June 3, 2004

Alison on Aliyah:  Holidays in the Holy Land

            Lately my Hebrew has been suffering.  Although I have improved tremendously from six months ago, I’ve noticed that my speaking and writing has reached a bit of a plateau as of late.  And I think I have pinpointed the reason for my lack of progression:  holidays, holidays, and more holidays!

They simply don’t stop.  We have not had more than seven days of ulpan classes in a row since the middle of March.  First, there was Pesach, for which we had a full two weeks’ break.  Five days after we returned to class, we invested two days preparing a ceremony for Yom Ha’Zikaron La’Shoah V’La’Gvurah (Day of Remembrance for the Holocaust and Heroism).  Barely a week later we had another few days off for Yom Ha’Zikaron L’Chalalei Tzahal (Day of Remembrance for Fallen Soldiers), and for Yom Ha’Atzma’ut (Independence Day) the next day.  Next, there was Lag B’Omer, and last week we had three more days off for Shavuot.

            Don’t get me wrong, I have always loved breaks from classes.  I just don’t know how any Israeli teacher manages to teach anything of substance when there is so little continuity for nearly two and a half months.  What I have found the most amazing, however, is watching the entire country band together to celebrate these very intense, very national holidays.  I have been continually struck by how differently Israel treats holidays that are frequently quite similar to their American counterparts.  There is an even more stark contrast when compared to Jerusalem.

            Yom Ha’Atzma’ut, for instance, can appear – to the untrained eye – very much like any old July 4^th in any American city.  Everyone has a day off from school and work; stores are closed; there are lots of barbeques and even a few fireworks shows.  But there is something different here, and it’s hard to put your finger on it right away.  It has something to do with the Israeli flags hanging from every storefront and clipped to every car window, and with the raging all-night parties starting from sundown, with people dancing in the streets and full neighborhoods metamorphosing into discotheques.  There is a sense of true joyousness, pride, and national loyalty among most of the Israeli citizenry.

(I say “most” because the extreme ultra-Orthodox Jews do not believe this is a holiday with cause for celebration.  One of my friends, while celebrating in the center of the city, turned to an ultra-religious man who was walking by and exclaimed, “Happy Independence Day!”  The man turned back to him and told him, “Shabbat Shalom!”  When my friend replied that it wasn’t Shabbat, the man retorted, “Neither is it Independence Day.”)

            This sense of passion and connectedness to the country is, in fact, apparent throughout every holiday, if not every day.  One can truly feel our Memorial Day.  People are more contemplative, less loud and brusque, more polite and solemn.  At 8:00pm on the night before the holiday, a siren blows throughout the entire country for one full minute, and at 11:00am the next day for two minutes.  When the siren begins to sound, everyone halts.  Cars stop in the middle of the road at green lights, and drivers and passengers get out of their cars and stand up with their arms at their sides.  Teachers stop teaching, vendors stop selling, pedestrians stop walking.  The entire country is at a standstill for these moments, and it is one of the most powerful visions I have ever witnessed.

I remember I was talking on the phone with a professor in Beersheva a few minutes before the siren was about to ring on Holocaust Remembrance Day, and he said he had to get off the phone in time to make it outside before the moment of silence was to begin.  I remember thinking of him in Beersheva, and of my friends in Haifa, and looking around at my ulpan class here in Jerusalem, and realizing that in two minutes, the entire country would be doing exactly the same thing at the same moment.

For the two weeks surrounding Pesach, it is impossible to buy bread anywhere in Jerusalem.  The shuk and all bakeries sell only cookies and cakes that are kosher for Pesach.  Whole aisles in the supermarkets are boarded up, and many restaurants and cafes close altogether.  Shavuot brings cheesecakes and other dairy products to the forefront of every market and bakery, and many stores have special 2-for-1 offers for anything with dairy ingredients.  It is said that on Lag B’Omer, one can see from an airplane the campfires lit on beaches and in parks all over the country.  Nearly every holiday brings with it festivals all over each city, and there is a general sense of each holiday wherever one goes.

Each of our Days of Remembrance are preceded by a night during which all places of entertainment (restaurants, clubs, movie theaters, cafes) are closed so as to foster a greater sense of solemnity and respect for the occasion.  On these nights all television channels broadcast the same show schedule, which is filled with programs about the relevant events.  The night before Yom Ha’Shoah, for example, the entire country was able to watch “Schindler’s List,” “The Last Days,” and a documentary about the Kindertransport all at the same time.

Indeed, holidays here – especially in Jerusalem – are not simply celebrated; they are respected, honored, and lived.  In America, I always felt like people were just glad to be not working on Presidents’ Day, or Memorial Day, or even July 4^th.  There was no sense of understanding of what each holiday truly stands for, and therefore, no real sense of connection.  This has always been most obvious to me around Christmastime.  In Jerusalem, however, we all know exactly what we are celebrating and why, and how hard Israel has fought in order to have the right to honor each holiday.

            So I suppose my Hebrew skills have been suffering a bit, but I have learned a lot more about this country in the past few months than just sitting in my ulpan class would have achieved.  I feel that powerful sense of connection that I don’t think I ever felt in America, and I understand even more why I need to be here and what it really means to be a citizen here.  On national holidays such as these, we forget our problems and unite to celebrate both our triumphs and our tragedies, and we are able to join hands and truly be together.  Israel is not perfect, and we will remember that the next day.  But in these brief moments, we like to pretend that it is.