Family affair / The Banns By Avner Avrahami and Reli Avrahami Moshav Kidron The cast: Oriel (36), Netali (24) and Yermi (17 months). The name Yermi: "He had a serious face, like Yirmiyahu [Jeremiah], but the 'I' gives the name a mischievous twist." Advertisement The home: Old Jewish Agency, renovated, adjacent to a big new house, 85 square meters, red roof with white plaster. It stands in the shade of a huge eucalyptus tree, alongside fruit-laden citrus trees, at the end of a lawn, with a small veranda adorned with potted plants and a reddish cat (Lola) on an abandoned armchair. They are renting ($500 a month). The entrance is through the kitchen and from there the living room and the two other rooms are accessed. Entering: Everything is clean, tidy, well kept. Waiting on the living-room table is a hot round marble cake and next to it a plate of long end-of-summer grapes. We wait for Oriel to come back from dropping off Yermi - this is the first day of his new school year - at a play group (NIS 2,000 a month). In the meantime we wander around. Wandering around: The floor is light-colored ceramic, the Formica shines in the kitchen, the round table is covered with a checkered pastel tablecloth. We head for the rooms. The study on the right is also Yermi's room (dual use). Cohabiting this space are a computer and a crib, along with a diaper stand on which 40 diapers are divided into piles of eight, and Pinocchio marionettes. In the background a radio-tape is quietly playing piano music. Onward: Onward means into the bedroom and the living room, to a beige sofa (from Oriel's grandmother) and two twin light armchairs. Opposite, attached to the wall, is a unit of bookshelves divided into square sections (IKEA) on which, in addition to books (Hanoch Levin, Bialik, Kafka, Dahn Ben Amotz, Hermann Hesse) is also a collection of colorful tin cans (Netali's). On the walls are framed family pictures, and on a high shelf close to the ceiling stand two pairs of candlesticks. The television has been shunted aside; not only is it difficult to watch, physically, it is also not hooked up to a cable TV provider ("We have an internal antenna"). Livelihoods and occupations: Oriel is an engineer in Intel's Kiryat Gat plant; what he does enables the slice of silicon to do its electrical work and to function as a chip. He says that to manufacture a typical chip, from the moment it enters the machine until it emerges, takes about two months. "It's the alchemy of our time," he says. "You take sand - that is, silicon - and you turn it into gold." Oriel's occupation (cont.): He works a five-day week, from 8 A.M., and tries to be back by 6. Three times a week he carpools; twice a week he takes the company car (a Hyundai Getz), 45 minutes each way. Netali's livelihood: She is an occupational therapist at the Be'er Yaakov Mental Health Center and works a five-day week (8 A.M.-2 P.M.). The goal of her work is to help the patients to progress from "hospitalization to integration in the community." The work sometimes leaves her distressed, too, and during the year she has worked, she has also suffered some disappointments and drawn conclusions ("to tone down expectations"). After she gets home she needs half an hour to herself before going to pick up Yermi. Oriel's bio: Born in 1970 in Ramat Aviv. His parents now live in Hod Hasharon. His mother was born into a diamond-merchant family in Antwerp, Belgium; his father, who was born in Algeria and settled in Israel in the early 1960s, is an importer of swimming pools, and also treats trees. After elementary school in Ramat Aviv, Oriel attended high school in Hod Hasharon on a science-mathematics matriculation track, then served in the Artillery Corps and reached officer rank. After the army he traveled to the East, rented a motorcycle and visited the Golden Triangle in northern Thailand (with an ex-girlfriend), where he encountered wild elephants in the heart of a swamp. Returning to Israel after six months, he did the university psychometric test (Netali: "Above 750") and began studying physics at Tel Aviv University ("terrific fun") while teaching mathematics ("subsistence moonlighting"). He completed an undergraduate degree at TAU and under pressure from a friend, did a master's at the Weizmann Institute, specializing in a model relating to crystals. Afterward he found himself at Intel, where has been for three and a half years. Netali's bio: Born in 1982 to the Versano family in Bat Yam ("We moved to Herzliya immediately"). Her parents are native-born (their parents were from Bulgaria). Her father works at Discount Bank (head of a business section), her mother manages a postal services branch (Geula, in Tel Aviv), and they live in Tel Aviv's upscale Bavli neighborhood. Netali has a younger brother who is now doing army service (Givati infantry brigade). She attended elementary school and junior high in Herzliya, and in high school, in Ramat Hasharon, majored in chemistry and theater ("On the one hand structure, on the other, lack of inhibition"). Lack of inhibition: In 12th grade she met Oriel, who is more than 12 years older than she, and moved in with him in his Rehovot apartment, from where she traveled every day to high school in Ramat Hasharon ("What you don't do for love"). Her parents: "Until the moment I told them I was getting married, they accepted it favorably." Her mother, she says, advised her not to make bombastic declarations such as "I am moving in with him," but to say "I am going to sleep" at his house and just take an overnight bag with her. When she told them she was getting married (she was 18) her father seemed agitated ("He said a watermelon had fallen on his head"). Oriel: "Netali is the most independent girl I have ever met." Netali's bio (cont.): She served eight months in the army (Signal Corps) and then was discharged ("When you get married, you are discharged"). Before, during and after her army service she waitressed at a number of cafes, where she learned how to work an espresso machine and also met Oriel. The meeting: 1999. She was a guest-waitress (17 years old) at the New York, New York restaurant (then located in the London Mini-Store complex in Tel Aviv). He was a 29-year-old physicist who had come to the restaurant with his brother and cousins. She seated them ("Smoking, nonsmoking"); they were a merry group. Then (she says), he began to follow her with his eyes "to the point of harassment." In addition (after the tip), he gave her his phone number and she, "scandalously," called him right after her shift ("I didn't understand anything about it"). They dated for a year and a half, raising some eyebrows in her high school ("The affair was intense, my best girlfriend cut out on me for good"), but nothing could prevent the wedding. The wedding: 2001, banquet hall in Kibbutz Yakum ("the whole shebang"). They designed the invitations; their song was "Under the Tree of Love" (Yossi Banai and Nurit Galron). The studies: Netali studied occupational therapy for three years at Tel Aviv University ("She graduated cum laude" - Oriel). The whole class was women, she relates ("One-third secular, one-third religious, one-third Arab"), and in the last year they all showed up with babies ("They always say this is the final project at the end of the year"). Daily routine: They aspire to get up at 6 A.M., but in practice get up at 6:30. Oriel opens a window for the cat and hurries to the kitchen to prepare Similac for Yermi (Netali: "I breast-fed for three days") and two cups of instant coffee. He takes one cup to Netali in bed and the other with him as he takes the bottle to Yermi. He gets a hug and a kiss from the baby, gives him the milk and changes his diaper. He then dresses him, brushes his teeth and chats with him about current events. In the meantime Netali dresses and puts on makeup (rouge, eyeliner, mascara; she waits a bit with the lipstick). At 7 everyone is ready; there's no breakfast. Netali takes a yogurt with her and puts on lipstick on the way. Oriel has his second coffee (a double Macchiato) in the plant's cafeteria (now upgraded), where he also eats lunch. Netali has lunch at the hospital ("in a staff dining room"). The food, she says, is nothing special ("We have seven different types of cabbage"). At 2 she heads home and at 3 picks up Yermi ("the best moment of the day"). She devotes the afternoon solely to him. Netali says she's "very motherly, but with limits." They registered Yermi for the play group when he was five months old ("Social skills are very important for us") and they constantly talk and sing with him ("Every situation is musical"). Supper: A new custom for them (bread, salad, cheeses), which they prepare alternately; the same goes with bathing the baby ("Whoever is there"). By 8:30 P.M., at the latest, Yermi is in bed, asleep. Television: "A Star is Born" (the Israeli version of "American Idol") and the Channel 2 news. Getting up at night: "Both of us, and sometimes we 'waste' the two of us on the same effort." Dream: A home in Kidron. God: Netali doesn't believe, but lights Shabbat candles ("Oriel insists"). Oriel believes, but not in reward and punishment. There is a surprisingly high proportion of believers in physics departments, he says ("Probably because of the inexplicable beauty and complexity of nature"). Quarrels: "The truth is that we don't know how to fight for a whole evening." The war: Oriel: "The media has made us too transparent." Even though they voted Meretz, they don't think Ehud Olmert should resign ("Let them examine responsibility further back in the past, too"). Agreement: "Because we did not actually win and did not actually lose, there is a chance" (Oriel). Happiness quotient (scale of 1-10): Oriel - 9; Netali - 9. The place Moshav Kidron - A rural community of 900, about two kilometers east of Gedera, it was founded in 1949 by Yugoslav immigrants on the lands of the former Palestinian village of Qatra.

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