My Israel Story – ‘Hope in the land’
'Something deep inside me stirs when I talk about Israel and my Judaism.'
From South Africa to Israel
I visited Israel for the first time on Ulpan in 1980 with my cohort of Standard 10 classmates.
Growing up in South Africa, we lived in a big double-storey, red-brick house with a grand circular driveway, two maids, a gardener, a driver, a brilliant blue Chinese carpet in our formal lounge, and a sparkling swimming pool. While our servants cooked and cleaned for us, my mother would play bridge, sew and drink G&Ts in the late afternoon. I grew up playing with my four siblings, watching Pop Shop and devouring Enid Blyton books. For the Jewish holidays, we would decamp to my grandparents in Bethal and wear our grandest and finest outfits. We’d attend shule in the morning and then play carpet bowls with our cousins in the afternoon. So, against this idyllic and carefree background, attending Ulpan, (my first time ever overseas and away from my parents for so long), and visiting my mother’s cousin for a Shabbat was an experience as far removed from my life – as Israel is from South Africa.
My mother’s cousin Tzaffa lived in Rehovot. When I arrived, I was ushered into their small home and sat down at a melamine table covered in brightly patterned oilcloth in their kitchen. They couldn’t speak any English; I couldn’t speak any Hebrew. They were trying so hard to be hospitable and friendly, I was trying so hard to not be homesick. I remember so vividly sitting at the table, watching the dust suspended on the sunbeams streaming in through the window. It was a beautiful winter’s day, with the radiant sun painting the sky blue and … it was taking all my willpower not to cry. Later I was taken on a walk through their citrus grove, which was really not much larger than the size of my garden back at home, but cultivated with jewelled oranges and dappled in sunlight.
What I wish I had known then, and can only appreciate now, was the pride that they had in their verdant orchard. Rehovot became historically important when they realised in the 1920s that the loamy red soil was perfect for cultivating large, round and juicy Jaffa oranges. These oranges became the pride of the country and one of the more important export goods of the small province under British Mandate Palestine. The Russian and Polish Jews who had settled in Rehovot (including my mother’s uncle and aunt) were hoping to find peace and prosperity in the land of Israel. The long route the oranges made from the tree to the table seemed to carry the promise of an imagined Zionist nation.
As Ari Shavit writes so eloquently in his sublime chapter “Orange Groves” in My Promised Land: “There is hope in the land. And the colony of Rehovot is a living testament that the Jews were right to end their two millennia of wandering in the plains of Judea. They were right to come here and build a home and plant a tree and put down roots. Creating something from nothing. Creating this green ocean of orange groves that whispers peace and plenty and home.”
But I didn’t know any of this then and youth is an excuse that excuses. Perhaps one day I will revisit Rehovot and walk in the (very few) remaining citrus groves and realise that the roots laid then, survive in the roots we lay with our children by sending them to Jewish day schools and on Israel study programs.
My fervent wish is that all our children appreciate the enormity of the contribution that the fragile yet fierce Holocaust survivors, the pale and poor Eastern European refugees, the brave and bold chalutzim, the Mizrahi Jews of the Arab world, the heroic warriors of the Palmach and especially the optimistic orange growers of Rehovot (like my mother’s family), made in giving us back the land of Israel, to once more become the people of Israel.
Am Yisrael chai.
More than ‘Shalom’
A few years ago, my husband and I embarked on a three-month grand tour of Europe. We witnessed Paris’s unassailable beauty, Budapest’s indomitable spirit, the Dolomites’ grandeur and Krakow’s renewal.
We touched the heavens at Mont Blanc; and felt the hell of wartime in Poland. But for Pesach, we detoured to Israel.
About to set off to Tel Aviv from Nice Cote d’Azur airport, a young Israeli El Al security guard greeted me with a cheery, “Shalom”, and asked me why I was flying to Israel.
My response was … tears.
I attempted to cover up the embarrassing moment, sharing it was excitement of going to see my daughter who was there on a gap year program. That was true … but it is far more complex than that.
Something deep inside me stirs when I talk about Israel and my Judaism. I do not know what to call it, nor how to describe it. Like the feeling after viewing an artistic masterpiece, hearing a sublime symphony, or reading a beautiful poem, it evinces and encompasses all: my affinity to our ancient and our eternal homeland, my love for our culture and our heritage, and my loyalty to our faith and our traditions.
Like Jerusalem’s translucent and golden masonry, I am nurtured by the warm golden halo of my Judaism. It has always made me feel special and given me a sense of belonging. I am acutely aware, and ineffably proud, of our extraordinary endurance; we are the longest surviving and flourishing community in the world, and I’m resolute about being part of this continuity.
It is why I have stayed in Jewish education for over 35 years.
The quest to describe my feelings simply, is not easy when the simple is so complex.
Golda Meir’s words resonate with me, “You see, to me, being Jewish means … being proud to be part of a people that has maintained its distinct identity for more than two thousand years, with all its pain and torment inflicted on it.”
I feel the highest privilege and deepest humility being Jewish. I feel the gravest responsibility and the happiest exhilaration being Jewish. I will be proud of my tears and go forward courageously and enthusiastically without pretence or apology.
Am Yisrael chai.
Tracey Schreier is the former head of school at Moriah College.
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