I spent “the Nefesh money” recently. It was just over a thousand bucks that the Nefesh B’Nefesh organization kindly threw my way when I made aliyah (moved to Israel) back in 2004.
I didn’t spend it on anything of consequence. I used most of it on groceries, oven repair, a parking ticket (OK, more than one), and I brought home some rain boots for the kids.
I’ve been in Israel eight years, bought and sold two homes, given birth to three children — and recently I admitted (to myself) that I am “permanent” here. Spending the Nefesh grant money was a big step for me.
Every year around this time my husband, Eytan, casually asks if we can release “the Nefesh money” — that money I earmarked as unspendable. It has a quiet home in a small online account and just sits there in money purgatory, a private symbol for me of our impending return to America.
Every year I’ve smiled a satisfied smile and responded to my patient husband with a consistent answer — “But Honey, technically, we need to give that money back when we leave.” A little commitment-phobic, yes.
I am not your run of the mill immigrant. I’m confident that all the other new American immigrants on the plane over here chanting “Am Yisroel Chai,” bedecked with joyous tears, paid no attention to the horror-stricken look on my face while we deplaned to welcome signs and an official Israeli army ceremony.
My friends threw me a going away brunch in a tiny Manhattan apartment the day prior to my departure. They were all thrilled for me — I was living the aliyah dream. Except that it was never my dream.
Going ‘home’?
Israel was never in my sights, my destiny, my plan, or my heart. I stayed as far as I could away from the raucous American Israel Public Affairs Committee gatherings on my Midwestern college campus. They were full of frizzy haired, passionate Zionists to whom I did not relate.
Of course, as an American Jew, I was raised to love Israel — I remember that we all were when I was growing up in Milwaukee. It was presented as a haven, a necessary place to run to if and when things got bad. Not a place to voluntarily raise a family — simply a place to send a check between morning Rosh HaShanah services and sitting down for brisket.
Then I fell in love with an Israeli. Not any Israeli, mind you, but an Israeli who promised me that he had no interest in ever returning to live in Israel. We met in San Francisco and my life changed. Literally. He came to me smelling of Greyhound bus and possibilities.
Two months later, I broke the lease on my apartment, laid out all my possessions on the sidewalk, sold them off one by one, quit my climbing-the-career-ladder professional agency job, and we took off together for Honduras to learn how to scuba dive. Imagine the call to my mother.
My Israeli and I travelled together for several months. As anyone who has ever fallen in love knows, the world sparkled. We had absolutely no goal but to conquer it together, and we did.
Not only did we earn scuba licenses, we were honored guests at a Tongan wedding, attended an evangelical revival in Fiji, swam with penguins in the Galapagos Islands, discovered old American RPG’s in Vietnam, and indulged in decadent meals in Belgium.
Over the next few years, we took turns between backpacking the world and working round the clock to save for the next trip. We lived in Boston and New York City between trips and vacillated between the corporate life and the traveling life.
Sandwiched between adventures, we got married twice — first in an elaborate traditional Jerusalem religious ceremony, and afterwards by Elvis in Las Vegas. Really.
Eventually, we began talking about having children. We were in Manhattan at the time living the East-Village-Double-Income-No-Kids life.
Then the bombshell. My wonderful husband says to me: “I think it’s time to go home.”
Now, to me, “home” is Milwaukee. My first job was asking if you’d like fries with that at Kopp’s. I could down a grilled cheese and a pint of custard on a 10 minutes break. I’m a Milwaukee girl at heart, so while I was surprised to learn that he intended to move to my childhood stomping grounds, I was game.
Well, he laughed. Apparently, “home” didn’t mean bringing up our future children as mall rats at Bayshore. It meant returning to Israel.
I spent some time being angry. I felt betrayed. After all, he had never expressed such an interest, and even declared that he had no intention of returning. He was an American citizen (born in New York and moved to Israel with his family when he was a child) so I considered our lives, our future, and any offspring we’d produce as American.
Yet here we were. He felt strongly that raising a family in Israel was advantageous. We hotly debated this topic for more than a year.
I had to decide: Which was more important to me, my husband or my address? My marriage or my culture? My love or my language?
I acquiesced and we prepared to move to Jerusalem. For a year. On a trial basis.
Life in Jerusalem
We arrived with a planeload of near-frenzied-with-excitement olim (new immigrants) and spent the next two weeks wading through Israeli bureaucracy to get me established as a citizen with rights to work, receive health care, and attend state-sponsored Hebrew classes.
A month later, I was pregnant (there’s something in the water here, I swear), and later that year, found myself home with a fussy newborn in a new place with no friends, no ability to converse, no career, and no clue. And Facebook didn’t exist yet.
I found myself at a disadvantage in Jerusalem; it seemed all the other Americans there had grown up knowing how to read Hebrew fluently. They were all raised in religious homes, so they could read since they could pray.
I have no penchant for languages. It took me three solid years of daily Hebrew lessons to get to the point where I could joke with the guy selling me my pita. It took me longer than that to open my taste buds to Israeli food (who wants to eat fried garbanzo beans?).
Our first six years in Israel were based in Jerusalem. Anyone who has ever visited Jerusalem knows that Jews come in two flavors there: Religious and more religious.
After I began to speak, I found I could begin attempting to relate to those around me. I made some friends, which is easy to do when you have small children. Shoot the toddler-toting, cereal-rationing, bags-under-her-eyes mother next to you at the gymboree a knowing look, and she’s happy to swap potty training war stories with you in any language you can muster, covered hair or not.
Although I was progressing nicely and learning to navigate the public preschool system, I was also discovering that I didn’t fit in on a whole new level. Jerusalem has its own unspoken rules.
If you’re married with small children, you can solidify friendships over Shabbat lunch only. There is no other option. No one wants to take off to the beach with you on a Friday afternoon because everyone is preparing for Shabbat.
Saturday afternoons in Jerusalem are nap time. I’m not joking — the whole city naps between 1 and 3 p.m., and no one drives on Shabbat anyway, so where would you possibly be going?
“Girls Night Out” has to be sandwiched between the weekly shiur (rabbi’s wife’s speech) and mikveh night; and it better be not only kosher, but many require proof of a glatt certificate.
There are two places to buy a cheeseburger in the whole city. There used to be three, but the community rallied to shut one down.
Jerusalem is a city where women’s faces in advertisements and on billboards are scratched out to “protect their own modesty.”
I was left to ask myself: If Israel is the place for Jews, and I am a Jew, but I’m so alone in being secular here, is there a place for a Jew like me in today’s Israel? This question rocked my world for a long time.
Could I eventually develop a love for this land, its people and culture if I am so utterly alone in my thinking and lifestyle? Is there anyone else here who makes challah every Friday and rocks mishloach manot like nobody’s business, but doesn’t believe in God? I felt like I was a non-Mormon attempting a life in Salt Lake City, and failing.
Life on a moshav
Last year, we decided that we could no longer fight the uphill battle in Jeruasalem. The city was becoming more homogeneous and we began to stick out like sore thumbs. Worse, we felt stunted and repressed. We had not found many like-minded friends.
We decided to relocate our growing family to a moshav 30 minutes away, in the mountains. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, picture an organically-grown gated community of about 100 families resembling a mix between a country village and a suburb.
Moshavs are historically agricultural, currently mostly residential, and juxtaposed to 99 percent of Israel — home to private houses with yards rather than multi-family apartment buildings.
What a change for me after living in big cities for the last 18 years! Suddenly, not only did I wake up, look out my window, and see forest rather than the neighbor disciplining her toddler, but the local English speaking community here invited us to a pot luck barbecue on a Friday night!
Here were families like mine, and they were proudly loving and embracing Israel. Prospering in Israel. Passionate about securing Israel’s future and fostering an Israel where we could all feel comfortable.
As I became more entrenched in the community, I started asking questions and began to discover that people moved to Israel purposefully.
Those nutcases with me on the plane who were attempting the horah next to the drink cart gave up Target, baseball, Stove Top Stuffing, and the ability to buy groceries online. They recognized their need for something more inspiring to live their lives by, and did something about it.
Me? I followed a Vin Deisel lookalike with dimples, but who’s keeping score?
People here, especially those who have consciously uprooted their comfortable American lives, are genuine. The immigrants are so dedicated to this land and securing its future as a Jewish State that they care infinitely less about things that challenged me when I lived in the States.
No one notices whether I’m wearing this year’s fashion, or any fashion at all. When I look around in July, not every woman on the bus has her toes painted. When my girlfriend asks me if I want to join her for dinner at a local steak joint, and my answer is, “Money’s pretty tight this month, how about I come by for coffee instead?” — the response is simple acceptance.
Nobody bothers trying to be or to present themselves as something they are not. I did not feel this sense of camaraderie, community, clarity, and higher purpose in the States — not in the Midwest where I grew up, not in California, New York, D.C., Chicago, or Boston.
I jog in the woods near my house three days each week. A few days ago, I came upon a herd of gazelle. I stopped short to catch my breath and drink in the scene.
Here I was, panting, and something occurred to me: Mother of three, home-owner, manager of a successful company, happily married, exercising on a sunny Wednesday morning in January: It is paradise, and I belong here.
This last year in the mountains has showed me that I do indeed have a place in Israel. I can be who I am and love this land — those two ingredients are not mutually exclusive.
Although I’ve been amassing titles all my life, as everyone does — the list which initially included wife, mother, daughter, boss, friend, foodie, runner — now includes Zionist. Finding my place in Israel taught me that Israel has a place in me.
And I am grateful to Nefesh B’Nefesh for helping me realize the dream I didn’t even know I had.
Hilary Faverman, nee Krissman, grew up in Glendale, is a graduate of Nicolet High School and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and lives at Moshav Mevo Beitar in central Israel. This article is one in a series written by Wisconsinites who have moved to Israel.
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