Parashat Vayahkhel: My Israel Story
I was seven years old when I first visited Israel. It was Sukkot and in 1975, the festivals fell completely within the month of September, so the weather was still very warm. I remember the holiday for several reasons.
Firstly, because I was absolutely bowled over to be
finally going to Israel, the country that I’d heard about from my parents for
as long as I could remember. The early
1970s were a challenging time for us financially and our summer holidays were
usually spent in western European countries like Spain, Italy, France,
Switzerland and of course, Belgium where my grandmother and great-aunt lived. My mother used to regale us about her visits
to Israel in the 1950s when she slept on the beach at Eilat (apparently, this
was the ‘done thing to do’), volunteered on some religious kibbutzim (Lavi and
Tirat Tzvi in the Jordan Valley), stayed with family, went on tiyulim (outings)
and had a pretty fantastic time. My
father would chip in and add his own memories of visiting the country over the
same period, although he wasn’t as adventurous as his wife-to-be, mostly
staying with relatives and touring. You
can understand why Spain, Italy, France and Switzerland, though beautiful,
couldn’t match my expectations of what Israel would be like.
Secondly,
because, unbeknownst to me, I had contracted Whooping Cough in London, despite
having been vaccinated against it as a baby.
I was diagnosed by a doctor in Israel who assured me that as bad as my
symptoms were, they would have been worse had I not received the vaccine. I
have never forgotten the dry-as-a-bone hollow cough that emanated from the very
deepest cavity in my chest and which I’ve, thank-Gd, never experienced since. It lasted the entire three weeks of the
vacation and took me a while to shake off once I returned to school in London.
Thirdly,
because I fell in love with the daughter of the close friends that we were
staying with in Savyon, a leafy suburb of Tel Aviv which is Israel’s version of
Hampstead Garden Suburb. If you’re going
to be unwell, staying in a luxury villa surrounded by beautiful mansions
inhabited by billionaire American Jews is not the worse place to find yourself.
This is a
photograph that my mother took of me with a group of Palestinian kids of my age
or slightly older in Jericho. We also
went to Tiberias, Zefat and of course, Jerusalem. In those pre-Intifada days and more than a
decade before the formation of Hamas, there was hope that there might be chance
that our generation would live in peace.
My
parents had always dreamed of making Aliyah and a few years later, they decided
to act. In the late 1970s, my father
managed to secure a job as an architect in an Israeli firm. I was coming to the end of my primary school education
and it was the most opportune time for us to move before I transferred to secondary
school. I don’t recall my mother’s plans
jobwise, but we had enough connections through family and friends for her to be
able to find work.
We were
months away from making Aliyah and then, as always, ‘life got in the way’ of
our plans.
My
maternal grandfather had died in Antwerp when I was six months old and my
grandmother and her sister still lived in the same apartment opposite the
‘Cholent Park’, as we called it, in the centre of the Jewish area of the city. We had noticed that she was starting to
become forgetful and this gradually led to her becoming more and more confused,
to the point that we realised she could no longer look after herself. Additionally, her older sister who had cared
for her was also feeling the strain. We
realised that the only option was to bring them over to live near us in Golders
Green. My uncle lived with his family in
St. Johns Wood and so he and my mother found a private Jewish nursing home that
was only a few minutes’ walk from our home in Temple Fortune and the sisters
settled in. They were well taken care of
and we visited them on an almost daily basis.
Which
meant that my parents’ dream of making Aliyah took a seat behind caring for my
grandmother who spent the last six years of her life in the home. They took the right decision and prioritised
the family over the country.
I started
secondary school, and my Israeli plans were also put on hold. It took nearly two decades for my second
attempt at Aliyah to materialise.
I had
graduated from university and was young and ‘fancy-free’. Aside from my parents and close friends, I
had no other ties preventing me from moving to Israel. It was the early 1990s and just after the
First Gulf War. I approached the Aliyah
Department to enquire as to how I could go about making the move. They were interested in meeting with me, and I
was excited to progress with my new life under Israeli skies.
The only fly
in my Zionistic ointment was my mother’s opposition to the move. Being an only child has its benefits but also
its drawbacks and I had always been very close to my parents. At
the time, both were working and were averse to leaving their close friends and
jobs behind. The economy in this country
was not in a great shape and my father was concerned about being able to keep
his job in a febrile climate. Aliyah for
them was therefore out of the question.
I tried
going forward but it became abundantly clear that if I made the move, it would devastate
my parents. They were in their mid-fifties
and sixties and although they were fiercely independent, they didn’t wish to be
living far away from their only child.
After
much deliberation and soul-searching, I took the same decision that my mother
had made when it came to prioritising family over the country and dropped my
plans.
A few
years ago, my mother and I were talking and she told me that she and my father
would very much like to spend their final years in Israel. What was holding them back was the
realisation that, if they moved, they wouldn’t be able to see their
granddaughters whom they adored (this was in pre-Zoom days).
A third
victory for the family over fulfilling the Zionist Dream. I don’t recall Herzl saying, “If you will it, it is no dream
and even if you will it, your family will always take precedence!”
If you ask
anyone who knows me well about my ultimate dream, they would probably tell you
that it would be to make Aliyah. That
little country on the shores of the Mediterranean occupies my thoughts for most
of my waking day (alongside with the Beatles, who didn’t make it there as group
either).
Every
time the opportunity arose, life, as they say, got in the way but knowing that
I put my family first brings me a great deal of comfort….and then the horror
that is 7th October took place and my family expanded to include 7.2 million
fellow Jews (of which a few are my actual blood relatives).
I feel
connected to Israel in a way that has not happened before. I listen to an excellent daily podcast from
the Times of Israel and have even taken out a paid subscription to the website. My WhatsApp feed is filled with breaking news
in Hebrew and English from a myriad of groups.
I refuse to watch the BBC or Sky and turn to GBNews specifically because
they provide a more balanced picture of what is going on. If I felt pseudo-Israeli before, now I am
there in all but body.
This
week’s Parasha starts by telling us that Moshe gathered the people. It doesn’t differentiate between men and
women, boys and girls, young and old.
They were
all considered as part of the ‘Kahal’, the community. Every shul is known as a Kehilla because it
is an assembly of people who come together to pray, shmooze, argue, laugh, eat,
drink and love each other (although sometimes, people demonstrate their
friendship in less than a loving manner!)
We join
together as family, whether or not we are related but one of the common
denominators that connects us is our love of Israel. We might criticize her politicians and some
of their questionable actions but this is what family is all about, isn’t it? No-one here feels anything but the purest,
deepest and endless love for the State of Israel. She is our country. Our State.
Our home from home. The place
that talks to us in a way that can’t be felt anywhere else on earth. Who doesn’t go to Israel and marvel at the
fact that the street cleaners, binmen, waiters, electricians, plumbers and old
men who push the airport trolleys in a particularly reckless manner are our
fellow Jews? Who doesn’t feel different
being surrounded by so many men wearing kippot, wherever we go? Who doesn’t feel a sense of leaving a part of
themselves behind when they walk up those steps to the plane that will whisk
them back to the UK?
They are part
of our Kehilla. Sephardim and
Ashkenazim, Ethiopian, Indian and American, right and left wing, skimpily clad
or wearing three layers of clothes. When
they rejoice, we rejoice. When they are
injured, we feel their pain. When they
are killed, we mourn their loss, even if we didn’t know them. This is Israel. She is ours and we, hers.
I haven’t
made it to living in Israel beyond my post ‘O’ Level Bnei Akiva Israel Tour in
1984 and the entire Rosh Hashanah to Simchat Torah period in 1993 which is
still one of the best holidays I’ve ever had.
When I wonder if I would have preferred it any other way, the answer is
probably ‘no’. I put my family first and
I have no regrets. I just didn’t realise
that one day, my family and my love of Israel could be reconciled.
Shavuah
Tov.
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