In May, my eighty-year-old father made aliyah. He has carefully followed all of the instructions in the booklet that Nefesh b’Nefesh supplied him, dutifully making the rounds of the various bureaucracies. He has learned the bus routes, located the barber and the bridge club, and even spent a few nights at Shaare Zedek Hospital. He has gone shul-hopping and found one that is a close walk and uses tunes he knows. He has renewed acquaintances with old friends and already made some new ones, who have taken him to events as varied as the Women in Green Conference in Hebron in July and the Israel Museum Wine Festival in August. He has settled in magnificently to his new circumstances. We have joked that if Moshe Rabbeinu could begin a new life at eighty and start off for the Promised Land, there’s no reason Dad couldn’t do the same.
I grew up in a Zionist family, spending fifth grade in Jerusalem when my father had a sabbatical at the Hebrew University. I have tried to instill a similar Zionism in my children. We visit Israel as frequently as we can, they attend schools with an emphasis on Hebrew and Israel, and my older ones have had the opportunity to live in Israel for a year. We are fortunate to have many friends and family members who live there, which makes our visits there mini-reunions. In fact, my five-year-old’s best friend is her cousin in Hashmonaim.
Yehuda HaLevi wrote, “Libi ba-mizrah va’anokhi b’sof ma’arav” (“My heart is in the east, and I am in the far west”) around 1100 CE, expressing his yearning to be in the land of Israel; he finally made it there in 1141. Modern transportation and the establishment of the State of Israel have made that journey much easier. And modern communication tools—the Web, Skype, cable channels—have allowed us to stay in contact with what goes on there 24/7. This has enabled us to nurture and develop deep connections with Israel, with many of us sending our children there for the year after high school, pursuing “twinning” opportunities as a way to celebrate a bar or bat mitzvah, and, in some cases, making aliyah ourselves.
While I have always followed events in Israel, now that my father is there, I am getting daily dispatches on matters large and small. And there is much to hear about: the cottage cheese protests, the conflicted response to illegal immigrants, the short-lived Likud–Kadima coalition, and much news of particular interest to Orthodox feminists, many items of which I mentioned in my last column. It is these developments that led us to focus this journal on Israel, to give our readership a view into recent events and trends.
When I was a teenager, I always thought of Israel as a model of equality: Women served in the army, and Israel had one of the first female heads of state and Supreme Court justices. And, in some ways, that model still holds true. According to a recent research report published by Credit Suisse, titled “Gender Diversity and Corporate Performance,” Israel has one of the smallest gaps between male and female participation rates in the workforce among modern economies. But recent occurrences of hadarat nashim—the exclusion of women—have certainly highlighted the tensions that still exist. As the Hareidi community becomes more integrated into larger Israeli society—in the army, in the workforce, and in new neighborhoods—the role of women will clearly be a friction point. I hope this issue of the journal will provide insight into the tensions and inspire all of us to find solutions that respect the dignity of all members of the community.
Shanah tovah and hag sameah!