July 28, 2004

Alison on Aliyah:  Not at home in my homeland

            The more time I spend in Jerusalem, the less religious I become.  Well, to be more honest, it is not that I am becoming less religious; it is actually that I am becoming more disdainful of religiosity itself.  I used to watch the men in black suits and long beards and women with head coverings with a certain pride in my new country, a country that allows for these people to feel comfortable walking freely in any neighborhood.  Now, I scoff at the “black-hats,” sweating profusely in the summer heat but refusing to take off even their outer coats.  I look witheringly at the women with gaggles of children milling around them, each one no more than a year in age away from the next, and even the sight of people praying on the bus annoys me to no end.

            I don’t know where these strong reactions have come from, but I do know that I’m starting to feel a bit of a chip on my shoulder about my own lack of religiosity.  My social life here in Jerusalem consists of no less than three conversations a day that go something like this:

“You speak English?  Where are you from?”

“The United States.”

“Oh yeah?  Why are you here?”

“I made aliyah ten months ago.”

“Really?  Do you have family here?”

“No.”

“Are you religious?”

“No.”

“And you live here in Jerusalem all alone?  WHY?”

“I love it here, it’s much better than the States.”

“No, you’re crazy.”

“I’m also here because my field is trauma psychology and I want to be a psychologist here in Israel.”

“No, really, you really don’t have family here?  How are you managing all alone???”

“I have good friends here, and I’m doing OK by myself.”

“No, REALLY.  Why did you come here????”

And so on and so forth, with the disbelief mounting each minute.  As much as I enjoy the glimmer of admiration in the eye of each conversation partner, it is far outweighed by the incredulity and distinct tone of “There’s no way you’ll make it here like THAT.”

And that’s when the annoyance sets in.  It’s so obvious that everyone here believes that there are only two reasonable motives for making aliyah:  either you’re religious or you came here to join family.  That’s it.  Any other reason is clearly beyond the scope of logic, and will surely lead to the oleh’s ultimate downfall.

            So I become politely indignant, trying to prove that I have a good reason, that I am committed to my aliyah with every bone in my body, that one can do it alone, without family, even without religion.  But all the time the gnawing doubt that everyone else seems to have starts to grow inside of me.

            I started a new ulpan course a few weeks ago at Hebrew University, and was shocked to see not only how many Americans had come for the summer course, but how many religious students there were overall.  My teacher’s opening statement was, “One cannot understand daily Hebrew without knowing and understanding the Bible.”  I immediately felt myself simply “switch off.”  The more she brought up stories and phrases from the Tanach, the less interested I became.  It was when she said, “Of course you all know the story of Yitzchak and Rachel!” that I became incensed.

            It may be true that knowing the Bible brings a certain background knowledge of Hebrew that a non-religious individual can’t have.  And of course it is true that daily Hebrew is influenced by its ancient counterpart.  But I instinctively resented the implication that I could not learn daily Hebrew without a religious background, and that I would be eternally inadequate because of this apparently huge, gaping void.

I told the teacher that I am fascinated by every facet of Hebrew, and I hope to know it flawlessly in the near future.  I understand that that will include going back to its roots, so to speak.  However, I have to believe that I can still learn what I need to know to get by on the street, and in business dealings, and in my psychology courses, without being fluent in Bible studies.  I told her this indignantly right before I left her class and decided to join another.

            She seemed shocked at the strength of my anger.  I will admit I may have overreacted, but I see it now as a subtly mounting frustration that stems from my developing acknowledgment of my “difference.”  As much as I am utterly in love with Jerusalem, the more time I spend here, the less I feel that I truly fit in.  During the past ten years or so, Jerusalem has become more and more polarized, with the more secular people slowly filtering out and the more religious moving in and staying in.  Some have quoted figures that the city’s Jewish population is only twenty to thirty percent secular, which means that on an average day it is becoming increasingly rare for me to encounter even a single other person like me.

             So I suppose I’m just getting a little fed up.  In my birthplace, Seattle, it never bothered me that I was brought up Reform, and I never felt a lack in my life because I didn’t celebrate every holiday with the traditional fervor.  I always thought that loving Israel was a good enough reason to come here.  Strange that only now, after I have become an Israeli citizen and lived here for almost a year, that I am beginning to feel like less of a part of the country than I ever did.  Strange that – after growing up in a completely secular environment and being one of only a few Jews at each of my schools – it is only now, in Jerusalem, that I should be made to feel inadequate, like I am less of a Jew, less worthy of being Jewish.  Strange that, living in the Jewish homeland, I often feel less at home than I ever have.