Leaning Toward Significance
SINGER, SUZANNE F.
PERSPECTIVE Editor's Viewpoint Leaning Toward Significance SUZANNE F. SINGER We make jokes, my friends in the States and I, about their coming to visit us in Israel to get away from danger....
...What a message it would be to Arafat and his Arab claque that their determination to wear down Jewish resolve will not outlast our determination to build here and flourish...
...or if you still think Jews in America are invulnerable and day school will do the entire Jewish-identity thing for your kids...
...Numbers matter here...
...Don't continue reading if you suffer from fear of flying...
...The citrus season has arrived with Clementinas, pomellas, and more familiar citrus varieties better every day...
...Most important is the talking we all do, simply sharing life...
...There are 5.5 million Americans of "Jewish background or current Jewish identity," according to the 2001 American Jewish Identification Survey...
...For some Jews, however, there's a powerful case for now being the time to make a home, maybe a second home, in Israel...
...Chamber concerts, jazz, Israel Philharmonic, medieval ensembles, dance troupes—it's all here with less than normal competition for tickets...
...As a sacrifice it won't work...
...The Friday newspaper supplements list lectures on everything from Sufi music in Turkey to grandparenting and the politics of archaeology...
...This isn't a call to heroism...
...Aliyab—literally, "going up" to the land of Israel—has to be something you do in large part for yourself...
...the safer ones—Americans and Brits and French—will stand exposed and vulnerable to the spores of Jew hatred ready to spring to life...
...Demographics are a critical part of security calculations...
...Walking freely around the country is curtailed, but families still make short trips (with their kids) to guest houses in the Negev or the Galilee or to hotels in Eilat...
...I picture Ben-Gurion Airport welcoming a hundred Jews from America each day over the next couple years...
...And what an opportunity for you— young or older—to build a life with significance...
...As always, there's lots of volunteering by people with time—in hospitals, on hot lines, on teams doing guard duty everywhere...
...But Israelis have been practicing living with bad news for more than 50 years...
...Nobody is pretending that this is a peaceful country or that the war against terror worldwide is not our war, too...
...Or if you are simply satisfied or risk-averse—meaning change-averse...
...The Shabbat walkers still hustle between shuls and lunch with friends and family...
...or if you're 30-something with three kids and struggling to find a job after a RIF...
...But the fact is that Israel has lost its distinctive character as a terrorist target...
...There's a sense of proportion here today, something that seems lacking in the United States...
...PERSPECTIVE Editor's Viewpoint Leaning Toward Significance SUZANNE F. SINGER We make jokes, my friends in the States and I, about their coming to visit us in Israel to get away from danger...
...from clowns in Chinese opera to the status of women in the Bible...
...It's black humor...
...And if that's your leaning, think about it...
...It works best if you're one of those who possess a kind of tropism toward significance...
...Check out www.nefeshbnefesh.org...
...melons hiding sweet yellow and green flesh can be chosen almost with closed eyes...
...What a message to Israelis burdened with defense needs and the challenges of building a modern state when Americans let their feet do the talking...
...The extended summer weather is a frequent pleasure...
...or if you don't tingle at the thought of the remarkable but still endangered Jewish enterprise in Israel...
...It's a lot clearer today in the Sept...
...local playgrounds may be fuller than usual because staying close to home feels right these days...
...11 aftermath that if Israel packs up it won't only be endangered Jews who have nowhere to go...
...Is it bizarre to think that 2 percent of these Jews—some 110,000—might join us here in Israel...
...This last year of unremitting Palestinian terrorism against civilians has added fiber to the spines of Israelis deluded into thinking that peace was around the corner a year or so ago...
...There's a new organization ready to provide significant financial assistance to families and individuals planning aliyah...
...I'm not inclined to ask anyone to do what I can't...
...Anyway, it's my life and the lives of our children and their young kids in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv that I know best...
...This isn't a call to join the committed men, women, and children who live in settlements in Gaza and the West Bank, knowing daily dangers and knowing that ultimately, if the Palestinians abandon violence and incitement and achieve their state, some number of them will have to give up the attractive communities they have built...
Vol. 27 • February 2002 • No. 1
