Hover-Effekt

Pascal Noetzli

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I arrived on a cold, cloudy night in Jerusalem, my first day in Israel. I hadn‘t found an apartment for my stay during the exchange program, but online I found a somewhat shady and unclear hostel. When I arrived, no one was there except for another Swiss guy and an older man who was calmly watching TV in the makeshift hostel courtyard. His name was Dan, but everybody call him Sabba. He was delighted to see another Swiss person in the hostel and gave me my first beer in Jerusa-lem, straight from the fridge- a Löwenbräu. It was oddly funny that my first beer in Israel was a Bavarian one from Germany. That beer was the start of an unconventional relationship with one of my future flatmates in Israel.

The Second World War is Saba's main area of expertise, where he is well-versed. He is this sort of guy who takes pride in the fact that the Americans protected the world from the Nazis. He is knowledgeable about everything - geopolitics, financial policy, and world politics in general. He speaks very objectively about individual pivotal moments as well as the atrocities or strategically important moments involving the Americans.

Most of the time, he comes home trom the bar in the early evening. lies down in his bed, and stares intently at his IPad. The sounds of the almost emotionless speaker with a deep voice and the war noises indicate that he is once again watching a documentary on the Second World War. He often falls asleep during the documentary. It is rare for him to get up with pain and walk to the bathroom to take his medication. It happens more often that he gets up in the middle of the night to go back to the bar.

 Family is, for many, the most sensitive topic, and it's no different for Sabba. His relationships with his five children and his ex-wife are not the best. To be honest, they're quite strained. He often asks if he can borrow my phone to talk to one of his daughters with whom he still has a somewhat decent relation-ship. He calls from a different phone because he knows that if he called from his own, she wouldn't pick up. Once, when his daughter and another one of his daughters were visiting Jerusa-lem, he was determined to meet them in his favorite bar. My other roommate and I accompanied Sabba because his daughter wanted him not to come alone.

A week after I met Sabba at a hostel, inside of Jerusalem, he was invited to the wedding of one of his daughters. He was very excited, looking forward to seeing his family again, but also uncertain whether things might turn negative. I didn't ask him in detail about his past with his family and why the relationship was so strained. I could imagine it in my fantasy what happend.

The day after the wedding, Sabba seemed like the happiest man on earth. Shortly thereafter, he received some memorable photos from the wedding from his daughter, which he proudly showed us. His eyes sparkled every time he talked about the wedding.


Sabba is the funny guy for everyone. Eloquent and smart, he has a good sense of humor and knows when to push the boundaries with jokes and when to hold back. He comes across as a tough man who's been through wars, often referring to his time with tanks. Some would say he's a typical Zionist. Howe-ver, to me, he embodies the values of post-World War II Americans - justice, democracy, and equal opportunity. He is a very strong critic of Netanyahu's regime, settlement policies, and the increasingly powerful ultra-Orthodox movement. Sabba enjoys telling stories, drinking, and chatting with new people.
He's a good man - tough on the outside but with a soft heart.