Family Affair - Haaretz

Subscribe to Print Edition

Thu., January 24, 2008 Shvat 17, 5768

Israel Time: 14:11 (EST+7)

web haaretz.com

Back to Homepage

Rosner's Domain

Diplomacy

Defense

Jewish World

Opinion

National

Print Edition

Advertising

Books

Arts & Leisure

Business

Real Estate

Easy Start

Travel

Week's End

Anglo File

Family Affair

By Avner Avrahami and Reli Avrahami

Tags: Family Affair

Ramat Aviv Gimmel

W The cast: Vered (36), Yoel (34), Itai (4) and Shira (2).

	Advertisement

W The home: Apartment building, eight floors, beige stucco, a yard, 48 tenants, stainless-steel elevator, fourth floor, living room leading from the front door to the plastic blinds, an open kitchen, three bedrooms - one for the parents, two for the children. Total of 90 square meters after renovation and extension. Until nine years ago, the home of Vered's grandparents.

W Design: The living room is divided into two, one part for hosting guests, the other for the children. The first part contains two small reddish sofas (purchased in South Tel Aviv's furniture mecca) and a large white television stand (IKEA). On its shelves are small sculptures of wood and a peacock made of folded paper. In the other part is a whole array of toys arranged by family on wooden shelves. A glimpse into the orderly kitchen reveals cream cakes waiting on a plate. On to the rooms.

W The rooms: Shira's room has a white bed, a white bureau and a Mickey Mouse resting on a yellow moon; in Itai's room there is a blue bed and a big bike (a gift from Grandma and Grandpa). The master bedroom contains a large desk with a computer; adjacent is a walk-in closet, with the clothing meticulously arranged, some of it hung, some folded. Back to the living room (and the cakes).

W Livelihoods and occupations: Yoel is assistant pastry chef at the Moses restaurant in Ramat Hahayal in Tel Aviv. He works a six-day week, 11 hours a day, starting around 2 A.M. and finishing about 1 P.M., including Shabbat. He helps in preparing all the desserts and loves his work ("wild about it"). The restaurant, he says, is "like a family" for him.

W Favorite cake: Baba - a savarina (cream-filled) pastry in strawberry syrup with whipped cream on top and fresh strawberries.

W Dieting with pastries around: "You take small bites." In addition, he works out three times a week in the neighborhood country club. In 2002, he says, he weighed 110 kilos, and within three months ("until the wedding"), he shed 25 kilos.

W Vered: Holds a graduate degree in biology, and until Shira's birth worked for Sigma, an American company located in the Rehovot Science Park, which produces biological and chemical substances for research in laboratories and hospitals ("antibodies, for example"). Since giving birth she has been home, looking for similar work on a part-time basis ("But it's hard to find").

W Itai: Attends a neighborhood kindergarten. He was born deaf. At the age of one he underwent an operation that enables him to hear with the aid of an electronic device implanted in the bone behind his ear. After the operation he started to hear sounds, and a year and a quarter later he also started to talk. He now chatters away freely, with a processor attached to his back picking up the sounds around him and transmitting them to the device.

W Shira: Attends nursery school. She, too, was born deaf, had the same surgery a year ago, and is also supposed to start talking. They're waiting. She already hears, they say. A child needs about 15 months to process the sounds and start articulating words, according to her parents, who also can't hear.

W Can't hear: Vered and Yoel are deaf from birth. Yoel has an instrument that enables him to distinguish certain sounds; Vered doesn't have such a device: Her life is accompanied by total silence. Both of them read lips and talk to others with uncanny alertness. They learned speech, they say, by means of inexplicable intuition, with the help of devoted parents and communications clinicians. They never learned sign language - a deliberate choice. Their parents decided that only interaction with the hearing world would give them the opportunity to lead a normal life. When they were children, the operation their own children underwent did not exist.

W Sign language: Rarely taught nowadays ("because the operation can be done"). Still, Vered notes, there are deaf parents who do not want their children to have the operation: They want to keep them close to the "culture of the deaf."

W Vered's bio: Born in Tel Aviv, 1971, to a well-to-do family - her father is a financial consultant, her mother a housewife ("She looked after me") - and she has a younger sister. She is the only one in her family who can't hear. She attended the prestigious Gymnasia Herzliya high school, where she got along with the aid of a close girlfriend who took notes in class while Vered glanced at them diagonally. She still takes note of every word written in her immediate surroundings and suggests corrections (Okay, we're fixing it!).

W Bio (cont.): After completing her matriculation exams cum laude, she attended Carmiel College for two years (engineering biotechnology), rooming with Efrat ("My being deaf didn't bother her"). She then went on to study life sciences at Tel Aviv University, doing a graduate degree in medical sciences. After graduating (1998) she sent her resume to Sigma and was hired ("They gave me a chance").

W Yoel's bio: Born 1973, Kibbutz Ruhama, has a brother who hears and a deaf sister. He is from a family of chefs. His father, who immigrated to Israel in the 1960s, was the kibbutz cook, and his brother is the well-known chef Jonathan Roshfeld. He attributes his ability to speak mainly to the devotion of his late mother, Orly (she died two years ago). As a child he was in a regular class on the kibbutz. His peer group, he says, always treated him well ("They knew me from age zero"). In high school, though, at Sha'ar Hanegev, things did not go so well, and he preferred working in the fields on a tractor. He recalls fondly the fields of Ruhama that he plowed and seeded ("with a 12-meter machine"). He did not do military service ("The army wanted me to be a postal clerk"), remaining on the kibbutz and working as a driver. He liked driving, getting along well on the road with the device that has been attached to his ear since the age of three ("I hear ambulances"). He never sang and has never heard music, and recalls being envious of the kids in the blue shirts of the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement who sang around the campfire. He met Vered on a blind date ("a blind-mute date"); she was his first girlfriend ("and the last").

W The meeting: 2002, Schuster Center, Ramat Aviv Gimmel. Vered had been told by a girlfriend about a notice on a singles Web site for the deaf that was posted by Iris (Yoel's sister). Vered faxed a reply. She was skeptical, having had several disappointments. Yoel responded and showed up for the date. From the first glance she knew he would be hers ("I looked him in the eyes"). A month later, he proposed.

W The wedding: October 2002, Ha'ahuza banquet hall, Beit Hanan, "with music for the guests."

W Itai's birth: Yoel expected that his son would be able to hear. When that turned out not to be the case, the disappointment, he says, lasted "a very short moment." Vered grasped the situation immediately. She saw him sleeping peacefully while babies screamed all around. Subsequently, Yoel left his job and stayed home, and Vered was the breadwinner. Afterward, Shoshana, her mother, came to help out, and Yoel went to study at Bishulim, a school for chefs and pastry chefs in Tel Aviv. After completing the course (of one year) he worked two years in the kitchen of the Tel Baruch boarding school for children in distress, feeding them meatballs and celebrating graduation parties with them ("a lot of tears"), until he lost his job ("because of cuts"). He found his current job three months ago.

W Daily routine: Itai goes to Vered at 5 A.M. and wakes her with a touch. Vered gives him a "Milky" dairy snack and a banana, wakes Shira, gives her a bottle and dresses both children. At 8 she takes Itai to kindergarten; Grandpa Zvi takes Shira. Yoel gets home in the early afternoon. He holds the cooking portfolio at home, producing meals every day except Wednesday ("McDonald's day"). Two afternoons a week Vered takes Itai to Micha, an organization for deaf children, where he went to nursery school, as Shira does now ("They do wonderful work"). Sometimes friends come over to play with him ("He's a very sociable boy"). They have supper (omelet, salad) early (between 5 and 6 P.M.). Yoel goes to sleep at 9 P.M. so he can get up at 1:45 A.M. ("Five hours is enough for me"), Vered goes to sleep an hour later.

W Television: Vered likes "ER." She skips the TV news ("There are no subtitles"), turning to the Internet to stay updated. The invention of the text message is also wonderful, she says. She reads a lot; among her favorite authors are Khaled Hosseini and Dan Brown.

W Crying child: Next to each bed is a voice detector; if one of the kids cries, the parents' bed starts to vibrate wildly ("We jump up to the sky"). There is also a flashing light attached to a device that detects sounds and indicates their source - telephone, door, child.

W Children's names: "Itai is easy to say, and so is Shira - and she is also named after Grandma Sarah."

W God: They do not believe. Vered: "I have never said 'Why me?'"

W Dreams: "My big dream came true," Yoel says. "Itai is talking." Vered agrees: "I have Yoel and wonderful children." Another small dream: To write a book "with autobiographical elements."

W Romance: "Notes, text messages."

W Israel: "I want to be optimistic," Vered says. "We have nowhere else."

W Happiness quotient (scale of 1-10): Vered - 8.5, Yoel - 8 ("It could have been 10 if my mother were alive and could see Itai talking").

W One for the road: Creme brulee.

Bookmark to del.icio.us


	The father of the victim
	Father of terror victim slams Olmert for letting PA try the killers.


	And you're out
	German hip-hop artist thrown off reality show over Hitler salute.

Today Online


	High Court of Justice to hold urgent hearing on Gaza blockade
	Responses: 201


	Gaza source: Hamas planned border wall blast for months
	Responses: 123


	Canada to skip UN racism meet due to 'anti-Semitism'
	Responses: 112


	Yossi Beilin: Here's to Prime Minister Livni, Foreign Min. Olmert
	Responses: 14


	Rami Livni: Bi-national state would only perpetuate suffering
	Responses: 18

More Headlines
13:38 High Court to hold urgent hearing on Gaza blockade


14:05 Hamas says studying possibility of role at official Egypt crossing


14:07 Burns, in Israel, says new Iran resolution will be punitive


12:43 AG to announce Sunday decision on reopening probe into Oct. 2000 riots


05:52 Canada to skip UN racism conference due to expected 'anti-Semitism'


14:08 First commercial flight from Albania to land at B-G Airport Thurs.


13:53 Dollar continues to drop, falling another 0.8 percent to NIS 3.680


12:45 Hamas court sentences policeman to death for family feud killing


09:10 Gaza source: Hamas planned border wall blast for months


12:42 Police probing Lieberman for alleged money transfer