The Aliyah Question

There have been a flurry of blog posts written this past week or two about the aliyah question. First, Hannah Dreyfus wrote about her ambivalence toward making aliyah:

....the pronouncement of aliyah as an unequivocal ideal is quickly followed up by a laundry list of buts. My career. The language. Money. The precarious way of life. The foreign culture. The school systems.

An ideal, yes. Am I going? No...

Immediately following came what I thought was a tragic piece, written by Aryeh Younger, in which he unabashedly declares:

For me and many other American Orthodox Jews, we proudly see America as our homeland. We believe that American culture is our culture...

To me and the overwhelming majority of America’s Jews, we have no reason to apologize for living in America. I am proud to be an American, and I don’t see Aliyah as that “unequivocal ideal.” 

There ensued on my Facebook Timeline a 109-comment (and counting) thread about whether or not having zero desire to make aliyah is, as I termed it, tragic. One brave and persistent commenter, writing from her materially comfortable life in the US, cited a long litany of reasons why she and other modern Orthodox Jews are not even considering aliyah. Some of her reasons are based on misinformation (e.g. "will the rabbis allow my children to get married because I wasn't raised religious?") but some are completely understandable for those making a strictly rational decision.

It's my contention that the decision to make aliyah is not a decision that can be made on the basis of strict rationality. In fact, I'm not sure that for many olim, it's really a decision that we make at all. It rather feels like a decision that was made for us. 

By the Big Guy.

Two years ago, I wrote a post in which I noted that:

I am often struck, when friends and new acquaintances tell their stories of how they came to live in Israel, about how we are all guided here.  It's as if God handpicks us, one at a time, and sets us on a path toward this place.  It has long seemed to me that a significant percentage of olim are either converts or ba'alei teshuva like me.

For years, I've dreamed of writing a book filled with stories of olim who came here from distant places, both spiritually and geographically. While that book gestates within for a few more years, I would like to introduce you to two families whose aliyah stories particularly inspire me.

Getting The Call

I know olim who experience ending up in Israel as a somewhat random outcome. But there's another experience many olim recognize. Others refer to it as having your aliyah switch flipped on, but I refer to it as getting the call. However you term it, the experience feels something like this. You get an idea in your head that somehow, someday, someway, you are going to live in Israel. And that thought never leaves you. Whether it takes 6 months or 6 decades, THE THOUGHT NEVER LEAVES YOU.

Take the Morgan family. They made aliyah just a few days ago, after living in places most East Coast Jews have never even visited, among them Idaho, Nebraska, Utah and Wyoming. I was told that Baruch Morgan was a cowboy but that didn't fully prepare me for our first meeting. They were our Shabbat guests this past week and all three Morgans walked in wearing white straw hats.

Photo not taken on Shabbat.

As new olim often do, we traded aliyah stories, and, in so doing, we spoke about getting the call. I immediately recognized from their story that, even though they had been living very far from major Jewish population centers, Hashem handpicked this family and brought them Home.

Jewish Ancestors Calling You Home

Yoel and Yael Keren started life in Oklahoma as faithful Christians named Joel and Tracy. Although Joel and Tracy married as Christians, they were plagued by theological questions for which they could not find satisfactory answers. Tracy's intermarried Jewish grandfather encouraged them as they pursued conversion to Judaism through the Conservative movement in Oklahoma. As newly-converted Jews, they married a second time, this time under a chuppah. Tracy's grandfather attended their Conservative wedding and encouraged their aliyah, saying, "You go, and be good Jews, not like me." 

Fifteen months later, they made aliyah and began to study for a second, halachic conversion (which I think of as Jew 2.0). In August 2002, they stood together under a chuppah yet again (for those who are counting, this was their third wedding together) and began their lives as Orthodox Jews in Israel.

Twelve years later, now known as Yoel and Yael, they are both fluent in Hebrew, which Yoel speaks using the Tiberian vocalization that dates back to Second Temple times. They have an Israeli-born daughter in addition to their American-born son. Yael teaches English in an Israeli high school and, in addition to teaching occasional Torah classes, Yoel works for an organization that reclaims the Land of Israel for the Jewish people. Their Oklahoma accents and fondness for smoking meat remain, even while they continue to make their daily contributions to the Jewish people in the Land of Israel.

Rabbi Nachman Kahana taught me that the reason why aliyah, as in being called to the Torah, and aliyah, as in immigrating to Israel are the same word, even though they are pronounced differently, is because Hashem calls to each of us, individually, by name, when the time has come for us to return Home.

For those who view the aliyah question as Hannah Dreyfus, Aryeh Younger and my Facebook commenter do, it seems plausible to me that, perhaps, they have simply not yet been called.

The Blessing of the Unearned Shekel

I have been among the lucky olim who, since finishing ulpan, has had work for most of the time I've been in Israel. Sometimes more, sometimes less. It's a blessing to have the ability to earn shekels and I never want to take that for granted. After I received it, I took a picture of the first paycheck I earned in Israel, skimpy though it was, to always remember my humble beginnings as a worker here.

So I have paid work, thank G-d, even though I don't yet have paid work that delights my soul.

More and more, I think that my real work is what I do for others. Kol haKavod to people who are, but I was never the "let me make you a meal and watch your children" kind of person. That didn't change when we made aliyah. But every day, Hashem sends me opportunities to help others in ways that are a better match for my skills and my nature.

Sometimes these opportunities are relatively small, such as answering questions about Israel for prospective olim or connecting one person to another or giving someone a phone number or lending new olim an air mattress until their lift arrives or teaching someone how to do a particular task on the computer.

And sometimes, they are as big as organizing an event that raises many thousands of shekels for tzedaka while helping the English speakers in my neighborhood find new books to read at very affordable prices.

As a major bookaholic, when we made aliyah, I came to Israel knowing I was going to have trouble finding enough English books to read. I did what most English speakers in Israel do. I bought a Kindle, borrowed books from friends and had family visiting from America bring books. But it wasn't enough to keep my book addiction fed. I went into a few used book stores in Jerusalem, but the books there were too expensive for me to consider that as a viable, long-term option.

I thought perhaps I would organize a small book swap. I imagined getting together about 20 women with 100 books so that we could trade with each other. Everyone would get something new to read and it could be a fun evening. I put out a call for people who had English books to donate to the swap.

In the first hour, I already had 100 donated books and I realized that this idea had much more potential than I had, at first, imagined.

The idea has grown to a major community event that takes place twice a year. I call it the Great Ma'ale Adumim English Book Swap and Sale. We collect book donations (we had 3000 books at the last swap), organize them by category and charge just a few shekels for each book. All the proceeds go to tzedaka.

But even more, as the event has grown, more hands were needed. There are now dozens of volunteers who help along the way - collecting book donations from those who don't have a car, bringing boxes from the local grocery to pack the books in, schlepping hundreds of cartons full of books, setting up tables, sorting the books into categories, cashiering and breaking down the displays. It's a great event that attracts a high percentage of the English speakers in our city, so it becomes a social outing as well. And everyone finds great bargains while raising thousands of shekels for tzedaka.

The night of the Book Swap, people always thank me and my partner for organizing it. But it's impossible for the Book Swap to happen without help from literally hundreds of people in our community - book donors, book buyers and the dozens of volunteers - working together to make it happen.

I don't earn a shekel from the work I do to make the Book Swap happen. But it's a blessing nonetheless. 

The blessing of the unearned shekel. 

A Spiritual Spin on Anti-Women Nonsense

Lately, there has been a huge amount of tension regarding the role of women in Judaism bubbling up around me. I haven't been so caught up in this issue since I first became religious a few decades ago.

I spent the first year of my observant life in tears - drawn to the power of truth in the Torah and in living a God-centered life, and repelled by the constant reminder that my status as a woman defined and confined nearly every aspect of my Jewish experience.

Over the years, I made a kind of uneasy peace with my role as a Jewish woman. I know well that we, as a community, are not where we are meant to be regarding equal dignity for men and women. And there are still too many times when I am struck by the lack of derech eretz, of respectful human behavior, towards women by my community.

Lately, the list of indignities against women in the Orthodox community seems, against all logic, to be escalating. More and more aspects of women's behavior are being categorized, in certain circles, as immodest and thereby newly forbidden. I thought about listing all the recent examples here, but I decided not to put any energy into cataloging the insanity.

There's also a tremendous backlash against the Women of the Wall, a group of women who are seeking "the right for Jewish women from Israel and around the world to conduct prayer services, read from a Torah scroll while wearing prayer shawls, and sing out loud at the Western Wall." Their goals are not mine. Nevertheless, I am horrified by the way their detractors speak of them.

In the comments section of a recent Times of Israel blog post where the blogger expresses her inability to understand why some Orthodox women are not content with our traditional role, one woman calling herself Orthodox commented:

I daven in an "orthodox" shul following certain practices such as having a mechitzah. I was raised to view the mechitzah as "evil" and making women "second class" and in fact discovered that the opposite was so: I found a sisterhood where each woman was valued on her own merits versus the Reform "I'm Mrs. Doctor" where your merit is what a macher your husband is.....I found far more respect for women in my "orthodox" shul than I'd ever encountered in the neighborhood Reform temple, where women were derided, joked about and made to feel unimportant. Now, WoW doesn't want an "egalitarian" section -- they want orthodox practices ended altogether; the Kotel should be open at all times to their style of prayer service and the separation of men and women ended--because THEY don't like it. Well, I DO like it. And I want to KEEP that tradition. So who are these creepy once-a-month-media-circus-pretenders to come to the Kotel where the majority of Jews are "orthodox" of one stripe of another and have their temper tantrum in the name of "equality." That's not equality--that's oppression when you force the majority of people to adopt your prayer style over their objections.

To which I replied:

You have exactly illustrated the precise thing of which so many critics of Women of the Wall are guilty. You claim to indisputably know their motivations and you judge and malign their intentions. You call them "creepy once-a-month-media-circus-pretenders" and refer to their attempt to secure what they believe is their right as Jews a "temper tantrum in the name of 'equality.'" This is not talk befitting an Orthodox woman. You disagree, fine. But where's your derech eretz?

So far, in the cholent pot, we have:

• The ongoing small and large indignities that I and other Jewish women (some, not all) feel occasionally - but most acutely in synagogue-based interactions.
• The escalation of strictures meant to keep women out of the "public" (code for male) eye.
• The backlash against Women of the Wall.

Add to this cholent a recent, personal, excruciatingly painful episode of being forced to beg for the right to do something holy in a synagogue setting and being turned down, not for reasons of Jewish law, but for reasons of gender bias.

Why is all this anti-woman nonsense escalating davka now?

In a book that forever changed my view of the tension between men and women in Judaism, Devorah Heshelis assures us of the Torah’s promise that gender equity and the balance between masculine and feminine spiritual energy will ultimately be restored. 

As we approach geula and the ultimate redemption of the Jewish people, the dominant masculine spiritual energy, knowing its days are numbered, is thrashing around and whacking everything in its path with its death throes. 

That's why I'm suddenly assuming the duck and cover a whole lot more.

POSTSCRIPT: A few thoughtful readers have pointed out that my use of the phrase "duck and cover" implies that I have chosen to take a passive approach to the increasing chauvinism in the Orthodox community. I'm happy to have the chance to correct that impression.  What I meant was that I'm noticing more anti-women nonsense flying around. I understand that Hashem gave me, personally, a combination of sensitivity to these issues and a particular set of resources with which to address them. This post is an example of my approach.

Thank you, Janis

NOTE: I originally wrote this after a friend was killed in the bombing at Hebrew University on July 31, 2002 (22 Av 5762). I was still living in Baltimore at the time. Today is Yom HaZikaron 5773 and today, I stood outside and heard the national Yom HaZikaron sirens from my home in Israel.

Whenever I read news from Israel that includes the names of victims of terror, I force myself to slow down and actually pronounce the names. I know that each name represents a whole world – a person who had a life and a family and all that goes with it.

To most people, reports of the death of Janis Coulter, who was killed when a bomb exploded in a cafeteria at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was just another in a long, tragic list.

But not to me. Janis was my colleague. We both recruited American students to study in Israel at our respective universities. More than that, Janis and I were in the midst of that blurry transition between being colleagues… and becoming friends. I genuinely liked her and looked forward to seeing her on occasions not dictated by our mutual work schedules.

A few months ago, I told Janis about a position in Baltimore I thought would be perfect for her. In deciding not to pursue it, she said, “Part of me wants to stick it out here [at the Hebrew University] until the matzav [situation] turns around so that I enjoy the thrill of sending students to Israel again. I don't want to remember this job mainly as a string of crises... ” I was disappointed because I knew I would enjoy having her in Baltimore.

She had a different destiny.

News of her death, which was suspected the whole day of the bombing, but not confirmed for me until late in the evening, hit me hard. I was aware, as I cried for the loss of Janis, that I was also crying the pent-up tears that I was never quite able to summon for other victims whose names I had forced myself to pronounce. Paradoxically, her death freed me to mourn more deeply for all the others.

Any shred of detachment from a bomb in Jerusalem that I still felt, as an American Jew, imprudently at ease in my host country, was torn away. More than ever, Israel commands my full attention. I know I’m not alone in this. Totally counter-intuitively, the day after the bombing, three new students applied to study in Israel. Despite everything. Because of everything.

A few days ago, Janis was my colleague and friend. Now her face and her life story is international news. How bizarre. The circumstances of Janis’ death caused me to wonder. Is it a merit, or a curse, to die because you’re a Jew?

The first night after her death, I had a dream that Janis and I were on a crowded bus together. We both knew she was already gone, but she appeared to me, sitting by a window of the bus, just as I remember her. Even in my dream, it was clear that our time together was brief, because she had to return to the Next World. But as a kindness, she came to me, just so I could talk with her one last time.

When I think of Janis, I think of her humor, which was bursting with silly puns. I think of the significant conversations we had while sitting together at Israel Program Fairs, in between talking with students about studying in Israel. I think of her Boston accent. Her dimpled smile. Her role as a doting aunt. I think of the way she was so filled with personality that her cheerful life force always shot out at me, even from her ordinary emails, the text of which was always blue, like the flag of Israel.

Janis Coulter died as a Jew in Jerusalem. And we are left behind to mourn her.

Thank you, Janis, for touching my life. I miss you already.

The family has asked that donations be made to the Janis R. Coulter Memorial Fund, The American Friends of the Hebrew University, 11 East 69th Street,New York, NY 10021

Feeling Israeli

One of the experiences of being an immigrant, and I believe this applies to all immigrants everywhere, is that, at least initially, you lose the ability to pick up on subtle environmental cues. So you either see things but don't really understand their significance, or you just don't see them at all, at least until you become more acculturated.

Walking down the hill yesterday afternoon, my visual field was overwhelmed with the multitudinous Israeli flags that have popped up recently. I know Yom HaAtzma'ut is coming, so my immigrant brain was able to process this change in the environment.

I also saw a group of preteen girls walking around with a purloined grocery shopping cart filled with sticks and scraps of wood. I know Lag B'Omer is coming, so I deduced that they are collecting wood to make a traditional Lag B'Omer bonfire.

Then I saw this flag with homemade addition of a bit of orange tape. I discerned that the owner was imploring us to remember Gush Katif. That touched me the most. And I was gratified to be sufficiently culturally attuned to grasp the message.

For immigrants who have been here a long time, this will seem like no big deal. But for newbies like me, it helps me feel more at home in Israel when I understand even things that are not spoken.

Yes indeed, I'm feeling very Israeli today.

Doublelife: A Book Review

I received a copy of Doublelife: One Family, Two Faiths and a Journey of Hope by Harold Berman and Gayle Redlingshafer Berman in the mail the other day. I had heard of the book through various social media channels, but I didn't remember ordering it. This, in and of itself, is not that unusual for me since I have a very bad case of book addiction. When we made aliyah, my husband (who is also a book addict) and I brought well over a thousand books with us. And that was after we sold off at least an equal quantity.

Turns out, I was sent a review copy by the book's publicist. I cracked it open and, despite the escalating pace of Pesach preparations going on in my home, no less than in Jewish households across the world, I finished the book over Shabbat.

I generally like books that are first-person accounts and Doublelife falls into that category. The book is written as a series of letters between Harold, a secular Jew from New York and Gayle, the Minister of Music in a mega-church in Texas. Herein lies my major criticism of the book. I found the format much too contrived, particularly after the couple married and began living together.

Having said that, I was struck with the self-congratulatory tone that the couple expresses as the book opens about how they are not going to fall prey to the difficulties of intermarriage. Through the years (and it's important for the reader to note the dates of the "letters" in order to understand the passage of time in the story), religion becomes a central issue in their marriage, and that's where the story becomes much more interesting.

First Harold, in response to his inability to answer challenges from a Christian colleague about why Jews don't believe in Jesus, begins to learn about his own Jewish heritage. Later, the obvious spiritual sensitivity of the child they have agreed to raise as a Jew, pushes the family closer to Torah observance. Indeed, these are some of the most moving passages in the book.

The reader is carried through the inevitable hurdles - finding the right community, the challenges of Gayle's conversion, the need for careers that are compatible with a Torah life - that the family faces. I found this the most interesting part of the book.

I knew, from before I opened to the very first page, that Gayle and Harold made aliyah at some point and are raising their children in Israel. But there is not a hint of that part of their story in this book.

I'm anxiously awaiting the sequel. I love hearing people's aliyah stories. And this untold part of the Bermans' story adds support to my contention that ba'alei teshuva and converts make aliyah out of proportion to our numbers in the general Jewish population.

The awkwardness of the format aside, it's an engaging story and one that has a happy ending for the Bermans and for the greater Jewish community. Another Jewish family finds their way home. What's not to love?

Not Exactly Kisei HaKavod

Item: In an Orthodox shul I attended while visiting friends in another community for a simcha, the men sat in beautifully constructed synagogue furniture from Kibbutz Lavi...

http://furniture.lavi.co.il

...while the women sat in Keter chairs that had been stacked in a corner.

Item: I attended a lecture on Derech Eretz held in an Orthodox shul. Separate seating was set up for men and women. The men sat in the regular men's section and the women were seated in rows of folding chairs that began behind the end of the men's section. I arrived on time and paid the same price for admission to the lecture as men were charged, yet the very best seat I could get was further away from the speaker and less comfortable than the seating available for men, including those men who came late.

Did I mention the topic of the lecture was Derech Eretz?

Item: Praying in a certain Orthodox shul for Yom Kippur, it is impossible for me to see when the aron kodesh is open. The only way I know to stand is from the scraping of chairs and the rustling I hear coming from the men's section.

Item: In an Orthodox shul I attended while visiting family in another community, the men's entrance was through decorative double doors in the front of the building. The women's entrance required me to pass by the shul's dumpsters, enter an unmarked door on the side of the building and climb two flights of stairs.

Item: The blogger A Mother in Israel recently hosted a guest photoblog by photographer Rahel Jaskow which chronicles the many ways in which the space for women at the Kotel is compromised.

Item: Though my husband and I were the first ones at a concert of Jewish music being held in an Orthodox shul, and despite the fact that I was charged the same ticket price as the men, I was told I must sit in the cramped women's section behind tables two rows deep and to the left of the performer. Men had their choice of  seats facing the performer and had plenty of room to dance. A man who came 45 minutes late was able to sit two rows from the performer.

I could continue with similar examples of a lack of derech eretz I've experienced as a woman over the years, in different communities and in different countries, but I believe the point is clear. We in the Orthodox community have a derech eretz problem when it comes to women in synagogue spaces.

I'd like to assume that it's a problem of oversight rather than of intentionality.

Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not suggesting that I want to wear tefillin or serve as a ba'al tefilla or be called for an aliyah. I'm not inherently opposed to separate seating for tefilla. Please don't conflate and thereby dismiss what I'm saying because my point is based on gender. I'm not revealing my disdain for being a Jewish woman and I have no secret desire to be a Jewish man. I'm a committed, faithful Orthodox woman, married to a former pulpit rabbi, who would like to be treated with dignity whenever I enter an Orthodox synagogue.That hardly seems like a controversial expectation.

I'm speaking here about derech eretz and kavod habriot - the simple human dignity of women that is often violated in public Jewish spaces. No woman should have to feel diminished because of thoughtless spatial planning.

I imagine that most people involved in making decisions that lead to these sorts of circumstances are not intentionally hostile toward women but are rather unaware of the consequences of their actions. I believe these are, in the main, sins of omission rather than of commission. My intention here is to draw attention to the issue in the hope that, by sensitizing more people to the unintended consequences of careless synagogue design, things can change for the better.

Haveil Havalim #401: The Pre-Pesach 5773 Edition

Founded by Soccer Dad, Haveil Havalim is a carnival of Jewish blogs -- a weekly collection of Jewish and Israeli blog highlights, tidbits and points of interest collected from blogs all around the world. It's hosted by different bloggers each week, jointly coordinated through our Facebook Group. The term 'Haveil Havalim,' which means"Vanity of Vanities," is from Qoheleth, (Ecclesiastes) which was written by King Solomon. King Solomon built the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and later on got all bogged down in materialism and other 'excesses' and realized that it was nothing but 'hevel,' or in English,'vanity.'

          If you're a Jewish blogger, please join our Facebook group and consider sending in your posts and hosting an edition yourself.

Life in Israel

A Mother in Israel, I am very jealous that I didn't get to host this extraordinary guest photo blog by Rahel Jaskow on my blog. Separate and Unequal at the Western Wall. Best not to record my blood pressure after I read this post. I'm a very calm and even-tempered person, but the appropriation of the Kotel by one group infuriates me.

Shlomo Skinner writes about the significance of the Hebrew month of Nisan and the custom of reciting Birkat Ha-Ilanot (the blessing on budding fruit trees)

Mrs. S photoblogs a visit to Hevron.

Real Jerusalem Streets photoblogs a whole different understanding of the BDS strategy (boycotts, divestment and sanctions) and, in so doing, shows the world what the streets of Jerusalem really look like.

What a week for photo blogs. Here, Batya photoblogs about lions in Jerusalem and here about an ordinary walk in Israel.

A mother and a son write movingly about the recent enlistment of the youngest of a crop of brothers into the Israeli Defense Forces. Their words make my heart soar with pride in the Jewish people.

Politics in Israel

Lots of Israelis are none too fond of America's interference in Israeli business. Batya and Esser Agaroth wrote on this theme a lot recently.

A none-too-flattering look at AIPAC by Esser Agaroth.

Batya wants to Keep Barack Hussein Obama Off Our Roads!

Batya explains why the 22 state solution is better than the Two State Solution. 

Esser Agaroth talks about what connects Obama, Pollard and Passover.

Pesach is Coming

Jacob Richman shares a huge number of educational Passover resources.

Esser Agaroth shares a surprising secret for single men making Pesach.

Inspirational Roundup

A Settler's Dream inspires with The Chassidic Approach to Joy

Mordecai Holtz writes 10 Lessons I've Learned From My Mentor, a moving tribute to the recently deceased Rabbi Dr. Stanley Wagner, A"H, his wife's grandfather, who had a profound impact on his life. My favorite was Tip #2.

Batya writes about a bit of hashgacha pratit on the Jerusalem public transportation system.

May you each be inspired by something you read here.

Chag Sameach.

GUEST POST: An Israeli-American Living in an American-Israeli City

This guest post was written by Anabelle Harari. Her bio appears below.

An Israeli-American Living in an American-Israeli City
(or it the other way around?)   

This past fall I signed up for a photography course. It was run by an American who was completing her masters in Art Therapy. The advertisement read as follows:

“Are you a new immigrant looking to gain some photography skills? Come learn how to use photography as a method for exploring aliyah and liminality.”

I was sold.

While technically, I am not a new immigrant to Israel, I certainly feel like one. You see, I was born in Israel and shortly after my family moved to America. I grew up like any other Jewish kid in northeast Philadelphia- listening to the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears, hanging out the mall on the weekends, and while at times I really wished I had blonde hair and my name was Ashley- I felt like I fit in.

However, there was one caveat- I was Israeli.

My family spoke Hebrew in the house, we never had goldfish or Doritos in our kitchen- only imported Israeli products, I listened to Eyal Golan on the way to school, and while all the other kids at my Jewish day school ate white bread sandwiches with peanut butter and jelly, I ate pita bread with chocolate spread.

Fast forward 15 years and I find myself in Israel once again. While I have been traveling in between Israel and the States for a while now- visiting friends and family, the obligatory birthright trip as well as a few other Jewish programs that bring wide-eyed Americans to experience Israel- I built a life for myself in America- not Israel.

However, when it came time for my boyfriend to study at a yeshiva- we knew the only choice would be to spend some time in Israel, specifically Jerusalem.

I arrived here feeling pretty confident. I speak the language- what more is there to really know about living in Israel? Turns out- a lot. Living in Israel has not only pushed all my boundaries, it has also made me realize how utterly American, I really am.

I enjoy my space, I enjoy central heating, but mostly I enjoy not being yelled at or being asked when I’m going to get married every other day. By American standards, Israelis are rude. They are loud, they are pushy, and they are extremely nosy (read: the married question coming from the guy at the grocery store).

And while this can become frustrating beyond words, I have come to actually appreciate this “rudeness.” The guy at the grocery store may be judging me, but he actually cares that I marry a nice Jewish boy. And the aggressiveness? After yelling at me about why I didn’t have a Tuedah Zeut card, the woman at the bank actually invited me to her home for Shabbat.

Does it make sense? No. Does it have to? Not really.

Being in Israel has made me value my American-Israeli upbringing. It has allowed me to take a critical look at the things I experience on a daily basis, and it also has made me appreciate this in-between state of being. Not quite American, not quite Israeli.

It seems that I have found the perfect place to be not quite this and not quite that- Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a liminal place in itself. It’s Israeli, it’s American, it’s everything in between jammed into one neatly packed city.

So now, when people ask me what it is like to live in Israel again, I give them my short yet complicated answer- it’s liminal. And I leave it that.

Anabelle Harari is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College. She is a sustainable food blogger and the community attache for BirthrightIsrael Experts. She lives in Jerusalem and you can connect with her @thelocalbelle.

Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny

Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny. I have no idea why I remember this phrase, which I learned as an undergraduate student 100 years ago. It's actually quite fun to say. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.

What it means, in essence, is that the development of an embryo goes through all the same stages as its organism's evolutionary history.

I learned that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, not in evolutionary biology, where it seems to have been repudiated, but in a linguistics course. There, the theory states that the individual acquires language in roughly the same sequence in which the language originally developed. One echoes the other.

Which makes me think of cauliflower.

Naturally.

Every time I cut a head of cauliflower, I marvel at how each floret is a miniature version of the entire head.

It has a stem and a top and, if you cut the stem, you get smaller florets that also have a stem and a top.  And so on. And so forth. Whenever I cut a head of cauliflower, the words "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" echo in my head.

Then I think about Hashem and the amazing variety of fruits and vegetables He put into this world for us, with all their colors and smells and flavors and textures and sweetnesses and I feel happy.

Chodesh Tov.

Two Tiny Moments

Today was grocery day. We went to the grand re-opening of a store that is reputed to have the very best prices in town. Lots of bags, boxes, cans and bottles, but they have zero produce.

I found a recipe for spinach burgers online that I'm going to tweak to make pareve. Alas, at the second grocery store today, the place where we regularly shop, there was no frozen spinach.

On the way home, we stopped at a third large grocery store and, again, no spinach.

What the heck!? Did Popeye move to Ma'ale Adumim?

There is a smaller store, a cross between a grocery store and a makolet (mini-market), in the neighborhood we pass without really going out of our way. I actually needed zucchinis too. And the onions I forget to get at the last two stores.

I found many fat zucchinis and perfectly acceptable onions at store #4. Emboldened, I went to the frozen section to look for my spinach.

"?יש תרד" (Is there spinach?) I said to the guy stocking the freezer section in perfectly correct Hebrew that I had looked up on my translator app just moments before.

He looked at me with those deer-in-the-headlights eyes I get whenever a clerk is explaining something to me in rapid fire Hebrew.

And he says to me, "I, eeeh, don't speak English."

That's okay, these gorgeous ceramic pomegranates popping up in time for Tu B'Shevat cheered me right up.

Postscript:

In the end, I made spinach balls instead of burgers. Vegan. And yum.

Something Momentous

These are the tools of a voter in Israel. The blue teudat zehut - my national identity card, the postcard that told me where my polling place was, and the slips of paper, each representing the two parties between which I have been tossed for the past few weeks.

Last night, I dreamed that a candidate for one party told me to vote for the other party. That's how deeply uncertain I was.

Today, I stood there and asked Hashem to guide my hand. Today, I voted for the 19th Israeli Knesset in the modern State of Israel. This was my first time voting in a national election as a Jew in in Jewish county. Like a lot of my fellow olim, I said Shehecheyanu- the blessing for special occasions, to express thanks to Hashem for sustaining me and getting me to the point where I can express myself by voting for the party that I think best represents my interests in the government of the State of Israel.

The actual voting took less than 10 minutes, including waiting in line. 

I still feel a little shaky. 

I did something momentous.

In the end, as with all other decisions, the outcome is ultimately in Hashem's Hands.  In the end, I derive great comfort from that.

Haveil Havalim Blog Carnival #394

Founded by Soccer Dad, Haveil Havalim is a carnival of Jewish blogs -- a weekly collection of Jewish & Israeli blog highlights, tidbits and points of interest collected from blogs all around the world. It's hosted by different bloggers each week, jointly coordinated through our Facebook Group, and headed up by Jack.  The term 'Haveil Havalim,' which means"Vanity of Vanities," is from Kohelet, (Ecclesiastes) which was written by King Solomon. King Solomon built the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and later on got all bogged down in materialism and other 'excesses' and realized that it was nothing but 'hevel,' or in English,'vanity.'

If you are a blogger and would like to submit a post or two for consideration for next week's roundup, please email Esser Agaroth  and put "HH" in the subject line.  If you're a Jewish blogger, please join our Facebook Group.  Volunteer hosts are also being sought. All you need is a Jewish blog and about an hour of your time.

There are a pack of new-to-HH bloggers mentioned, as well as some old favorites, in this week's roundup. It's also a very Israel-centric issue. Not that I'm complaining about that :-)

Don't know if immigrants all over the world do this, but in Israel, it's very common to celebrate the anniversary of the day you make aliyah. In this post, Lauren takes a look back on previous posts on her her third aliyahversary. I'm not gonna lie. I was happy that she mentioned one of my own top posts of all time.

As you might have anticipated, there were a lot of weather-related postings this week. Israel had extraordinary weather - heavy rains throughout the country that continued for days and, on Thursday, real, honest-to-goodness snow in Jerusalem and other places around the country.

In this post, Susan from Aliyah on Purpose, reflects on the weather and her first aliyahversary. As far as I know, Susan is a new blogger at HH. I plucked her from obscurity because she often makes me laugh. It's worth reading her blog, called Aliyah On Purpose, on a regular basis. Not by accident, her daughter writes a blog called Aliyah by Accident.

Ruti from Ki Yachol Nuchal! is planning a wedding (Mazal Tov!) so she didn't have time for a lot of words this week. Instead, she gave us one of her fabulous photo blogs, full of snow shots.

Batya had a busy blogging week. She reflects on the way Israelis react to a lot of rain, the way Israelis react to a little snow, the joy of excellent customer service and why a trip between Jerusalem and Shilo will demonstrate that the Land belongs to the Jewish people.

Besides weather in Israel, the upcoming national elections are on everyone's mind. Shev from they call me SHEV writes about how making aliyah changed her perspective on politics.

Esser Agaroth also had politics on the brain last week, though from a, ahem... less uplifting perspective. In this post, he talks about the nasty side of Israeli politics on the far right .And here, he reflects on the recent choice of the Obama administration and what he sees as the fundamental nature of Arabs.

Continuing on the darker theme of governmental threats to the Jewish people, Rafi reminds us what happened in Germany the day after Kristallnacht in 1938.

Shlomo from Thinking Torah reflects on former Chief Rabbi Rav Ovadia Yosef's controversial statement that yeshiva students are better off leaving Israel rather than serving in the IDF. He also reviewed a new English translation of the Mishnah Berurah this week and suggested what English speakers should think about before they invest.

Back to the joy! Living in Israel impacts all of us. Ima2seven writes about how, after learning more about them, she now views the vegetation that grows out of the Kotel stones in a spiritual way.

Finally, in Sussmans b’Aretz, perhaps another new-to-you blog, Romi writes about an "Only in Israel" experience with ricocheting money. I loved her story so much, I wrote a post about the very same thing.

Go ahead. Click a link. Enjoy more of the world of Jewish blogging.