Herb Keinon is a veteran reporter for The Jerusalem Post. He has been at the paper since 1985, and has covered the diplomatic beat since 2000. Keinon has a BA in political science from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and an MA in Journalism from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. Originally from Denver, Keinon moved to Israel in 1981, is married with four children, and lives in Ma’ale Adumim.
This exchange focuses on Keinon’s new book, French Fries in Pita: A Collection of Herb Keinon's Columns on Life in Israel. (Parts one and two can be found here and here.)
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Dear Herb,
A recurring theme in your book is the things you and your family had to give up for your aliyah. There are several moments in which you realize that your children will not share many of the formative experiences you had growing up.
Curiously, at some point you humorously describe your conscious decision to show your kids the least appealing sides of America, out of the fear that they will want to move there:
Some folks let their kids watch sitcoms that show the sunny side of the US; we force our kids to watch the Thursday night movies on Jordan Television that focus on every possible ill burdening America… America we want our kids to see – the America they won’t want to move to.
Now, it seems that one of the main reasons for American Jews to immigrate to Israel is to ensure that their children lead more Jewish lives. But you could argue that one could enjoy a no less fulfilling Jewish communal experience in the US. As someone who wants his children to lead Jewish lives, do you think that moving to Israel really helps, or is the challenge a similar one anywhere you go?
Yours,
Shmuel.
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Dear Shmuel,
I humbly submit that I made aliya at the best possible time in one's life, right after college. I had no job, no money, no possessions. I was standing at the starting gates of “real life,” and did not have to give up much materially, simply because I did not have much materially.
What I discuss in the book is not having had to sacrifice possessions or a great career to make aliya – which some people do if they immigrate later in life – but rather giving up the non-tangibles, the things you grew up with: the family, the food, the sports, the customs, the things that are familiar.
And I don't write about giving up little league baseball or Taco shells or Thanksgiving dinners as if these things were tremendous sacrifices, rather only to illustrate that the things that made up the landscape of my youth, will not make up the terrain of my kid's formative years. It's not good, it's not bad, it just is, something that I try to illustrate.
I learned about Native Americans and Henry Hudson in my junior high school, my kids learned about the Rambam and Operation Nachshon. I don't bewail the fact that they don't know as much about Geronimo as I do, I just point it out because not having similar experiences to those of your children – and being nostalgic about the ones you did have – is definitely part of the immigrant fabric.
Regarding showing my kids the least attractive parts of America, that was obviously written tongue-in-cheek, my point being that if indeed we as immigrants want our kids to enjoy living here, it's counterproductive to say – as many immigrants have a tendency to do at least in the early, difficult days of their aliya – how great everything was in America. Cleaner, bigger, more efficient, more polite, cheaper, more entertaining.
If parents say to their kids, “Well in America we could buy that for half price,” or “in America that would never happen,” or “things work in America,” then at a certain point the kids will say, “Hmm, if that's true, what the heck are we doing here.” In our first exchange I said that a key to successful aliya is not to have unrealistic expectations about Israel. Another key is not to over idealize the Old Country.
And, as you rightly point out, one can live a very fulfilling Jewish life in America. But it is different, fundamentally different.
One of the reasons I moved here was, indeed, to raise Jewish kids here. To raise them where being Jewish is normal, natural. Where they can walk outside with a kippa without having to think about it, or go to schools where they don't have to plead with the teacher to let them take off for Simhat Torah, or go to lunch with friends and order a hamburger just like them, not a fruit plate. I wanted them to be in a place where the rhythm of their life is set by a Jewish calendar, where they speak Hebrew, where they can unapologetically and unabashedly live their lives as Jews.
I see how I grew up as a proud Jew in America, and how my kids have grown up as proud Jews in Israel. And there is a difference – a difference in knowledge, in confidence, in perspective. And it's a positive difference I have found worth the price of giving up Monday Night Football, Hot Tamales, and even monthly visits to the grandparents.
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