For once can we just call a spade a spade?

I was sitting in front of my computer yesterday, waiting for an email, when all of a sudden I heard the heavy bass of traditional chassidic music shaking my house. I looked at my watch and remembered that at 6:00 pm the local religious elementary school was holding a Hachnasas Sefer Torah ceremony, moving a brand new set of Torah scrolls into a synagogue -- or in this case, their school. Since the scrolls were donated by the mother of a fifth grade teacher, there were kids everywhere. The ceremony included street dancing from a nearby synagogue where the scrolls were completed, to the school. Fortunately for me, my house is located along the route. So, I ran outside to be an active bystander.

There were a few police officers on motorcycles -- one at the front and one at the back -- clearing the way for the happy students, their parents, siblings, their teachers and the odd grandparent. All the kids were waving large Israeli flags and in the middle of the crowd was a van sporting gigantic speakers that were pumping out that addictive music. It's impossible to ignore chassidic music because it just begs you to get up and dance.

As I was standing there waving to the kids I knew, saying a few words to their parents, it dawned on me -- not for the first time, but for the first time in a while -- why I live here. And then it also occurred to me that I can't for the life of me figure out how a real religious Zionist could bear to live outside of Israel.

So now you are wondering who died and left me in charge of making that call? Fair question.

The answer is that if you are asking the question you are obviously feeling uncomfortable with your present circumstances. No one left me in charge. No one needed to. Every parent who walked past me said pretty much the same thing. Maybe a little tamer, but that's not my style.

What it came down to is: it's moments like this that confirm the soundness of our decision to live here, and it's moments like this that justify every misgiving or moment of angst we have experienced since we arrived. Did we make the right choice? Absolutely. Are we always clear about that? Not so much.

I didn't say it was easy. I said it was right.

And what I am saying now is that there is no way you can have the Israel experience outside of Israel. You can  visit. You can visit a lot. You can walk in the depressing Yom Ha'Atzmaut parades in your own city. You can go to the Israel rallies. You can wave your mini-Israeli flags. You can throw around hebrew words and phrases here and there. You can attend the events for every Israeli speaker who visits your city.

But you will never really get "it" until your children go to school here; until the first time you have to buy a "klasser" for your child and you have no idea what it is; until you realize that everyone goes to synagogue in sandals; until you let your young-ish kids walk to and from  neighbourhood friends alone even after the sun sets; until you understand that Mo-ed Alef is just the first kick at the cat; until your sixth grade son is proud to wear his father's army greens on Yom HaZikaron and can't wait until he gets his own; until you hear the morning radio hosts on every channel saying Chag Sameach because it is Yom Yershalayim; until you feel safer when you see an 18-year-old in or out of uniform carrying an M16; and until you dance down the street as part of a Hachnasas Sefer Torah ceremony and your insides are just bursting with pride and happiness because you are doing it in Israel.

Bubble girl

(I'm back from my Christmas break. I figured that if more than half of the world can have a 12-days of Christmas break, the fact that I am Jewish and live in Israel shouldn't keep me from celebrating in a secular Christmas sense as well. If my friend Barb can celebrate the parts of Yom Kippur that she likes, there is no reason I can't pick and choose what I like about Christmas.)

And so, I am back with a thought about living in Ra'anana. After we moved here, many Israelis -- and many North American Jewish know-it-alls -- were quick to tell us that living in Ra'anana was not really living in Israel. My hebrew ulpan teacher said that Ra'anana was a bubble. I didn't really know what she meant because for the first few years, I rarely drove outside the Ra'anana-Kfar Saba-Herzlyia area (for those of you who do not know Israeli geography, I didn't wander very far from home). However, I completely trusted my teacher, who was a born and bred Israeli.

We didn't visit Toronto for almost two years after our move. But before we left, one of my friends told me to be prepared for the Jewish types who wanted to dismiss the magnitude of our move. She told me that they would inevitably say things like: "living in Ra'anana is just like living here (Toronto, New York, Chicago, etc..)."

On our first trip back to Toronto (I specifically mention Toronto, rather than Canada, because there aren't enough Jews anywhere else in Canada to create a collective opinion on anything Jewish), no one said anything of the sort. I automatically assumed that my friend, being an ex-New Yorker, had simply assumed that Torontonians were the same as New Yorkers.

However, two years later, on our next trip to Toronto, I was standing in my old grocery store -- the one with the largest kosher section in all of Canada -- talking to some old friends. We were talking about life in Israel. All of a sudden, some woman I didn't know just joined in our conversation. I guess that if you are standing in the kosher section, other kosher section customers assume you are Jewish and by default, they can just join your conversation.

She said: "I overheard you say that you live in Israel." "Yes," I answered. "Where do you live?" she asked. "Ra'anana," I innocently answered. And then there it was.... plain as the nose on my face. She looked at me and said: "I would just love to live in Israel, but Ra'anana isn't really Israel."

I almost keeled over on the spot. I could see my ex-New York friend's cheshire cat smile in my mind's eye.

As my regular readers know, I am not one to let sleeping dogs lie. It's just not my style. So, I turned to her and said: "Oh really. That's funny. The Israeli government seems to think it is. They gave me an Israeli passport." And now I was on a roll, so I continued: "Don't try to find excuses why you don't have the guts to make the move. Ra'anana is in the center of Israel and even though there are a lot of English speakers there, at least I had the guts to go. Don't justify your pathetic excuses for not moving by insulting me."

That will teach her to join strangers' conversations.

Everyone in my little social circle just stood there.

I love uncomfortable silences -- especially when I initiate them.

I said good-bye to my friends and I went back to my shopping.

Well, that opinion has served me very well for several years now. However, the news of the past few weeks has made me wonder if perhaps I do live in a bubble -- albeit, a bubble in Israel. (Don't even try to start that debate with me again.)

After the rape of a teenage boy in an Israeli Juvenile Detention Center a few weeks ago, another friend walked up to me and said: "Well, what crazy North American olim (immigrants) move to places like Carmiel? It's a dangerous place. Everyone knows that."

I didn't.

I just assumed that moving to Israel was pretty much the same everywhere you went. I know that moving to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem is NOT like moving to a smaller place, but it never dawned on me that there are simply some places that North American, Australian, South African or Western European immigrants simply don't move. Unfortunately, Carmiel is one of those places.

After a little more thought I realized that most North Americans (and probably members of the other three westernized groups) move into areas that have reputations for being more Anglicized. And I guess we do it for a reason. We are more than willing to move to Israel and be active contributors to the future of the Jewish people. However, the more streetwise among us understand that we are never going to be truly Israeli. We are just too westernized. I have an Israeli passport and I speak passable hebrew. Many of my Anglo friends speak excellent hebrew. But it's not about those things.

We think like westerners. We can't help it. Our children wear helmets when they ride their bikes. We insist on using seat belts. We take turns at intersections. We do not honk our horns at the drivers in front of us the split second the light turns green. We take our places in lines. We are not afraid of someone getting in front of us. If we get out of line, we understand that we have lost our place in the line. We say please and thank you. We tip service people who help us. We do not interrupt other people's turns with bank tellers because we just need them for a second. We do not nap between 2 and 4 and we definitely don't get angry if children play outside between those hours.

I could keep adding to the list, but you get the point. Most of us are westerners living in Israel.

I will never agree with that dismissive woman in my Toronto grocery store. It is very easy to be an armchair observer. I can come up with hundreds of excuses for any number of things I simply don't want to do. However, I am willing to accept that Ra'anana is a bubble -- an Israeli bubble.

So do you prefer living in Israel?

I bumped into one of my Canadian friends on the street today. He looked totally exasperated so, as I approached, I said: "what's up?"

He told me that he had just returned from Canada and that while he was there he hadn't had even one little problem. But now that he was back in Israel ... he didn't finish the sentence. He just threw his arms up in the air, shook his head and rolled his eyes. That was the three-pronged expression of total frustration of life in the State of Israel.

We talked for a few minutes about the pros and cons of living in Israel versus Toronto in a way that we never could if either one of us still lived in Canada (Or more specifically, Toronto). It's an unwritten rule but Jews living outside of Israel are not looked upon kindly when they assess the benefits of one location over the other. We may smile while they discuss it, but inside we are giving them the major finger gag motion.

And then the non-Israeli Jews ultimately say something stupid that just makes us want to barf even more. My personal favorite: "living in Ra'anana isn't really living in Israel." Oh thanks for that stupid, unsupportable factoid. Funny how my Israeli passport suggests otherwise. And by the way, if Ra'anana isn't in Israel, where precisely is it then? I think what those people are really trying to say -- and doing a lousy job of it -- is that the quality of life in Ra'anana and other cities and towns in Israel with a significant Anglo populations, is very very good. Inexplicably good for Israel.

I also think that people who say things like that are just trying to make themselves feel better about the fact that they don't live here in "fake" Israel. Self justification is an old trick in the Neurotic Jews Handbook.

Here's another favorite: "Oh, I would never live in Israel because you become less observant when you do." And another one: "I guess you couldn't afford day school in Canada so you decided to move."

I am not going to rebut these stupid comments here because I do not feel that they deserve my time and attention. However, I will simply say to those people: Yeah, sure, whatever.

So back to the question of whether or not moving to Israel, and leaving our cozy Canadian lives, was worth its while. The truth is that it is not a simple yes or no.

The weather in Israel is definitely better for at least nine months of the year, but that's not a reason to pack up one's life and schlep to the Middle East.

The more complete answer goes something like this. If you can avoid dealing with officialdom in any way, shape or form, and if you can either speak a decent hebrew or manage in your crappy hebrew, and if you prefer to live a more full and active life, and if you want to give your children a sense of freedom that does not exist in Toronto, and if you want to be part of something bigger than yourself, and if you only want to eat fruit and vegetables that are in season, and if you like to go to the beach in January, then Israel is the place to be.

However, if you love talking to government officials on the phone, and if you like filling out forms, and if you like shoveling snow, and if you like to understand the precise answers to questions you asked and the reasons for those answers, and if you aren't picky about the authenticity of the taste of your fruits and vegetables, and if you want a quiet, low-key life, and if you need to go to Walmart every week, and if you like driving your kids here and there, and if you need to be somewhere where people line-up properly and take turns nicely, then Toronto is much better for you.

In other words, this is a very full and purposeful life -- for me. I used to think that every Jewish person should be here. I don't think that anymore. I think that things are exactly as they should be -- the people who belong here are here. And those who don't belong here, are not here -- and shouldn't be here. They would not benefit from what the country has to offer and the country would not benefit from having them here. Israel does not need any more lukewarm Jews within its tiny borders. Israel needs people who want to live here whether they can explain their reasons or not.

In other words, shake your hands in the air and roll your eyes. Rationalize any which way you want. There's no one final answer.