Thursday, January 31, 2013

"You're Looking Over The Green Line?!?"

"It's not safe!"

Because, you know, Brooklyn is safer.


I am getting more and more amazed by the mentality that pervades those who live here in New York. There seems to be this idea in people's heads that there is safety, security, economic potential growing on trees, and that anywhere else is horrible by comparison (forget a different country - you ever see a Brooklyn person talk about "out of towners"?).

In Brooklyn, we are terrified of letting our kids play outside on their own, ride public transportation till they are mid-teenagers, or playing with strangers' children in the park. We pretend the rash of car break-ins and street muggings does not exist, that the looted stores following hurricane Sandy (including the Kings Plaza mall!) were an aberration, and that the ani-Semitic graffiti on the shuls doesn't mean anything. We're "safe".

In Israel, children hitchhike without worry (or much worry, anyway). They ride busses from the age of six or seven. The streets are filled with children playing, shopping, being kids. There is an awareness of what the security risks may be, and it is tempered by the awareness that we belong there - it is ours. (Neither would be true of pretty much anywhere else.)

It is safer to live in Israel, anywhere in Israel, than in New York.

The Community Options

So we have narrowed down our original countrywide search to Maaleh Adumim, the Mateh Binyamin area (Kochav Yaakov, Michmas, Kochav Hashachar), and possibly the metro Yerushalayim area, depending on affordability.

We are in the process of further narrowing that down, though I have a sneaking and sinking suspicious feeling we will not really figure it out till after we are already in the country (making those first few days more stressful than they'd be, since we would be on a ticking time clock to have an address within 30 days of the lift making port).

On one hand, there's a lot of positives for the outlying areas. I like community. I like people who are friendly, I like the suburban ideas of letting your kids roam free and play outside till dark. And real estate is MUCH cheaper.

On the other, I like the anonymity cities afford their inhabitants, their convenience in terms of travel (walk and bus) and shopping (many stores instead of one or two).

It's a big decision to make - especially because of the prices in terms of renting/eventually buying. Not to mention education options, employment opportunities, the need for a (insanely, ridiculously) expensive car...

Hopefully we'll find more clarity in the coming weeks.


Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Reactions - Theirs, and Mine

I never ceased to be amazed by the comments I receive from some of my well meaning friends and family when I tell them we are making aliyah.

"You know, you should stay here a few more years until you save up more money."
Yes, in a perfect world I would be going with my untold millions in my pocket and blowing my nose on $20 bills. But I am only temporarily employed in a grant funded position, and in a job that I am technically overqualified for based on my degree (though the economy is so bad most of my coworkers are also "overqualified", as due to the major number of unemployed people it is easy to hire people who bring more to the table than what you are paying them for). I have no guarantee of being employed after the grant runs out, and the prospects for the field seem dim (the entry level jobs go to people with three years of experience!). Even now that I AM employed, and so is darling wife, and we still barely break even each month. As if we can save money in the first place. And we DO have money saved up, from previously, anyway.
We are pretty employable people, positive and go-getters, and bring a Masters degree (on my side) and being trilingual (darling wife) to the table. There are no guarantees anywhere (though for some insane reason, Americans continue to believe that in the US you can always get a good job, so much so that it's implied as a given in the comment). And waiting for your material comfort's sake has another pratfall built in - come once your children are a certain age, you're begging for problems by moving and putting them through a language change and culture shock. Thank G-d our family is in the perfect window both age wise, comfort level wise, and money wise. And what many Americans don't get is that it isn't money that determines success, it's the will to succeed.

"You know, life in Israel is very hard, and while it's a big mitzva to live there, I don't think it's יהרג ועל יעבור!"
So it's ease that determines which מצוות to keep?
And besides. Who's talking מצוות? Is your whole connection to הקב״ה so external that everything needs to be rationalized and externalized as a מצוה, a rule, a "commandment"? Maybe, just maybe, someone can be motivated by love, by connection, by wanting to be where their Lover is? Perhaps hardship doesn't matter?
And what's this יהרג ועל יעבר stuff? Convenience and lower prices, cheap restaurants and two cars per family, Walmart and Target and Whole Foods is the barest minimum for a happy life??? I am not saying everyone should move to Israel. I am not saying there isn't a positive aspect to a higher standard of living. But that doesn't mean these are objective needs, or values, and that living with it is considered a must.

More comments and commentary coming as people continue to say things to me.

ביום טובה, היה בטוב. וביום רעה ראה.

גם את זה לעומת זה עשה אלקים. (קהלת ז:יד)


There is a chassidic tradition that this פסוק means that there is a balance of good and evil in the world - counterfeits, if you will. One stands against the other, and the balance of forces evens things out. Therefore, the more something is good, or right, or real, the more forces of evil, or wrong, or falseness there are arrayed against it.
It depends which side of the equation you're on. Therefore, on a good day, be (in the) good. And on a bad day, look. See. Find the good that is valiantly trying to break through.

The emotional roller coaster that lead to this decision has been a wild ride, filled with ups and downs and barrel rolls and gut flipping loops. There are days the clarity shines through, the world is aligning itself to let our dreams come true, and everyone flows. We find what we need, meet people who are positive and encouraging, find leads about communities and resources, and we're ready to grab life by the horns.
And then there are days the negativity sets in, the doubts creep up, the naysayers get vocal, and the never ending paperwork requirements and the Sisyphean task of tracking down what we need and getting it done weighs down on us. It can feel like we will never finish, that the ridiculous backflips to track down paperwork from the French Riviera and downtown Manhattan won't work, not to mention the daunting task of moving somewhere with no job waiting for you, a different language spoken there, and no mint or winning lottery ticket in your pocket, all, while both of us hold down jobs and parent our beautiful little children.

But if you can quiet the voices both inside and outside your head, you can see. You can see that Israel is your Place, the only Place you can have a life in, and that whatever the cost of passage is, it will be worth it. You can rise above the fear and doubt, back to the good side of things, and re-find the Good that is the ארץ חמדה, טובה, ורחבה - wide enough to accommodate you, when you can see its Goodness.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

The Amazing Israeli Bureaucracy, Part 2 of Many

So today we discovered that our ketuba, which is a perfectly fine marriage according to the United States government (for everything except taxes), is not according to Israel. They demand we get civilly married in the United States as part of our tik aliyah.

So in addition to having the Israeli passport fiasco, we now have to brave the New York City bureaucracy as well. Of course, did I mention that this marriage certificate will also need to be notarized AND apostilled as well?

And now I'll have to remember two anniversaries. I am announcing ahead of time that there will only be presents for one of them!


While these things are annoying now, and create more headaches, I am sure we will all laugh about this when we arrive in israel. Probably on a line at the misrad hapnim.

Monday, January 28, 2013

The Amazing Israeli Bureacracy, Part 1 of Many

So my darling wife's mother is Israeli by birth. Which means my darling wife is Israeli too. However, she is also French, due to her being born there and all.
To make aliyah, she needs an Israeli passport.
However, she needs to give them her original documentation, which is French.
Due to that, she needs an "apostille" on all her French documents.
To get it, it has to be done in France.
Of course, being done in France, the apostille will be in French.
The consulate here in the United States doe not read French.
So the French apostille will need to be notarized in English, here, in the States.

How's that for backwards?

Of course, there is also the complication of French bureaucracy, in which that apostille can only be granted in the city she was born in. Which, needless to say, is nowhere near where we live. Nor where any of her relatives still in France reside.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Terror of the Unknown

The road to Eretz Yisrael begins by walking headfirst into the Yam Suf.

Try to put yourself into the headspace of Nachshon Ben Aminadav for a moment. Behind him is all he ever knew. The economy, the house, the language, the culture, the streets and neighborhoods, his whole life is behind him - the comfort, the security, the KNOWN.

In front of him, the promises of a G-d he cannot see or hear, and the hopes and dreams of future better than the one he is running from. But it is a future he does not know.

And, in my opinion, the true brilliance and genius of his act of walking into the ocean is his complete giving himself over to that unknown. The one that threatens to engulf him, to swallow him whole, to completely overwhelm him and destroy him, hopes and dreams unfulfilled.


I believe our family, each of us in our own way, is standing at that precipice.

Here's to jumping in, to walking in up to our necks into the unknown. And to the future beyond it, the Land of our dreams and the Life within it that we will come to know in time.

Paperwork....


There is a lot of it. A ton. It helps that my darling wife is trinational, including being technically israeli already, and the wonderful israeli need for mountains of paperwork to feed its burgeoning and bludgeoning bureaucracy. I have photocopied hundreds of papers, faxed tons more, went searching for papers that I didn't know existed, and faxed a few more. We're making headway - we may even finish sometime before our flight leaves, assuming we can make it on. Anyone who knows about getting apostilles on foreign documents, let me know!

We have also begun to try planning our move. Thank you Nefesh B'Nefesh, the flight and initial paperwork is free, thank G-d. The choices of what to do with our furniture (ship or sell and buy there), which items to keep and which to throw away/sell,
health insurance HMO to choose (which depends where we choose to settle), ulpans, daycare/gan for shoshana....the questions are daunting. Financially planning this move has not been any easier.

I have begun listening to galgalatz on the iPad, as well as read Yisrael Hayom and ynet in Hebrew in an effort to try to learn some new vocabulary.

So this is where we're holding for now....

Why are you making aliyah?

It is perhaps a sign of the times (or perhaps simply the result of people's natural tendency for entropy) that whenever one moves to israel, they will inevitably be asked why they chose to do so. For some reason, moving to Monsey or Los Angeles does not need to be justified, but moving to Israel does.

Rather than humor people by saying I am crazy, or a dreamer, or a religiously motivated fanatic, I will actually answer the question. In my typical fashion, I will do so obtusely, protractedly, and in a dissertation. As I am wont to do.



Our Torah describes a certain life. Sefer Devarim is written almost as a constitution of sorts - it provides the legal framework, the rights of each individual, the separation of powers between the Religious (kohanim and Beis Hamikdash), Legal (Sanhedrin/court system), and Executive (the king) functions of the state. It subscribes to the "ish tachas gafno v'tachas t'einato" ideal (that was put into words by Michah HaNavi) of a landed citizenry who inhabit homesteads of their making within a greater system of individual and communal goals (the shevatim).

In the Unabomber's Manifesto, he eloquently and cogently explains that in our (global) industrialized and urban society, the ability to make life choices which matter and give us power over our own lives has been taken away. We live in fear of, and under threat by, the actions and decisions of others that we have no control over. We have arbitrary things we can sink our creative energies into (such as topics of interest, or sports, or hobbies) that are meant to give us an arena of interaction within the choices we make.  But within our actual lives, whether it is the daily struggle of subsistence or the grand struggle of forging an identity, we are alienated from the enterprise of setting goals and investing ourselves in their fruition.

The inner struggle of the human being to forge an identity and live within its worldview while interacting with the world at large, is perhaps the hallmark definition of the term "human" itself. And we, those to whom the L-rd of the Universe has Given His Torah to, and the title of Adam to, have both bequeathed that struggle to the world and act as its exemplar in living it.

It is this life, I believe, we are meant to live; in fact, it is what it means to be a Jew, a Ben Yisrael.

The problem is when you leave the comfortable confines of your own mind and begin to build bridges to the world outside you.

Societies in Israel AND America fall short of this ideal, and for different reasons. They each (and yes, I am overgeneralizing here) aproach the fundamental "What does it mean to be a Jew" issue differently.
In America, we see ourselves as the continuation of the Jewish religion that began with Avraham Avinu. We have taught the world morality, monotheism, religious life; we are committed to being model citizens, an example of a g-dly people, and hope and pray each day for the time when all can see g-d is One.
We also see ourselves as Americans, as members of the democracy, as contributors to society, and as a part of the American people. We follow their sports teams, create businesses, run candidates for office, and partake in the public debate of values and ideals. However, culturally and religiously we are different, we revel in that difference, and it provides a key component of our identity as Jews.
Americans want their children to be successful as Americans as well as Jews.
In America, our Judaism is an identity component, a conversation piece, a religion. We talk about "staying sane in an insane world", we grapple with issues that arise from living in two different worlds at once (internet bans, shidduch system, movies, music, jobs, praying on airplanes, etc.). We try to define everything within ritual and law (halacha if you are frum, and tradition if you are not) and live in black and white terms (muttar/assur) and build walls around our communities to block out the "outside world" and its bad influences (or in a desperate attempt to hold onto the Jewish identity in the first place). Our children grow up confused by the contradictory positions of their parents and learn to live this dichotomous life - or leave, either the religion or society. And those who have left the religion carry on in their ideas of its tenets (tikkun olam, caring for the needy, championing the downtrodden).

In Israel, we see ourselves as a nation, with a rich national history that goes back to Avraham Avinu. We teach the world morality, we invest ourselves in making the world a better place, and we try to create a fair and just society for all.
We see ourselves as Israelis, as a democracy in the Middle East; we identify with the West while also embracing our Middle Eastern roots and culture. We have sports teams, lead the world in hi-tech businesses, invent medical solutions that help all of humanity, and field an Army that is dedicated to preserving the sacredness of human life (paradoxically). We debate nationally our own existence, the rights of those we may have displaced, the citizen fatalities on both sides of the conflict we find ourselves in, how to create a long and lasting peace with our neighbors, and how to balance the democratic ideals of the state with its religion. We believe we are different than the other nations, and we revel in that difference.
Israelis want their children to be successful as citizens of the world as well as Jews.
In Israel, our Jewishness is an identity component of the nation,  a religious and perhaps archaic tie to the "Mickey Mouse Rabbis" of the past (or saving grace for the horrific future of Jews that do not know what they are, if you are haredi). We grapple with issues of living in two worlds at once (Torat Eretz Yisrael, abolishing kitniyot, reinstating the korbanot we can, representing ourselves to the UN for the dati and secular, and the struggle to keep the primacy if Torah in a modern country for the Haredim). We define everything in black and white terms (muttat/assur for the haredim, will of G-d, security, PR for the rest) and build walls around our communites to block out the outside world (terrorists, secular culture) and their harm. Our children grow up confused by the importance of the Land (or the Torah), and wonder if its price is worth paying - and leave for America, or leave the religion.

The legacy of the Jewish People is the near inability to reach any sort of concesus as all about anything. We embrace each individual's right to an opinion, and look at concensus as the deciding factor only because of the imperative to have a conclusion in practical matters. Whether this is expressed in a Beis Medrash or in Knesset elections, we believe the only way to live is one where you are alive - "u'bacharta b'chaim l'maan tichyeh" is not a pun or nonsensical non sequitur, it is a definition of the Toras Chaim we are meant to live by, live with, and partner in creating through Torah sheBaal Peh. The "third dimension" of life, the "electricity" we feel when we know we are alive, the "being there" in the moment where our decisions matter and we are engaged in creating ourselves together with the Creator - this is the background, the context, the basis of Torah, and of Judaism. And it is this path that leads to that idyllic life of "ish tachas gafno v'tachas t'einato" - the ability to live your life, to engage in the sacred struggle of being and becoming Adam.

So to revisit the age old question - when looking to plant roots, which one is a better option? What is a better recipe for our children to find their way under their vine and fig tree?



I had the pleasure and blessing to spend a month's time in Israel. I came with a blank mind - no biases, no preconceived notions, nothing - just being there. I wanted to immerse myself in the Land, to experience it from the point of pure Experience, of just "being there".

The Land is inhabited by a fractured People - complete with those who are not that People at all living among them. There are Jews who think that Mosaic law is an outdated and archaic "Mickey Mouse" philosophy living in the same buildings as those who think that Israel the country is a violation of the Divine Will. African migrants roam the streets, passing the Ethiopians claiming to be from the lost Tribes, who themselves are talking to the Russian immigrants who are grandchildren of Jewish grandfathers and no more and therefore unable to marry or be buried in Israel). Women soldiers sit on the same buses that the "Burqa women" ride, one holding their gun and the other their children. Taxi drivers gently chide (if not outright verbally assault) tourists to move to Israel, while thousands of Israelis leave for the greener pastures of New York and Florida, and India and Tibet. Buildings in "settlements" are demolished to placate the Leftist peaceniks who claim the land was once owned by an Arab, while IDF helicopters and artillery pieces flatten Arab buildings in Gaza being used as rocket launching pads. The secular cashiers in the department stores wish people a "shabbat shalom" while some merchants look for the "frier"they can take to the bank.

Some of the inhabitants look to the past, sitting in the shadows of ancient places espousing philosophies and dreams of re-establishing the days of ancient yore. Some look to the future, indifferent to the archaeological sites around them in favor of the high rises and luxury apartments that arrive with more successful start-ups being sold to wealthy American investors. Some think the answers are to be found in the primeval books of wisdom, while others dismiss these books as antiquated and antediluvian remnants of un-Enlightened people.

We drove through Jerusalem, parking our car in the parking lot of the brand new Mamila mall and apartment complex and walking to the Kosel - a trip of about a kilometer, though spanning a few thousand years. We traveled to Teverya (Tiberias) and prayed at the kevarim of the Rambam, Rav Yochanan ben Zakkai, the Shelah, and some other Tannaim and Amoraim, which were around the corner from a shopping center. We visited Ein Gedi, which was a old world manufacturing center of balsam, and today is a beautiful nature reserve where one can walk the ground where Shaul chased David (the famous story of David cutting the corner of Shaul's garment took place in the area) while swimming under the waterfalls. I listened to the haftarah of Shimshon Parshas Naso literally bein Tzorah v'Eshtaol - in an air conditioned shul in modern day Ramat Bet Shemesh.

But before all of this, I went to a beach in Ashdod.
Sitting next to us on the beach were three young teenagers, who couldn't be older than 14. They were probably playing hooky from school. They were fooling around, smoking, going from the water to tan in the sun and back again. The two boys were groping the girl, pretending be suavely joking while doing neither. I looked at them and felt this odd sense of revulsion and disdain - THIS is the goal of G-d's promise to Avraham?? The G-dless and soulless secular Beach Boys dream of sun, surf, sex, and love? And then, upon arriving back "home" in Ramat Beit Shemesh and seeing the teenagers in the park, children of olim who came to Israel at the perfectly wrong time in their lives, hurting from rejection and feeling hopelessly placeless, adrift in a country they do not know what to make of nor fit into, I had the same feeling, and the same incredulity. It was a feeling that was to remain on the outskirts of my mind the entire time I was in the country, whether I was in the Tel Aviv mall, Old City of Jerusalem, suburbs of Haifa, at a yahrtzeit seuda in Beer Sheva, or on the mirpeset of my gracious grandparents in law in Ramat Bet Shemesh, overlooking the broken and fighting city of Bet Shemesh and its suburbs.

And yet.....
There is a certain shadowy sense of the Land wrapping itself around you, a magnetic draw it pulls you in with - for those who are not in tune with their inner worlds, they can mistake it for "only in Israel" stories and a love affair with shwarma; but it is a sense of belonging, of rootedness, of being a part of what is a part of you. For it is still a Land that seduces its Lovers, calling out to them in gentle whispering breezes and caressing them in wisps of visions of a future they know uniquely to be Yisrael's. And all those who have trod its soil, whether as tourists or toshavim, instinctively know that feeling upon the plane's wheels hitting the ground. The taste in the air that you can do anything, be anything, become anything at all - not in business, but Existentially; you can get a contact high with Life itself. There are no roles to play, no arbitrary rules to keep, no expectations to meet or fill. You are you, an individual, Adam. No more, and no less.
Of course you are going to push a little bit, say exactly what you think, help the stranger get off the bus, and tell the mother next to you how to raise her kid. Of course you will be flipped off, then invited for shabbos, by the SAME TAXI DRIVER. There is no "egrof shel chanifa" telling you not to be you, to live as yourself, to be and become at once in the madcap adventure of being human.

As the old joke goes, the El Al plane landed at Ben Gurion Airport, and as it taxied to the terminal, the voice of the captain was heard:
"Please remain seated with your seatbelts fastened until this plane has come to a complete stop at the gate, and the seatbelt signs have been turned off.
We also remind you that cell phones may not be used until the exit doors have been opened.
To those of you still seated, we wish you a Merry Christmas, and hope you enjoy your visit to Israel.
To those of you standing in the aisles talking on your cell phones, Happy Hanukkah and welcome back home."


After traveling the Land, the question running through my mind was, should today's times be written as a sefer in Tanach, what would it look like?
Then I saw sefer Shoftim, and immediately did a double take. Right down to conquering the land and not driving out the inhabitants, resplendent in the battles and the people just not getting the messages given to them, the problem being summed up as u'bayamim haheim ein melech b'yisrael...it is as true today as it was then. Only today the idols are democracy and liberal philosophy, instead of the Great Fish and the Lord of the Flies (Dagon and Ball Zevuv).

Just as people today question living in Israel, from socio-economic grounds as well as religious ones, I would venture to say that people in those times questioned themselves as well. The confusion and contempt, the disbelief that this is the beginning of something completely different, the very first flowering of a thirteen petaled Rose that has lain dormant for hundreds of years, is not new. We wondered then, as we do now, what it means to be a Jew - we went from the days of Moshe and the clarity he brought, to Yehoshua and his tenacity in defending and promoting the Brit we have with haShem, to....nothing. A leader here and there, but mostly a vacuum in which we stumbled around and wondered what we were supposed to do, and who we were supposed to be. Just as today. The parallels are frightening in their implications...it means, contrary to those with messianic visions for this State, that there may be hundreds of years of going in circles, tripping over our own feet trying to find our way. And contrary to those who believe the State is a travesty, a mockery, and a secular G-doses bastion destined for a short life, that it will outlive them, their children, and perhaps their ideas.

i had a slight epiphany one night, sipping a beer on that porch in Ramat Beit Shemesh (beer is an epiphany inducing beverage, after all).
All the people in Israel are searching for their version of Heaven, in the place they think is closest to it (as an aside, I think this is wonderful pshat in the Gemara which says that Jerusalem/the Old City is closest to the entrance to Heaven - and Hell...).
For some, heaven is a socialist ideal in this world. For others, it is a "vibrant democracy in the Middle East." For still others, it is a place where you can do many mitzvos, like maaser and orlah, so that they may earn a bigger share in the World to Come. Some think it is a theocracy built on (their interpretations of) halacha, with bonus points that allow them to claim ownership of their area and forbid those who do not comply to their standards and ideas from entering. [You thought I was talking about Meah Shearim, but that applies to Dati Leumi yishuvim as well, no?]
But all of them are trying to build Heaven - here, in this Land.

Contrast that with the religious Heaven you were taught...the one that had no room for Earth, because there was nothing sacred about Zhidikov, Vilna, or even Boro Park.
Why do people think Heaven is more important than Earth? The same theological flaws that people point out regarding the second coming are true of saying that the "real game" is being played on a field different than the one the players are in - or in simpler English, saying that your reality is not the one that you live in is psychotic!
Do people not see the Torah never bothers to mention Heaven or Hell? Why do people leave the world behind in their minds for flights of fancy? Each week brings another quote ripped out of context that supports a worldview centered on staying cloistered in a virtual ghetto of our making, with reality walled off and our gaze directed up at the Heaven/Reality weve created for ourselves. We ask ourselves deep questions about the internet and music, about why the vibrancy is gone and the kids no longer care, while the masses slowly slip away to the abyss of the West.

Perhaps this focus on what is beyond this world, on a reality that has not yet arrived, is inbred from thousands of years of persecution, when all we had WAS the next world...
But now, just perhaps, we HAVE something in this world - the prophecies have come true, in far more Real and True ways than the superficial readings of them would admit. There indeed is the callings and voices of the young, the old, the groom and bride, in the streets of Jerusalem. Yisrael is no longer just a concept expressed in synagogues and dusty books pored over by teenagers and long bearded adults. Now the name Yisrael is a people, a nation, with shopping malls and skyscrapers, schools and a lottery, beaches and restaurants, and more shuls, yeshivos, and interest in what it means to be a Jew than ever before. {Less of a clue, arguably, but more of an interest.}

Perhaps the building of a shopping mall, or the successful launch of a business, or the "simple" raising of your children and building of a home IS the very bricks of heaven you thought would fall out of the sky. Maybe we are only meant to play our part, however pitiful and limited it may be, in the world's evolving advance towards Olam Habah, the world that is to come. And if we do it right, and are a part of its creation, its formation, its existence, then we will rise after death to partake in the fruits of our labors. That is all it is. Raise our children faithfully, and faithful, that the World to Come is coming, and slowly engage the world around you trying to make it happen. A discovery here, a wrong righted there, and a thousand small victories in that never ending, generations long struggle to discover what it means to be Adam - which is what it means to be Yisrael.
(It is this, I feel, that happens after every Yom Kippur, when the bat kol rings out "lech echol besimcha u'shtei beleiv tov et yeinecha KI KVAR RATZAH ELOKIM ET MAASECHA." Your actions, your mistakes, your painful toiling in the sands of time, they are all Wanted, all Desired, all part of Life itself.)

The Jew as he who lives as the consummate "other", suffering quietly in a corner of a community that is not and never will be his is perhaps outdated...and perhaps, even more true than ever before; one who lives as a ben Yisrael probably feels most alienated, the most "Ivri", the most as an "other" in Israel/Yisrael itself, waiting for Klal Yisrael to shake off the dust, arise, and bloom into the People it can be.

This "otherness" - is it what a Jew is, or merely a product of his inability to figure it out?
And how does one know which Jew to be? Or where?



After all the intellectual meanderings and late night worry sessions, after all the inspirational propaganda and "only in israel stories" we may use to justify to ourselves the insanity of embarking on your own personal Lech Lecha, after the confusions and doubts and helpful and hurtful advice we receive from everyone who thinks they are entitled to their opinions, the only thing that remains is the simple question: to go, to set out on the journey, or to stay put and wait.

Whether you wait for an Israel more palatable to your ideals and ideas, or to wait for the arrival of a man on a donkey and his fleet of eagles to fly you to the Temple, or for a brutally obvious communique from the L-rd Himself that invites you to make the trek, is not the issue. Just as whether you go because you think the current government in israel is the kiyum of the nevu'ot of Redemption, or because you think it's a better lifestyle, or because you want to be able to cry at the kotel every Thursday night, or because you want to go Home. At the end of the day, either you go, or you do not.

It is no accident that our people traces itself back to Avraham, to the man who at 3 years old realized there has to be something bigger, deeper, One, to the world; the man who was tortured and made into an outcast for his beliefs, and subsequently was told by the L-rd he discovered his intellect that it is Experience, and Existence, that He wants instead. Avraham is the original iconoclast (a word that means idol smasher), the original discoverer that it is the Journey to Selfhood, the Lech Lecha that is life itself, that is the ONLY thing that can hope to answer the burning question of what it means to be Adam. And fittingly, it is his descendants that have gone to every corner of the Earth looking for it, living it, and becoming their small piece of the answer through doing so. It was Avraham who was told that this land is his home, and the home of his descendants.
And now those descendants are returning home. For some of us, home is a place to run away from, a horribly subsuming place that robs us of our chance to be an individual and gives us a role to fill, clothes to wear, an identity that is not ours. We hate home, try to abandon it, pretend it doesn't exist (with all sorts of intellectual, academic, and emotional arguments saying that it is not your home, or not a home at all), become a "self made man". For others of us, home is a place that ALLOWS for an identity, that gives you the things you need to create yourself, become yourself, BE yourself; home is where we are trying to get to, not get away from.

I believe that those who choose to go are the latter, and those who choose to stay are the former. So to answer the revisited question, the place to choose is the home you want your children to have, where they will know what it means to be a Ben (or bat) Yisrael, and take part in the march to Olam Habah.

I hope to see you there.






But wait, you say. Hold on. That is all vey nice, and eloquent, and everything. But what about feeding your kids, about simple living, menus and clothing and shopping and stuff, regardless of where and why and all your mystical and intellectual and emotional bull.
And I tell you. Perhaps it is a different lifestyle. Perhaps that last sentence was one of the biggest understatements in the history of the universe. But the ability to pay your way thru life, simply, with no sword of Damocles hanging over your head called "tuition" or "keeping up with the Shwartzes mad rush into financial stupidity" has its benefits as well. Yes, we will work our asses off. Yes, we will live simpler. But finances is NOT something to compare. They are what they are in both places. We are young, not tied down, able to make a go of it. And we will.

And yes. Affording a house, or flat, will be a bit harder (40% down payment, ludicrous prices, etc.), we won't be able to eat meat, or perhaps even chicken, on a daily basis, and we will probably live without a car. And you know what? It will be a better life, a more rich life, a life LIVED instead of observed as it goes by. Or so we hope. I am pretty sure it will be better off than a life of thousands of meaningless commercial choices, even if it will be a lot more uncomfortable. And I disagree about the comfort level, personally. There is a tremendous comfort in being part of the building of something, the flowering of something, the realization (the making real) of thousands of years of history and a few prophecies to boot. There's a comfort in being part of the  "Nachamu, Nachamu ami", the comforting of Tzion and Yisrael themselves. And there's a comfort in knowing that you live in the Place that Comforts all.