Celebrating YOM HA'ALIYAH Making One's Home in Israel, The Holy Land

 

For the past few years a "new holiday" has joined the Israeli Calendar, YOM HA'ALIYAH, a time to honor those who made aliyah-- immigrated to Israel. My husband and I made the move two months after our wedding in the summer of 1970. You can read about it here part 1 and part 2. 

YOM ALIYAH is celebrated around the Torah Portion Lech Lecha in which Gd commands Avram-Abram (before his name is changed to Avraham-Abraham) to get himself going to the Land Gd will show him.

בראשית י״ב  

לך לך

א- וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהֹוָה֙ אֶל־אַבְרָ֔ם לֶךְ־לְךָ֛ מֵאַרְצְךָ֥ וּמִמּֽוֹלַדְתְּךָ֖ וּמִבֵּ֣ית אָבִ֑יךָ אֶל־הָאָ֖רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֥ר אַרְאֶֽךָּ׃

1- יהוה said to Abram, “Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.

Over the millennium many Jews all exiled over the world have felt these words from Gd personally and made their way whether by plane, boat, wagon or foot to the Holy Land, the Land of Israel, even before the modern State of Israel had been established. I was one of them.

I'll never forget how I broke the news of my plans to my parents, who had barely adjusted to my religious observance. You must understand that we were an ordinary American Jewish family, which lit Chanukah candles, had an abridged Passover Seder, were even members of a synagogue, Conservative-- which was the most popular and rapidly growing in the 1950s. But the kitchen wasn't kosher, and Shabbat and many Jewish Holidays weren't on our family calendar.

When I was thirteen 13 we moved to a different community, and the only synagogue actively recruiting new members was Orthodox, the Great Neck Synagogue. There I joined their Teen Club to make friends. It was a chapter of NCSY National Conference of Synagogue Youth, where I was introduced to "Torah True Judaism" which changed my life. Soon after, one of the local Jewish activists got me involved in Betar and Zionism, icing on the cake of my Jewish Life.

I didn't want any ideological, philosophical arguments with my parents about my plan to move to Israel, so I simply said:

"You couldn't stop me from keeping Shabbat and Kashrut. Living in Israel is just another mitzvah, and you can't stop me from doing that either."

It worked. They had no answer, though sometimes I wonder if they were happy to get me far from my younger siblings as not to corrupt them with my revolutionary life style. Within a few years, my mother enjoyed being the local expert in helping other parents with similarly "eccentric" children.

Obviously, Lech Lecha has always been my favorite Torah Portion of The Week. I live in a community, Shiloh, that is a fantastic stew of longtime Israelis and and much newer ones from all over the world. Our local region Mateh Binyamin, which is like an American county, is the same sort of mix. This year Mateh Binyamin made a big festive event to which we had been invited. I really enjoyed seeing so many people; some had been customers of mine when I worked in Yafiz. The highlight was an old-fashioned Israeli singalong. The choice of songs was just perfect.

It's the truth to say that I celebrate YOM HA'ALIYAH daily. I've never once considered that decision I made as a teenager to have been a mistake.

Today's The Game- How did I End Up in The Bleachers?

You probably don't believe me, but not only am I not from an athletic family. None of us were sportsmen. We weren't in any of the school teams. We didn't watched sports, not on television and not in the stands. Only once did my father take my brother to baseball game, and that was because his cousin's husband somehow convinced him that they should do a father-son outing together. For a short time in high school, I went to junior varsity basketball home games and did have fun cheering Great Neck North, which probably won every game. None of my friends went to them or the varsity games, even though our school was generally first or second in all categories. Once I became active in the Great Neck Synagogue Teen Club, NCSY* chapter, that was the end of my life as a spectator.

So, it's rather funny to think that today I'm one of the loyal fans, too hyper even at my age, to cheer the Jerusalem "Big Blue" Lions from a seat. I guess that I'm considered one of the "local characters" by the team and other fans. "Why?" You're probably wondering.

When my youngest child came back from his post-army sojourn in New York, he was hooked on American tackle football. He tried out for Jerusalem "Big Blue" Lions and became part of the defense. And we started going to the games to cheer for him and the team. At that time the Jerusalem "Big Blue" Lions was a middling team and didn't win any championships. But I enjoyed watching, being with most of my children, getting to know other fans and the energy surge I felt even as a spectator. After a number of years, my son was appointed head coach, and in his second season, which would make a great movie, the Jerusalem "Big Blue" Lions won the IsraelBowl X Championship! That was two years ago, and last year we also won.

Today at 11am in the Kraft Family Sports Campus, we'all watch IsraelBowl XII and cheer on the Jerusalem "Big Blue" Lions and pray for a third record-breaking championship in a row, Gd willing. Yaala Big Blue!

*Davka, one of the players in Jerusalem "Big Blue" Lions is the grandson of NCSYers from the 1960s.

On My Mother's Yartzeit

As per Jewish custom, I have a 24 hour light burning in her memory.

I have no set custom as to what to do on these memorial days for her. When my husband has them for his parents, he brings herring and maybe schnapps to synagogue in the morning to make a "Lechaim," in their memory. But even though I do pray the morning (and also afternoon) prayers, I do it all quietly alone at home or wherever I happen to be.

I don't really do anything special to commemorate my mother, and I'm still in the first year of mourning for my father, who passed away just a few days before Passover.

In a sense my whole life is a reflection on my parents, for good and for bad. We all are the results of how we are raised and what we make of it.

Even though both of my parents ended up extremely dependent in the period before they died, I still think of them as a generation of giants. There's nothing I can do or accomplish that can compete with the powers they had. We were taught to treat them with awe and respect. And from what I understand, their parent, too treated them that way. They were the "American generation," the first in their families to be born and raised in America. They paved the way. They were also very strong and influential grandparents, in a way I can never be. And in a sense I wouldn't want to be, since I had to stand aside when my parents (and in-laws, too) visited and were with my children.

My mother always encouraged my love for dance, and there was a summer, when I was twenty, when we actually worked together teaching an exercise class for women. Other women in a nearby community had requested that she give a summer class. I had just taken two years of "Dance Movement" lessons with an excellent, innovative instructor, Allan Wayne, in Manhattan, so she told them that she needed me to demonstrate the movements.

Basically, the truth is that I was the teacher. My mother would point to me and tell the women in the class to "follow" what I was doing.

And in many ways, after the original shock of hearing that I was going to live a Torah aka Orthodox Jewish Life and then move to Israel, she became quite supportive. And as the Great Neck Synagogue became more of an Orthodox community, she enthusiastically joined in the various chesed activities like comforting and bringing food to mourners besides running the Sisterhood Gift Shop and more.

My mother loved and participated in all of the arts, was a paid member of lots of museums, a docent in the nearby Nassau County Museum, performed and was stage manager in the Fresh Meadows and later the Great Neck Community Theater, loved dance and shows etc. She also tried her hand at painting. And she absolutely adored her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

לעילוי נשמתה

שפרה בת אברהם וחיה ריזיה

How Did Great Neck, NY, Become a Jewish Orthodox Center?

When my family moved to Great Neck in 1962, the Jewish community in Great Neck was almost totally secular. There were two Reform "temples," a large affluent Conservative one and a very small, poor Orthodox Synagogue led by Rabbi Efraim Wolf. Within a couple of decades, it had metamorphosed into one of the largest and most vibrant Modern Orthodox centers in the world offering a variety of Orthodox synagogues, kosher supermarkets and an enviable choice of kosher restaurants.

As I've written about many times before, as a newly arrived teenager in Great Neck, my parents pushed me into the Synagogue's Teen Club, as it was called, which was also a charter member/chapter of NCSY. That changed my life and brought me to Torah Judaism, but what changed Great Neck?

I'm still best friend with my best friend of the time who took the spiritual journey/life change along with me. We discussed it a few days ago. We agree that Rabbi Wolf was the key player in this by being so unbelievably welcoming to all. For instance, my friend's parents were not members, but she was as welcomed as I was to the youth activities.

As we're both daughters of CPA's we hit on an economic factor in the synagogue's expansion and influence.

Why did my parents end up in an Orthodox shul, after a very satisfied decade plus membership in the Conservative Oakland Jewish Center, Bayside NY? They were rejected by Great Neck's Conservative Temple Israel, which had all the members its sanctuary could handle. Not only wasn't it welcoming of new Jewish families to Great Neck, it rejected us.  Rabbi Wolf and the Great Neck Synagogue picked up the slack, and people like us felt and were fully accepted, even though my parents did not observe the Sabbath, even though our kitchen was traif (not kosher.)

Thank G-d, thank Rabbi Wolf and thanks to the closed door of Temple Israel!

My NCSY Story on the NCSY 60 Site

I was asked to tell my story for the site celebrating NCSY's 60 years.  Here it is:

NCSY CHANGED MY LIFE
Written by Batya (Beth Spiegelman) Medad, Blogger and NCSY Alumna 
The title of this says it all, or it says nothing. And it’s certainly not unique. Even here in Shiloh, so far from North America, I have quite a few neighbors who also have NCSY stories.

All those decades ago, yes, half a century plus, as I danced and sang those Torah tunes at every chance I had, my feet pounded on the floors, and the vibrations can still be felt here the other side of the world a half a century later.

The fact that NCSY changed my life shouldn’t be such a surprise to anyone who knew me or NCSY in the 1960’s. The surprise was that I ended up in NCSY. An Orthodox Jewish Youth Organization was not the sort of place I’d be expected to join. From infancy until the age of thirteen we lived in Bayside, NY, and my parents were founding members of the Oakland Jewish Center, which was Conservative. In terms of religious observance our home was pretty far removed from the norms of Conservative Judaism of the time or even Reform. There wasn’t any Shabbat observance besides occasional candle-lighting and chicken soup. I never heard Kiddush, and “Shabbat” wasn’t weekly.

When we moved to Great Neck in 1962, my parents ended up joining the Great Neck Synagogue for reasons far removed from Jewish commitment and rituals. Rabbi Wolf offered a membership deal my parents could afford.

I hated living in Great Neck. I just couldn’t connect to the prevailing customs, values and materialism of Great Neck North. After being there a few months, my father noticed that I didn’t have many, if any, friends and decided to take action. One Saturday night, as I remember, late December, 1962, he forced me into the old, small, dark second-hand car with the holey floor he had bought from a former neighbor and announced that he was taking me to the shul.

“They have a Teen Club. I read about it in their bulletin, and you’re going to join it, and you’re going to like it, and you’re going to make friends whether you like it or not!”

You could say that the joke was on him, because he was the one most upset with my transformation.
Batya Dancing in a Salute Israel Parade Ad

At first I didn’t really notice anything odd or religious about the group. There certainly was no pressure on me to adopt any religious observance. We just did regular teenage things like play Ping-Pong, talk and on occasion go to bigger events run by a youth organization called NCSY. I liked the people, and they seemed to like me. Meetings were mostly on Sundays, which didn’t interfere with the rest of my life. Nobody ever told me to change the way I dressed or asked what food my mother served at home. The boys wore kippot, but they did that at the Oakland Jewish Center, too.

Before I knew it, these activities became the center of my life, and that included going to NCSY Shabbatonim, National and more. I just lived for the events. When my parents wouldn’t give me the money to pay, I used my babysitting money. At the same time I was learning about Shabbat and Jewish Law, I was also running the best dances in Great Neck for teens. They were in the shul as our big fundraising events. You must know that in those days even Orthodox shuls had “dinner dances,” so for us teens to have a dance was not a rebellion. I was on the committee to audition the band, and kids came from all over Great Neck to attend.

I was elected to chapter and regional office. I dreamt of being a National Officer, but I still ate traif and was mechalel Shabbat.  I didn’t see the irony. I was just happy that in NCSY I was accepted. In NCSY I was popular. I loved NCSY even more than NSCY loved me. This was not quite what my father had envisioned that winter night, but in actuality it was exactly what he had demanded of me. I did have lots of friends in NCSY and I’m still friends with many people I first met in NCSY.

How did NCSY succeed in changing me? That’s a good question. Rabbis Stolper and Wasserman created an atmosphere and organization that used so many different methods and techniques simultaneously on so many teenagers, that it’s hard to say what worked on whom. This wasn’t a very organized chemistry experiment.

Part of it was the singing, the dancing, the sessions, the talking, the fun, the friends, the being away from parents and school.

NCSY of the sixties suited the sixties, and it suited me in particular. I just can’t imagine living any life other than the Torah life I learned about in NCSY. And not for the first time, I wish to thank all who were part of inventing that great Jewish youth organization.
Batya Receiving an Award at an NCSY Convention in the 60s

Batya has lived in Shiloh with her family since 1981. She has been a writer for various publications and has her own blog called Shiloh Musings. Batya is also the initiator of Women’s Rosh Chodesh Prayers at Tel Shiloh.

Pictures from the funeral and cemetery

 

As usual, I had my trusty old camera with me at my mother's funeral.  I may have taken some of the pictures, for sure those before the actual funeral.  Then I'm pretty sure I handed it to a friend.  My mother is buried in the New Montefiore  Cemetery out on Long Island.  We got off at Exit 49 on the LIE and drove south.

My parents had bought their burial plots there in the Oakland Jewish Center section in about 1959. 

I'm pretty sure they lived next to us when we
were in the five room duplex in Bell Park Gardens.

They were founding members of the shul, Oakland Jewish Center, Bayside NY.  I was hoping to see lots of people I knew, I mean their names on tombstones.  No doubt I'll be back, and then I'll find their old friends.

My father has a lot of relatives in the Neshelsk (a city in Poland that once had a very large active Jewish community) section of a different cemetery.  A cousin was there visiting her parents and grandparents in between my mother's death and funeral.  She told them the news about my mother.

My mother's grave is near one of the outside walls.  It was pretty noisy, but that shouldn't bother her now.

Covering the grave was a group effort.  Due to a shoulder injury I was pretty useless with the shovel.  But I did drop a stone from Shiloh into the grave.  I had brought it with me to make sure my mother had something special from ארץ ישראל Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel.  Most of my mother's grandchildren and all of her great-grandchildren are in Israel.

I was surprised at how much deeper she's buried than we do here in Israel.  There are other differences, the American legally required coffin versus just the shrouds wrapped in a Tallit.  No, I didn't take up the offer to check/see the body.  My brother was pleased at how the shroud covered her.  She was in the simple coffin as all traditional Jews request.  There are many more "traditional Jews" when it comes to burials than living and breathing Jews.

In my community, Shiloh, Israel, actual "kri'ah," ripping of the clothes is the accepted standard.  My high school friend, with whom I had become religious almost fifty years ago,  did the first cut with a knife and Rabbi Dale Polakoff of the Great Neck Synagogue supervised, making sure that the rip was long enough.

Rabbi Polakoff made sure that my mother was well covered.  When the family and friends were gathering to leave, we could still he him heaving the earth onto my mother.  He was overheard telling the cemetery workers that he would take care of it himself.  I'd say that the Great Neck Synagogue is in good hands.

Baruch Dayan Ha'Emet

 

Shirley Spiegelman

שפרה בת אברהם וחיה ריזיה

Shifra bat Avraham and Chaya Raisia

 

לעילוי נשמתה

Li'ilu'i Nishmata

May her Soul be Elevated