The next few days are an especially tumultuous time in Israel.
Life throughout the country will come to a solemn halt as we usher in
Yom Hazikaron, Memorial Day, on Sunday night. The day that follows will be marked by intense remembrances at ceremonies throughout the country and via radio and television, recalling thousands of lives of service personnel and ordinary citizens lost in the almost seven decades of Israel's revival as a free nation and its ongoing struggle to defend itself against determined enemies.
And then Monday night - a complete change of mood as
the sadness of retrospection gives way to the joy of celebrating Israel's 66th birthday,
Yom Ha'atzma'ut,
Independence Day.
The
Australian Jewish News invited Arnold Roth to write a contribution to its Independence Day supplement. They asked to know about our hopes and expectations in making
aliyah. How has the
reality of Israeli life been for us in light of the events and changes of the past 25+ years. Here's one not-so-small measure of how great those changes have been: Israel's population in 1989 when we celebrated our first Independence Day was
4.6 million. It stands this year at
8.2 million.
Here's a version of what the AJN published in
this week's edition.
Dependence and independence
Arnold Roth
This month, my family and I
celebrate the 25th anniversary of our first Israel Independence Day as olim,
immigrants who went up to the Land.
Most of us tend to think of
ourselves as unchanging over time, the same old me inside, while the world
around us evolves. The reality of course is that with the passage of years, the
person we are, the life we live, changes. Beyond the physical aspects, we adapt
to the circumstances of our lives.
In preparing to respond to the
AJN’s invitation to write for the Yom Ha’atzma’ut supplement, I looked back at
letters to and from Australia during our first year in Jerusalem. Some of the
issues I encountered in that 1989 correspondence surprised the 2014 edition of
who I am.
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| Independence Day 1989 on our terrace |
Many Australian olim
will know that when Israeli-born Israelis hear where we came from, much of the
time this elicits a clichéd response: why did you leave there? Why would
anyone leave?
But we, as a young family,
four children under the age of 10 when we moved from Caulfield to Jerusalem,
knew why we were leaving and where we were going. We had only the vaguest of
senses about what to actually expect, but life can be like that even when you remain
rooted in the town of your birth.
Frimet, my wife, no longer
remembers this (she says) but on the very first date we had in New York City
where I pursued post-graduate studies, she asked me how I felt about making aliyah.
Turns out it was a powerful issue in her life as well as in mine. Our outlooks
were closely aligned on this and on many of the other key issues we have faced.
Each of us felt, and still feels, that living a life illuminated by the
peoplehood, the religion, the ethical values, the collective history of being
Jewish was best done in the Jewish people’s historical home. Being able to make
the decision to do this was a privilege available to us. Not to take the
opportunity when it was offered and accessible was unthinkable.
With all the momentous
changes we experienced and saw, it bears mentioning that in 1988 when we
arrived, the swamps had been drained. Tel Aviv had a working airport with
incoming and outgoing flights to almost everywhere. Electricity and phone services
were obtainable for the asking. Toilet paper and baby nappies were nearly as
good as in other countries, and you could read the daily news in English if you
wanted.
None of this means the
process of adjusting to a very different environment was simple. But the
challenges came with major compensations.
My letters to family remind
me of how pleased we were with the adjustments our children made to the school
system and to the language. Getting them a good Jewish education where both Torah
and Jewishness received solid attention was at the top of our wish list. Once we
completed the not-so-smooth process of finding schools and enrolling them, the
initial indicators were promising, and in the course of the next two decades the
promise was by and large fulfilled.
The children found friends
quickly, and so did we. They of course became completely and quickly fluent in
the language that surrounded them at school, in the streets and on the buses. Less
predictable was their connection with their native language and their
ability and desire to keep reading and writing in it. Here, we made a
principled decision right at the beginning that paid real dividends: the
children had to speak English at home, with us and with each other. And
we would keep them supplied with English-language books and magazines. In the
Israel of 2014, as much as if not more than twenty-five years ago, a mastery of
English is a key component to succeeding in the workplace and in academia.
Our oldest son, a primary
school student at Melbourne’s Yavneh College before we brought him to Israel, and
blessed with curiosity and a nimble mind, went directly into grade 6 in a
notoriously demanding Religious Zionist school in Jerusalem. Barely three
months into the experience, his class teacher phoned and asked to meet with us.
It’s a discussion that remains vivid for me: your son, a lovely boy, needs
to find a different school and we want to help you in that search, nothing
personal. The teacher himself, it turned out, was in his first year
– both at the school and in teaching and our son was evidently the first
student he had encountered who was new to the Hebrew language. We were alarmed
by the paternalizing tone and the presumption that a child barely into his
first semester in a system very different from the one in which he had been
raised ought to be shown the door if, as it seemed to the educator, his
language skills were not up to scratch.
Thinking back on it now, I
realize this was a learning moment for us. We knew the teacher was right about
our son’s language gaps, and totally wrong about the chances of him overcoming
the hurdles and adjusting. We pushed back, insisting that we and he would do
what it took to improve his Hebrew skills, and while it was good to know help
was available if we wanted to find him a new school, we were perfectly happy to
leave him where he was. That son has gone on to develop a fine academic career
in medieval Jewish history and Halachic thought. The teacher remained at
the elementary school, and my wife and I have continued to hone our push-back
skills.
Still in our first year but
a few months later, we piled everyone into the family car and visited a museum
located on the campus of Tel Aviv University. Engrossed in what we saw, neither
my wife nor I noticed when the older of our two daughters, then just 4, slipped
away. Our search was anxious and worrying, then urgent, and then seriously,
traumatically stressful: she was nowhere to be found and the campus seemed
huge. Then someone told us she had been spotted by a guard at one of the gates
who was looking after her and waiting for us to walk over. The relief we both
felt as we hugged and kissed her was enormous. Recalling it now is unspeakably
painful because just a few years later, by then an accomplished and delightful fifteen year-old, she was murdered in a Hamas terror attack on a pizza shop in
the centre of Jerusalem.
Anyone who knows anything
about life in Israel is aware of how two of the most intense days in the public
calendar follow one after the other, stitching together two utterly different
experiences that drag an entire population from one end of the emotional
spectrum to the other with barely a moment in between. If there is another
place on earth apart from Israel that tries to do this, I don’t know of it.
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For two minutes, the life of an entire busy country comes
to a standstill: Israel's Memorial Day [Image Source: Haaretz] |
Unless you have spent those
two days, Memorial Day and Independence Day (Yom Hazikaron, Yom Ha’atzma’ut),
in Israel, you might not be aware of the central role television plays in both.
While many Israelis – many
more than you might think – visit cemeteries and memorials, and attend local
and central memorial services, even more of them allow television to bring the
message of the day into their homes. Throughout the somber day of remembering
lives lost in the struggle to establish and then preserve a Jewish state, some
of the most moving video programmes of the entire year are shown, round the
clock. Even the programming broadcast by the made-in-Israel cable stations
reflects that thoughtful, heavy mood.
Then the sun sets, marking
the end of that day’s remembrances, and it all changes completely, giving way
to fireworks, lively music, campfires and parties; boisterous, noisy
celebration. Then the following day – the smell of burnt meat as an entire
country, gathered in family groups and broader social settings, embraces the
tradition of the mangal, known outside Israel as barbecue.
Before lunch, during those Yom
Ha’atzma’ut morning hours, a vast part of the Israeli population tunes their
televisions to the Independence Day final round of the International Bible Quiz. It’s astonishing really: a modern, technology-obsessed country, living
with day-to-day threats to its borders and its buses, taking time out to watch
questions about Biblical verses and personalities being fielded by eager
competitors from all over the world.
For years, it was incomprehensible
to me that a community of millions of people could shift gear in this way:
engrossed in tragedy on a human scale, family by family, victim by victim, and
then – in a heartbeat – embracing collective happiness and achievement, sharing
joy, celebrating life and survival and attainment.
A year ago, my family and I
found ourselves at the focus of this national schizophrenia. The central ceremony
that sets the tone for Memorial Day begins simultaneously in two places: the
Kotel, and the plaza of the Knesset, the parliament building in Jerusalem. Both
events go to air on virtually all the television and radio channels. So the
audience is huge, an entire nation watching and listening.
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Roth family members at Yom Hazikaron memorial event in the Knesset plaza,
a year ago - April 2013 |
In April 2013, we were
seated in the front row of the ceremony site at the Knesset as a handful of
extremely moving video clips and performances honored the lives of a selection
of young Israelis who died Al Kiddush Hashem, in Sanctification of the
Name.
By now, we have come to
learn how well that sharp cross-over from mourning to celebrating reflects the
essence of Jewish history and Jewish life. It’s a lesson I wish we had never
had to learn. But having come to understand that process – and what it says about
our people – a little better now, I am proud that we possess a response that is
relevant to both the tragic and the transcendent.
As a people, we know there
are moments when our thoughts are sharply focused on the individual, and others
when we celebrate being together. Israel, not a paradise but certainly a
special place, embodies this.
