“How miraculous” was my immediate reaction, and I wondered if the reciting of the Shehecheyanu prayer of gratitude was called for. Fully one-third of the Jewish people was wiped out just sixty years ago, the state of Israel had been attacked numerous times by enemy forces intent on destroying it, and yet by the grace of God we – the Jewish people and our state – had prevailed and now the national airliner of Israel was about to bring home its newest citizens.
How sweet, how appropriate – how “slap-in-the-face-of-a-hating world” triumphant – that a gleaming jet of the Jewish state was taking hundreds of Jews out of exile and flying them to their new lives in Israel. With the tune of Am Yisrael Chai ringing in my ears I boarded the plane.
Greeting me in Israeli-accented English were Israeli flight attendants exuding a Yiddishe chayn (charm) enhanced by the golden Mediterranean glow that radiated from their faces. They addressed each other in Hebrew as they handed out newspapers to passengers. Flying El Al is like having a geographic appetizer, an early taste of Israel that whets your appetite for more, so that you can’t wait until the flight is over and you can actually set your foot down on the ground and partake of all Israel has to offer. Quickly and efficiently, the plane was ready to embrace the skies and bring home its precious cargo of olim.
* * *
The passengers on this special flight were like snowflakes, diverse yet similar. From a distance, flying snowflakes seem alike and have the same destination, yet no two are alike. So too the new olim on this flight were headed to the same place, had the same goal, but each individual, each couple, each family, was unique and special.
There was 23-year-old Jamie Shulkind of Kansas, who described himself as being spiritual, though not religious in the traditional sense. He was moving away from family and friends, as difficult as that was, because “Israel needs me, there is power in numbers.” His family supported his desire to make aliyah, he said. They were “happy for me” and admired his pioneering spirit.
There were the demure, yeshivish newlyweds headed to Jerusalem where they would set up a new household and he would continue his learning. Their decision to make aliyah? “It’s where we belong,” the young wife said. A true woman of valor, for in her case, leaving the familiar for the unfamiliar was particularly challenging: she was visually impaired. And while she could read Hebrew in Braille, she did not understand it well. But whatever fear of the unknown – or the unseen – she might have had apparently did not outweigh her desire to come home.
So many of us make excuses for not doing the things we know we should do, citing hardships or inconveniences, real or imagined. In a few brief moments of speaking to this young woman, I learned a lesson to last me a lifetime. If you want it badly enough, it’s in reach.
Jean Quinn, 67, did not allow her age to prevent her from launching a new beginning for herself. Before living on a nine-acre ranch in California, this great-grandmother had lived in Mexico, where she volunteered in hospitals and schools and assisted jailed Americans. She plans on living in Jerusalem and participating on n archeological dig.
Nor did age hinder 97-year-old Irma Haas and her “baby” sister Hilde Meyer, 94, born in Germany and survivors of the Holocaust. Both they and the Jewish state symbolize the resiliency of the Jewish people. What a bitter pill it would be for Hitler to know that these Jewish women he had tried so hard to annihilate not only have outlived him by decades – but were now en route to the bustling, thriving, restored land of the Jewish people.
