This Is What I Am
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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History of the Jews and Judaism in the Land of Israel
11 min read
The story centers on Gordon's immersion in Israeli culture through his workplace and impending trip to Tel Aviv. Understanding the 70+ years of modern Israeli nation-building that his coworkers reference ('The things we do in seventy years') provides essential historical context for the cultural dynamics at play.
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Yerida
12 min read
The workplace dynamic of Hebrew-speaking Israeli immigrants dominating a Brooklyn real estate office represents a specific phenomenon of Israeli emigration to American cities. Understanding this diaspora community adds depth to the cultural tension Gordon experiences as an outsider in his own workplace.
Gordon Lewis hasn’t exercised since college. But if you saw him standing outside MacDuffy’s pub, a few blocks from the Clinton Hill Real Estate office, a lean not yet paunched figure, sucking down a Camel Light, you might think he doesn’t look half bad for someone caught in a five-year spiritual free fall. By some genetic miracle, Gordon’s pasty, 29-year-old skin hasn’t soured. Despite the alcohol and the cigarettes and the midday rub and tugs, there is still unharmed youth inside him, perfectly good unspoiled blood waiting to be shaken and stirred in the right direction.
He’s just gotten off the train and strolls residential blocks, sipping a four-dollar coffee. He knows this particular wedge of Brooklyn well. It’s a cash block, he thinks, studying the trees overhead. Prospective homeowners are so predictable. Suckers for names and brands and storied descent. Red maples, silver maples, Norway maples — Gilded Age money trees. From a real estate perspective, there’s no such thing as excessive foliage. White people love vegetation, and will shell out to feel like they’re in a suburb. They live to squeeze babies and jog in the shade and own animals with preposterous origins.
Gordon waits to see if someone will wave at him (personal greetings are lucrative). Across the street a proud brownstone owner rinses stone. Diligent property maintenance. Check. Planters are repositioned one house down. Future herbage. Check, check. A dog walker appears. Triple check. The dog walker is young, female, and wears Alo. Checkmate.
A delivery truck passes slowly, braces for a speed bump. Gordon slurps coffee. The barista used milk instead of cream. His eye lands on a tree he didn’t notice before that messes up his plot average. Gordon recalculates. It’s still about two trees per plot, which means, on the low end, a $100,000 swell in the initial offering price. He sighs. What have I become?
It’s nine in the morning and his coworkers are outside on a bench puffing cigarettes, draining coffees, and sending texts before lunchtime showings. For those who don’t have showings there are other activities. Drinking so much coffee you fall asleep, binging alcohol, saunaing at the local New York sports club. Or stopping by the much-talked-about Chinatown rub and tug.
When Gordon first started at Clinton Hill Real Estate it was a more even split of Anglos
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