October 21, 2005

Alison on Aliyah:  Tziki and His Lone Soldiers (Part 1 of 3)

            I have met a lot of people through the course of my immigration to Israel and absorption into the country and culture, and I have received a great deal of help, support, and advice throughout the process.  There is one particular man, however, who stands out in my life, and to whom I will forever be grateful for an infinite amount of reasons.  His name is Tziki Aud, and I think his story needs to be heard.

Tziki works as the head of the Information Center for new immigrants at the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem, and he spends his days fielding office visits, phone calls, and emails by the truckload from “fresh off the boat” immigrants from North and South America, France, Canada, Ethiopia, and Russia who don’t know what they’re doing and have no idea who to turn to next.  He holds their hands and he reassures them that things will be fine, and then he picks up his seemingly magical phone and finds them a place to live, potential options for school and/or work, and a way out of their desperation and fear and aloneness.  This is his day job.

            In every other second of his spare time, Tziki assists chayalim bodedim, or “lone soldiers.”  These are young Jewish boys between the ages of 18 and 23, who have chosen to leave their home countries—often very much against their parents’ wishes—to come to their homeland, become Israeli citizens, and enlist in the Israel Defense Forces.  Some would say this is Zionism in its purest form; after all, “real” Israelis are required to become soldiers.  These chayalim bodedim have no family here; in fact, some of them don’t know a soul in the country.  They cannot rent an apartment because they don’t get enough income from the army, and they can go long stretches without more than one or two weekends off per month.  When they do get off the base, therefore, they literally have nowhere to go.

That’s where Tziki comes in.  He picks them up from the bus station, takes them to his tiny three-bedroom apartment (where he lives with his wife and three teenaged boys, one of whom has also just entered the army), feeds them until they can’t move, does their piles of laundry, and puts a pillow under their heads moments before they collapse from exhaustion.  When they wake up, many hours later, they are treated like kings at his Shabbat dinner table every week.  There are never less than seven to ten soldiers there every Friday, stuffing their faces hungrily with the first home-cooked meal some of them have had in weeks.

And then there’s always me, one of the lucky ones who managed to get an invitation to Tziki’s dinner table back in the first week after making aliyah, and I have barely missed a meal there since.  It’s been almost two years that I’ve been spending my Friday nights with Tziki, his American wife, Aya, their three sons, his mother and father (a Holocaust survivor), and all the chayalim bodedim he can fit at the table.

It took me a while to feel comfortable at their house, even though I became fast friends with Aya.  There are still times that I feel out of place, given that I am at least seven years older than even the oldest soldier, and I know nothing about the endless macho games played at the table surrounding army units and 40-kilometer hikes and what type of gun is the best.  Some of the soldiers seem to treat me like a surrogate mother, some like a sister, and most of them just spend most of the night trying to hit on me.

There have also been times when I couldn’t understand why I was even there, and why I was the only female besides Tziki’s wife and mother at the table every week.  A few months ago, he finally answered this burning question, telling me that as soon as he met me, he just knew I would fit in at his table.  Apparently, that same night he came home to Aya and declared, “We have a daughter!”  He calls us all his adopted children, and we delight in having an adoptive family to get us through our tribulations.

I spend most of my time at the Aud house thanking my lucky stars that people like this exist in this world, and in Israel in particular.  I simply don’t know what I would have done without them, from the moment I made aliyah up to and including today.  And I always knew that Tziki spends his time helping these soldiers, advocating for them, steering their way through the army bureaucracy, sending them care packages, and lending them money when they can’t make it to their next paycheck.  But not until I went to visit some of Tziki’s soldiers “in action” a short time ago did I truly understand what really goes on behind the scenes.

(To Be Continued…)