אוירא דארץ ישראל Avira DEretz Yisroel

Dr. Mori Bank, Bayit Vegan, Yerushalayim

B”H, I have lived here in Eretz Yisroel for twenty-four years, witnessing and being part of the unprecedented blossoming of the Torah world. My connection to Eretz Yisroel, though, existed long before my aliyah.

When I was growing up in South Africa, Eretz Yisroel as our current homeland was an integral part of our Jewish culture. I remember during the Yom Kippur war how everyone was desperately davening for HaShem’s salvation. Everyone was emotionally connected to Am Yisroel and Eretz Yisroel.

It was only when I continued on to dental specialty studies in the U.S. that I came to realize that this connection to Eretz Yisroel is not something natural to all Yidden. One Pesach, at the university, I came across an extreme example of this. A professor, who was Jewish, was eating bread. He told me, “Just like I’m scraping this bread off my plate, Israel should be scraped off the face of the earth.” I later understood the source of his attitude – eating bread on Pesach carries with it the penalty of kares, spiritual excision. This professor had destroyed his soul and was therefore disconnected from his religion, his nation, and his ancestral homeland – Eretz Yisroel.

Even among those who were connected to the Torah, there was a certain disconnect from today’s Eretz Yisroel – at least in terms of a desire to live here. There was a question I would routinely ask on shidduchim, “Could you ever imagine living in Eretz Yisroel?” In seven years of prospective shidduchim in the U.S., I got no positive answer, only one “maybe.” This shocked me to my core. I realized that I would need to come to Eretz Yisroel to find a suitable match, which I B”H did.

As a Jew, I felt privileged to be able to live in relatively hospitable places like South Africa and the United States, and to take advantage of what they had to offer in terms of higher education. But it was important to me not to forget what I am there for. One can get caught up in the American Dream, or for that matter, a similar Israeli one. Over a million Israelis caught up in such a dream have been rejected by the Land. Our tachlis here is getting the best Torah education we can for ourselves and our children.

In relation to our tachlis here, I would like to relate an experience I had which left a profound impression on me. I had applied for dental school in Johannesburg, and after a rigorous vetting process was accepted as one of sixty applicants out of thousands who had applied. All sixty of us were overly proud of ourselves, until we were told by the dean on the very first day that only a third of us would graduate to second year. This meant a failure rate of two-thirds!

This terrifying statistic, which I later confirmed as the reality, had a dramatic effect on me. I realized we were in a crisis. I then had three nightmare dreams which haunted me throughout dental school and beyond.

In the first dream, I woke up on the day of my final exam, and when I looked at the clock, the time was 12:00 noon. The exam was scheduled from 9:00 to 12:00. I had just missed the entire exam!

In the second dream, I got early to the exam hall, but the questions were from a field not related to mine in which I did not know the answers.

In the third dream, I got to the hall on time, knew the answers to the three questions, and wrote pages and pages for just the first question, suddenly hearing a bell ring to announce the end of the exam. I hadn’t finished answering even the first question!

I later understood these dreams as warnings: Firstly, the infinite tragedy of never doing anything constructive, just oversleeping the exam of this world. Secondly, studying for the wrong exam, succeeding in all sorts of fields but not knowing the aleph-beis about Yiddishkeit. Thirdly, even getting it right academically but just not accomplishing what we were brought to this world for, i.e. to be a light unto the nations.

The failure rate may be high; in Mitzrayim, the success rate [those who managed to get out of Egypt] wasn’t more than twenty percent [Rashi, Shemos 13:18]. Many Jews have not survived golus; whether it was pogroms, assimilation, or intermarriage, an enormous percentage of our people have been swallowed up in the Diaspora throughout the thousands of years in exile.

But there are better dreams, too! We are a nation of dreamers, and there is so much to do and accomplish here in Eretz Yisroel, to turn those dreams into a reality. B”H, I have had the siyata d’Shmaya to fulfill some of mine, including running a free dental clinic in Yerushalayim for the poor, opening a soup kitchen, and more. Eretz Yisroel can be a home for every Jew that dreams and believes he can make it here.

The Torah opportunities here are immeasurably greater. Practically speaking, being that the local language is based on the language of the Torah, it is infinitely easier for native Israelis to connect to the Torah. A ba’al teshuvah here can get from zero to a hundred in no time. We also have the quality of avira d’Eretz Yisroel here, which Chazal say makes a person wise.

The bottom line is that building in the Diaspora can be like building in quicksand. Here in Eretz Yisroel there is a feeling of building for eternity.

All for One

I was a little seven-year-old boy back in 1967, when the Six-Day War was raging in Eretz Yisroel. I decided I must go and help. My father came back from work that evening and found me by the door with a little suitcase containing my pajamas and a toothbrush. I told him I needed a ride to the airport and a flight to Eretz Yisroel. When my father asked me why, I responded, “Maybe I can help out at the hospital, caring for injured soldiers!”

My father told me that as long that I was under his care, I would be staying at home. I accepted that decision, but asked instead to sell all my toys for the benefit of those in Eretz Yisroel, to which my father agreed. I had an impressive collection, and sold all my toys for the 150 USD it brought in [equivalent to about 1200 USD today in 2020], which we donated to an Israeli hospital. Although I couldn’t help in person, at least my money would.

Fifty years later, that same hospital saved my mother’s life when she slipped and broke her hip. At 85 years old, they did a hip transplant, and she was walking one week later. That hospital is the Shaare Zedek Medical Center, here in Yerushalayim.

And the miracles continue…

Todah HaShem!

It was during Pesach, right in the middle of the coronavirus outbreak, that we finalized our plan to move from Brooklyn to Eretz Yisroel. I asked a shailah if we were allowed to pack up for moving to Eretz Yisroel during Chol HaMoed; yes! was the encouraging p’sak, so we packed and prepared. The very next week we landed in Eretz Yisroel, going right into the fourteen-day mandated quarantine.

Living in Eretz Yisroel was something I had wanted to do for many years already, but the proper time apparently had not come yet – until now. As a Belzer chossid, I would come with my family every Tishrei to spend the Yomim Nora’im and Sukkos with the Belzer Rebbe in Yerushalayim, and would regularly ask about permanently relocating to Eretz Yisroel. I had now finally gotten the green light from the Rebbe to make the move.

We had two married children in the U.S. (they want to come too!), and one bochur already in Yerushalayim in a Belzer yeshivah gedoilah. We worked to prepare the four younger children for the move. We took them out one by one, to speak with them individually about the move and to reassure them that we would be there for them, offering our full support for helping them integrate. We explained that there would be many challenges on the road to integration that we would all have to tackle. As with anything we want to do, if we look at the obstacles as difficulties, they may seem to be depressing and insurmountable, but if we look at them as challenges, every step we take to overcome them can even be enjoyable and satisfying. I thought it was of utmost importance that we would all come with this positive attitude.

It was not only my kids who stood to benefit from this outlook. Although I was born in America, I had lived in Eretz Yisroel from the age of six until my own firstborn was six years old, and the subsequent eighteen years of living in America definitely rubbed off on me. This was also true for my wife, who grew up in Bnei Brak. There was now much that also we, the parents, would need to adjust or readjust to, from the differences in culture and mentality, to the technical operational differences such as different standard banking hours. Did you know that many government and financial institutions here close at 1:30 PM on most workdays?

Though there are of course many differences between life in Eretz Yisroel and America, the influx of Americans over the course of the last several years has had an impact on narrowing the gap in some neighborhoods, making it easier for newcomer Americans to acclimate. In my neighborhood, there are no stores that are not trying to attract American customers, some offering American-style service, even if they are not all doing it “right.” You can have a cleaning lady and other household help—even live here “American style”—and not be viewed as “different.”

One thing that is, for the most part, quite different, is the chinuch available here. Different things are emphasized. There is a stronger focus on ruchniyus, even while some schools here have the gashmiyus as well. Of course, the very basis of the private mosdos we Chareidim have opened in chutz laAretz is our desire for strong foundations in ruchniyus, but the surrounding atmosphere just isn’t the same. I felt that the chinuch they would get here would be a precious lifelong gift I wanted to give my children, and this became technically possible once I had the capability of easily running my U.S.-based business from Eretz Yisroel.

We came in the middle of the school year, but because the schools had somewhat of a restart when they were able to be reopened, my kids had a “fresh start” together with their Israeli counterparts in this new situation. My yeshivah ketanah-aged son noted that in his new yeshivah here, all the boys feel equally connected; the bochurim who are not as strong in their learning skills don’t feel that they’re looked down upon. It was originally suggested that one of my daughters would move down a grade to make it easier for her to cope with the changes, but she found that she was even a bit above her grade level and didn’t even need extra help. My wife, who in America had been volunteering for various causes, already started getting into volunteering over here. Boruch HaShem, everyone is happy here.

Although we did have a head-start at integration, being that we all spoke Hebrew at home (now we’re making a point of speaking English at home!) and were exposed a bit to life here from when we came every Tishrei, there are still some differences in mentality and culture that are new to us, some of which took a few weeks to even discern. We are sure though, that as we become more experienced, we will be more adept at getting along here.

Decades ago, people who came to Eretz Yisroel were challenged with building up the country from scratch. It was a difficult project, but people welcomed it as a challenge that generated excitement and a sense of satisfaction. Today, the primary challenge of newcomers is integration. Effort and success in this endeavor should generate a similar sense of satisfaction. I think there is work to be done here to make Eretz Yisroel more welcoming for newcomers, helping them take on the challenges of integration. To play on a recent American election slogan, we should work to “make Eretz Yisroel welcoming again.”

More Time for Initiatives

Running my U.S.-based businesses (property development and assets management, and a high-tech and programming business) during American working hours, leaves me with the ability to daven with more yishuv hada’as in the morning, with several hours spare for learning, chessed, or other activities. As it is common here to rest sometime between 2:00 to 4:00 in the afternoon (here’s another adjustment for Americans – “14:00 to 16:00” is more commonly used), I can start working after a refreshing nap. Although number-wise there is no real difference in the sum total hours of the day, I find that, for myself, less time gets wasted when the “extra” hours are at a time when nobody is just going to sleep to finish off their day, as was the case in America. Having Sundays off is another bonus for me, as Sunday is a regular workday here.

Holding an additional morning job may also be more possible when one of the jobs is in American hours. For example, I recently started an initiative for a prestigious living area for newcomers from the U.S. and Europe, and I am able to squeeze it into my schedule.

B”H, davening, learning, family and business fills my day, all avodas hakodesh in Eretz HaKodesh. It’s great to be back home!

R’ Chaim Leib Belsky, Ramat Eshkol, Yerushalayim

When we first came to Eretz Yisroel as a young couple, we did not give much thought to whether we “moved” here and to the possibility of “moving back.” We just saw ourselves as “living here.” This didn’t preclude us from moving back, but it did take our focus off the emotional issue of having left our familiar and comfortable place, and it allowed us to focus instead on “living” in the here and now.

One who moves from New York to Cleveland does not think too much about how long he will end up being in Cleveland. In this regard, our move to Eretz Yisroel was the same. We sought to ensure that our reasons for relocating should b’ezras HaShem work out, and we endeavored to establish a comfortable home here.

It would have been counterproductive to refrain from investing in the necessary arrangements to make ourselves comfortable. Why should we shlep all those personal items from back home if we were only here to try it out? But then, how would we ever have felt at home here if we had been conducting ourselves as if we were in a sleep-away-camp or bungalow colony, living out of the proverbial suitcase?

We did not plan to be in Eretz Yisroel: we planned for being in Eretz Yisroel. This meant taking the necessary steps to live comfortably. The Gemara (Kesuvos 112a) relates that R’ Ammi and R’ Assi would move from the sun to the shade and from the shade into the warm sunny area while teaching their talmidim. Rashi explains that they would move to the more comfortable spot so that they wouldn’t come to complain about living in Eretz Yisroel. They did not look to overcome the prohibition of speaking negatively about Eretz Yisroel by controlling their feelings; they ensured that they would not have anything to complain about.

It is not about giving Eretz Yisroel a chance to suit us: it’s about giving ourselves a chance to appreciate Eretz Yisroel. There are various jobs and other opportunities in Eretz Yisroel, and many of them require only a minimal effort or investment. We should also have a bit of faith in ourselves when trying to speak the local language, as most of us have a solid background in Lashon HaKodesh, and with a bit of practice, this will make our lives significantly easier (this goes for trying to understand the local mentalities as well). From our own experience, these adjustments for success have made a significant impact in enabling us to establish ourselves here in Eretz Yisroel.

Most significantly, to appreciate living in Eretz Yisroel we must educate ourselves a bit through the lens of the Torah. Moshe Rabbeinu davened five hundred and fifteen tefillos to merit entering Eretz Yisroel. Throughout our history, many anashim yereim u’sheleimim [righteous people] were moser nefesh [made sacrifices] to come to the Land and lived here besimchah despite much difficulty and hardship. HaShem Yisborach has thrown open the doors of Eretz Yisroel bechasdo hagadol (in His great kindness) and made living here infinitely more feasible than it has been since ancient times. Why is it that some people are not more open-minded about the opportunity to do what their ancestors would have been moser nefesh for, at a time when physical comforts are widely available here?

I am not minimizing the significant factors one must deal with in making such a move. I ask, though, do we identify with the ideals of our ancestors? Do we appreciate what it is that HaKadosh Baruch Hu so desires about this Land? Do we recognize the ruchniyusdik and halachic significance of living in the Holy Land? Do we appreciate walking, quite literally, in the footsteps of Avraham Avinu and Dovid HaMelech, where the pesukim of Torah come alive before us?

There is also much to say about the atmosphere in Eretz Yisroel. The reality of shavas vayinafash [HaShem’s “rest”] on Shabbos is significantly easier to sense and appreciate in Eretz Yisroel. The shuk (marketplace), teeming with people on Erev Shabbos, is quiet and empty before sunset. One can feel Shabbos or Yom Tov approaching from the very flow of traffic on the streets. The entire financial system, banks, and all, close down from Friday until Sunday. You know which Yom Tov is approaching for weeks or months beforehand just walking the streets or going into the shops. Shofaros are being blown at all hours of day and night during Elul, so too the sounds of sukkos being built from the beginning of Tishrei. On Sukkos itself, the streets and alleyways are filled with sukkos. Merchandise being sold in all stores varies accordingly in the weeks leading up to Chanukah, Tu BiShevat, Purim, Pesach, and Shavuos. You do not have to be an overly spiritual person to be affected by the kedushas hazman that can be felt in the air.

A final thought: As with any mitzvah or ma’alah ruchnis (spiritual virtue), the yetzer hara will make matters difficult. This is especially true regarding living in Eretz Yisroel where one can reach greater spiritual heights than in chutz laAretz. The avira deAr’a (air of the Land) promotes shteiging and a desire for greatness in Torah and avodah, and one can grow exponentially without the distractions of chutz laAretz. Also, people in Eretz Yisroel don’t seem to get old, only whiter. You can see seventy and eighty-year-old yungeleit going to beis medrash to learn with a frishkeit (freshness) and a lebedikeit (liveliness). This is truly the Eretz HaChaim.

Learning and Teaching

Though I spent some time in Eretz Yisroel when I was younger, I did not have the experience of learning in Eretz Yisroel as a bochur. I learned in Telshe Yeshiva Chicago for a couple of years and then in Yeshiva Rabbeinu Chaim Berlin until my wedding. I will never forget my first impression of the Mirrer Yeshiva when I first came to Yerushalayim as a yungerman—the overwhelming feeling of awe in a “neighborhood” of Torah. I learned subsequently in my grandfather’s kollelfor many years, and also had the opportunity to gain immeasurably from HaRav Yitzchok Berkowitz and HaRav Yechezkel Weinfeld. For the past ten years, I have had the privilege of learning and teaching in Yeshivas Tiferes Yisroel, a yeshivah for American bochurim.

Reprinted with permission from Avira D’Eretz Yisroel.