Tisporet

I never thought I would be able to trust a straight man in the fine art of cutting and styling hair, but Ruby is an exception. He also happens to be Israeli, and - as I learned on Friday - the Hebrew word for haircut is "tisporet." 

From the outside, Ruby's salon looks like a tiny hole in the wall - it's probably even smaller than my 450 sq foot studio apartment, which I vacated just yesterday (sad!) I remember being a bit skeptical when my mom first suggested I check him out, but his rates are reasonable and he happens to do great work. 

When I arrived for my 5:30 appointment on Friday, the shop was bustling with people rushing to get their hair styled before Shabbat. A man in a kippah seemed disgruntled to have the 6pm appointment immediately following mine; he was worried that he would not be finished before sundown. He arrived early and asked Ruby to please call him on his cell phone if by some miracle he finished early. 

The customers and staff chatted noisily in Hebrew, with the occasional snippet of Farsi, thanks to the sizable Persian population in Great Neck. In my attempts to translate the conversation around me, I managed to make out exactly three words: "Hamishim" (Fifty -- aka the going rate for a cut at Ruby); "Yom Rishon" (Sunday); and "haval al ha'zman" (an idiom that literally translates to "a waste of time"). Today the phrase is commonly used in referring to something that is totally awesome -- it's sort of like the Hebrew equivalent to "off the hook." I have Leat (the teacher of the Hebrew class I took at the Y) to thank for my cursory understanding of very basic "street Hebrew," but my overall knowledge of the language is, to say the least, beyond pathetic. I'm admittedly quite worried about battling the language barrier, but I'm hoping that a few solid months of Ulpan will have me chatting away like a pro. 

In other news, I'm quite pleased with my new tisporet!