some kind of an intensive language-learning school for them… what do you think?“
If you very clearly state that your are “Canadit”, you will usually get a much bigger smile from most Israelis and others and often just a blank look from Americans. My daughter, the teacher, at the beginning of the school year if she has new pupils, explains that they will hear “zeds” and not “zees” and that they can live with it. She does not expect them to spell Canadian. It’s enough that the States are not always the best neighbours but we are definitely and distinctly unique and very polite.