Chutzpah & High Heels

by Jessica Fishman

  Outside everyone is celebrating Israel’s Independence Day, but inside we now spend my last few days in the country packing.

  As I’m taking the pictures off my wall, I stare at the photo from the day I made aliyah, in which I am surrounded by Benjamin Netanyahu, Ariel Sharon, and Sallai Meridor. By now, I’ve gotten over the fact that the shirt I was wearing that day turned out to be see-through—maybe that was why that religious girl looked at me so strangely on the flight.

  Nearly a decade has gone by since I first started my journey in Israel. Things have changed so much. Bibi is prime minister again and will do anything to stay in power, including leading the country into civil unrest and giving the religious more control. Sharon is now at the Tel HaShomar Hospital; he’s been in a coma for over three years. And I don’t really know what has happened to the other guy, but I don’t know if anyone cares.

  It makes me wonder, out of all of us in that picture, who is better off now?

  I look around my room, the place that has been my home for the past six years. I see all of my memories, both good and bad, all of my accomplishments, packed away in boxes and suitcases. I look in my closet. The only thing hanging there is the pink dress that I bought after my interview in the army. I remember wearing it and thinking about all of the dreams I was going to fulfill. It was the start of many of my path to accomplishing my dreams. The fabric is still soft in my hands. Deciding to leave it here, I put it back in the closet and close the door.

  I look back at my empty room. I can’t believe that I’m leaving tomorrow. I am terrified to be leaving. To be giving up. But I am going home to the love, comfort, and support of my family, which I have been without for so long.

  I look at Jinjy and say, “Don’t worry, you are coming with me. And you will have even more room in your kennel than I will in my seat!”

  Jinjy comes over and licks my wounds as I hear a knock at the door.

  Looking at my watch, I’m surprised that it is already time. I take a deep breath. I’m nervous that I’m making the wrong decision, but it’s too late to back out now.

  A few months ago, in the deepest depths of despair, I had been sitting alone in my bedroom, looking for answers, when a headline jumped out at me.

  Most Israeli Jews Back Religious Freedom, Poll Finds

  When I saw the article, my eyes had opened wide. I sat up straight. I devoured the entire article. The statistics made me feel less alone. I read that the poll was conducted by Hiddush, an Israeli organization promoting religious freedom and equality in Israel.

  “What is this organization?” I had asked out loud to nobody but Jinjy. He had moaned and then set his head back down on my leg. Suddenly, without thinking, I started writing the organization an email, telling them my story, from growing up in a Zionist family to making aliyah, from joining the IDF to being given an ultimatum to convert. My fingers moved across the keyboard without needing to think about what to write. Everything that I had been through poured out of my body through my hands.

  Now on my last day in Israel, Hiddush has asked me to share my story with the entire nation. I take a deep breath and open the door. I welcome the journalist, the photographer, and the head of Hiddush into the living room, which is filled with more of my boxes.

  I boil some hot water for tea while we make small talk. I find out that the journalist, a reporter from Yediot Aharonot, the largest newspaper in Israel, spent a few years in Minneosta where I grew up. I smile to myself, thinking, “Only in Israel.”

  “Shall we start?” the reporter looks at me.

  I look back at her and take another deep breath.

  I had agreed to share my story because I wanted to make a difference, to raise awareness, to let others know that they aren’t alone, and to help prevent the Knesset from passing a conversion bill that would give the ultra-Orthodox rabbinate more power and make conversion even more difficult. I had decided to try to make some good from everything that I went through.

  I took another deep breath and began telling my story. While I sat in front of the reporter, I finally felt the strength coming back into my body. With every word that I said, I felt less like a victim. My story was finally empowering me instead of weighing me down.

  * * *

  My mom and I walk to the gate in silence. This flight leaving Israel feels completely different than the flight coming here. Instead of being filled with hope and endless possibilities, I’m filled with disappointment and uncertainty. I don’t feel whole. I feel an emptiness. Leaving Israel is more difficult than moving here.

  Our flight begins boarding. I don’t want to get up out of my seat in the terminal. I can’t believe that my life here is over. As I pick up my bags, they suddenly feel heavier, almost trying to anchor me in the country. I show my ticket at check-in and the agent has to forcefully pull it out of my hands, as if it is stuck between my fingers. As I walk down the boarding bridge, each step gets slower as if I’m walking through deep mud. I can’t believe these are going to be my last steps in the country. My mom and I board the plane to a country that I haven’t lived in for nearly a decade. Together we find our seats.

  Feeling as if I no longer have anyone to call to say goodbye, I quickly turn off my cell phone. It is too hard to call Bar and I know that he hates goodbyes.

  Sitting on the plane, I think of all the things that I learned while living in Israel. I learned that it is easier to be a Zionist outside of Israel than inside. Living outside the country, I only had to stand up for it against all the external threats. But living inside Israel, I have to stand up against the internal threats too. I almost wish that I could have held on to my idealistic views of Israel—it was so much simpler.

  When I moved to Israel, I thought I could survive on Zionism alone and while this is true in the US if you can get a good job at the Jewish Agency, in Israel you will starve to death on Zionism. You might as well just get in the line for food stamps.

  As the plane begins speeding down the runway and the engines get louder than thunder, questions and doubts rush through my mind. I look out the window and see my world disappearing behind me. Is this the right thing to do? Should I really be going?

  But as the plane takes off and the wheels lose touch with the land, I realize that I too have lost touch with it.

  I look back at the small, twinkling lights of Tel Aviv from the air. Parts of me still want to believe in the Zionist dream of the country being the homeland for all Jews.

  But instead I just close my window shade.

  * * *

  1 . Shabbat elevators are elevators which are pre-set to work in an automatic operating mode in order to circumvent the Jewish law requiring observers abstain from operating electricity on the Sabbath.

  2 . Moran is an elite unit in the IDF that works with precise guided munitions, but to a native English-speaker it sounds like moron.

  13

  Badge of Courage

  I wake up to three feet of snow on the ground. It is the end of April, but there was a big snow storm last night.

  A few days ago, I was lying on the beach in my bikini. Now I have to put on winter boots to walk outside.

  This is the first time that Jinjy has ever seen snow. I thought he would hate the snow, but he is prancing and jumping around in it like a puppy. He looks so happy. He scratches at the door for me to let him in. Unlike me, he has already gotten over his jet lag. He curls up on the couch.

  I sit down at my parents’ kitchen table, the same table we used to have Shabbat dinners at every Friday night. There is a fire burning in the fireplace. The sun shining through the windows warms my skin. Everything feels familiar here.

  My mom hands me a cup of tea. My dad gives me a hug.

  I look over at the bare wall where there are now two rectangles that are a darker shade than the rest of the paint. The two paintings of Jerusalem’s Old City used to hang there—paintings that my parents bought during our first trip to Israel. They were recently moved to some dark and unused closet
so they won’t be a constant reminder.

  I turn my computer on. I go straight to the Israeli news sites. It has been my morning ritual for nearly ten years. But now that I am no longer in Israel it feels even more important. I can’t bear the thought that something might happen to the country while I’m not there.

  After scanning all the Israeli news sites, I open up Facebook to see what all my friends back in Israel are doing today. To my surprise, I’m greeted with dozens of new messages from people I’ve never met.

  I begin opening them.

  “I admire you!”

  “You are more Jewish than all of the rabbinate and ultra-Orthodox community.”

  “In the name of the country, I’m sorry.”

  “We need more Jews like you here in Israel.”

  “I want you to know that I am appalled and embarrassed as an Israeli and as a Jew. I firmly believe that the vast majority of the people here would agree with me.”

  “More than you lose the country, Israel loses you.”

  “Even if it sounds kitschy, for me and for many others, you are the example of a Jewish Zionist.”

  “I’ll marry you!”

  I finally got a marriage proposal from an Israeli.

  “I guess the article was printed today. Look at all of these messages of support that complete strangers sent me,” I say, turning to my parents.

  After reading the messages my dad says, “That is wonderful, Jessica” as he gives me another hug.

  “It is good to know that there are Israelis who are accepting,” my mom says quietly.

  My phone rings.

  “Baaaaarrrrrr,” I cry into the phone—happy to hear from him.

  “Did you see the article? It is huge! A two page spread!” Bar exclaims.

  “I hope that it makes a difference. I hope that some good can come out of everything I went through,” I say.

  “I bet Meydan regrets ever asking you to do his laundry for him, now that you have aired all of his dirty underwear in front of the entire country,” he says and we both laugh.

  “I miss you,” I say, realizing that what unites us is not what we went through in the army together, but it was our fight to find our Jewish identities in a schizophrenic country.

  “I miss you too. I just want to let you know, that I’m so proud of you for speaking out. There are so many people, like me, who don’t have the courage to do what you did,” he says.

  “Thanks,” I say, hoping that Bar knows that he should never feel like he has to go through what I did to prove his identity to anyone. “Hey! At least I won’t have to hear that Jessica song every day . . . hmmm, I guess I should have paid more attention to those prophetic lyrics . . . because here I am, far away.”

  “I have to tell you something. Don’t be upset, but Tali called me,” Bar says hesitantly. “She read the article and told me that she couldn’t believe that you would take part in an article that was so critical of Israel.”

  “I’m not surprised. She doesn’t get it. She doesn’t understand that participating in this article was more Zionistic than any of my volunteer work, moving to Israel, and serving in the army combined,” I say. Speaking up is the first thing I have done to actually try to make Israel a country that lives up to its potential.

  “So, what are your plans now? Do you think you’ll come back to Israel? ” Bar asks, knowing that after he left, he missed the country so much that he returned.

  “I’ll just take each day at a time,” I trail off thinking that if I do move back to Israel, then the next time around, I’ll know that no matter how much I will it, the Land of Oz is only a dream.

  “We will talk again soon?” he asks.

  “Of course,” I say, making sure not to say goodbye when I hang up.

  I open up the scanned article that Bar just emailed to me. As I read about my experience in the third person, I begin to realize that participating in the article wasn’t only about sharing my story. It was about being truthful to myself, accepting my past, and reclaiming my existence so that no one could ever take away my identity again. I had always had that strength inside of me. I never needed a balloon ride or ruby slippers.

  Stronger and even more determined, I’m ready to bare my soul to the world. I pick up a pen and pull a notebook in front of me. I embrace all of my struggles while sitting at my childhood kitchen table. Without hesitating, I begin to write. The ink flows out like silk, but I feel like I’m etching something permanent in stone. The black ink is sharp in contrast to the bright white paper.

  It’s 3:00 A.M. It’s August. It’s boiling outside.

  Afterword

  by Rabbi Uri Regev

  [Jessica] Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

  This is the title of the article published in Israel’s leading newspaper about Jessica’s returning home to the United States, which her book mentions towards the end. I was there that day with Jessica and her mother with the packed suitcases when the journalist recorded her moving story of her failed attempt at aliyah. As Jessica stressed in the article, “I love Israel, but Israel betrayed me.” Nevertheless, Jessica’s genuine Zionist commitment and her love for Israel prevailed, and she is now living in Israel again, having renewed her aliyah and returned in spite of being let down, as she powerfully described.

  Jessica’s story provides a critical perspective for both Israelis and American Jewry. For all its sharp criticism of different facets of life in Israel, it is a Zionist treatise anchored in a deep love for the State and its people. At the same time, it presents a challenging indictment of the new generation of American Jewry. This is not a story of black and white, but rather of Jewish life’s complexity, of core values, and of the realities facing both major Jewish communities.

  For Israelis, Jessica’s insights are important because just as we don’t hear ourselves as others do, so do we not perceive ourselves in the same manner that we are perceived by the rest of the world. The often humorous reminder, and at times biting criticism, which Jessica offers does us a great service by putting a mirror before our eyes and urging us to engage in the necessary soul searching that is so essential for national mending.

  Jessica presents the inherent contradictions in the attitude of Israelis to Judaism and the wide gap between the USA’s Jewish community-based reality and Israel’s consumerist-based reality (without being able to select one’s preferred product) in vivid colors. This gap is particularly striking when she describes the reality of Israel only recognizing religious marriages, even though most couples are secular and have no connections with their officiating rabbis, often meeting them for the first time beneath their wedding canopies. Compare this to the longstanding relationships that American Jews develop with the rabbis of their congregations, which build mutual acquaintance, friendship and spiritual meaning. In a lively and compelling way, Jessica conveys the experiences, worries, hopes, and difficulties confronted by the new immigrant: the struggle with the difficult Hebrew language, the atmosphere of the IDF, the military conflict and challenges of security, the divide between religious and secular, and the distinct worlds of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The book also serves as a delightful guide for Hebrew terminology.

  While the book is multidimensional and covers numerous facets of Israeli life, what brought Jessica and me together on that fateful day when the chapter of her aliyah seemingly ended was the existential dimension of Israel as both a Jewish and a democratic state.

  Jessica conveys the pain of the realization that in spite of her family’s full Jewish life, their active membership and leadership at their synagogue, her rich Jewish education, her annual Zionist summer camp experiences, her aliyah and the many difficulties she willingly faced out of her deep love for Israel, nevertheless: “my sorority sisters who preferred Prada over Israel would be considered more Jewish than I am in this country.” The heart aches when you read her account of feeling that she had to “alter” her parents’ Jewish wedding contract, and one cannot fault her. The responsibility for mending
Israel’s law and reality lies not on her shoulders, but rather with the Israeli public and the Diaspora Jewish leadership.

  Jessica quotes her “Otzma” program counselor who explained that soldiers who are not recognized as Jews by Israel’s Orthodox Rabbinate are not buried next to other fallen Jewish soldiers in military cemeteries. This is but one example of a scandal that outrages Israelis, as it did when Sgt. Lev Pesachov z”l died in a military confrontation with terrorists and was buried next to the fence of his hometown military cemetery, for his mother was not Jewish according to traditional religious Jewish law. Rabin z”l was the Israeli Defense Minister at the time, and he responded to the public’s outrage by ordering that Pesachov’s coffin be reburied next to his fallen Jewish comrades. Unfortunately, that did not resolve the problem. Just a few years ago, a female cadet whose family had made aliyah from Russia died in a fire that consumed the Carmel forest, and the military rabbinate pressured her pained family to bury her next to the fence.

  This is an example of the battle that we at Hiddush have launched for a more systemic and lasting solution, demanding that the IDF change its rules and provide a dignified solution for soldiers who have made aliyah but do not meet the military rabbinate’s Orthodox criteria of Jewish status, and for those whose families wish to bury them in a manner befitting their non-Orthodox beliefs and lifestyles. Much to Jessica’s satisfaction, I can report significant progress and remedy unfolding on this front.

  A leading Israeli columnist explained some years ago that whereas common democratic discourse deals with the need to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority, in Israel this is often reversed; the necessary focus is upon how to protect the majority of Israelis from the tyranny of the fundamentalist religious minority. In speaking to audiences in the USA and elsewhere, I am often asked how such a thing is possible. One look at Israel’s current government coalition explains this anomaly. With Israel’s parliamentary system, no one party has ever been able to win a majority in the national elections. The need to form a coalition to a majority of 61 Knesset seats has been at the core of Israeli politics since its inception.