Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Long time no mass emails. What can I say - sharing my life with every human being in the world posessing an internet connection and a search engine is sometimes daunting.
Last Sunday I loaded all my possessions into a van and vacated my apartment in Nahlaot. We drove through the beautiful Jordan Valley, past Jericho and through the Beit She'an valley to a heavenly little Kibbutz called Sde Eliyahu. I figured I had been in an MBA program for two months, living in the most intense incredible city in all the world - it was time for a change: Socialism and shepherding! Actually, I will be in the Ulpan at Sde Eliyahu and picking dates as well. I am sick of not being fluent in the Language of my people. The walls that are erected between me and the rest of the Jewish nation due to my exilic language are intolerable and must be torn down. The manual labor will also be good for my soul.
Last Monday I had to go to Tel Aviv to receive one of my benefits as an Oleh Chadash - a voucher from the student authority paying for my Masters Degree. After I finished there I walked through Tel Aviv toward Yaffo. I had never been there but heard it was beautiful and wanted to get a look at it. I walked through a beautiful sea-side neighborhood that looked a lot like Nahlaot - the old construction style from the pre-state settlement of Eretz Yisrael. After passing through a district of carpenters and metal shops I arrived in Yaffo.
I walked past a church and a middle-aged man in a wheel-chair called me over. He had the circular metal-rimmed glasses of a Tel Avivian bohemian and at first I thought he was going to berate me for walking toward an Arab neighborhood or as a representative of the entire settler movement, but he did neither.
"Excuse me," he asked in Hebrew, "why did you come here to visit this place?"
"I have never been here and I heard it was a beautiful place and wanted to see it," said I. He smiled a warm smile and apologized for accosting me.
"It is good to see a Jew like you with a beautiful kippa and tzitzit hanging proudly come to visit Yaffo . . . nobody comes here any more, we need you."
I told him it was no problem, blushed a little, and asked him what his name was.
"Chaim Cohen," he said. "Do you have a little time? I have something very important to talk to you about."
I said that I did and he began speaking with an open heart:
"I am speaking with you like this because I see you have a beautiful kippa on your head and you look like someone who cares. I don't have my head covered but if it would be up to me I would have my daughter marry someone like you. I am talking to you because you are the only real Zionist today. I want you to know, though, that while you and your friends are busy settling in Gaza and the West Bank, in your own backyard you are losing the battle. We need you to come here, to come to Yaffo with your kippot and tzitziyot and your Israeli flags. We need you to pray in the old synagogues here that lie empty because the Arabs have convinced us this is an Arab city. They buy the corner houses. They buy up all the properties and blare their music out their windows so passersby will know to whom it belongs. I grew up side by side and in the same houses with them and now I have gotten spat upon in the streets to jeers of 'al-yahud'. Our girls are afraid to walk the streets as the streets are full of Arab youth smoking nargilas and harassing them constantly with lewd comments and threats. We need you here!"
'NOCHACHUT' is the word he used. He tried to explain what it meant and I got the impression it meant some sort of permanance. Facts in the ground, if you will. He was crying over the loss of his particular part of the Land of Israel.
I promised him that we would have a Kumah Shabbat in Yaffo and that he would see the day when Jewish children once again danced through the streets and dove from the piers into the sparkling sea alongside his beautiful old birthplace.
I then returned to Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu, where biblical prophecies are fulfilled daily and punctually as the efficiency and punctuality of the German Jews who emigrated there generations ago continues to run a vibrant old-school kibbutz that has not forgotten that we Jews can and should roll up our sleeves and fix the world with our own two hands.
It is unbelievable to be studying Hebrew and working side by side with Olim Chadashim from Argentina, Mexico, France, New Jersey, London, Australia and even the Canary Islands. It makes me think of those American Jews who think our people's redemption and the ingathering of the exiles is going to wait around the station until they are ready to board the train. Over here in the Beit Shean Valley, between Har Gilboa and Har Gilad, the exiles are being gathered speedily, taught Hebrew, given incredible food (organic farming is huge here, and most of the vegetables consumed each day by all the members in the communal dining hall are pesticide-free) and put to work picking dates, milking cows, harvesting pomegranites and grapes, planting vegetables, in the spice factory, or at Bio-Bee.
Oh yes, I forgot to mention that I will finally be eligable to be tried for war crimes by a jury of internation Jew haters from Europe and elsewhere: I got my draft date moved up to December 27th!! So if any of you know Saddam or Muhammar Q. let them know they better watch out come winter time.
I want to send this out now before some of my fellow immigrants come and usurp the internet connection. Please feel free to come visit me up here in
paradise.
Blessing us all with a year of fulfilled dreams and the formation of new ones,
Looking toward the dawn and seeing more and more light coming faster and faster,
Kim'a, Kim'a...
Kumah.
b'ahavat yisrael,
Ezra HaLevi