Israel became the focus of our daily lives for a few days last week. Daphne and Moshe, who live in Rishon Le Zion, their country’s fourth largest city, came to visit us. My cousin Uri, who lives in Holland, but was born in Jerusalem, sent me an e-mail. Dalia and I phoned her cousin Izy in a suburb of Tel Aviv. And 26-year-old Doron, Daphne and Moshe’s son, sent me some of his poems and short stories.
Daphne and Moshe are in their fifties. Her mother, Batya, and I played on a one-block street in Tel Aviv when we were ten years old. There was no pavement, no traffic, and I don’t recall anyone having a car on Hagilboa Street. In later years, Batya introduced me to Dalia. We shall soon be married fifty-five years.
Moshe told me, as the ladies were off by themselves, of great concern in Israel that another war will soon erupt in the North. Chezbollah, supported and financed by Syria and Iran, has been rearming, despite the presence of the U.N. Peacekeeping Force. I had read this news in the Israeli press on my computer. But to have Moshe here, in my house in America, tell me in person about his and his fellow countrymen’s worries personalized the situation.
Why, then, were he and his wife in the U.S.? They were on their way to visit their other son, who lives in Canada “We visit him every couple of years, and now and then he visits us,” Moshe said. “Life goes on.”
Uri, who has children and grandchildren living in Jerusalem, reported that Israelis enjoy traveling to Vietnam. “You can stay in a five-star hotel for very little money,” he wrote. “Of course, you have to like their food, and that’s a different story.” Earlier this year I received a similar e-mail from Sara, who also lived on Hagilboa Street as a child. She and her husband, now grandparents living north of Tel Aviv, were heading for a vacation in, yes, Vietnam.
Uri also wrote that his granddaughter had completed her mandatory two-year service in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), but was staying voluntarily for another six months.
During our telephone conversation, Izy told us about economic prosperity in Israel. Skyscrapers were under construction. Companies offering technological services and equipment were enjoying a boom. That day I picked up a prescription at my local pharmacy. It was produced by Teva, an Israeli pharmaceutical company and a giant in the field.
Moshe told about mergers and acquisitions, at times financed by foreign money. Unfortunately, Moshe, a computer expert, lost his job in the process, when his company shut down his department in preparation for a merger. He is fifty-seven years old, and now suffers from age discrimination, as often is the case in America. After thirty years with one company, he is unemployed.
And Doron, a computer guy like his dad, sent me, among his writings, a poem about his home-town, Rishon Le Zion. The name means The First In Zion, the last word being another name for Israel. He recalled his childhood, going to the beach with his father, and growing up. Rishon, as it is called for short, was founded in the 1880s, and according to government records, has grown from 11,000 resident in 1948, the year Israel became a state, to 217,500 by the end of 2003.
Between Israel’s Independence Day in 2005 and in 2006, a total for 149,000 babies were born. Immigrants numbering 26,000 arrived in the Jewish home land during the same period.
Danger of another war, travel abroad, economic growth, unemployment, births, immigration. This is Israel today. As Moshe said, “Life goes on.”
While Daphne and Moshe were with us, they called me by my Hebrew name, Yehoyakim, the name I was called while growing up in Tel Aviv. I miss hearing it now.
