Aliyah Anniversary: Part One
BH, recently, my family merited to celebrate that twenty years have passed since the date that we made aliyah. Those decades melted away rapidly.
Through the guise of my husband’s, Computer Cowboy’s, career, Hashem brought us to Israel. The international company for whom the Love of My Life worked had bought intellectual property in Jerusalem and needed someone to make its newly attained cogs spin and wheels turn. So, they offered my man and the rest of us a corporate relocation.
Computer Cowboy and my discussion of his offer went like this;
“They want me to relocate to Jerusalem.”
“I’m packing. Suede kippa still okay?”
“I’ll have to troubleshoot in India when they say so, not just when you have semester or summer breaks.”
“I can’t teach rhetoric in Hebrew. I hardly know Hebrew. Khaki or black pants? What do the guys wear there?”
“It’s not just the timing, it’s the frequency. I’ll travel more.”
“The kids are older. They’ll be in school while I attend ulpan. It’ll be fine. White, button-down shirts?”
“They’ll pay me less—they’ll pay an Israeli salary.”
“That’s okay. Aliya’s not about gashmius. Black sneakers or black shoes? Tell them ‘yes.’”
In the end, my husband did travel often and on his boss’ schedule, not mine. He worked in India and Europe. Even so, he was able to negotiate a lower-than-American/higher-than-Israeli salary.
When we arrived, on August 5, 2005, it was the chronological eve of the Disengagement. On August 15, twenty-one settlements in the Gaza Strip and four settlements in the West Bank were evacuated by a government intent on “peace.”
My family was mystified by those events. We were trading American “luxury” for Israeli spiritual riches. Yet, some of the other Jews, meaning, some who had preceded us to The Holy Land, felt the need to give away urban acreage, farms, homes, and communities for the illusion of harmony with cousins who were and still are intent on murdering us.
Whereas my family’s furniture wouldn’t arrive for weeks and whereas our linguistic acumen would lag by years, we, nonetheless, tied orange ribbons onto ourselves, our windows, and our leased car. It was beyond our ken why anyone would want to tie blue ribbons onto themselves and their belongings let alone to do so proudly.
Regardless, before moving into our rental and fastening our orange support to ourselves and our things, we spent two nights in a hotel near the shuk. We needed to overcome jetlag and emotional exhaustion before attempting to live in a barren home among people whom we loved but with whom we were unable to communicate.
That first morning, while my family slumbered in their hotel beds, I walked the few blocks separating our temporary residence from Jerusalem’s historic marketplace. There, I told random vendors that my family and I had just made aliyah. At the time, I couldn’t understand why my family’s “sacrifice” was so unimpressive to all of the people whom I tried to engage.
After two days, my family moved into a rental. We’ve stayed put in our initial community, BH, all of our Israeli years. Within a year, we bought an apartment there. Nearly fourteen years later, when the kids were grown and had moved into their own units, Computer Cowboy and I sold our original purchase and bought a smaller home.
In the intervening years, all of us experienced much growth and made many adjustments. For instance, before our lift arrived, when we were sleeping on the air mattresses that we had mailed to Hubby’s office and were relying on the single pan and single pot that we had packed in our airplane luggage, we visited our neighborhood makolet.
Over the rows of cereal boxes, we heard a voice announce to us or, so we thought, to no one in particular, “Do I hear English?” It turned out that the query was aimed at us. The man behind the voice gifted my family with instructions on how to find a wonderful Shabbat and holiday minyan, which we never would have otherwise found as it was located in the library of a nearby public school.
My family belonged to that minyan for the entire fourteen years during which we lived in that area of our neighborhood. Truthfully, because of the middot of that congregation’s members, when we replaced our rental with a purchased apartment, we specifically sought one that was geographically suitable for attending that minyan.
Mere weeks later, our children began school, Israeli-style. Missy Older, who was fourteen, became her classmates’ “pet.” Rather than speak inaccurately, she chose to be silent for her entire freshman year. As well, she endured her peers literally patting her head and constantly commenting on her fair skin and blond hair.
In her second year of school, when she began to feel more secure about her use of Hebrew grammar, she began to speak up. Her chums realized that she was quite smart and went from patronizing her to imploring her to help them with their homework. Plus, they cheered her on when she represented their school in intercity math competitions.
Older Dude, who was a socially savvy twelve year-old, had brought along an American football. That piece of sports equipment earned him favor with his school’s oldest students. An entire cadre of juniors and seniors protected him from the bullying of eighth, ninth and tenth graders; those big kids just wanted him to like them enough to grant them access to his imported plaything. That protection was valuable; boys, here, often establish pecking order via physical interactions and our son, who had achieved proficiency in martial arts, had been warned by us not to hit back (three years later, when we and his school’s principal had run out of nonviolent strategies and allowed him to defend himself, it took just a single defensive blow for his school’s aggressors to pursue a new target.)
All the same, by tenth grade, Older Dude was attending a different school. The students there were considerably more loving and accepting than those in the school housing intimidators. However, twice, during those years, Older Dude suffered from wall-mounted air conditioners falling on him.
Regarding Missy Younger, she was a month shy of her tenth birthday when we made aliyah. Unlike her big sister, she was willing to take risks in Hebrew. Then again, she was only willing to do so with girls younger than her. Those children, so proud to have an older friend, were disheartened when, in her second year in Israel, Missy Younger abandoned them to socialize with same age playmates.
Missy Younger attended Bais Yaakov summer camp for years. She was exasperated that Computer Cowboy and I sent her to a school that fed into a bagrutot-offering high school instead of allowing her to continue her Bais Yaakov education. Summers, for her, were small compensation.
Our baby, Younger Dude was seven and one half when we made aliyah. He and a bunch of brothers from a family living a few doors away, who attended the minyan that we adored, filled their afternoons with typical “little boy activities;” running, shouting, Legos, and Five Stone.
Conversely, school was less fun. Younger Dude’s yeshiva didn’t know what to do with him. On the one hand, they provided an IEP, an Individualized Education Program for his English studies since he was reading his older siblings’ books and correctly using associated vocabulary. On the other hand, both the administration and my family’s youngest acted out frustrations relating to the dearth of promised, onsite ulpan services. After a few years at that school, during all of which time tensions and consequences kept increasing, Younger Dude departed. Unfortunately, although he was able to leave behind the building’s occupants, he was unable to leave behind the trauma.
As for Yours Truly, from the beginning, the challenges piled up faster than the answers. On balance, the many and varying tests that I underwent shaped me. They ranged from Missy Younger needing IV drips three times a day during our first week here, to Older Dude and Younger Dude being at the receiving end of fists on the same day (of course, while Hubs was abroad), to Missy Older fretting that she had to wait date for marriage until she finished high school, to Computer Cowboy’s too often empty place at the tabled. I wasn’t born a Sabra, but I toughened, nevertheless.
Our aliyah remains my family’s miracle. From the “Chag Sameach” posted on public buses to the corner stores selling Shabbot candles, my family had arrived where we belonged. Despite the fact that we were always part of Am Yisrael, it was only upon making aliyah that we began living the dream, that we began living in Eretz Yisrael!
