I've used that quip too many times this past month. How the world turns unbeknownst to us mere mortals.
Here I am, back again in Melbourne, barely nine months after I became an olah - a citizen of Israel. How things have changed since first stepping off that El Al flight, swarmed by Israeli tourists returning from their vacations in Thailand, and me clutching on to a number of bags, coats, and pillows, anxiously anticipating the mountain of paperwork and Israeli chutzpa about to bury me. Beginning at the airport.
But we shall return to that in another post, a post that will be dedicated purely to the aliyah experience and the subsequent adventures/mishaps/surprises/tedium/frustration/elation... I could go on.
However, today, being 'Chag HaSusim (Festival of Horses)' or Melbourne Cup Day in my hometown, and given the dreary greyness that has conquered November's skies, I feel like writing about Melbourne. And all things Melbourne. Why my relationship with this city and her inhabitants is so complex and confusing and ambiguous and lonely. Particularly, how on earth I managed to return oh-so-quickly to a place I thought I no longer called it my own. Well, not entirely.
It's November, the eleventh month, which makes it ten months after making aliyah, and nearly three month after becoming a married woman. Who woulda thunk it.
*****
And since first writing (and not completing) this post nearly a year ago, things have changed - I have changed - in a way that I could not fully appreciate back then. Persuaded to return to the land of plenty, I reluctantly made Melbourne once again my home. However now, seeing the economic difficulties of life in Israel, coupled with family commitments and a general negative feeling felt throughout the non-anglo sections of Israeli society, perhaps it isn't the right time in my life to be living there.
So, meanwhile, I'm kehilla shopping, apartment hunting, and trying to settle into a Melbourne lifestyle with my eyes firmly set on my real homeland - Eretz Yisrael. I shall return.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Monday, November 1, 2010
Scrapbooking - diary entry number one, page one.
Written: About a month after I immigrated to Israel officially - February 2010
When an Australian Jew makes the monumental decision to make Aliyah, it’s extremely difficult for their family and friends to digest. Why on earth would someone choose to abandon their close-knit community, their hometown of carefree aspirations, their comfort zone, their ‘no worries’ commitments, and rebuild their life halfway across the globe? Rather than running away from the challenges and conflicts that hound our day-to-day Melbourne living, making aliyah is a life choice to run towards a place, an idea, a home that resonates in all aspects of our Jewish identity. “B’shana haba’a b’yerushalyim,” we have cried for over two millennia, and now in our shrinking global village, Jews have created for themselves the opportunity to live their lives in a land they can call their own.
Countless olim from Australia and across the world have described the magnetic pull they have felt from within to return to the Jewish homeland. Regardless of our home countries – from Iran to India, Uruguay to Belarus, Ethiopia to Romania, we are building our own community in our own state, communicating in our own shared language, and celebrating our festivals according to our religious and national calendar. We, Australians who choose to fly across two oceans to make aliyah, are consciously giving up our cushy Caulfield comforts and exchanging our affluent and easy lifestyles for the daily struggle of Israeli living. Why?
Aliyah flight: in transit
So it’s come to this. What an anti-climax. My body can barely hold the build-up of tension and stress and preparation and hype and tears and emotion and love and anxiety and-and-and-and…
I’m sitting here in Bangkok airport, splitting headache, overtired, exhausted, drained, and finally calm.
This is it. Aliyah, baby. It’s as if I never left. Twenty-five years of a strong Jewish identity is finally coming to its fruition. It’s as if the haze is being lifted from before my eyes. Shapes are regaining their focus, colours are intensifying, and while I have no place to call my own just yet, I don’t feel so rootless anymore.
My first Shabbat as an Olah Chadasha
Overtiredness racked my body and denied me sleep during the first few days of my arrival. I had been awake for more than eighty hours and I couldn’t get my mind to quieten down once I lay my head against the pillow. I had to will myself to sleep during that first Shabbat. Soulful melodies ushered in my Sabbath prayers, and as I walked home from shule that night, I felt awash with renewal by my first Tefillat Shabbat (Sabbath prayers) in Israel – as an Israeli.
I can now call myself an ‘Israeli’, a citizen of the State of Israel. I have the right to vote for and complain about my government. The streets of Jerusalem, the beaches of Tel Aviv, the hills of Haifa – they belong to me, and I can settle wherever I please within the borders of my land. I never felt the same passion, the same sense of belonging, upon celebrating the ‘land girt by sea’ as part of Australia’s national anthem. My life played to the tune of Hatikvah. The Partisan Song is an anthem of my past in blood-soaked Europe. Advance Australia Fair – a place of refuge and childhood and family and friends and joy and love. But throughout – Hatikvah, a song of hope, of returning to the land of our nation after thousands of years, fills my heart with pure energy and emotion as it moves me to tears. Hatikvah, a haunting melody which conjures images of sacrifice, hardship, renewal, birth, stability, home, belonging, language, prayer, family, and heritage, is our anthem, no matter where we live.
When an Australian Jew makes the monumental decision to make Aliyah, it’s extremely difficult for their family and friends to digest. Why on earth would someone choose to abandon their close-knit community, their hometown of carefree aspirations, their comfort zone, their ‘no worries’ commitments, and rebuild their life halfway across the globe? Rather than running away from the challenges and conflicts that hound our day-to-day Melbourne living, making aliyah is a life choice to run towards a place, an idea, a home that resonates in all aspects of our Jewish identity. “B’shana haba’a b’yerushalyim,” we have cried for over two millennia, and now in our shrinking global village, Jews have created for themselves the opportunity to live their lives in a land they can call their own.
Countless olim from Australia and across the world have described the magnetic pull they have felt from within to return to the Jewish homeland. Regardless of our home countries – from Iran to India, Uruguay to Belarus, Ethiopia to Romania, we are building our own community in our own state, communicating in our own shared language, and celebrating our festivals according to our religious and national calendar. We, Australians who choose to fly across two oceans to make aliyah, are consciously giving up our cushy Caulfield comforts and exchanging our affluent and easy lifestyles for the daily struggle of Israeli living. Why?
Aliyah flight: in transit
So it’s come to this. What an anti-climax. My body can barely hold the build-up of tension and stress and preparation and hype and tears and emotion and love and anxiety and-and-and-and…
I’m sitting here in Bangkok airport, splitting headache, overtired, exhausted, drained, and finally calm.
This is it. Aliyah, baby. It’s as if I never left. Twenty-five years of a strong Jewish identity is finally coming to its fruition. It’s as if the haze is being lifted from before my eyes. Shapes are regaining their focus, colours are intensifying, and while I have no place to call my own just yet, I don’t feel so rootless anymore.
My first Shabbat as an Olah Chadasha
Overtiredness racked my body and denied me sleep during the first few days of my arrival. I had been awake for more than eighty hours and I couldn’t get my mind to quieten down once I lay my head against the pillow. I had to will myself to sleep during that first Shabbat. Soulful melodies ushered in my Sabbath prayers, and as I walked home from shule that night, I felt awash with renewal by my first Tefillat Shabbat (Sabbath prayers) in Israel – as an Israeli.
I can now call myself an ‘Israeli’, a citizen of the State of Israel. I have the right to vote for and complain about my government. The streets of Jerusalem, the beaches of Tel Aviv, the hills of Haifa – they belong to me, and I can settle wherever I please within the borders of my land. I never felt the same passion, the same sense of belonging, upon celebrating the ‘land girt by sea’ as part of Australia’s national anthem. My life played to the tune of Hatikvah. The Partisan Song is an anthem of my past in blood-soaked Europe. Advance Australia Fair – a place of refuge and childhood and family and friends and joy and love. But throughout – Hatikvah, a song of hope, of returning to the land of our nation after thousands of years, fills my heart with pure energy and emotion as it moves me to tears. Hatikvah, a haunting melody which conjures images of sacrifice, hardship, renewal, birth, stability, home, belonging, language, prayer, family, and heritage, is our anthem, no matter where we live.
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