Our First Letter From Home

written 17 Septemebr 2000


Dear Family and Friends,
It is motzei Shabbat and I have read Ari Glazer's parsha hashavuah D'var torah which talks about renewing ourselves each day in the service of Hashem , to do things in life B'simcha and to increase the role of Torah and mitzvot in our lives. With this in mind I would like to tell you of our adventures in Israel(from my perspective) since our arrival. It is truly B'simcha(with joy) that I do so as I have enjoyed almost every minute of this experience thus far. Some people say I am still in the "I made aliyah" euphoria that lasts for each person a different amount of time. The next stage I am told is the let down and "this is reality of living in Israel" stage. The final stage they say is when you wake up in the middle of the night sweating and panicked saying "What the hell did I do moving to this God forsaken place ? ".
As you know we took two separate planes to Israel, one with Michael and myself and the other with Aaron & Batsheva. Both planes were due to land within 5 minutes of each other so that we could go through our immigration process together as a family. However...the best laid planes.... my plane had to make a detour stop in Newfoundland for about three plus hours to extricate a passenger who seemed to be on drugs and out of control.. his luggage also needed to be found and removed while all the passengers had to remain on board with no a/c or entertainment etc. An interesting stopover since we had never planned on going to Newfoundland for vacation. Michael and I were fully stocked with food and games and so the experience seemed less irritating for us than most. We did get to see fuel being dumped out over the Atlantic since the plane could not land with so much fuel. I felt they should have dumped the guy rather than the fuel. So much for my vote.

We finally arrived well after Aaron and Batsheva and as if I had anything to do with the whole ordeal Aaron says "where were you?...like I detoured in Paris to go shopping !! A lovely lady from an organization AACI (Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel) who whisked us through passport control and up to the aliyah-immigration area met us. Where else but a Jewish country would food await you as you meet with the immigration person putting together your immigration information and your new identification for your new life. Seeing my name in Hebrew on all my documents was exciting as I began to realize these new papers were the beginning of a new existence here in our new home. I really thought of others who have had to immigrate from their homelands around the world and how scary it could be... for us it was, thank God, by choice and really quite exciting. After the paper work was completed at what was now 9am(we had left USA at 12 noon the previous day) we had to collect our luggage.... All 12 large duffel bags bursting at the seams. Thanks to Rhoda and Herman Cohen for helping us tag each bag and to Ben Levine for helping us pack! Your help was invaluable. We then were waved through customs and were not given a second thought as to what might be in our bags. The Sherut driver we got to take us on our one free ride to our new apt was "overjoyed at the sight of these bags however when we arrived at the apt two full flights down stairs he was thrilled to know that he could charge us for shlepping these bags down. Aaron thought he wanted too much for this task but when I asked him if he wanted to do this he quickly changed his mind.... And boy was it hot. Now this was the first time the children and Aaron had seen the apt and they were quite excited. While the stairs down seemed a bit much they were overjoyed to see the space...5 bedrooms, 3 full bathrooms a kitchen, living room/dining room and a backyard/patio and an additional porch off the master bedroom. The whole yard/patio overlooks the city of Modiin and we are taken by the beauty as it twinkles at night and looks so stark and white by day in the glowing sun. In thinking of how we spent the next few days are blurred by the extreme heat that greeted us. We were told that we were experiencing a "heat wave" or " Hamseen" in which the very hot air from the Sahara desert blows over from Africa and heats us up real nice!!! We immediately went to find food and water and explore the city we had chosen to live in. We slept at friends that night who had no a/c and the next morning we were on a bus to Jerusalem.... for two important reasons one to go to the Kotel to thank Hashem for our safe arrival and to pray that He accompany us throughout our adventures and guide us safely to successful conclusions. The other reason was to arrange for the delivery of the beds I had ordered when I was here in June. Both tasks were successful I was so enthralled by the children’s reaction to the Kotel and then the mundane of getting the beds. They were excited by everything and always hungry. Pizza was all Michael ate anywhere we went. Batsheva was much more daring and we began our new life in eating mode exploring every new eatery with a teudah Hakasher(acceptable kosher certificate) While we were informed that our lift would be delayed because it wasn’t being unloaded at the dock we used our time to get all the formal immigration tasks taken care of. We used buses as mode of travel as well as taxi’s and found that getting there was half the fun. My “thing” upon arriving in Israel was to say Shalom to everyone. This was interesting because most people just go about their business and don’t seem real friendly…but once someone says something to them they seem to light up and become happy. I found this fun to see all the reactions. My second words were to tell everyone who would listen that we were Olim Hadashim(new immigrants). Comments ranged from Welcome, you are so brave, it should be with mazal, can I have your USA passport, to you are crazy. People in the neighborhood that we moved into had heard of our arrival and our lack of anything in our house so we received food, a fan, a couple of chairs, an n electric teapot. We also became good customers of the Home Center, which is fashioned after home depot. It was always a costly trip there as we began putting the bathrooms, kitchen and house in order. Israel is short on wood but big on plastic and so ones life can be a collection of everything in plastic with the greatest colors. I was in heaven as one bathroom would be the turquoise room, the kitchen accentuated with lime green, another bathroom in peach/orange etc. I was having a ball. It was still hot and we went to Ramla(not to be confused with Ramallah-yasar Arafat’s hangout) for our immigration papers. We were in and out of that place in 40 minutes, which after hearing horror stories about how long everything takes we were amazed. We then proceeded to…..EAT. another new exploration of the Ramla shuk and various stores…ending with the purchase of ice cream. That always seems to top off the day….COLD POPS!! We also acquired a second cell phone so we were so Israeli already with cell phones, bottled water and a pocket full of shekels. We opened a Bank account only to discover the wonderful world of banking here. Overdraft is the rule because no one seems to know what they have in their account…. there is a charge for checks, a charge for deposits, a charge for withdrawals, a charge for a statement showing your account activity and you only get your statements every three months. Also post dated checks are the norm for everything. You buy something and if you want you can pay with three months of postdated checks with no additional charge. Every time I bought food in the grocery store I was asked if I wanted to charge it over 3 months. This seemed ridiculous as you could be paying for September’s food in Dec and Nov. ‘s food in January, etc. The grocery store is another wild experience as the stores in Modiin are under the supervision of Rabbi Lau, the son of Israel’s chief Rabbi…, which is ok by me. Everything in the stores are Kosher and you have to decide which hecsharim you will use or not but in the mean time I just had to get through what was in the package let alone the hecksher. Thank heavens for pictures, but that didn’t tell you if it was sweet, salty, fat free, sugar free (no such thing here) or on sale. I quickly learned about sales and wanted to stock up only to find that there was no place to put multiples of grocery items and that kitchen space limited what you bought. I asked people for help in the stores and they were always so nice even making recommendations at the bakery counter as to which rugalach was better..chocolate always won.. I made friends with the lady behind the cheese counter who spoke english. Esther was not only helpful in shredding cheddar cheese for the kid’s macaroni which she knew instantly that I needed but she was a wealth of other useful info. I was always glad to see her and we have become close as she is looking into cheap air flights for Yona to come here…she used to be a travel agent in the states. I must say that to describe our “office-business-immigration experiences would seem boring as they were easy, quick and non eventful…except everyone was helpful and kind to us. They escorted us to other offices if we were in the wrong office and would direct us to the proper places when we were finished. Of course I attributed it all to my winning “Shalom” that introduced us, followed by” We are Olim Hadashim and my charming smile…. but in truth it was probably Aaron’s really good Hebrew that made things go so well. Well our lift finally arrived and a few days later Aaron left for the states to finish his work at Lucent. He was gone for over two weeks in which time Yona, Batsheva, Michael and I unpacked the boxes, and turned a room full of boxes into a house. We hung pictures, arranged furniture and had central air conditioning installed in the upstairs which was the biggest mess possible but we are now cool and the house looks great. We are ready for the hordes of family and friends who are eagerly waiting to arrive at the Modiin Motel. A friend lent us a portable a/c for the downstairs and we are now really cool. So I will stop here and continue at a later time. May you all be well and happy and remember to smile, say Shalom and make someone happy today.
L’hitraot…
Ronda
The Israels in Israel