Sophisticated Chutzpah

Yesterday I spent most of the day with Oren and Yoel- Yoel is Oren's very good friend, a member of Knesset, and my first independent fundraising client. Yoel found himself with a car and without a license, and me and Oren were with a license and without a car, so we decided to team up and Yoel would come with us where we needed to go, and we would drop Yoel off and pick him up where he needed to go. Besides Oren and Yoel being best friends for years, I have spent some quality time with Yoel during his visit to DC and my last visit in Israel, so this day of driving resulted in much quality time, and many conversations. By the end of the day, we were driving Yoel back home after picking him up from his mom's house, and after he went into great detail explaining what Tunisian food was (his mom is Tunisian), he abruptly switched gears and started telling me that, since he met me in Washington, DC last March, he thought that, if I ever decided to move to Israel, I would have no trouble adjusting. I asked him why he thought this, and first he told me it was because I have (some Hebrew word I didn't know). When I asked Oren to translate, he said that in English, it would literally translate into "Pepper" or "Spice", though when said in this context in Hebrew, means that I am sharp and engaging in a way that makes people want to do things for me. I thanked Yoel for this compliment, and then he proceeded to tell me that I had another very important quality that would ensure my success in Israel. He said that I had chutzpah (for the non-Jews, it is roughly defined as 'a quality of audacity'), but not just Chutzpah, because anyone can have Chutzpah and it's not necessarily a good thing. Rather, I had sophisticated chutzpah-just like he and Oren- and THAT was the key to being successful in Israeli society. I like it.