Visiting the duty free shop at Ben Gurion airport is always an exciting experience for Israelis. You’re still in Israel, but already sensing the smells and the spirit of Chul (Chutz L’Aretz), the visit abroad.
Many times during my almost four years of shlichut in Milwaukee I traveled back and forth to Israel for work purposes and to visit family and friends.
Yet my visit two weeks ago felt different. I always say that wherever my wife and kids are is where I call home; and indeed I missed them a lot this time, as always.
I left Israel after a fantastic week of screening new Shin Shiniyot (Young Emissaries) for the 2003/04 academic year for the Milwaukee Jewish Day School and the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center. I also visited with my friends and family, particularly my ill 87-year-old grandmother Malka, whom I still very much hope to see again when my family and I return home in the summer.
So what was different this time? It took me the entire 14-hour flight to understand one very important thing: that despite the lifetime friendships my family made in Milwaukee, our continuous efforts to bring Israel here and to help develop and manage programs to foster personal ties between Milwaukeeans and Israelis through the Partnership 2000 Program, to interact daily with our P2K partners in the Sovev Kinneret region, to watch Israeli cultural events in Milwaukee and to advocate for Israel every hour of the week, we have not been living “the real thing.”
The real thing for me is running every morning in the Jerusalem mountains along the Knesset and the Israel Museum, Har Herzl and my high school courtyard. To be stuck in a traffic jam along the new Menachem Begin highway that crosses Jerusalem from north to south.
The real thing is to go to governmental offices to speak about enrolling my children for the next school year — in my mother tongue. To sit in my grandmother’s apartment in Jerusalem’s Talbiyeh neighborhood, holding her hand tight and listening once again to her stories about her mother collecting clothes for the needy in Jerusalem of the early 1900s. My wife, Anat, and I donate clothes here regularly, but it feels different somehow.
In Milwaukee, we now enter spring with a beautiful exhibit of Israeli artist Amos Yaskil’s work at the Michael Lord Gallery and the JCC. Israeli singer Osnat Zeno will be here for the community Mimunah celebration, and on Yom HaZikaron disabled Israeli Yoel Sharon will tell us his story, which is the story of so many other disabled veterans. On Yom HaAtzmaut, we will walk in solidarity with Israel, and perhaps also purchase Israeli products in the shuk at the JCC. All these events give us a chance to take a bite of “the real thing.”
These are difficult times. The world is changing, and Israel faces an ongoing threat. I love my kids more than anything else in the world, and precisely because of that love, and despite the threat we may face, Anat and I still decided to go back home to live our real life.
We invite all of you to join us, for a short or long vacation in Israel — for a lifetime connection, to feel and experience my “real thing,” and maybe fall in love with it and make it your real thing too.
Nir Barkin is the community shaliach and director of the Israel Center of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
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