Jul

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Israel Appreciation Observation - Day 3

July 5, 2007 |

Israeli Flag

If yesterday’s post was fairly specific, then today’s post is going to be very general indeed. Today’s Israel Appreciation Observation is about something that native Israelis just can’t understand nor ever really appreciate. Today’s observation is about:

Aliyah - aka Coming Home

I was 23 when I made aliyah and moved from the US to Israel. Growing up, I experienced the same things that most Diaspora Jews experience no matter where they are from. I remember many times wishing that I was not Jewish just so that I could fit in. I remember thinking that to be a “goy” would be so much easier than being Jewish because I could go out anywhere I wanted and never be stared at or looked at as “the other.” I personally experienced anti-semitism. Whether it was from the neighborhood kids calling me a “Jew boy”, kids on busses throwing pennies at me, or a college professor who took an inordinate amount of pleasure in treating me just a little bit different than my classmates. I remember being annoyed that the restaurants in Disney World weren’t kosher and being pissed because where we went on vacation was dependent upon my Dad finding a minyan. All these things did not ruin my childhood. I never felt underprivileged or sorely lacking. I just felt slightly out of place my whole life.

And then I made aliyah.

Now, Israel sucks, trust me when I tell you this. But the spirit of these posts is to find the positive aspects of being in “The Holy Land”, so let me tell you something amazing. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that can beat the feeling of knowing that (practically) every place you go, everyone you see, every clerk, every policeman, every soldier, every stranger (almost), is just like you. I know, there are Arabs in Israel, there are Druse, there are Russians who are not Jewish, and there are foreign tourists everywhere. But unless you have lived here, you can’t possibly understand what it means that if you are Jewish, Israel is home. The first time that a religious oleh walks into any grocery store and knows that he he can buy meat and fish from the same counter that everyone else can, he feels that his whole life has been building to that moment. The first time a single secular oleh goes to a bar and realizes that his mother would be happy if he brought home any girl there, he realizes that he was missing something and he might not have even understood what it was. It is what makes Israel special for Jews. It is why I made aliyah and why I stay here even though I often want to leave.

For thousands of years, we have been “strangers in a strange land.”

Not anymore.

P.S. For your enjoyment and cathartic crying, I present a video made by Nefesh B’Nefesh which always makes me feel proud that I made aliyah. If you are Jewish and you can watch this without being moved, you have a heart of stone and you won’t be getting dessert tonight.

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