I’m not entirely sure if I blogged my First Aliyah Anniversary or if I just think I did, but in any event, all my readers will now be subjected to a review of the last year, unless they choose not to read it.
My second year in Israel wasn’t an easy one, and may well have been the hardest year of my life.
At the beginning of it, I was out of work, my then-girlfriend and I had recently broken up, the country was marching toward Expulsion 2005, and who knew what was going to happen?
I’m not going to trace here how all of these things developed, but I will say that I spent much of my second year in Israel in a really bad financial situation – really really bad. One of the reasons I spent everything and maxed out beyond belief in April to move to Tel Aviv was so that I could get a decent-paying job and start actually treading water. I have done that now and, though I am still paying bills from whenever and wherever, at least I have a reasonably strong feeling that I will be able to pay them. I will also say that my social life has had its ups and downs. I got back together with that girlfriend in the summer, then we got more serious, then we broke up in the winter. Then I began to feel aware, ever more acutely, that I wasn’t “making it” socially in Jerusalem, wasn’t finding a group and couldn’t really make myself fit in. That’s another reason I moved to Tel Aviv: I wanted to try this city out and see if I’d do better for myself here. With regards to the Expulsion, I can say now only that I was deeply hurt and let down by Jerusalem and by the country’s religious Zionist leadership (the two of which, to some extent, I confound). At the same time in the wake of the Expulsion that I started viewing people with a new suspicion because of the community to which they belonged, I could feel every day that they viewed me the same way – even though they and I were ideologically and politically so close. And I don’t like to be made to feel that way. And so I came to Tel Aviv to experience the exact opposite: people who look like I do, but think very differently.
So, I faced some pretty serious challenges, including many that I didn’t write about, and although I don’t think I met them all, I do know that I did something to break out of a situation that wasn’t working for me. By that standard, I think my second year in Israel was a major success: for the longest time I was unable to shake the feeling that my life was happening to me and that I wasn’t in the driver’s seat.
And that’s not to say that moving to Tel Aviv was the greatest idea, either. The best thing I can say about my job is that I am ambivalent about it; after three months I still know practically no one in this city; and even as I meet people I have to be exceedingly careful not to express any beliefs, so as not to be prejudged.
That’s tough, and also unfair, so maybe in a year I will be writing how hard it was for me in Tel Aviv and why I moved to …. but what I do know is that on 25 Tammuz 5767 I will write about my third anniversary of Aliyah because I still continue to feel more and more Israeli – if not every day or every week, then at least every month.
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