Letter from America

They say that every immigrant to Israel (Hebrew: "oleh") from North America is at first euphoric. The surge of moving to an exotic country, new surroundings, and being pumped with Zionist ideology is intoxicating. Eventually the emotional high wears off and the oleh comes to his senses and sobers up with one hell of a headache. The exotic has become foreign, the new has become routine and ideology diluted by reality is weak soup. (This doesn't happen to immigrants from Russia or other places where Jews are poor and persecuted.) I don't know who "they" are, but in view of the high percentage of American olim ("oleh" – plural) that eventually return and from personal experience, I tend to believe "them".

I got my Aliyah (Hebrew: immigration to Israel) hangover relatively late. I was in uniform only a year after my feet touched holy ground, and it's against Israeli Army regulations to get homesick. It took about 3 years before it hit me – I'm here. For good.

By then I had been released and was living on a kibbutz and when I wasn't scheming how to get myself and my family back to 'God's country' (Better know as the great state of Oregon), I was working in the kibbutz's cotton and wheat fields. Modern agriculture isn't really work anymore; nowadays it amounts to sitting on your butt in an air conditioned tractor cab listening to the radio while you keep the wheels in the furrow.

Pining as I was for my homeland, I would tune in The Voice of America and when that wasn't sending, second best was the BBC. One of my favorite programs was Alistair Cooke's "Letter from America".

(Now for those of my generation that don't tune into the BBC, let me remind you that Alistair Cooke was the British guy that hosted "Masterpiece Theater" 30 years ago on the Public Broadcasting Service, which I watched regularly in my youth; not because I was such a cultured teenager, but rather because I was a normal one that thought that the PBS was the only channel on television where there was the off chance of seeing naked women.)


Every Sunday Cooke would comment on the current events, American culture (or lack of it.), the days personalities or simple personal reflections with dry humor and a sophisticated not-American accent. What I loved about "Letter from America" were the bits of America and Americans that most Americans were either too oblivious or too American to admit.

I think Alistair Cooke's authenticity was due to the fact that he was never really quite an American. He lived there almost all of his adult life, received citizenship and genuinely loved her, but in the end he was the eternal outsider. He never was really a player and from his position on the sidelines could see things that were lost on those in the heat of the game.


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I have observed in the past (see "I am a Chameleon") about myself that I have this quality of blending in, but not really belonging. I am different even if I seem to fit in. I'm an outsider. And so, perhaps this blog offers the reader a novel point of view of Israel, maybe one that is as, if not more accurate than if I were a native son. Maybe I should call this blog "Letter from Israel".

It took time and not a little strain on my marriage to pass the crisis of immigrating and integrating in Israel, but in the end I made it and I'm not sorry. I love it here and I love the people in spite of it all. But I will always be me and part of that is being an American.

The funny thing is that by now, after 27 years of my adult life living in Israel exceeding the 21 years that preceded them, I'm an outsider in American circles as well. I don't think quite like them. I see things they don't see even if they're there.

So in the next two weeks while I visit home (America will always be as much home for me as Israel.), My People will be a letter from America. Hopefully my family and friends will be kind enough to let me post from there even though they probably will end up scratching their heads when they see how they and their America looks through my eyes.


I'll try to be gentle.