Day 2 in The Big Aliyah House

I don’t get the English.  I never have and I probably never will.  If you were offered a fabulous free Israeli breakfast with all the trimmings, why would you eat a bowl of imported sugary cereal??? Husband kept nagging at me to hurry up so we could go to the aliyah fair and sort out our lives but they had herring and I am pregnant for goodness sake! And AMAZING salads…. as predicted my son, who has always had a taste for Mediterranean food, was loving the Israeli white cheeses.  Ended up stuffing croissants into the nappy bag for brunch.

We spend the day at the special fair designed for UK aliyah-niks.  One day to sort out your finance, healthcare, phone… and such things as newspaper subscriptions.  They had even wheeled in Jdate.  (I don’t get that – surely singles make aliyah to get away from Jdate??) But we couldn’t complain, it would have taken months to sort all that stuff out on our own so it was nice to have it brought to us.  Just a bit difficult to make life-altering decisions on less than 4 hours sleep.  I was falling asleep at the Bank Mizrachi stand so decided to go and get a coffee.  Big mistake.  First one I had for a while in my pregnancy and the combination of caffeine and sugar gave my foetus all the energy it needed to practise kickboxing.  Quite difficult to concentrate on financial figures when someone’s having a party inside you.

After a (reasonably) successful morning where all the stands were helpful, except for the mobile phone companies who, rather than offering incentives to olim like the other services (e.g. free for a month, 10% off, etc) saw us coming  and as far as they were concerned, we were game fodder.  So we have no phone.  We may be olim but we know a rip-off when we see one (they do have mobile phone tarrifs in London you know guys).  We then get taken to the kotel for a tour.  By this time the people with older kids were really struggling, as they don’t just fall asleep in buggies and by now were reaching the really really ratty stage.  So husband, Jojo and I are practically alone on the tour.  Luckily one of the shuls has a nice big armchair, perfect for the big of belly, so I collapse into it, only to have the tour cut short because no one else was coping.  Bummer.

They put on a special ceremony for us, where we received out teudat zehut, and we could invite family & friends.  I have to say it was rather moving (not that I was doing any moving, being a hippo) my cousin thoughtfully grabbed a chair for me and my friend took care of Jojo, who was VERY excited by the whole experience.  It was a nice moment, to see people accepted as “Israelis” knowing as we did that some people had made a big journey/sacrifice/general effort to be there.  Some people had waited 20 years for the opportunity, come as single mothers or sacrificed good jobs and their entire family.

I sacrificed my Rangemaster.

(Don’t laugh – if you saw it you would understand, its green with gold knobs on its).

I was thrilled our families (and one friend) had come along, and after we left them it dawned on me that all of those people had themselves made aliyah, and how much things have changed since they did.  We can’t really complain.  Yes we were tired and we still had the journey to Karmiel, but I imagine my Yemenite grandmother, coming over in the 20’s, by who-knows-what more of transport, poor, illiterate and most likely with a few kids in tow, had it much much worse.  In fact so did my mum who made aliyah in the 50’s on a boat where you had you make sure you didn’t throw up in first class.  When we went back to the hotel to grab our stuff, my dad turned up, bearing a little cash to get us started and a 3 kilo melon.  (when he tried to tell me how heavy his gift was, I laughed at him.  He should try carrying that weight around for months and see how he likes it).

So if you want to see why me, the daughter of an Israeli father and a mother who made aliyah still had to go through this process, read on…………