Aliyah 108: Political or Religious Collective?

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The Hive Mind

Did you know supermarkets can have elevators? Park down below, mosey on over to the elevator, fit up to three people with shopping carts, and there you go.

Yesterday I walked out of the elevator into the supermarket to a loud ambient buzz coming from outside. The man in front of me stops, puts his head down a little, and his straight body goes still. I reach for a watermelon – he’s not making way. I look behind me and there’s a packed supermarket with people standing just like him.

Oh great – Pluribus has arrived.¹

(My mind was already in science fiction mode, listening to the Project Hail Mary audiobook on the way.)

To my American “land of the free” mind, you can’t tell me to do anything that others are doing. Freedom is not doing what they’re doing. Here, people are an individualistic joined collective which somehow isn’t a contradiction and they’re very happy. Sometimes it’s a bittersweet happy that they’re together, such as yesterday when they stood at 11am together in a supermarket for the Yom haZicharon (Israeli Memorial Day) siren. In America, we’re so far removed from soldiers dying whereas in Israel they take this day very seriously. Everyone knows someone who died in the army – each and (almost?) every funeral is on TV and it’s not like stuff hasn’t stopped being shot at us.

Where was I last year? I don’t remember though clearly not near other people.

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Yom HaShoah in Ulpan

Recently I went back to Ulpan, during which time was Yom HaShoah and another siren. I personally think we have enough sad days in the Jewish calendar and talk about the holocaust on Tisha B’Av … I digress.

We had a special program which started with a prayer that they had me lead, which forced my head back into saying “et” like “es” with the Ashkenazi pronunciation which, if you’re taking part in such a program for social convention, seems that my pronunciations should follow the social convention too.

Tomorrow is Yom Hatzmaout, where in synagogues in my community they say Hallal with a Brocha, read from the HafTorah, and basically make a religious holiday out of what my prior community and yeshiva more-or-less in a very heterogenous electric mashup of opinions called somewhere between a mistake that is delaying the coming of the messiah and a political event with, at most, a tiny amount of religious significance. If we say Hallal, it’s without a brocha.

I’m a lapsed tried-to-be Haredi Jew, so this is all quite foreign to me, and honestly, in the United States I still wouldn’t be celebrating these political holidays. As an Israeli living in Israel (OMG, I’m Israeli – I’ve memorized my Israeli identification number by accident after almost two years!) . . . I’m not changing my prayerbook though remembrance of soldiers who died followed by a BBQ the next day for a country I live in… why not?

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Selective Jewish Memory

Back to Ulpan – in our book they have this picture:

This bothers me. Between the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 CE and modern Aliyah in 1882, the only event you can put in a timeline about the history of Jews in Israel is the explusion from Spain in 1492 which didn’t even take place in Israel?

Modern Zionism is all like … “Temple … some expulsions … woila, we’re back in Israel!” You know we were doing other things as well and had a rich history? When I give an answer with even a hint of religion in Ulpan about why we are in Israel, the teacher just moves on.

Look, if I can make say a prayer in front of everyone on Holocaust Remembrance Day, you can teach about Talmud Yerushalmi, the Ramban, and the Shulchan Aruch which all directly relate to Jews in Israel. This would only strengthen or claim to Israel by telling the world we never left.

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Buying for the BBQ

The supermarket sells frozen cubes of meat:

American style hotdogs I found only in a large package … one kind, that’s it. There are some sausage things … not many … and these already spiced lamb things which are great. The part of my family who doesn’t like lamb doesn’t seem to know I keep feeding it to them and they love this stuff. I grill it or fry it and put it in pasta instead of meatballs. Add a little oil or red sauce, and that’s all you need.

Good meat is behind the counter, it seems, at most every supermarket, and you need to talk to someone to get it. What is it with Israel and having to talk to people? How is that the most efficient way to do things? It’s like … I’m not in America. The meat is better and a lot less expensive, so alright.

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Car Costs

I’ve written about what it’s like to get an oil change in Israel. New information: Car registration renewal is once a year. For a sedan it’s 2450 NIS which is about $750 a year! This country gets expensive, fast.

The main highway … Kvish 6 (Route 6) … it’s a toll road. What I didn’t know is that the northern end is a different ‘company’ … Kvish 6 Tzafun (Route 6 North). There are big signs that say, “toll by mail” … okay, except they don’t actually send you the mail, I thought I was paying these tolls, and the fines are about 10x the original toll. You can’t even pay it online … you have to deal with a law firm that handles the payments for them. The only reason I even know I owe this money is because I decided to create an online account. Obviously, I should have done that much, much, much earlier.

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Hard floor hazards

Houses in Israel feel much more connected to the outside – the light from outside is bright, the colors inside are bright, though they’re not as well sealed as American houses (heating is an afterthought, though we barely needed it this year – beautiful weather from about the end of October until the end of April).

The floors are also stone or tile in Israel. Carpet is rare. That’s fine with an American cat.

Come out of the bathroom with wet feet and a crazy Israeli cat on tile … whoops … bad combination.

To the tiled closet … ugh, cat, get out of my drawer. Place him on the hamper, grab my tzitzis and pull them over my head and … FWUMP.

Down I went. The Israeli cat on the hamper mistook my tzitzis for 24 mouse tails and went full force into my chest sending me down causing a gash along an arm and a big cut on the top of a toeHe doesn’t even feel guilty about it!

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Strengthening the Natives

I went back to ulpan to learn Hebrew … it kills me. Tires me out for the rest of the day and then I work American hours at night. Again, not sure how long I’m going to last.

The teacher asked us if we’d of come here if we knew there’d be war. Everyone in the class said yes, of course. Life is so much better here and others attacking us because we’re Jewish only strengthens our conviction that we need to be here. This is defiance.

The teacher said she is always so surprised to hear this – that so many people from around the world are totally fine with coming in a time of war. (It’s really not that bad.) I think it strengthens her, just as ba’al teshuva’s (those who return to / become religious) strenthens the religious from birth in their actions.

Our class has newly arrived people from US, Russia, France, Greece, Ecuador … and at our Shabbos table we once had every regularly populated continent represented except Africa. We had an Australian, a Argentinian, an English, us now from Asia, and two daughters of friends in America. Their father reads my blog and his daughters on the phone with him that the reason sthe connection wasn’t good was because they were in my basement and needed my WiFi password. Love that.

That’s all for today.

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1. In the Apple TV+ sci-fi series Pluribus, the shaking (or seizures) represents humanity connecting to a “hive mind” after a viral, alien-like infection. This event triggers a global “reboot,” where individuals are assimilated into a unified, seemingly happy collective. ↩︎