Profiles in Etiquette — Hannah Bavly

Hannah Bavly (1901 - 1993) — “Born into an aristocratic Polish-Jewish family around the turn of the century— she prefers not to say exactly when— Bavly learned ladylike behavior from a German governess. After immigrating to what was then Palestine, she married a proper Dutch Jew and honed her manners on the countless official lunches and dinners they gave while her husband was the Israeli ambassador to South Africa.”
— Public Domain Photo

Does Zionism Allow for Good Manners? 

The ‘Emily Post’ of Israel hopes so.

Hanna Bavly’s is a modern Israeli voice crying in the wilderness.

Born into an aristocratic Polish-Jewish family around the turn of the century— she prefers not to say exactly when— Bavly learned ladylike behavior from a German governess. After immigrating to what was then Palestine, she married a proper Dutch Jew and honed her manners on the countless official lunches and dinners they gave while her husband was the Israeli ambassador to South Africa.

Returning to Israel 25 years ago, she began answering readers’ questions on etiquette for the Hebrew-language newspaper Haaretz. Later she wrote “The Manners and Customs Manual” for the Israeli Foreign Ministry and gave lectures and courses on politeness.

Still, the lady some people call Israel’s ‘Emily Post’ concedes that she is a one-woman industry.

“I have no competition,” Bavly said in an interview at her home here. “I’m a lonely fighter.”

Even the most strident Zionist will admit that Bavly’s help is needed.

Advice to Tourists

“Sabras (as native-born Israelis are called) as a group are not the best-mannered adults on the planet,” advises the Rogue’s Guide to Israel, a popular tourist guide published here. In fact, the guide adds, “It has been suggested that should a well-bred Frenchman of the 18th Century glance at Israel today, he would think he had been transported to some barbaric tribe in the heart of the deepest part of the jungle.”

In his guide for new immigrants, “Will the Real Israel Please Stand Up,” author Leon Fine warns that some newcomers never adjust to the “shoving, pushing and rudeness.” The happiest ones, he suggests, are those who “quickly learn to do as the Romans do.”

An Israeli professional woman said she was taken aback when she met her Sabra brother-in-law at the airport upon his return from an 18-month study tour in the United States.

“Suddenly I heard this voice saying ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ and lots of other non-Israeli expressions,” the woman said. “I had to look twice to be sure it was he.”

A popular new Israeli satirical review includes a sketch that turns the story of “My Fair Lady” on its head. The Israeli Eliza starts out cultured and learns how to be crude in order to fit in.

“It is time we stopped making excuses for bad behavior, especially by people employed in the service of the public,” Michael Galland, who immigrated to Israel eight years ago, wrote in a recent letter to the English-language Jerusalem Post.

“This blind acceptance of the way things are done in Israel permeates not only our social contacts but our very existence,” he complained. “Do we not have to contend with enough pressures and hardship without adding to them bad behavior, poor manners and lack of consideration?”

Galland was particularly appalled by an airline employee pushing a trolley cart who bulled his way through a crowd of waiting passengers. But other examples of bad manners abound.

“In Israel, a man’s home is rarely his castle, and people just drop by uninvited or unannounced,” Fine said in his guide for immigrants. Such behavior is so common, he noted, that those who do not indulge are considered to be either snobbish or abnormal.

Even on a first visit to one’s home, Israelis are fond of wandering about, inspecting books, photographs and knickknacks. It is not thought to be in bad taste to ask how much the hosts paid for anything--including the house or apartment itself.

Reading your neighbor’s newspaper over his shoulder while riding the bus is considered polite. In fact, the reader who doesn’t offer a few pages of his paper to a nosy fellow passenger is thought to be boorish.

“Israelis detest standing on lines and will use any pretext or form of skulduggery to avoid taking their just turn in a queue,” the Rogue’s Guide says. The same attitude, the book warns, extends to the highways, where “courtesy on the road is unheard of, and an Israeli who yields the right of way to another driver is seen as a coward or a sissy.”

On the subject of talking, the guide points out that Sabras prefer high volume.

“It is not that they mean to offend or to pick an argument,” according to the guide. “It is simply that shouting instead of speaking is the accepted norm.”

Israelis offer various explanations for what they admit is a national lack of manners. Bavly notes that Israel is a melting pot of immigrants from 100 or more different cultures, “and each one brought his manners with him.”

‘We Are Not British’

“An elderly man from an Arab culture will not get behind a young man in line,” Bavly said. “He will go to the top.”

She also points out that Israel, in the tone of its national voice, merely reflects the norm in this part of the world.

“We are not British,” she said. “We belong to the Mediterranean.”

Others argue that Israelis are too busy worrying about issues of life and death to be overly concerned with manners. Fine notes in his guide: “Israelis tend to be more suspicious, nervous and impatient than other people. But these characteristics were learned during centuries of pogroms, suffering and trying to get along without succeeding. They are gripers, but what else can they do considering the heavy load they bear? What other people could endure such problems and keep their sanity, much less their good manners?”

Rebellious Attitude?

Still others see rough manners as part of the “New Jew’s” rebellion against the image of the ghetto Jew, bowing and scraping to his oppressors. In this view, politeness becomes a sign of weakness.

Another factor is the strong socialist streak in Israel’s history, with its emphasis on egalitarianism.

“An Israeli waiter will no longer indignantly return a proffered tip. But he will not be servile to the customers as he might elsewhere,” Fine said. “He will do his job without being charming and is not disappointed if the diner seems dissatisfied. Israelis are simply not at ease in circumstances requiring formality or positions of service, and their behavior reflects this attitude. It is the unusual office clerk or waiter who is as courteous as his counterpart in Europe or America.”

To Bavly, it is basically a problem of education.

“What are good manners?” she asked rhetorically. “It’s not only how to eat. It’s how to have consideration for the other one. . . . I tell them (audiences) that if you happen to be on an island alone, you don’t have to have good manners. But the minute somebody else arrives, you have to have consideration. Behavior is different in different countries, but consideration is something that goes with us.”

Basically, Bavly said, Israelis “are very kind. They will do anything for you. But they have never learned how to behave.”— By Dan Fisher, Times Staff Writer, Tel Aviv, 1986

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia