I became orthodox because Avi was, and we searched for God together. We kept our food kosher and I kept my arms and legs covered. I learned a lot about Talmudic Law, for example, swallowing semen is forbidden during the Yom Kippur fast.

Over summer break, Avi wanted to study Hebrew in Jerusalem. My parents wanted me to get a job. So Avi paid for me to study in Israel with him. We spent eight hours a day in class. Afterwards, we were so exhausted that we never saw more than two square miles of Israel. Avi's roommate went home on the weekends, so we spent the time together in his room, having eighteen-second sex and eating a lot, because in Jerusalem everything's closed on Shabbat.

After three weeks, I was sick of Hebrew. I was sick of Jerusalem. All I wanted were books in English. Avi wouldn't buy me books in English, because he thought I should be studying Hebrew.

So I started stealing books from the English book store, which was particularly scary because soldiers lurked everywhere with loaded machine guns.

I wanted to leave but the flights were full, so I taught myself to masturbate from a book, and I stopped going to class because Avi's phony Hebrew accent made me sick.

When I wasn't perfecting my masturbating technique, and sometimes when I was, I retreated to a study carrel in the library on Mount Scopus. There I mastered the thirteen Hebrew verb tenses -- each one reflects a different mood or feeling. But I wondered how anyone could ever use all those emotions, even if there were people to talk to.

In this text we find a clear opposition between what she wants and that others want for her, expresed with the abundance of the verb “to want” in many paragraphs, alluding to her parents and her boyfriend (“Avi wanted to...”, “My parents wanted me to...”, “so...” -this last connector defines the relation she makes between these external causes and the reason she follows them; she is disabled, not capable of deciding, too young probably).

In the beginning, what she wants is linked together with the other's plans for her, but as time passes she finds the situation not affordable and starts reacting from her inner self: she seeks satisfaction to the conflict she is not able to solve through masturbation (“I wanted to leave but the flights were full, so I taught myself to masturbate from a book” -unconnected logic. Instead of trying to find a way to escape, she desists from struggling and reaches an easy relief.)

Another interesting issue in this concise view is the highlighting of sexual situations, demonstrating the kind of relationship they had and the concerns of the main character, all related to her sexual practices and other manners of rapid satisfaction (such as eating). Particularly, labelling her sex as an “eighteen-second” one gives us another clue of her emotional state of uneasiness about her life in Israel.

Regarding to the context, we notice the assumption of the idea of confinement through descriptions of an environment full of “soldiers with loaded machine guns” in a “less than two square miles of Israel”. Israel is the enemy, a constriction, opposed to England, her books, identified with her former self and stable universe. The “I was sick of” expression combines the solitude (that will lead to a search for independence) and the hostile reaction towards Avi and the world she has been dragged into.

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