So, here in Israel there is no such thing as a water boiler, at least not the same sort as us spoiled Americans are familiar with. What I am referring to here is the phenomenon where a person will walk into the bathroom at any time of the day or night, take a steaming hot, fifteen minute shower, dry off and get dressed. Unless you are filthy rich and/or live in a hotel, in Israel everyone has something called a ??? (pronounced: dude). It is a water boiler, but with two very important variations:

1. It hold much less water than a traditional American water boiler
2. It is usually turned off.

If you want to use hot water, you must turn the dude on before hand. Some people (especially those fortunate enough to have access to direct sunlight will user a dude-shemesh – here the boiler converts the suns energy (gathered through a solar panel) into hot water. Others will have a dude-chashmal – here the boiler uses direct electricity to heat up the water.

Out apartment has a dude-chashmal. When we moved in, we were told that if we wanted to take a shower, we would have to flick the switch 20-30 minutes ahead of time. We should then be able to have a nice (though not super-long) shower.

I wish.

The problem first became apparent when both my wife and myself were caught (seperately…what did you think I meant?) at the end of a shower with no more hot water. And we were not taking long showers. Water is a precious commodity here, so we were doing it chik-chak. Yet we still ended up with shampoo in our hair and no more hot water (kind of like what happened to Bob Saget just about every other episode in Full House, for those out there who know what I am referring to). So we spoke to our landlord…who spoke to our neighbor (who installed the dude)…who replaced the heating element…which then broke again a week later…to be replaced again today.

However, only after he was done replacing it for the second time did our handyman-neighbor tell us (which we then verified with a measuring tape) that although the dude is working in a superb fashion and will heat up water in 20-30 minutes, it can only hold forty liters worth of water! For those of you who have never measured the amount of water you use in a shower, forty liters is about enough for a four minute shower. And for those of you who have never been in the army that is not very long. Especially for those among us who have really long and thick hair to wash. These things just take time to do.

Unfortunately, there is not much for us to do with the situation, other than learn to shower really quickly. (We also just have the hand-held thingie for the shower, no wall attachment, so you always have one hand occupied). And it is still unknown whether our washing machine will work given the water supply. I guess now that we are in Israel, we might have to learn how to live the way that everyone else in the country is living. Yissurin shel ahavah, I hope.