Eye on the prize

Pesach is over, the temperature is rising, the sun is shining. Tourism Season has begun. So has Aliyah Season.

With summer fast approaching, so too are the dates of Nefesh B’Nefesh charter flights from the US to Israel for those taking the plunge and making Israel their new home. Summer is aliyah season, especially for families with school aged children, because it makes more sense to come in time for the new school year. Just five years ago, we stood in your shoes. We waited for confirmation from the Jewish Agency and NBN that our status had been approved, and that we could be on the flight of our choice. We waited to hear from our realtor in Rehovot, that he had seen apartment that would work for us. We waited for the shipping companies to give us estimates. We waited for confirmation from schools that our children had where to go on September 1.

Five years in (feels like more), I’m offering advice to those arriving this summer. Keep your eye on the prize. Remember why you’re doing this.

You’re not making aliyah for the paperwork and bureaucracy.
You’re not making aliyah for the socialized medicine.
You’re not making aliyah for the superior education system.
You’re not making aliyah for the bigger house or car.
You’re not making aliyah for the higher salary.
You’re not making aliyah for the premium online shopping.

You are making aliyah because no matter where in country you choose to live, you will be no more than a few hours away from Jerusalem.
You are making aliyah because no matter where you walk, you are walking in the footsteps of your ancestors.
You are making aliyah because you will no longer be a minority, but part of the majority.
You are making aliyah because even in a non-religious school your children will celebrate the Jewish holidays.
You are making aliyah because your children and grandchildren will defend our country on behalf of Jews around the world.
You are making aliyah because you can live the life that previous generations could only dream of.

There will be days when you wonder why you did it.
There will be days when you feel like a complete alien.
There will be days when you cry.
There will be days when you get yelled at.
There will be days when you do all the yelling.
There will be days when your kids tell you they hate you for bringing them here.

But remember this: Keep your eye on the prize.

להיות עם חופשי בארצנו, ארץ ציון וירושלים

 

Home is where the?

One of my clients asked me yesterday “where do you call ‘home’?”

It’s not a simple question for anyone who lives someplace other than the place they were born and/or grew up. My husband, for example, was born in Detroit, but if you ask him where he’s from, he will say “Florida” or “Miami”, because that is where he grew up from the time he was a baby. Ask me where I’m from, and I will counter with “originally, or where did I come from this time?” But the answer to the question “where are you from?” is not the same as the answer to “where do you call ‘home’?”

We are in the midst of my favourite time of year in Israel. Spring. Spring doesn’t last long here; the pleasant, sunny, warm days with breezy nights, quickly become the never ending, humid, hot summer. But it’s not just the season of Spring that I love. It is everything that Spring in Israel brings on the calendar.

The blue and white starts to appear just before Pesach. The city streets get decorated with flags and streamers. There is something in the air. Slowly but surely, more flags show up on apartment buildings, office blocks and cars. The pre-Pesach sale of wine and matza becomes a sale of disposable grills, beer and blue and white marshmallows.

This year is particularly special, this the 70th celebration of our little country’s independence. All year in school, the kids have been doing special projects to commemorate 70 years of the State of Israel. My parents’ generation saw it happen, watched a 2000 year old dream become a reality.  My generation is the first to grow up with the State of Israel as an established fact, a vacation destination for many, the place so many of our friends came for a “gap” year after High School, and for the rest of us, the country we have chosen to call “Home”.

It’s been almost four years since we arrived as a family. I can say with absolute certainty now that this was the best decision we ever made. I can say with complete clarity that my children have been successfully absorbed. They switch easily and flawlessly from English to Hebrew. They  have that air of confidence that I thought was only possible in Sabra kids. They have trekked across parts of the country that I have yet to discover and slept under the stars. The older two have already compiled lists of their preferences for the army. The youngest walks all over the city alone, coming home only when it’s getting dark, something I cannot imagine allowing a 10 year old to do elsewhere.

Where do I call home? There’s a little bit of home in each of the places I have lived.

Dublin, where I was born and grew up until at 17 I came to Israel. I have no family left there now, and only a few friends. I haven’t visited for more than 5 years, and have no plans to return right now.

London, my second home for so long as a child, and the place I lived for 3 years after my first stint in Israel. With my parents and all my siblings and nephews and nieces there, the pull is strong, and I love to visit. The feel of “home” is strong there, but I think it’s more a feel of familiarity. I didn’t enjoy living there.

Boca Raton, my home for thirteen years. I recently returned for the first time since we came back to Israel. I love Florida, I can’t lie. It was great to be back. It was wonderful to see Keith’s grandparents and so many of our friends. I really really really enjoyed driving a minivan for a week, on wide, six lane city streets, and easily parking it in any parking space. I had fun at Target, at Ulta and Marshalls. But you know what? I spent most of the time at the wheel of that minivan thinking “was this really my life for so long?” and then laughing. It seems so foreign now, so different and so not really me.

Israel. Grand total of almost 11 years living here. Most definitely Home. No explanation – none necessary. But this is just it. It’s just where we’re supposed to be.

Where do I call home? Home is where the heart is. And my heart is right here.

 

What is normal anyway?

We’ve been here almost a year and a half. Honestly, our klita (absorption) has been fantastic. We are very lucky. Not everyone is blessed to move to the place that they want to make their permanent home in Israel – olim frequently find that the town or city that seemed so perfect on their pilot trip is actually not the best fit for their family. And then they start all over again some place else. For us, Rehovot is still the best place. We love it here. I know I keep reiterating that every time I blog, but it has to be said. This city is freaking awesome, our shul is amazing, our community is fantastic.

As we’ve finished dealing with all the bureaucracy involved in the early days of aliya, I found myself wondering what can I possibly write about. Not for my readers, but for myself – I need to write, you see. This is how I get it all out, it’s why I’m so active on Facebook – I have to put my thoughts into writing as part of my functioning – it’s why I kept a journal for 13 years.

I realized this week that while life in Israel is the new normal for us, there will always be things that don’t seem normal. I started compiling a list in my head, and I’d love to hear from other olim if they have things to add.
I’ll start here:

1. Sundays – ’nuff said
2. Buying fresh kosher meat from the supermarket
3. Ditto for kosher cheese
4. The Post Office
5. Shopping in general – everyone lives in debt but the malls are always full
6. School – from the (lack of) hours to the balagan (chaos) of parent teacher meetings, and kids calling their teachers by their first name starting in 1st grade!
7. Disposable cups, for both hot and cold drinks – the ones for hot drinks are so thin that you have to wear oven gloves while holding them, and the ones for cold drinks are so flimsy that, well, let’s just say I wish I’d put a case of Solo Cups on my lift.
8. “Aruchat Eser” – literally “a meal at 10am” – not the “elevenses” I grew up with…
9. Opening my purse before walking into any store for a security check
10. The amount of paper wasted every time I go to the bank

Please comment with your own not-normal-norms in Israel!

Why my French flag won’t fly

I’m having a really hard time expressing my feelings today. I began writing a whole long blog post, but nothing was coming out right. Then I commented on the Facebook status of someone more or less accusing those who hadn’t changed a profile photo to the French flag of resisting solidarity with the French victims. And somehow in the comment I was able to get across exactly what I wanted to say. So I’ve scrapped the rest of the blog post, and I’m just putting this here:

What happened in Paris is terrible. So is what happened in Beirut. What happened in Sydney. What happened in Mumbai. What happens daily in Israel, Syria, Iraq, Iran etc. etc. etc. I don’t feel the need to change my profile picture to the flag of another country in order to express my anger/sadness at yet another act of Islamic terror that has come upon the “civilized” world. Of course I am sad for the families of the innocents who were barbarically murdered in cold blood. But how on earth does putting a French flag on my Facebook feed make any difference to the blindness being shown, even in the wake of another brutal act of terrorism? We need a lot more than flags and “je suis Paris” to rid the world of this filth.

I want to get something straight – not changing my profile picture to the French flag has absolutely nothing to do with the French track record on Israel or Jews. It has nothing to do with much of the world turning a blind eye to the Israelis being targeted by terrorists daily for the last couple of months. It is unrelated to the rising number of anti semitic attacks around the world – New York, Milan, Manchester, wherever.
Any normal person is upset at terror attacks anywhere in the world, and regardless of who carried them out. Oklahoma City. Atlanta Olympics. 9/11. Sydney. Mumbai. Boko Haram in Nigeria. 7/7 London. 13/11 Paris. Beirut. Kenya. Argentina. Somalia. Belfast. Derry. Enniskillen. Sweden. Norway. Russia.
Those really not showing solidarity are those celebrating in the streets, handing out candy, letting off fireworks, dancing – because of the murder of innocents. And I don’t have to tell you where that is happening.

What’s it really like?

Perhaps the question people ask most often is “what’s it really like, living in Israel, when all these attacks are going on?” And you can’t really explain it, because how can you explain it, without sounding either freaking out crazy (OMG,  you cannot imagine how scary it is to leave the house, when any second someone might stab you!!!) or nonchalant (Well, it’s terrible what’s happening, but we can’t let it get in the way of living our lives).

Live Before You Die

“When you’re young you always think
The sun is going to shine
One day you’re going to have to say hello to goodbye
Shout it out let someone somewhere
Know that you’re alive
Take these words wear them well
Live before you die”

Bon Jovi – Live Before You Die Lyrics | MetroLyrics

Well that’s a bid morbid, isn’t it?

But here’s the reality that we in Israel are living right now. We have no sirens. We have no safe room. No Iron Dome. No Patriot missiles. No 90, 60, 45, 30 or 15 seconds. Everything is immediate impact. It could be in the mall, or in the street, in the synagogue or in the supermarket. In the playground, at the bus stop, the train station. It could be right here, right now.

For more than a week now, since the horrible murder of Eitam and Na’ama Henkin, shot point blank, in their car, with their 4 small children watching from the back seat, I’ve lost count of the number of attacks on Israelis. Stabbings, mostly. With scary looking serrated knives, or screwdrivers, or whatever else a would-be terrorist can get his or her hands on. Yes, her hands. There have been multiple female terrorists too. Just this morning, a female terrorist attempted to blow herself and a long line of traffic up near Ma’ale Adumim, just outside Jerusalem. Thank God for a very vigilant policeman, who stopped her car. She detonated the bomb, but the impact wasn’t what she hoped for, and the policeman was lightly injured, and the terrorist more severely. She is now being treated for burns IN AN ISAELI HOSPITAL.  These attacks are happening all over Israel. Not just in the disputed territories of Judea & Samaria. In Tel Aviv. Petach Tikvah. Afula. Hadera. Pre-1967 Israel.

Let’s get one thing straight. I don’t hate Arabs. I don’t hate Muslims. I don’t hate Palestinians. I hate terrorists, and when I look around, it seems that most terrorists today are Muslims. When Jews carry out “revenge” terror attacks on Arabs in Israel, they too, are terrorists. The difference is that when that happens, the Israeli government (in whom I don’t have the greatest faith right now) immediately condemns the attack. The perpetrators are arrested as soon as possible, and given jail time – just like Palestinian terrorists are. The difference is, that when a Jewish terrorist is put away, that terrorist’s family doesn’t receive a life-time wage from the Israeli government – which is what the families of Palestinian terrorists receive from the Palestinian Authority.

Back to our current reality. Our motto has always been to keep living our lives. In the 90s when they were blowing up buses, we kept taking buses. To stop living is to let terror win. And yet. How, how do we live, how do we allow our children to continue living their lives as normal, when at any moment, we could say “hello to goodbye”?

Should my teenager still be hanging out at the mall with her friends?

Should my younger children still walk to school on their own?

Should my son and his friends be allowed to skateboard in all their usual places?

Is that man over there a terrorist?

Is that woman in the hijab hiding something under her clothing?

What is he taking out of his pocket?

Is she going to try and hurt me?

Is he going to try and kill me?

Should I scream?

Should I run?

This is how it is, in our part of the world. And we always choose life.

“You learn to love to live
You fight and you forgive
You learn what’s wrong and right
You live before you die

I made mistakes I caught some breaks
But I got no regrets
There’s some things I don’t remember
But one thing I don’t forget

When you’re young you always think
The sun is going to shine
One day you’re going to have to say hello to goodbye
Shout it out let someone somewhere
Know that you’re alive
Take these words wear them well
Live before you die
Live before you die
Hey!
Live before you die”

Bon Jovi – Live Before You Die Lyrics | MetroLyrics

Lessons from our first full summer

After a long, hot (very, very hot!) summer, school is back in session since September first.

My 8th grader was excited to return to school – in spite of the few difficulties she has last year, she really likes her school and has lots of friends. I’ve never met a group of teenage girls so happy to be back in school, as those girls who are in Pelech. Even getting up by 6:30am to get her bus is effortless! Long may that last.

The younger two kids refused my offer of walking them into their classrooms on the first day. In fact, when I offered, they asked if I meant that I would drive them to school. When I replied that my intention was to walk with them, they said no thank you, we will walk on our own…

Sadly, as second year olim, my kids are no longer entitled to the six hours of help that they received during school hours last year. Apparently this year they will get 2 hours of pull-out help, plus help in the classroom from the sherut leumi (national service) girls. I sincerely hope this will be enough, especially for my son in Kita Vav (6th grade) who will be starting Middle/High School next year. Time will tell.

Both my elementary aged kids have the same teachers as last year, which is very helpful. My son’s teacher placed him next to the new oleh from this summer, a boy from Denver, CO, who we have had the pleasure of getting to know in the weeks since he arrived. At first I wasn’t sure that this would be a good idea, but it turns our his teacher is a genius. She’s been doing this job so long that she taught most of the parents of the kids who are now in her class (rumour has it she was cajoled out of retirement again to stay with these kids until they graduate at the end of this school year). By having my son sit next to a kid who really can’t speak Hebrew, she is forcing him to listen to her, and to then convey information to his new friend. Turns out he understands a lot more Hebrew than any of us realised…

As for me, what have I learned, my first year back in Israel?

1. Israelis are loud. They yell. A lot. But this doesn’t mean that they are angry or upset with you. Indeed, often they are yelling at you because they want to help you, but you may not realise that, because all you can hear is yelling, and therefore you can’t hear the words…
2. The driving license bureau is a scam. What should be a relatively simple procedure to change a valid driving license from your country of origin to an Israeli license is made really complicated by the number of steps necessary. In addition, no one will take responsibility if there’s a mess up along the way – as discovered by a close friend who now has to claim back money from the licensing bureau, due to a mistake made by the post office, but that neither they nor the licensing bureau will accept responsibility for. So, good luck with that…
3. Summer vacation is very long, and most camps only last for 3 weeks, and only run from 8am–1pm. Which leaves every afternoon in July, and all of August (prone to major heatwaves) to fill in somehow.
4. Joining a pool is a necessity, not a luxury (see 3 above).
5. Shopping for school books and supplies in July is smart. No Israeli shops for school supplies before the 3rd week in August. The down side is that some of the books won’t be available until August, but those can really wait until school has begun – they don’t do much until “after the holidays” anyway.
6. During the last two week of August it is perfectly normal to see little kids at work with their parents, regardless of the line of work. There are no camps or daycare at all for those two weeks. It’s not uncommon to see 3 and 4 year olds “helping” out parents who work in retail stores, medical offices, hi-tech companies – anywhere really. It’s almost a given that you can bring your kid to work.
7. Due to the lack of daycare etc. (see 6 above), it is very difficult to a) get appointments with various doctors, therapists etc. in those last 2 weeks of August, as everyone is on vacation, and b)due to a), very difficult to find hotels to stay in around the country if you would like to go on vacation within Israel during those last two weeks.
8.  Due to 6 and 7, if you want to take vacation during the last two weeks of August, even if just for a couple of days, book your time off with work as early as possible, and make any hotel reservations as early as possible! Alternatively, you can do what we did, and find awesome friends who invite you to stay with them for a couple of nights so that you can have a fun mini vacation without the hotel stay!

One week from tonight will be our second Rosh Hashanah in Rehovot. Allow me to take this opportunity to wish all of you Shana Tova, ketiva vechatima tova, and leshanah habaah beMedinat Yisrael – don’t be afraid to take that step and make aliya! You never know what it may bring – Bon Jovi is coming to Israel in October for the first time ever. If someone had told me that all it would take for them to come here was for me to make aliya (again), I’d have come back years ago!

Aliyaversary: From the eyes of the teen

Today, August 12, marks exactly one year since our Nefesh B’Nefesh flight arrived at Ben Gurion Airport. We were greeted by the then new President of Israel. Ruvi Rivlin, the Chairman of the Jewish Agency, Natan Sharansky, and a host of other people. Rami Kleinstein played piano and sang at our welcome ceremony. A friend busted the dog out of her crate. It was the final point in a long adventure, and now it’s been a year of adventures.

The most asked question, posed by Israelis and non-Israelis alike, is “How are your kids doing? Are they happy? Have they integrated?”

So, I asked my 13 year old daughter, Noffiya, if she would write this blog post for our one year aliyaversary. To my delight, not only did she agree, but she wrote a piece that I’m proud to publish here. I hope she will guest blog for me again in the future.

<<This post is a guest entry written by: Noffiya Brooks

(Some of you might recognize this name from other blog posts because I’m Vanessa’s daughter and she writes about me very frequently)

When my parents announced to us that they were considering making Aliyah, I was hoping for an “April Fools!”, even though it wasn’t April. I was 11 years old, and was feeling sort of like that typical teenage girl in every movie like “ugh mom my life is officially over!” And of course, to top it all off, a pilot trip. Without me. I had never been to Israel before. This is still my first time here. (Never left yet mommy, still waiting for that Florida trip…) All the time my parents would tell my siblings and me so many great things about Israel, from when they were here back in the olden days. “Oh there’s makolet (mah-ko-lete) on every corner” “the fruits and vegetables are fantastic” etc. etc. I was not happy with the decision. When they went on their pilot trip, Chanukah 2013, I kept hoping they would come back and say “we were wrong. Israel is not the place for us to be right now.” But they didn’t.

Well, after the pilot trip, I started to tell my friends. Some said “it’s not such a big deal, its in 8 months” while others said “we have to start doing more things now!” Someone even asked me if I hated my parents for this. I was shocked. I told them that I couldn’t hate my parents for making the decision to move, and that I might be mad at them but I don’t hate them.

I also got tons of (useless) “advice” from people that were more like opinions. Here are examples of a few of them.

~Never buy clothes in Israel they’re terrible! (it depends where you shop though)

~Don’t buy ice cream from the vendors (?)

~Get a boyfriend (why? …)

~ Israeli shoes are the best (some are and some aren’t. just like America)

And of course, during Tzuk Eitan (most recent war, known as Operation Protective Edge in English), I got bombarded with the “are you scared of the rockets and/or sirens???!!?!??” To which I answered “No, not really” to which then I was told I was “very brave” and that I had “such wonderful trust”

Up until that very day, that very second that I put my foot on the plane from New York to Israel, I hadn’t actually thought about everything. That I was moving and leaving my friends and family behind. And I was sad, knowing that I might not see some people again, or for a very long time. So I thought on that plane, and I slept and dreamt about some of my fun experiences that I had in Boca. Then we arrived, and I hated it. I couldn’t stand the thought that now I actually was on a whole other continent than my friends, and that we had actually moved. It was too hard to grasp.

School was very hard for me. Obviously, it was in another language, but that was only the half of it. I had a special teacher that took me out twice a week to teach me. Her English was absolutely terrible, and so was her teaching. There was a girl that sat next to me, whom everyday would scream “you need to do your work! If you don’t do it so then the teacher will be mad at me!” and when I explained to her that I kind of had no clue what the heck those work pages were about, she told me she can help. So when I would ask her a question (after every single word because I didn’t understand) she would scream “I CAN’T HELP YOU I ALSO HAVE TO DO MY WORK” I mean, her English isn’t that good, but why offer something you can’t fulfill. I had to do two projects. One of them was an oral presentation in Hebrew, back in March. I did fine, and after I finished, the teacher then told everyone I was an olah chadasha, in the country for only a few months, and everybody clapped and said my Hebrew was so good for someone who hadn’t even been in the country for a year. The teachers were very understanding. Well… most of them were. I had one teacher who would force me to take tests that I didn’t understand. It wasn’t only me though, because one of my friends who made Aliyah 5 years ago had an exemption from that class as well as me, and she also was forced to do the tests. I have friends now, but I still find it more comfortable to hang out with people who speak English as their mother tongue. Most of the girls my age in Rechovot were born in Israel, so even if they speak English, Hebrew is their first language. Most of my English-speaking-made-aliya friends are in Modi’in, and I would much rather live there.

Now, I’m used to Israel a little bit. I’ve been here a year. Do I love Israel? No. Do I like Israel? I guess. Do I like living here? It’s different. I have to wait for my dad to go to America so I can get clothes, talking to my Boca friends is extremely hard because either I’m in school, or asleep or vice versa. I basically feel like the emoji that has a smile but a tear drop on the side of its head. I have mixed feelings about being here. It’s now my home, or at least; until I’m eighteen. And who knows how I’ll feel by then.>>

No Longer New: Aliya, the first year

11 months have passed by, since we left behind America, boarded an El-Al charter flight and came home to Israel.
11 months have passed by, since we said goodbye to friends and family, and drove from Boca Raton, Florida, to New York City.
11 months have passed by, since we left the comforts and ease of life in America, and landed in the fast and furious Middle East.

I planned to blog for our one year “Aliyaversary”, but I quickly realized that the kids would all be home, as their camps are almost over (and there’s still a whole 5 weeks of summer vacation to go!), and the chance of me having time to sit and write was slim. It seems appropriate to write the blog post today, 11 months and 1 day after our arrival, as the Nefesh B’Nefesh summer flights have just begun. In fact today, in JFK airport in New York, some 220 people are boarding a flight, right about now, much like ours from last year. Tomorrow morning they will arrive at Ben Gurion airport, they will have their welcome ceremony, similar to that which we had last August, and they will start their new lives as Israelis.

It makes me really happy to say that I know 3 families on that flight. One from Florida, one from Virginia, and one from Colorado. As everything is still so fresh in my mind, I have tried to help each of them as much as possible plan for this move. Whether advising them on what to stock up on for their lift, recommending crates for the dogs, or simply explaining to them some of the “shouldbesosimplebutisnt” things that they will have to deal with upon arrival, I’ve attempted to cover it all.
With their arrival tomorrow their dream will be fulfilled. The days, weeks, months, and often years leading up to making aliya are a work in progress – so many things come into play, faith, beliefs, emotions, money. Once you finally arrive here at your destination, it’s difficult to know what to do next. The first weeks (months) are a mess of bureaucracy, something that many find difficult to deal with – especially those coming from North America. Once all of that is out of the way, your dream is now your reality.

Our reality here in Israel is good. It’s wonderful. I’m not one to tint things with rose colored glasses – you should all know me better than that by now. There are things here that will never be easy, and many people allow those things to become an obstacle to their happiness. In order to be happy here, you simply have to “Let Go, and Let God”, as a well known rabbi from South Florida once said, while sky diving somewhere in Israel. I try hard not to let things get to me. Like waiting almost 5 hours at the driver’s license bureau in Holon, simply to get a piece of paper stamped to allow me to take a test to switch my license over. Yes it was frustrating. No it was not fun. But it was part of the first year full of things that just had to get done. Once it’s done, you never have to do most of those things ever again. (Ok, so grocery shopping, dealing with the bank and post office, are things we kind of have to always do, but you get used to it…)

Tomorrow morning, an airplane full of people will become the newest Olim in Israel. As of tomorrow, the Olim of 2014 become the “vatikim” – the “old timers”. We will always be immigrants, as I wrote a few weeks ago, but we are no longer the newest crop. We still have so much to learn about our new-to-us homeland, and yet we have learned so much that we can impart to the newbies.

I wish all the olim arriving tomorrow hatzlacha raba – much success – and a klita kalla vene’ima – an easy and pleasant absorption. May you enjoy a wonderful first year in Israel, and may it also be your worst year in Israel – let each year get better, and let our love of Israel only grow and strengthen our reserve to stay here, in our homeland, our country.

Let’s talk about schools again!

It’s been a while since my blog covered this topic, hasn’t it?! It’s June 30th, that’s the last day of elementary school here in Israel. Middle and High School ended almost two weeks ago.

I’m always excited for the last day of school, I enjoy the summer generally – less pressure on the kids, no homework, no tests, more time to play and have fun. This year is different. This year, I have an added element to my usual summertime excitement. This year, we are celebrating. My children got through an entire Israeli school year, and we all survived!

It’s less than a year since we arrived here in Israel. School started a mere two weeks after we landed, our lift had yet to arrive, and the kids didn’t have real beds to sleep in for the first few weeks of school. They didn’t have a proper table to do their homework on, and they didn’t really know anyone yet.

We told the kids when we made aliya, that they could each take a “personal” day each month, where they could stay home from school. We recognized that it would be a difficult and challenging year for them, learning the language, sitting in class without understanding much of what was being taught, and starting from scratch in the social arena. In the beginning, they each took a day off here and there. There were a few rough weeks where one child or another begged to be allowed to stay home all week. We did not give in. They each worked hard, they all made friends fast, and pretty much every day, all three of them came home smiling from school. Since Chanukah, not one child has asked to take a personal day from school. It’s a good job I never suggested we roll those days over!

For kids who have always been at the top of their class with grades, without ever having to put a lot of effort in, it is very difficult to suddenly sit in class and really not get any of what is going on. To become a kid who struggles to get any kind of grade in a test, rather than easily getting an A, simply because the language isn’t your own, is a really big adjustment. The schools worked with them to an extent, giving extra time where needed, and grading them according to their progress, rather than according to how well they did. But it’s no easy feat to accept that a 65% is a really good grade in a history test, when you’d have gotten 95% had it been in English.

I can’t attest to how much they have learned from an educational perspective, (not much teaching appears to go on from Pesach until the end of school, just an abundance of field trips, tekesim (ceremonies) and parties) but they have learned so much.

They have each emerged from this school year as young Israelis. They have the little shoulder shrug and that shaking of the thumb/forefinger down pat. While they sometimes claim they still don’t speak or understand much Hebrew, I have proof that this is not so. I read their Whatsapp messages, in Hebrew, with atrocious spelling (just like most Israelis!).

Three weeks of camp begins tomorrow – 3 kids, 3 camps, 3 different directions – and then we have the month of August to recuperate, relax and get ready for another year of school. I will have a 3rd grader, a 6th grader (last year of elementary school here) and an 8th grader. Wow, how time flies!

My 3 little Israelis