Aliyah: Fifteen (plus 2) things I learned in the last 15 years

Last Friday night in synagogue I sat next to someone who just made Aliyah. She told me that she feels like she has been hit by a bus. Despite the fact that she and her family have been spending their vacations here for the past several years and many people in the neighbourhood assumed they already lived here, the transition from visitor to resident had caught her off-guard. It's a big thing and personally, every time I allow myself to think back to my first year, I have to go to bed and calm myself down. Let's just say that those aren't my best memories.

So, with the help of input from some of my friends who have been there and done that, here's what I know today that I did not know 15 years ago when I arrived.

1.       No matter how hard you try, you are not going to turn Israel into whatever place you came from. At some point you are going to have to accept the old adage "when in Israel, do as the Israelis". This includes learning the fine arts of strategic impersonal yelling, holding your place in line without getting in line, being in two lanes at once, parking wherever it suits you, and the willful rejection of the word "no".

2.       This is not wherever you came from. The country is counter-intuitive. Nothing is done the same here as it is "there". This includes: returns in stores, wedding ceremonies, banking, crossing the street, expecting service with a smile. How ever you are used to things working, it's the opposite here.

3.       Aliyah is difficult and even if you are a capable Hebrew speaker, it is going to turn your world upside down for a while. You may think you are mentally, physically and even spiritually prepared for the move but I am willing to bet buttons to beer caps that you are not. All you need is a day dealing with any branch of officialdom (personal favourites: Bituach Leumi, Misrad Ha P'nim, the maccabi4u website) and you will quickly realize that you are no longer in Kansas and no twister on Earth will ever get you back there.

4.       The ideal development of your child involves their ability to hold their own on the playground ("use your words" is not an Israeli concept) and independent learning until – approximately -- 10^th grade, when the teachers finally shift into gear and start catching-up on every drop of curriculum they forgot to teach your child for the previous nine years. These are truly the roots of Start Up Nation; not the army.

5.       When people tell you that your child will be a fluent Hebrew speaker by Chanuka do not get it into your head that they mean THIS Chanuka. They mean Chanuka several years from now.

6.   Kids turn out differently here. They know that they are all vital components of a country/a people/ a history. They want to do their part to give back to society. They do not need to make academic and extra-curricular decisions based on how to impress a college admissions advisor – they know who they are and what they must do.  Army service, while nerve-wracking for their parents, is a great source of much pride that turns our children into adults so much better than they would have been without the experience.

7.       Going to the army (and some national service) may be similar to getting an undergraduate degree, except for the shitty dorm rooms, worse food, and Hamas and Hezbollah instead of BDS.  It is a valuable experience that will matter later in life – just like university. However, that life and death element is a bit of a game changer.

8.       If you don't want your children to mingle and possibly marry Israelis, moving to Israel may not have been your best idea because there a lot of Israelis here. And as surprising as it may be, Israelis prefer to speak Hebrew and live Israeli lives. You may also have to accept customs and traditions that you believe are uncomfortable for you or bad for your health. I personally like the Sephardi tradition of green-onion-as-representational-whip at the Pesach Seder but I am no fan of meat for lunch.

9.       Winter is colder inside your house than outside. The lack of insulation results in a situation where wearing a coat or heavy sweater to bed begins to seem obvious. Even my dog prefers to go outside in the winter and she is normally no friend of fresh air.

10.   Dead people go straight into the ground. No coffin, just a tightly wrapped shroud. It is incredibly unnerving the first four hundred times you see it.

11.   Israel has a very robust economy. It almost looks like a first world country. There is a crane overhead almost everywhere you look in the center of the country and roads constantly under construction. However, it is all part of the most elaborate sleight-of-hand ruse you will ever see -- you still have to pay Mercedes prices for a Mazda, and $15 for a decent pair of underwear.

12.   Fruit tastes like whatever it is, and can only be found in season. Tomatoes like tomatoes (not wet cardboard), strawberries like strawberries. And dairy products taste like the cow made them specially for you in your backyard five minutes ago. Once you eat here you will never enjoy food anywhere where mass production rules.

13.   The guys carrying visible guns on the street, on the bus, and on the beach, are the good guys and you are really glad they seem to be everywhere.

14.   No one plans ahead. It may have begun as gallows thinking – why plan ahead when we may be dead by then -- but has over time become part of the fabric of Israeli thinking. And oddly enough it works and is truly addictive. Thinking about getting married? Why not next week? Definitely no later than two months from now! Bar mitzvah party venue burned down the night before the party (this really happened), just move the food, the DJ and the guests up the street to the next available party location and carry on.

15. You do not have to be post-secondary school educated to have an opinion on everything from the American presidential elections, to the pros and cons of the interest rates set by the Bank of Israel, or who is right: Boogie, Boujie or Bibi. Every garbage collector, bus driver, gardener, and delivery person has an opinion about what is going on and how things should be.

16.   Oh, and one last thing. The reason Starbucks failed in Israel is because Israelis do not like the taste of Starbucks coffee. There is no conspiracy.

17. Oh, and another thing, lizards have to live somewhere and apparently their somewhere is Israel's everywhere. 

A tale of two reunions

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.

Now I finally know what Dickens meant when he wrote those words.

I recently returned home from a two-reunion trip to Canada. The first reunion was at my high school with people I have not seen for the past 37 years and the second was at my childhood synagogue, a kilometer down the road from my high school. I only mention the distance because, in retrospect, the two reunions might has well have occurred in two different hemispheres for all the similarities between them. In other words, no similarities.

The only reason we went to Canada this summer was because I wanted to go to my high school reunion. Apparently I was the only one. I saw six old friends (from a graduating class of 374) and had word that at least five others were sighted in town. They must have been at other high school reunions because I definitely did not see them at mine.

At one point my husband convinced me to call my high school boyfriend to see if he was coming. It took some serious detective work to get his phone number and when I finally reached him and asked him if was coming to the reunion (he lives at best 12 kilometers from our high school) he offered the most unintentionally profound statement of the week: "What for?"

Another friend, who lives less than 10 kilometers from the high school didn't bother to show up because she had to lose weight.

I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.

I travelled half way around the world and they couldn't scoot around for the corner due to futility and weight issues?

Fortunately, the synagogue reunion could not have been more satisfying. A hundred and fifty old faces that were genuinely happy to see me -- and each other. The one exception was my cousin Alan, who apparently is a bigger idiot than I remember. For clarity's sake, he was always an idiot and now he is a much, much, much bigger one!

Everyone in the synagogue wanted to talk, to hear about each other's families, see pictures of each other's kids, take new pictures, and generally catch up on the past 37 years. In other words, all the things a reunion is supposed to be. We reminisced and laughed. It was great. Those people know me in a way that no one -- not even my own family now -- could ever know me. They remember every stupid piece of minutiae from the first 17 years of my life. The time Heidi's father inadvertently drove over her new puppy; the time my mother didn't pick up Sandra when she walked home in the rain and I had to hear about it for years; the time we got caught playing basketball when we should have been participating in Kol Nidre; the time this and the time that!

They also observe a unique form of Judaism that I am confident is not practiced anywhere else in the world. It isn't based on Halacha (Jewish law), but rather on decades and decades of oral, local, Jewish tradition. It makes perfect sense to them and heaven knows it is more genuine than a lot of things I see today.

And yes, there is a simple lesson from all of this:

You can only go home again .... for a visit. You can't stay. It is never the way you have recreated it in your mind. Lots of "old friends" would rather not see you after 37 years if they are carrying a few extra pounds. For others, the past is the past and that is where it should stay. But, for some reason, my original Jewish community, the people who inadvertently played a big role in who I am today, will take you any way you come, whenever you come. 

Getting what we deserve

Yesterday a bus with 27 people from my neighbourhood headed to Kiryat Arba and Otneil to make shiva calls to the Ariel and Mark families.

There are few things less comfortable than watching people you do not know, but truly feel for, mourn their needless and inexplicable loss. You want to comfort them but since you don't know them there is really very little you can say. Instead, you stand quietly and let them pour out their grief and their pain, while you listen. All the while you are trying to look at your feet because you feel like a voyeur. Your heart is hurting because your greatest fear is experiencing similar loss and if it can happen to them, then it can happen to you.

And as you drive in and out of these small, protected communities you see all the soldiers trying to keep these people safe living on land that was first purchased by our ancestors in biblical times. In my case that makes me even more anxious because one of those soldiers is my son.

"Hallel (Ariel) wasn't just murdered," says her mother in American English, "she was massacred." She unfortunately proceeds to tell us exactly what the 17-year-old terrorist did to her daughter. I surely didn't want to hear it yesterday and now I want to do whatever I can to stop hearing it repeating over and over again in my head.

"Go inside and see the bedroom (where it happened)," she suggests. I don't know why she suggests that but who am I to question how she expresses her grief? I don't go inside.

And despite everything that has happened in the past five days she is talking about hope and the need to keep going. All I can think is that I doubt I could go on under such circumstances.

However, we are met by exactly the same message when we get to the Mark house. This shiva has wall-to-wall people because all of the 10 Mark children have many visitors – not just their own friends and family, but people like the Ra'anana bus crowd.

"We must stay strong; we cannot lose our faith," says the daughter who I watched the day before cry inconsolably on a YouTube video of her father's funeral.

The same message.

This isn't theatrics; They aren't looking for attention. This isn't for the cameras and the media. There are no cameras because, outside of Israel, there is very limited interest in this story. To the greater world there is no story in a 13-year-old girl about to go to her last day of school before Summer break, get mutilated while sleeping in her bed in her house. "Well, look where they live," think the news followers outside of Israel, "she had it coming."

And what about Rabbi Mark off to visit his mother for Shabbat. He must have been looking for trouble as well.

The funny thing is that the people who commit these atrocities don't have a greater purpose in mind either. The 17-year-old who killed Hallel wrote on Facebook that he wanted to die a martyr ….. and go off to his 70 virgins. That's an honourable reason isn't it? He didn't do it to protest his frustration against Israel or Jews. He simply wanted 70 pliant lays.

Of course that's not a story for the media either. It would ruin their international construct that Jews in Israel are getting what they deserve.

10 reasons for Jews to live in Europe

As always, most of the really interesting feedback from last week's post arrived on the street, via email and WhatsApp and even in my backyard. While it is never really clear to me why my readers crave face-to-face discussion in the midst of society's greatest technological age, so be it. Therefore, I am left to relay the myriad conversations to my less accessible readers through the second Jews In Europe post.

Here are 10 reasons my readers disagree with me and my position that Jews should get the hell out of Europe.

1. Who died and left you in charge of where people can or should live? Fair point.

2. Many of the Jews who are part of this New Enlightenment Period in parts of Europe always lived in Europe. They never left. Not even after the Holocaust. The difference now is that they have re-connected with their Jewish identities and that is a good thing. Well, if the choice is being there and hiding in fear or being there in a more overt sense, obviously I vote for being seen. Of course, try being seen with a kippa or a sefer Torah on the street before we agree on how well that works.

3. If all Jews live in one place it is easier to kill them. Better that there should be Jews spread out around the world. Yes, true, until someone designs a sawed-off nuclear weapon capable of indiscriminate and simultaneous targeting of Jews wherever they are, spreading out may have its benefits. Harder to reach everyone in all the dark, little corners of the world.

4. There's no real threat in (fill in your region, country, neighbourhood or room in your house). Spanish Jews say they aren't feeling it; British Jews keep saying the newspapers are exaggerating the story to make it more newsworthy. I am not there but there seem to be an awful lot of security people positioned (yes, in media photos) around Jewish schools and synagogues for places with artificially inflated threats. Of course, Spain is actively pursuing the return of the descendants of the Jews evicted during the Spanish Inquisition. Probably so that there will be a clear group of people to blame for Spain's growing economic woes. Right now, with so few Jews in the country, they might have to blame poor economic performance on government incompetence.

5. Denial by the authorities. Countries like Denmark pride themselves on their inherent culture of tolerance so they simply cannot fathom that something bad could happen to a group of their citizens -- even the Jews. They think they are above the fray. Of course, if you poke your head above the fray, some not so tolerant Dane will eventually knock it off. Sort of like a not-so-fun game of Whack-A-Mole.

6. Not everyone wants to live in Israel or could make a go of it here. Well that's for damn sure.

7. Israel is way more dangerous. I really don't have the energy to respond to this one. It is not more dangerous to live in Israel as a Jew than it is to live in Europe as a Jew. If we were talking the US or Canada, I might agree, but not Europe. At least in Israel we are on a country-wide alert for crazies. In Belgium, on the other hand, the crazies work in the airport. On one hand, that makes them much easier to find but on the other hand, they are within spitting distance of some seriously combustible capital.

8. There's been anti-Semitism in Europe for more than 1000 years. We simply learn to live around it. Europe wrote the book on Reasons the Jews are to Blame for Everything: From the Death of Jesus to the creation of both Capitalism and Communism. While it makes for a very comprehensive read of the entire history of the modern world, sane people everywhere know that the Jews are the ultimate malevolent force in the world and that everything would be perfect without them.

9. The only violence in Europe against the Jews today is coming from Muslims, not from regular Europeans. So the logical conclusion of that statement is that that it is okay? Let's just say that it is true and that the problem is only disenfranchised Muslim immigrants. I guess that makes it okay because there are only 45 million or so of them (at least there were in 2010), so that really has nothing to do with real indigenous Europeans.

10. Israeli chocolate pudding is far less expensive in Berlin than it is in Israel. Yes, the humble little Milky. In Berlin they are 33% cheaper than what they cost in Israel. And that's why Israelis are flocking to Berlin to live. Berlin has the fastest growing Jewish community in the world today because of the chocolate pudding. Okay, it's a reason; I never said "good" reasons.

The endless retraining of the Jewish people

Last week we celebrated Yom Ha'atzmaut 68 with our annual Canadian barbecue. One of the other guests was a regular Canadian, no hyphenation. She had just arrived in Israel for her first trip here -- after a week on The March of the Living. Needless to say she was in gung-ho Jewish mode. I can sniff these people out a mile away.

A group of Canadian-Israeli barbecue guests sat down to hear about her trip. Some of my friends here have been to Poland, but I have not. In fact, all high school kids in Israel spend a week in Poland touring Holocaust monuments, camps, ghettos and the likes for a week sometime in their Junior or Senior year. Two of my children have been there and the third is going next year. My in-laws are (or were) Holocaust survivors and my husband has been to his father's home town in Poland with his father. My mother-in-law's father died in Auschwitz and she was a hidden child.

In other words, we are not a family who is oblivious to the events of 1936-1945. Although I thought I was well versed on the subject growing up, much of my education came since I met my husband and his family.

Apologies for the digression but I needed to establish my street cred. Okay, back to the story. Here's a mini re-enactment:

Canadian Israelis: So tell us about The March of the Living? (You know we really asked because we are Canadians and we are polite like that.)

Canadian visitor: It was a wonderful trip. It wasn't an easy or fun trip but I learned a lot. (She continued with many more details and responded to a few questions from the crowd.)

So far so good.

Canadian visitor: But the most amazing thing was that there are these new Jewish communities sprouting up in Poland. It really says something: the Jews are returning to Poland.

That's when I lost it. (I'd like to thank everyone there for the uncomfortable silence. If one of you had spoken up I probably would have sat quietly .... hahaha.)

Me: THAT IS THE DUMBEST THING I HAVE EVER HEARD!!!! (I didn't mean to yell, but I am a loud talker to begin with and I was really upset by her comment.) HOW MANY TIMES DO WE HAVE TO RETRAIN THESE STUPID JEWS? DO THEY THINK THE POLES HAVE HAD A CHANGE OF HEART?  (Personally, I am sure they have not.) DO THEY THINK THAT ALL OF A SUDDEN, WHEN ALL OF EUROPE IS BECOMING MORE AND MORE ANTI-SEMITIC (or its nomme de guerre: anti-Israel), THAT POLAND IS SUDDENLY GOING AGAINST THE SOICAL CURRENT AND IS HAPPY TO SEE THE JEWS RETURN? DIDN'T THE JEWS OF POLAND  LEARN ANYTHING THE LAST TIME? HOW MANY JEWS HAVE TO DIE BEFORE THEY GET THE MESSAGE? (Obviously the number is far greater than a measly six million.)

I am not sure that I stopped to take a breath during my rant but after my exaggerated attack on this poor unsuspecting Canadian woman, she gathered her thoughts enough to say:

Canadian visitor: Well, obviously we don't see things the same way. I think it's great that even Hitler couldn't keep us down and that Jews are returning to Poland.

I also think it is "great" that Hilter's psychotic plans didn't wipe us out. The difference is that for me the turnaround began in 1948. Followed by the successful Six-Day War, the miraculous turnaround in October 1973 and the fact that we are still here today at 68 despite overwhelming odds and many, many setbacks. We have blown Hitler's plans to kingdom come time and time again ..... in Israel.

That's the difference. The Canadian visitor would never live here (her exact words), and I hope I never have to live anywhere else!

The whole conversation left me with a terrible taste in my mouth so I discussed it was several people. Then one wise woman said the words I just couldn't find:

Wise woman: She might know how to read a siddur and when to light the Shabbat candles, but she doesn't have a Jewish soul.

A Jewish Soul. That was it. You don't have to live in Israel to have a Jewish soul but you do have to understand inherently why beginning new Jewish communities in Poland is 180 degrees from sane. I know Jews who live outside of Israel who actually care about the country's well being -- the numbers are dwindling quicker than I would have imagined and a lot less Jews outside of Israel love Israel than at any time in the recent past. I see it in my own life. I am sad on many levels but mostly for the loss of their Jewish souls.

The one thing I know for sure is that the future of the Jewish people is not in Poland, or anywhere in Europe and probably not in North or South America. Sorry soulless Jews.... the future of the Jewish people is in Israel. I'm pretty damn sure the Canadian visitor will not be moving here.