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.

Finally, the feeling I got landing for the first time in Ben Gurion Airport, exiting the plane into a wall of heat and seeing men with kippot transporting our luggage back to the terminal.  Knowing that, for the first time, I was in a country run by Jews, where most of the population was Jewish, the language spoken was one that I could recognise from my siddur (although my knowledge of Hebrew was not like it is today) and the places I visited were listed in my Chumash and Tanach.  This was matched with the desperation I experienced when we boarded the steps to the ELAL plane that would return us to Heathrow.  Tony Bennett might have left his (entire) heart in San Fransisco but mine was scattered throughout the land of Israel.

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.

I still haven’t made Aliyah yet and I don’t know if I ever will, but I do know that despite the fact that I am a mere 2000 miles away, this Shabbat for Israel reminds me of how close we have always been.  I might not have an Israeli passport but as far as I’m concerned, I’ve been a spiritual Israeli since the very first day I landed as a whooping cough-ridden kid in Ben Gurion Airport back in September ’75!

Shavuah Tov.