Month: January 2011

Letting Go, Love, Making Friends, Work

Follower

Jen

One of the best decisions I made before making Aliyah was the decision to let my husband lead the way.

This was not easy for me. I’m a born supervisor and taskmaster.

I met Avi a little more than ten years ago when I was a “madricha” (counselor) on a JCC association youth program to Israel. Avi was technically my boss; he coordinated the programs and was in charge of hiring the counselors. I think he’d agree that the summer of 2000, when we were both on this program, was the last time he told me what to do.

Since then, I’ve typically been the leader in our little family unit. This is not to say I’m bossy necessarily, though I do have a tendency to nudge. But thanks to an inherited and proprietary blend of obsessiveness, impatience, and a touch of arrogance, I tend to be the person who researches and makes decisions for our family. My husband agrees (I swear he does! Ask him!) that a lot of my proverbial, but not literal pushing and shoving has generally benefitted both him and our kids over the last ten years.

But I wasn’t 100 percent on board with the idea of making Aliyah. Excited about this prospect, yes. But terrified at the potential implications — for me both personally, and professionally. So, I contemplated letting go of the decision entirely. Not because I wasn’t strong enough to make a definitive yes or no decision for myself and the kids. But because I was tired of being the decision maker. I had no practice in “just going along” with a plan of someone else’s design. All of my spiritual gurus and trusted friends advised me that “letting go” was something I might actually embrace, if and when I got better at doing it.

Avi took on the application process through Nefesh B’Nefesh. He was the one who sent requests for all of our needed paperwork to local and national government offices– copies of our birth certificates, our social security cards.  He was the one who organized the “Aliyah” file, keeping careful track of which documents had been completed and mailed, and which ones still needed to be aquired. He looked into communities in the North that might be a good fit for our family.

I remained a little bit aloof and even moreso in denial that this Israel thing was really happening.

When it was time to actually make a real decision, the kind that leads to a plane ticket and a contract with a shipping company, I couldn’t quite bring myself to say yes or no. Yes, would mean leaving my parents, my good friends, my community, and even parts of my business. All relationships I had spent time and energy cultivating over the past few years. No, would mean landing in a new country, learning a new language, and adjusting to new cultural norms and expectations.

It was all too big.  Suddenly, the born leader understood why some people choose to follow.

And it’s not to take the easy way out. It’s to allow someone who loves you to lead.  To fall under the spell of your leader’s vision. To be able to see what he sees for you through his eyes.

During my time of indecision, it was difficult for me to see anything but fear and anxiety. But Avi could see hope. He could see freedom. He could see dreams coming true.

Who wouldn’t want to follow that?

And so yadda yadda yadda….we made Aliyah.

Learning Hebrew

Initiation

Jen

My friend Etya, whose husband is Israeli, said it right. “Sorry to be cynical,” she wrote on Facebook, after hearing about the ongoing “balagan” (mess) that is settling in here as a new immigrant, “but they’re just preparing you for life in Israel.”

I also hate to be cynical, but now that I am an Israeli citizen it’s my God-given right. This first week in Israel has been trial by fire for us. Walking on hot coals with three children attached to my back would have been easier than swimming out of this sea of red tape, as I’ve been calling it. And thanks to PMS, I’ve had to desperately hold back not only jet-lag, but hormone-induced tears as Israeli after Israeli participates in the endless incidental hazing of “olim hadashim.”

From government worker to moving company office manager to kindergarten teacher to municipality administrator…no one is making things easy for us. None of it comes with malace, and all of it comes with a hearty and loving “b’hatzlacha” (good luck!). Nonetheless, we’re not having the easiest of transitions.

If I was watching the movie of our life this past week, it would be funny. It would be in black and white, though, starring the Marx brothers or Laurel and Hardy. There would be a tad bit more physical humor…my husband would have tripped and fallen face down into a discarded falafel as he was filling up the flat tire on our rental car at the gas station. Or a pigeon would shit on my head the third time I walked out of Bank Leumi without an official bank account. Or maybe after the moving company called to tell us the dock workers at the port of Haifa went on strike, we’d see the ship captain setting our lift from America on fire.

Thankfully you’ll see none of those extras on the documentary of our first week here…And some of the highlights were the warm welcomes we got from our friends and family. Posterboard signs on my in-laws house and on our soon-to-be rental saying “Bruchim Habaim” (welcome) in colorful Hebrew letters. Cheerful hellos from neighborhood kids who remembered my children from playing with them in the summer. And, most memorable, the awesome arrival at Ben Gurion airport.

Things may or may not be getting any easier in the weeks to come, but someday very soon, I have a feeling we’ll be part of the Tribe — hazing newcomers with a love that is reserved only for those who’ve decided to become members of a club who would have me as a member.

Religion

De plane, de plane

Jen

I’m thankful for this parody forwarded to me by my friend Deborah, which does such a good job making fun of El Al flights (like our flight to Israel) that I don’t have to spend time doing it myself.

One thing I have to add to this blogger’s post is the unique insanity that accompanies Israel-bound flights because of the necessity (Or desire? I don’t want to offend.) for orthodox Jews on the flight to “daven” (pray). Individuals such as the gentleman seated in front of us who seemed to lose his prayer book every time the beverage cart started down the aisle and had to go searching for it in multiple pockets of multiple suit jackets in multiple overhead compartments.

That said, during the minutes I thought the plane was going down from extreme turbulence, I was very grateful for those on our plane who had God’s ear. I was rational enough to think at the time, “This plane is as blessed as you can get,” while simulatenously countering that rationale with the Holocaust, evidence that you can pray super hard and still tragically perish.

But most of all, the one thing you can count on from El Al that you don’t see on domestic American flights is that no matter what the emergency, tea and coffee will be always be served…with pleasure.

Learning Hebrew

Sounds like

Jen

Whenever I am at the Jersey shore in the summer, the sounds of the ocean stay with me long after I leave the beach. Lying in bed at night, I still hear them rolling and crashing; rolling and crashing.

It’s the same with Hebrew. Long after my mind has intellectually shut down and refuses to try to translate anymore (at least for the day), my brain keeps working. I continue to hear in my head the gutteral CH sound and the rolling Rrrrrrs speeding by a mile a minute.

Is this a known neurological phenonmenon? What causes this to happen? And when will it stop? I desperately need some sleep!

Perhaps the quiet will return when Hebrew is no longer noise to me, but LANGUAGE.

Learning Hebrew, Love, Making Friends, Parenting, Religion

Too Jewish

Jen

Almost from birth, the American Jewish mother does everything she can to ensure that her American Jewish daughter meets a nice Jewish boy.

What seems like minutes after her daughter’s baby naming, the American Jewish mother registers her daughter for Hebrew school at the local synagogue (or temple, if you happen to be a Reform American Jewish mother). And for a few years, the mother sails by on her daughter’s love of tefillot – not the actual meaning of the prayers, mind you, but the sing songiness of the chants. After all, who can resist a good Adon Olam? It comes in, what? 36 catchy varieties?

But soon after, the American Jewish daughter starts to whine that she doesn’t want to keep going three days a week to Hebrew school – her friends are busy with tennis and ballet and she wants to be busy with tennis and ballet, too. She doesn’t want to be wasting time on the Alef Bet since who speaks Hebrew in America anyway?

So her parents start telling her fabulous fairy tales of a land called “Bat Mitzvah” where you get rewarded for studying Torah troupe. The payment comes in the form of jewelry, and jewelry boxes to keep the jewelry in, and in a few envelopes with money for your college savings account (which will in reality be your camp account because these days camp costs almost as much as college.)

Then, some time in between Sunday School and Bat Mitzvah, the American Jewish parents  send their daughters off to Camp Ramah in the Poconos or Camp Harlam…where it’s sink or swim. Swimming after cute Jewish boys for the next five or six years, hoping to score at the weekly campfire or in a quiet corner at a USY convention, where she learns how to French kiss, but certainly nothing more.

And, says the American Jewish mother, God willing, during one of those years at overnight camp or in Jewish youth group or at a state school with a few good Jewish fraternities or sororities, the American Jewish daughter will fall madly in love with a nice Jewish boy whose parents are from Rye or Westchester, but not Brooklyn or Long Island. Even better, his family would be from The Main Line or Denver or Scottsdale, because this would mean his parents are Jewish, but not New York Jews, which as we know, are not the same as other Jews.

And, so God willing, by taking all the right steps and supporting all the formal and non-formal indoctrination, the American Jewish mother has put her American Jewish daughter on the path to a nice “shidduch.” Yes, God willing.

But, God forbid, that nice Jewish boy is Israeli.

Oy vey. God forbid.

God forbid, your American Jewish daughter falls for a nice Israeli Jewish boy. Then, all your hard work has been for nothing.

Because one day, the American Jewish daughter will marry that nice Israeli Jewish boy. And filled with all the yiddishkeit from Hebrew school and Zionist summer camp and Jewish youth group and a summer trip to the Holy Land…

One day…yadda yadda yadda…The American Jewish daughter will make Aliyah.

If you’re an American Jewish mother, I bet you’ve never imagined the scene where you kiss your American Jewish daughter goodbye as she steps on a plane to Israel with her husband and three children.

But it might happen.

So, be mindful, American Jewish parents. Instilling a love of Judaism in your American child is a careful practice. Much like a tennis serve: You want to make sure you hit it strong enough to get over the net, but not too hard it’s sent flying out of bounds.

Because, one day, yadda yadda yadda …you might find yourself kissing a computer screen giving your Israeli grandchildren “nishikot” via Skype.

Like my American Jewish mother.