Cats and Bags

So I discovered, to my chagrin, that this blog was not as anonymous as I had hoped. Hello, coworkers reading this :)

The news of our move has traveled like lightning in the last two weeks. I suppose it helps that we started telling a few people...but WAY more know than we have spoken to.

The reactions are fantastic, and they are horrible.
Including from Israelis. Israel may be one of the few places where half the people there want to leave, and half the people not there want to come.

It seems the dictum of Chazal is proven yet again, כל הפוסל במום, בעצמו הוא פוסל. Those who share a dream of Yisrael the people, living in harmony in its land, are owe who encourage, who help, who inspire. And those who are afraid, who seek security over realization, seek comfort over that which helps you become yourself....they disparage, rebuke, intimidate.

I am sure both sides are true, and both have a perspective worth hearing and learning from. But ultimately, the life you have is the one you make for yourself, and this is what we are setting out to do...

Hilarious

I listen to Galgalatz online at home as a way to begin getting immersed in Hebrew (and cuz I like to hear new Israeli music).

There was recently an ad for parents to not allow their kids to cross highways on Lag Ba'Omer by themselves (I assume to gather wood for the bonfires).

Imagine this in the US....

A War of Words

Black and Blue
And who knows which is which and who is who
Up and Down
And in the end it's only round and round and round
Haven't you heard it's a battle of words...
And most of them are lies.
-Pink Floyd, "Us and Them" The Dark Side of the Moon (1973)

My travels through the twitterverse have lead me, inevitably, into contact with many "activists" seeking to promote the Palestinian cause. I am being דן לכף זכות in saying this is their intention - strictly judging by their comments and pictures, they seek to demonize Israel, to paint it as a ragtag group of monsters, hellbent on genocide and destruction. They create arbitrary distinctions between "Jews" and "Zionists", rewrite genetic science and world history, deny basic accepted (biblical) archeology, and above all, present "facts" that are absolutely false, twisted, and misleading.
These people pretend to be engaged in conversation, while trumpeting their prior "knowledge of the facts". They refuse to entertain any notion, and suggestion, any intimation that there is another side to the story.
I have been lectured that women carrying fake pregnant bellies packed with explosives attempting to blow up hospitals is no excuse to deny "poor Palestinians" health care, since Israeli hospitals are better than Palestinian ones. When asked why they are entitled to this health care, especially when doing so leaves our citizens in danger, they respond with attacks on Israeli soldiers manning checkpoints being apartheid. When presented with the facts that those checkpoints have decreased terror attacks by a ludicrous number, they respond with Israeli "attacks" on Gaza infants. When asked what they would do if 14,000 rockets were fired into their cities, they say its about checkpoints and healthcare again. Circular logic, around and around and around we go...There is no logic, no reason, no give and take. Just throwing words at the wall, hoping one sticks, and leaving the trail sliding down said wall as incitement for readers to take up the mantle of demanding "justice".

As a child, the gallows humor that is the cultural inheritance of Ashkenazi Jewry was consistently heard about the "piece process (give them a piece of land, be attacked. Repeat as necessary, or until standing in the surf near Tel Aviv)", about the discrepancies between what Arafat would say in English and in Arabic ("we want peace. Mach al yahud!"), about the silly leftist Israelis who were trying to destroy themselves for some unattainable dream of "peace".
But the youth knew better than those dumb adults, we were going to change the world! Of course if we can just talk, negotiate, get to know one another as citizens of the world together, there could be peace! We can tour the sites and sights in their country and they can do the same, we can lay down our weapons....
One of the more striking things, for me, was to watch the leftists who were out there helping poor Palestinian farmers pick their olives in the ancestral groves denied them by the evil occupying Israeli army, protesting the policies of their country, slowly stop talking about their vision as the bombings increased and the missiles fell. When the Fogel family, hy"d, was stabbed in their beds, adult and child alike, some lefty journalist in Ma'ariv or another announced he wanted to hide under Daniella Weiss' skirt. Gradually, the horror of talking to the empty air, negotiating with ourselves, being the "frier" in the dance of international politics, sank in...and was replaced by cynicism, sarcasm, and a grim determination to take care of ourselves. Those who still talk of peace do so with unilateral plans; the government continues to walk the tightrope of peace and war.

But the battle of words has not abated, nor slowed down. The Internet gives a stage to all and any who wish for one, with no need to justify your speech. In an age where attention spans are measured in instants, where the search for truth and fact has been relegated from media and academia to the psychiatric wards, and where postmodernist sensibilities (there is no Truth, all of us have our own truth!) have replaced common sensical ones, the sound bite, whether accurate or not, has the power to paint realities on a global landscape.
[If the previous sentence seems to run on forever, I insist it is a properly structured sentence :) ]
Scandals are created out of thin air (The Jewish Agency gives Ethiopians birth control forcibly against their will!), out of misrepresentations of events (an Israeli air strike killed Omar Mishrawi's baby!), or from sheer stupidity (Israelis only rape white women and not Arabs, proving their racism!). Intellectual frauds like Shlomo Sand spread historical lies faster than anyone can point out his errors. Memes pop up with messages containing basic accounting errors (75% of Gaza is in prison!) and factual inaccuracies (Israel kills Arabs in prison without a trial!). Hell, someone will quote this blog, using those parenthesis as proof, of those statements. By the time someone fact checks it, and discovers their context, the liar will be on to the next "source".
As the famous saying goes, a lie can make it halfway across the world before the Truth gets its boots on. Sadly, once the Truth straps on its boots and heads to battle, the lies lay in wait, documenting "atrocities" that do not happen (Jenin) and "deaths" that do not occur (Mohammed al-Dura).

Which leaves our people stuck. As I have said many times, and continue to do so, Jews wish to build a world with words, not wars. But when there is no one listening, no one willing to talk....the הן עם לבדד ישכון returns, and a nation/people forlornly wishing for a way to engage the world meaningfully.

History, Identity, Purpose (Another Long Winded Diatribe)

So the last many posts have been uppity updates about paperwork and such. I haven't belted out a meaningful post since...well...a long time (http://alohnaaleh.blogspot.com/2013/03/blog-post.html and http://alohnaaleh.blogspot.com/2013/03/it-crazy-crazy-world.html deserve mention). I wanted this blog to be more than a way of telling the world what document I'm trying to obtain, and I was hoping to be able to share depth, meaning, and thought provoking ideas and concepts. Aliyah is not just a move, nor is it some tweetable jolly happy time [more in this later, if i can, when i discuss the party at the airport]. Of course, there's the element of time involved, and I haven't been able to write that much...
I've been holding this in for awhile, and while I don't think I have fully digested/processed/laid it out yet, I want to spit it out just the same.


History is a story. It's a human way of making sense of a million disparate activities by weaving them into a narrative, a cogent whole. We see patterns, themes, even lessons, and ascribe them to the various elements of our beliefs and knowledge of the actors in the stage of the story.

Needless to point out, most peoples have different histories. That is to say the history books in different countries may report the same events, but completely differently. Things mean different things to different people.

The idea of a people, indeed, is linked to its history. The national psyche is formed by the events that it endured (or created it). The national conceptualization of its destiny, its purpose, its dreams...are all tied to its story, its narrative, and its history.

Of course, the model for such an idea (which is not original, nor mine) is the Torah, which is a document of history, as a story, which includes and creates the national laws, dreams, and character...a document which is the raison d'être of a people and its homeland, its ethos, and its pathos. A document so thoroughly bound up in its possessors, that they themselves have become the "People of the Book" - and called such at a time this book is universally read, and claimed.

Except, of course, when this isn't true at all.

One of the unintended consequences of the Zionist movement was the stripping of the Jewish people's history, FROM THEMSELVES. A generation of kids grew up thinking history started in 1933 or so, with the vague prehistoric notions of the Sicarii on Masada and some cute gimmicky things like Saul, David, and the like. But the story, the narrative, the Exile and Redemption theme so vital to Jewish thought and Torah history telling....gone.
Of course, they had a reason to. Religious Judaism, at that point, had devolved into a bunker mentality. "The world is crazy, the Final Redemption must be at hand. There's no need to adapt, no need to change, no reason to engage anything. HaChadash Assur Min HaTorah, and we cannot lift a finger unless G-d makes it so", etc. When creating a nation, which needs an army, bus systems, garbage removal, roads, schools, technological advancement, foreign policy...you cannot have a bunker mentality, because it isn't going to happen by itself.
(Two points on this: 1. Look at our neighbors across the so called "Green Line" for an example of bunker mentalities causing a mistaken belief that states form themselves. 2. Imagine if the religious parties [UTJ, for example] ever held power in Israel. Do you think the infrastructure would be functional?)

For a while, all was good. The ancient traditions and their silly superstitions ("like this G-d thing cares what you eat?") were no longer in the way of our being able to chart our own course, set our destiny, and live free. And then that generation came face to face with existential challenges. Challenges that forced them to ask themselves the dreaded question...why?

As Yair Lapid pointed out in his now-celebrated address at Kiryat Ono College (transcript: http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2013/01/25/yair-lapid-at-kiryat-ono-the-transcript/ ), who would want to live in a desert, surrounded by rockets and suicide bombers, in some dinky tiny apartment, earning maybe $28,000 a year, unless there was a reason to?

And without the history, the story of a dormant Rose flowering yet again, the sense of national purpose in having taught and teaching a world about morality, justice, and humanity, they do not have an answer. And so they live in confusion, bewildered by a world that believes them to be evil incarnate where many wish them dead, while being told they are a democracy like any other. Small wonder thousands leave each year, tempted by the shores of the West and the Far East, where they do not have to be shot at for their democracy, or where they can learn spirituality.

Sadly, Mr. Lapid himself demanded the Education Ministry for his party, and I do not think he plans to address this issue. Nor has anyone in the past, though Gideon Saar's creating school trips to Hevron to show children the place their fathers sleep was certainly a good start.

I was particularly touched by the story a Jewish outreach worker told me of an Israeli girl who came to an Orthodox weekend retreat/shabbaton, and cried profusely at Havdala. When asked why, she said "I am angry. Angry I had to travel halfway around the world to discover something beautiful, which is mine. Where is this in Israel?" He was speechless - it's all over in Israel. Except she was correct - it wasn't in her Israel...

For a few years, I joked that the simplest way to solve the Haredi draft and unemployment problems was to send them to the public schools to teach Torah as a form of national service. Everyone wins - they stay engaged in Torah, the secular learn of their heritage, and the yeshivot don't need so many kollel checks from the government. Of course, the added side benefit of bridging the two sides by letting them meet, converse, and discover together is nice, too. I don't think it's a joke any longer.

If our children do not learn their own story, they will live with no narrative to their lives. And this, perhaps, is the biggest tragedy of all. A life that is not a story is a life that has no meaning - it has no way to be recounted. It lacks the gift of purpose, it remains stuck in its own little dreams and goals, removed from the world's story, and its people's.

And that is something we cannot afford.

13.5 Weeks To Go

The flight we hope to make is July 22.
There is so much to do....
Mail darling wife's request for birth certificate to France. Get wedding certificate notarized and apostilled. Fax copies of all remaining paperwork to NBN and Jewish Agency. Bring originals to Jewish Agency. Select a shipping company, and a shipping date. Take inventory of what we have, what we need, decide where to buy what we don't have, figure out our budget, figure out a budget we actually have, wrap up loose ends (cut the cable service, put a signatory on the bank account, etc), packing what we'll need before the lift comes, sending resumes out to half the State of Israel, (try to) contact realtors and klitah coordinators in places we're interested in, and a hundred other things I can't think of off the top of my head.

It's exciting, it's terrifying, it's making wonder if I'm insane. But it's happening!

It's Official

Past the point of no return, no backward glances
The games we played 'til now are at an end
Past all thought of 'If' or 'When', no use resisting
Abandon thought and let the dream descend
("Past the Point of No Return", Phantom of the Opera)



I turned the job down.

Making the phone call was hard. I felt like I wanted to cry. Until now, we've lived with one foot in either world, going through daily life here while also planning a life in Israel. This offer was the point of no return - we are now committed to this, for better and for worse.

Sigh.

Here we go...

יום הזכרון

http://youtu.be/uPaNZ8wFYbE

For some reason, this song holds a powerful sway over me - too often, the deaths of youths in conflicts bigger than they will ever be are hijacked by "patriotism", by politics, by messages and meanings not their own. We sometimes forget the simple fact that the human life, its richness and woven tapestry of narratives and connections, is precious; it is also crushing and devastating when one is lost.

I heard this song for the first time on the bus to Tzfat, looking at the Chayalim and Chayalot on the bus. There are 25,578 who never came home...

Interview Set. Apostille Magic.

Once again, זה לעומת זה at play.

I get the call for the interview. Life is peachy. Friday is the big day.
My wife receives a call from the French consulate, with a (admittedly harebrained) scheme to get her elusive apostille and births certificate.

Long Live Rafael Cohen/Details on our Progress

Rafael Cohen is the director of Aliyah at the Jewish Agency.
He is a fantastic, friendly, caring person. And a wonderful representative for the Jewish Agency.

Due to darling wife's paperwork mess, Rafael took a personal interest in our case, and cleared his schedule to meet with us personally for the interview. He listened attentively to our case, and is already working on helping us with the bureaucratic monolith that is the Israeli government. If all the people we need to meet with (NBN, Misrad haPnim, etc) will be like him, life will be peachy.

We have completed the apostilled name change document (and anxiously await it in the mail), passport pictures, sent in our marriage certificate (though we will need to get that apostilled, as well), and have an appointment to get baby's passport. In about a month, I think we will be done with all the paperwork...!

Now it's on to prepping for a lift, hunting for apartments and realtors, and making an inventory of what we will need to buy here before moving.



Of course, there's that job interview...

I met with that friend in the office today. He had already asked my current boss for permission to move over to his division. The position is a 5 year contract, comes with a raise compared to my current salary, will graduate to supervisory level in about two months, and is closer to the field I enjoy working in (and possess a Masters degree in, for that matter).
It's a two level jump in the agency in four months, which is unheard of.

My current boss gave me her blessing to interview, and intimated that sticking with her will have benefits down the road, too. In agency politics, that is a strong hint towards latching on with her next project after this grant is completed.

It feels good to be wanted, great to be making progress in a career, and confusing for it to be happening in direct contradiction with my dreams, and plans.

We'll see how the interview goes, I suppose...

And the Sun, It Shines for Thee

Interview with the Jewish Agency went VERY well.

I was so excited to take a positive step, a concrete step, towards moving. (Even if we still aren't approved yet, and will need to go down to the JA at least one more time, because of the paperwork outstanding, as well as our apostille issue).

Then I got a phone call from a friend at work, offering me a position even higher than previous (it has the word supervisor in it). It's a position with a lot of potential, and comes with a significant raise.

This is a bit insane - it seems for each step I take in Israel's direction, an equal and opposite force says "stay".

I agreed to an interview - let's see where it goes...

Here Comes the Sun

Sorry for the Beatles reference...

Tomorrow we head for an interview with the Jewish Agency. After much back and forth, they told us to come in without the problematic apostille, and that well figure things out from there.

We also found a licensed rabbi to sign the marriage certificate, which we will take care of tonight. Slowly, the last of the paperwork is being resolved. It is exciting to know that we're finally getting somewhere.

Pesach has come and gone, and this will be the last time (hopefully) that we have two sedarim. It was cold, blustery, rainy, and bleak outside this chag - that should be a last time, too.

Now the nitty-gritty of where to live and job hunting is making its way into our lives - there are so many options, technically, though in our experience of them there seem to be none. Not having the clarity of where we want to go, and how we will earn a living, is a bit crushing. Sometimes I wonder if others have had to go through this, and how they coped. Other times I realize this is something that all people go through at some time or another (job hunting, school choosing, moving, etc) and that the human race is still around and doing okay. I guess it's a day by day kind of thing.

But the sun coming out is nice. May it be a portent of things to come.