Having spent earlier sabbaticals here in Israel, I knew the subject of aliyah loomed as a background issue but hardly expected the untold ways it would recast itself.
Jerusalem’s stylish German Colony, where we rent a furnished apartment, has seen an influx of French-speaking olim – so much so that when one of the Hildesheimer Street shul’s Simchat Torah honorees came forward, a chorus of “La Marseillaise” rang out. I once heard the congregation’s black-frocked rav
trying to explain a complex Talmudic point and then wondering aloud in
Hebrew whether he should add some French to his vocabulary.
The aliyah
theme surfaced again in a friend’s e-mail announcing he planned to
arrive the following month on a flight sponsored by Nefesh B’Nefesh
(NBN), the aliyah service organization.
“Scary,” he wrote, “but better scared than sorry.”
After making a mental note of his December 27 arrival date, I was reminded once more of aliyah
at the premiere showing of the film “Refusenik” at the Jerusalem Jewish
Film Festival. This moving account, showing both the heroic Jews
trapped in the Soviet Union desperate to emigrate to Israel a
generation ago and the daring activists in the United States who took
up their banner, held personal meaning for me.
In 1968, I wrote one of the first books on their struggle (The Unredeemed: Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union),
and on three occasions visited these Prisoners of Zion. Whatever tears
I shed during the movie were dwarfed by how I felt when Sharansky,
Levin and some fifty other survivors of the Gulag (some now aided by
canes and walkers) came onstage afterward to a five-minute standing
ovation.
As though some master plan were at work, the next morning an ad appeared in newspapers inviting readers to welcome NBN’s 31st chartered aliyah flight at Ben-Gurion Airport.
Two more experiences underscored the theme of aliyah. Less than a week before the trip to the airport, the Daf Yomi class I attend at the Hildesheimer shul finished the tractate Ketubot,
the last few pages of which glorify the land of Israel to the extent of
allowing husbands and wives to divorce spouses who refuse to settle
there.
The
world of the dreamers who trekked across Europe three centuries ago to
board boats sailing to the Holy Land came alive, only a day before the
NBN welcoming ceremony, during a tour to Tiberias run by the Orthodox
Union’s Israel Center. I saw the shul founded
by the followers of the Baal Shem Tov, and in the city’s old cemetery,
the tomb of Rav Yisroel of Shklav, one of the students of the Vilna
Gaon who made the precarious journey.
It
was 5 a.m. and still dark when my wife and I boarded one of three
chartered buses parked in front of Jerusalem’s Binyanei Ha’uma for the
ride to the airport. Among the passengers, many of whom carried
homemade signs, were joyous teenagers, teenagers and twentysomethings,
parents with infants in tow, and Shulamith and Yehoshua Neaman, the
seventyish couple who had led the previous day’s Tiberias tour.
We sat behind alumni of an earlier NBN flight – a couple from Portland, Oregon, and their three babies – who’d made aliyah
as they were becoming more religiously observant, because to their mind
the choices were either a larger Orthodox community in America’s
Northwest or Israel. They were traveling to the airport to welcome a
21-year-old woman from Seattle who had just finished a pastry chef’s
course.
Arriving at El Al’s Terminal 1, I went upstairs where a minyan
was underway. What impressed me was the relatively large numbers of
boys in the room who were in their early teens. I learned from their madrich (guide) that these 120 students from Kfar Saba’s religious high school had set out early in the morning to fulfill the mitzvah of greeting Israel’s newest arrivals.
At
7:30, the crowd of about one thousand ran outside to the tarmac and
formed two parallel lines abutting the makeshift gate where the olim would pass. Fifty chayalot
(female soldiers) waving Israeli flags stood at the front of the rows
under the bright sun. Israeli music blared, a young man blew into a
long, curbed shofar,
hand-drawn signs bobbed up and down, guitars sounded. Everyone was
pressing to get a glimpse, or touch, or reunite with the new arrivals.
It was a scene of joyous, triumphal pandemonium.
The first of three buses shuttling the olim
from the plane drew closer, circling again, seemingly teasing the crowd
to shout harder and wave more strongly. Finally, the heroes stepped
down from the bus greeted by hugs, kisses, tears, mazal tovs,
and handshakes. Fatigued, but apparently sure they had done the right
thing with their lives, the newcomers smiled, cried, kissed loved ones,
and even tried capturing the moment’s emotions with camera photos of
their own.
The
200 arrivals were a cross-section of age, dress, and religious
observance. One couple came from Venezuela, a few from Canada. Some
were Holocaust survivors; others were already preparing to serve in the
Israel Defense Forces. The eldest was a woman of 93, the youngest a
girl of three and a half months.
Anna
Solomon, 24, born in Toronto and holding an MA degree in mathematical
finance, felt she was living out her grandparents’ dream. “My parents
wanted to come,” she said, “but couldn’t do so after the war.” Jeff and
June Glazer were uncertain whether their three children in Teaneck, New
Jersey, would follow their example.
Among
the young, the pull of Israel was especially powerful. Atara Mark, 20,
from Plainview, New York, aspired to teach English and was headed for
Bar Ilan University. “It’s all my parents’ fault.” she joked. “My
father wanted to jump on the plane with me.”
Simona
Kogan, 25, who edited a website back in Metuchen, New Jersey, planned
to settle in Rananna. “I feel very connected here. I could be Jewish in
America, but my Jewishness is more fulfilled by being in Israel.”
Jeff
Daube, 57, a schoolteacher from Riverdale, New York, was excited at the
prospect of launching a new career as the Israel representative of the
Zionist Organization of America.
The lesson of the new olim is that an intense love of Israel and a deep desire to fulfill the mitzvah of yishuv Eretz Yisrael
will surpass the pull of family, friends, habit and culture. Like the
Soviet Jews who risked the Gulag, the pilgrims to Tiberias who risked
persecution and poverty, even the French in my community who were far
from certain the beachhead they established on Hildesheimer Street
would be a success, these Jews came here because they see Israel as
their home – and a glorious place in which to live.
May they be inspired by the spirit that drew them to Israel to accomplish great things for Klal Yisrael.
Ron
Rubin, author of “Anything for a T-Shirt: Fred Lebow and the New York
City Marathon, the World’s Greatest Footrace,” is professor of
Political Science at Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY. He
is spending a sabbatical year in Jerusalem.
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