Evangelizing aliyah doesn't work...

My sister is back in America (right? Please call or e-mail! :) and we had a great visit. We didn't do anything spectacularly touristy while she was here-- it's nice to have a guest who lived here for 9 months already and got most of that out of the way. It was wonderful just to slip back into being sisters again. We both keep changing, yet the moment we get together we renew our language of shared experiences, sarcastic humor, and bad habits (like trailing off at the end of a sentence and speaking too quickly).

It's hard to move to far away from my family, but being close to my sister has nothing to do with geography. In a weird way, it was almost hard to value our time together because it just felt so normal. I miss her already, though!

Sadly, my attempts to brainwash my sister into making aliyah were largely unsuccessful. I'm not sure why. Certainly, it had nothing to do with the "incentives" my husband and I offered:

• If she makes aliyah, she can babysit our hypothetical future children ALL the TIME!! (Hmm. Are we self-serving much?)
• If she makes aliyah, she gets aliyah benefits, so surely she can put off getting a real job after college graduation.
• If she makes aliyah, she can watch American TV shows WITHOUT ADS!
• If she makes aliyah, she gets much better-tasting fruit and vegetables. (That one almost convinced her.)
• If she makes aliyah, she too can buy baggy pants with built-in fake underwear from FOX!
• If she makes aliyah, we'll let her stay with us for a whole two weeks before we make her move out and find her own place.
• If she makes aliyah, she can buy cute little cars unavailable in the US, like the Madza 2 (you just thought there was a Mazda 3, didn't you?) and our Hyundai Getz:

(Ok, so that's not OUR Hyundai Getz. Ours is... well...
a lot more dusty and dented. But it's the same idea.)

• If she makes aliyah, she can get a scooter license! (She took one sample scooter lesson while she was here, so she's already on the way. What? They have scooters in Boston, too?)
• If she makes aliyah, she can... umm.... wait, it's coming to me...

Seriously, I would love it if someone from my family or my husband's immediate family would make aliyah, and obviously there are better reasons than those. You know-- the whole living-in-the-Jewish-homeland thing. The fact that this is a beautiful nation with warm people, rich history, and almost any experience you want within driving distance. The fact that life here is vibrant and real. And even my selfish reasons for wanting family nearby have nothing to do with free babysitting-- I would love to have sisters and brothers in the area without a time limit, to share holidays and weekends with them and have it all be no big deal.

But this did make me realize that ultimately, you can't evangelize aliyah. You can't entice family and friends to leap into a different culture, different language, different life. Something about desire to make this crazy journey bubbles from within. And my family is there for me-- even if "there" is across an ocean.

Original content: http://howtobeisraeli.blogspot.com

To my mothers...

So today isn't actually Mother's Day in Israel. "Mother's Day" in Israel has actually been renamed as "Family Day," and this year fell at the end of February. And it doesn't seem to be a big deal at all, based on the fact that I only know everything I just said in this paragraph from a Google Search and careful consultation of our Bank Leumi calender.

However, Mother's Day in the US is a big deal, and that is where both my mother and mother-in-law live. So I wanted to take this post to celebrate the wonderful women they are and to thank them for the ways they have helped me become Israeli. (They've helped me in more ways than that, but this is the focus of my blog, after all!)

Visiting Har Megiddo (Armegeddon) with my mother in December

To my wonderful mother-- thank you so much for...

• Approaching my aliyah with unflagging enthusiasm and support.
  
• Practicing reading Hebrew so that you can someday read children's books to hypothetical future Israeli grandchildren. :)
• Teaching me how to live with curiosity, self-sufficiency, and a desire to self-educate.
• Modeling positive thinking, frugality, and creative cooking!
  
• Proving that it is possible to grow and change and learn even later in life.
• Bringing me bulk supplies of Breathe-Right nasal strips when you came to visit in December. :) (Don't panic, potential olim-- they're available in Israel, too. But they're more expensive. If I could offer one suggestion to new immigrants, it would be that they don't bring a lift of furniture but DO bring several year's supplies of cosmetics and toiletries!)
• Getting up early every morning so that we can say "hi" over AIM.
• Serving as my employer and mentor so that I came to Israel with a job.
  
• Letting me know whenever kids of friends of people you know move to Jerusalem temporarily and sending me their e-mail addresses. ;)
  
• Inspiring me by example to study Hebrew before I came, thus making this whole transition SO much easier.
• Being very resourceful guests when you visited in December, proving that it IS possible to tour all of Haifa on foot-- including Elijah's cave-- in one day!
  
• Bubble-wrapping bottles of your homemade maple syrup to send with every visitor from the US so far, including second cousins I had never met before. I still like my French Toast with maple syrup. :)
  
• Helping us out whenever we need someone to get something done for us in the states, whether it's transferring a check to our account to buy a car or Global Priority Mailing me my 1099 tax forms!
  
• Encouraging me in every new thing I try, including this blog. :)
  
• Becoming more and more of a close friend every year, even though I now live further away.

My mother-in-law and I in Seattle a few years ago... not the
greatest picture of either of us, but a good time!

To my wonderful mother-in-law-- thank you so much for...

• Serving as my original role model of Israeli womanhood.
• Introducing me to Israeli cooking, including the most amazing pashdidot I have ever had and the classic peti-bar ice cream cakes.
  
• Being unfailingly loving and nonjudgmental, the complete opposite of the bad mother-in-law stereotype. In fact, I'm pretty sure you've made it clear to my husband that you would take my side in a fight. ;)
  
• Helping me understand the Israeli attitude towards life and religion (such as why you don't really care about going to synagogue but DO prepare a huge feast on Rosh Hashana)
• Buying me Israeli clothes whenever you went on trips to Israel so that I could pretend to look Israeli before I arrived here.
• Modeling for me life in a foreign country-- you came to America 17 years ago and forged a thriving social life among Israelis and Americans, never cowed by a language barrier or cultural adjustment. I didn't realize how American you had become until I came here!
  
• Proving to me-- through the way you devour novels in English-- that I CAN read novels in Hebrew.
• Also bringing with you boxes and boxes of Breathe-Right Nasal Strips from the US, so that even now I'm nowhere near to running out of them.
  
• Reading my blog on your e-mail and sending me comments about it. :) (There should be a link for you to follow to see it on its original website!)
  
• Reminding me not to take life or myself too seriously.
• Keeping me updated on all the latest news about family and friends in both countries. :)
  
• Calling us every week, often right before my parents stop by to visit you-- I love that you all still act like family even after we've left!
• Raising a wonderful son who I was lucky to marry.
  

And I shouldn't let Mother's Day pass without mentioning my wonderful grandmother, who herself moved from Brazil to the US at a young age and serves as a great model of resilience, wonderful cooking, strength, and engagement in life.

Thank you to all of the strong women who have served as my role models. Happy (American) Mother's Day!

A generation without parents...

My husband's grandparents at our seder this year. At almost 90 years old, they're still smiling. His grandfather escaped the Holocaust by finding his way into service in the Russian army. (We sometimes call them "Shimon" and "Golda" because of their resemblance to two past Israeli PMs...)

Most Ashkenazim in Israel, like my husband, are descended from Holocaust survivors.

This Rosh Hashana, in synagogue, my husband's grandmother whispered stories to me that she hadn't told anyone else. That, after the war, she was excited to tell people she knew about being homeless, surviving labor camps, hiding -- "Nobody would have believed me!" she said, because she had been a spoiled child in an upper-class home-- only to find that there was nobody left to tell.

That once, she was caught by the Polish police and sentenced to be shot. While she was waiting for them to kill her, she noticed that she had holes in her socks, so she started to patch them. The police gave her their socks to darn as well. Eventually, they "looked away" and allowed her to escape-- "It's hard to kill someone who smiles," she says, crediting her survival to her friendliness.

That she had felt helpless as a young mother soon after the war because she had not known parents since her early teens.

She and my husband's grandfather (also the only survivor of his family) finally obtained visas to move to Israel ten years after the war. Israel is a land built by children without parents, teenagers who had just escaped death and were confronted with a new climate, a new language, and a new chance at life. My husband's parents grew up in a generation with few grandparents, uncles, or aunts.

The scars of the Holocaust never really heal: my husband's grandparents listen to the news on the radio every hour, just in case. They never throw anything away. They worry about my husband not wearing a rain jacket in the fall. They don't acknowledge tragedy, and yet they expect it every day.

The other day it struck me that my husband's grandmother is almost the exact age that Anne Frank would have been had she survived-- Anne Frank could be one of those little old ladies in the grocery store, struggling through English or Hebrew in a thick German accent, ushered around by a Filipini helper.

Tonight starts observance of Yom HaShoa, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Tomorrow morning Israelis will all pause at 10 AM as a siren goes off-- cars will stop in the middle of the road, construction workers will stand at attention on rooftops, even pets will somehow seem to freeze as we remember, one minute out of our good lives.

I'll post a video of the siren as my message tomorrow.

Never again.