After living my new life in Israel for five months, I returned to the USA after final exams at Reichman University last week to take care of unfinished business in Houston, visit my parents in Florida, and welcome a new grandson in Baltimore.
I’m especially thankful to my truly wonderful daughter-in-law for her impeccable timing during my month-long semester break.
On Friday afternoon in a not particularly Jewish neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale, I ran into Trader Joe’s to pick up some Empire chicken as well as challah and babka, since the closest kosher bakery is a 20-minute drive to Hollywood.
While checking out, a likely although not otherwise identified Jewish shopper passed by and cheerily shouted out, “Shabbat shalom!” to me, her fellow member of the tribe. Delighted to hear those words, I turned around and returned the greeting with a smile. “Shabbat shalom to you too!”
Leaving the store, I reflected on the incident. In Israel, hearing “Shabbat shalom” would not be a pleasant surprise but simply a regular aspect of the culture. Everyone in Israel – religious, secular, right, and left – wishes each other a Shabbat shalom when they pass.
My temporary home in Ramat Poleg, Netanya, is situated midpoint between the Young Israel of Poleg shul and the Poleg Country Club (with its two lap pools on par with the Jewish Community Center), both of which are open every day including Shabbat.
Whether I pass someone walking to shul or to the gym on Shabbat, the greeting is the same: Shabbat shalom. Everyone in Israel acknowledges Shabbat. In Israel, being a member of the tribe means being part of the entire culture. In the Diaspora, it means being part of the sub-culture, a minority with its own language and customs separate and distinct from the majority.
I couldn’t help but feel the tremendous difference with the first leg of my journey westward after leaving Israel, a layover in Frankfurt. Coming from Ben-Gurion Airport, where even the McDonald’s is kosher, I was in for a real letdown – although not exactly a surprise – when I could barely find even a kosher candy bar throughout the gigantic Lufthansa terminal.
Couple that semi-hunger with the cold and overcast day outside, which mirrored the cold and overcast feeling I had as I was asked multiple times to remove the cap I wear as a religious head covering by the German TSA agents.
The questioning of my religious head covering felt invasive, and as I was escorted to a dressing room, the sense of being an outsider deepened. When I said I was Jewish after being asked what religion I practiced, the confusion on the agent’s face was unmistakable, and I felt an unsettling distance from the welcoming Jewish identity I had known in Israel.
There's no place like home
It was a jarring reminder: You’re not in Israel anymore, Holly, followed by the mental kicking of my heels together: “There’s no place like home; no place like home,” a la The Wizard of Oz.
After the disorienting experience in Frankfurt, where my identity felt out of place, I continued my journey westward to Houston – my first stop in the US – which prompted further reflection on the cultural differences I was encountering.
The traffic-laden 45-minute drive from Bush Intercontinental to Meyerland reminded me of the similar drive from Netanya to Ben-Gurion Airport I had experienced the night before.
However, on Texas interstates 59 or 45, both of which pass through Houston’s sizeable downtown, there are no shuls, no kosher restaurants, and no Jewish life to speak of, essentially, until one reaches Braeswood, not just the heart but the very aorta of the Jewish community, located in the southwest quadrant of the sprawling city.
By contrast, on the Ayalon highway from Netanya to Ben-Gurion, which passes through Tel Aviv and Herzliya, the route is peppered with gas stations serving kosher food as well as fuel. In fact, some say that the best burgers in Israel are to be found in these nondescript gas stops!
That is in addition to kosher restaurants, schools, and synagogues – the building blocks of Jewish life – located all along the way, even in the more secular suburbs of the White City. Indeed, one cannot go too far in Israel without signs of Jewish life because those signs are ubiquitous in the Jewish state.
The differing cultural messages can also be understood by the billboards one sees. In Houston, massive ads for furniture and personal injury lawyers – products and services that most viewers do not need, at least on a regular basis – line the freeways.
In Israel, on the contrary, the signs speak of national unity, shared identity, and survival, with billboards demanding both the return of our hostages from their captivity in the terror tunnels of Gaza and the achievement of victory in the war by standing united.
There are also large banners on buildings and bridges expressing gratitude to President Trump for his crucial support and others – mostly critical but some supportive – of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his coalition government. Reading the billboards, one feels immediately grounded in the here and now of Jewish history.
In Israel, as I’ve experienced since making aliyah over five months ago, I feel embedded in a culture where Jewish life is not just a part of the landscape but the very fabric of daily life. In my native US, on the other hand, I now find myself feeling like a visitor, with my Jewish identity marked by what is absent rather than what is present all around.
When I’m in Israel, my new home, it’s the recognition of Shabbat Shalom on every tongue, not just in surprising corners of Trader Joe’s, that makes me sure I made the right decision. Am Yisrael Chai.
The writer is a recent new immigrant from Houston, Texas. Formerly a professor of English as a second language to international students at Houston Community College and the University of Houston, she is currently a lecturer of English at Reichman and Bar-Ilan Universities.