An Aliyah Journal

This March marks our family's four year Aliyah anniversary, and much as I hate to admit it, in some strange ways, Israel is starting to feel like home. As I drive from our home town of Zichron Yaakov down the winding hills through Binyamina and on to the flatlands of Pardes Hanah, I now recognise fields and landmarks as if I had grown up amongst them. I know how to avoid the morning traffic and still get to the bank on time. I know the shortcuts and the back roads, and I know the one way streets even though the inadequate signs are covered with overgrown foliage. That old familiar feeling of knowing an area well enough to give directions, in Hebrew, to strangers who suddenly stop in the middle of the road, oblivious to the seven car pile-up they have caused behind them, sits comfortably in my psyche. When I arrogantly dare step onto the pedestrian crossing and confidently march across the street, admittedly risking my life but more importantly disregarding the shock I inevitably ca...

You all know the story of the old man who walked along the beach picking up starfish that had been washed up onto the sand and tossing them back into the ocean. A young man stopped him and said Are you crazy old man, there are thousands of starfish along the shore, do you really think that your tossing them back into the ocean one at a time will make a difference? The old man bent down, picked up a star fish and tossed it back into the ocean. He looked at the young man and replied To that one, it just made a difference Natalie is sixteen. She lives with her boyfriend and his family in a 'block' in Pardes Hanah. A 'block' is an apartment building, but 'apartment' is too luxurious a word to describe where and how Natalia lives. There is no elevator in her building, no lights on the landings between the six flights of stairs that are littered with used clothes and electrical goods that no longer work. There are no paintings on the landings, no balconies, no plants...

The open concrete area under the block in which Yuri lives, is filled with large wailing women. They sit on plastic chairs between pillars in a large square clapping their folded hands over their chests in grief, lamenting the tragic and sudden loss of the father of my friend Yuri. In the cultural code of the Kazakhstan, they are all dressed alike for the occasion, wearing finely decorated black and dark blue summer dresses and patterned scarves to cover their heads. I am noticeably out of place in my jeans and my genes, dwarfed by their heavy bodies and swollen legs which show out beneath mid calf hemlines. They are, each and every one, magnificent, with eastern european faces that express a lifetime of experience; expulsion, war, famine, migration, poverty, loss, grief and suffering. These are not women who care about carbs, these are women who work two jobs a day to pay for their children's fake designer jeans and tobacco and Hash habbits. I have noticed these heavy set women w...

Sanitation was never my strong point. I mean of course I wash my hands after I go to the bathroom and sometimes even before, but I was never one of those moms who carried baby wipes in my bag and who bathed my children every day. I believe a little 'shmootz' is a good thing; it builds a healthy immune system. Still there are some places even I will not go. After a long day rushing around, I found myself in the supermarket late at night in desperate need of a change of tampon. A woman knows these things, not by the time on her mobile phone, but rather by the intuitive knowledge that if she does not get to a bathroom soon, even the most lax sanitary boundaries will have been crossed, and so it was that I found myself searching for the toilets in the ludicrously cheap King supermarket in the Arab Village of Urm El Farhem. A friend had told me about her husband's shopping experiences in the town and I was keen to find an alternative to the local Zichron supermarkets, the cheap...

Everyday I'm thinking, Thank G-d it's not yesterday. Robby was not getting any better and we realised if we left him in his hotel room in Tel Aviv alone over Shabbat he might just freeze to death, though the thought of moving scared him to bits. He was not well enough to make the drive and he could not pack up and check out but mostly he could not bare to be in our hot house with a million teenagers and air conditioning units that, much like us, worked some times, randomly and not at maximum efficiency. Still we had no choice but to save him and so we drove to Tel-Aviv, packed him up and brought him home against his better judgment. The house was clean, and we had run the air conditioning all day to cool it down. There was hot chicken soup on the stove. By Sunday morning he still had a fever so I took him to the doctor who sent him for an x-ray. "Ze iy efshar"- it's not possible, said the woman at reception, he has no details, no Israeli ID number, it can't b...

There's an Israeli comedian that tells how in Israel you have to take twenty eight driving lessons before you can take your driving test to get your licence. His punch line is aptly delivered in a simple "Why?" Our seventeen year old daughter has been working hard to pay for her own driving lessons of which she has so far completed half the required amount. She has also been studying the theory book in English and today I drove her to Hadera to take her theory test which she passed. Since I would be in Hadera with a few hours to spare I called my friend who is a police and traffic officer to meet for a coffee and a chat. Hadera is Golans beat; he walks through the streets and is greeted by all with affection. Once there was a time where he handed out tickets and fines, but now many years on he knows everyone and they all know him. He no longer hands out fines but rather warm greetings and small reminders for all to be on their best. He agreed to meet me outside the driv...

At this moment in time, Israel sits between that casual non affected place we all fell in love with in the seventies and a slick stylised future of the new century - hovering somewhere between the collapse of the Berlin Wall and Kylie Mons 'locomotive'. Last weeks Yom Ha'atzmaut celebration was a case in point. Podiums designed to look like large blue underpants , a pompous staged military presence, endless formations of predictable Israeli symbols visible only to the camera's eye, and masses of dancers all doing the same thing over and over again to the backdrop of (I concede) some relatively impressive entertainment technology. I imagine some big Israeli names were called in to produce the event but still it felt staged and flat. Of course in the Tel-Aviv world of design Israel is well and truly up there with the best, as it is in the world of the arts, music and dance, but the rest of the country, is still very much stuck in flared jeans and gaudy fonts. D...