It's fun to watch some tourists shop. When the cashier tells them how much to pay, some of them empty their money on the counter and say, "Take what you want." Israeli currency does not offer the same feeling as "real money."

Alternatively, some people ask, "How much is that in money?" They don't ask how much it is in pounds or in dollars or in yen. Israel is not part of the Real World, and the country does not use Real Money.

When corrected about this, they may explain that they only know how to use dollars or sterling - and that they are not used to using "foreign" currency.

However, this attitude is a one-way street. Israelis who visit other countries meet very impatient cashiers when they have difficulty with that local currency. After all, those in the Diaspora are using "real money" - which is expected to be all too familiar to Israelis.

Well, it is, to a certain degree. Israelis do use dollars and pounds. However, they do not represent the official local currency. It does take a few seconds to convert prices back into shekels.

And, yes, tourists to Israel sometimes argue that the problem would not have existed if we had lived all along in the Real World, as we should have done.

Sigh.