Exodus

I went on a group (Nefesh B'Nefesh) trip today to the Herzl Museum, followed by lunch at the Ticho House, and a tour of the Me'ah She'arim neighborhood.

Theodor Herzl - one of the ideological founding fathers of modern Zionism - is for me, as with many Israelis and Zionists, one of my heroes. Though he didn't live to see it, and though there were clearly other influential Zionists who deserve credit for the creation of the state of Israel (David Ben-Gurion, Moses Hess, Leo Pinsker, and many others.) his vision of a modern Jewish state eventually became a reality, despite the enormous practical obstacles to achieving such a project, through persistence, his practical skills as a diplomat and a writer, and his ability to inspire others to believe that a dream can indeed become a reality.

I was thinking about Herzl's vision and grit during our tour of the museum, as well as during lunch, where I had the amazing fortune of meeting an elderly woman who accompanied us on our trip named Francis Greenberg. When she, at age 88, walked off an El Al plane and into the terminal and became a citizen of Israel, last July, it was her second time trying to make Aliyah - the first being 61 years ago.

Francis, from Poland, whose parents, two sisters, and brother, were killed by the Nazis, was one of the passengers on the ship, Exodus, in 1947 which carried Jewish emigrants with the intent of taking its passengers to Palestine, then still controlled by the British. Though most of the emigrants, like Francis and her husband, were Holocaust survivor refugees, the British, who had set quotas severely limiting the number of Jews who could enter Palestine, seized the ship, and deported all its passengers back to Europe.

in March 1949, Greenberg and her husband, Isak, who were married in a displaced persons camp in Germany a year earlier, moved to Pittsburgh (Squirrel Hill), where Mr. Greenberg's sister lived.

The Greenbergs had been married for 60 years when Isak passed away, in 2008. Shortly thereafter, Francis decided it was time to try Aliyah again, so she left her home and flew to Israel on a flight arranged by Nefesh B'Nefesh. According to a story in Ha'aretz, loudspeakers at the airport blared Israeli folk songs, and children waved Israeli flags when she, and 200 other N. Americans who made Aliyah that day, arrived.

Herzl in his book, "Old, New Land" said, "If you will it, it is no dream", which became a popular slogan within the Zionist movement. I don't think Francis would disagree.

Herzl

Several people I've spoken to about my decision to make Aliyah expressed great surprise when I related to them that I only visited Israel twice (both for little more than a week) before making my decision, and that I speak almost no Hebrew - accustomed as they are to other Olim having the experience of living here for extended periods w/ ample time to learn at least a little Hebrew prior to their Aliyah. Indeed, during a conversation I had with a young woman who had just completed Birthright, at my first Shabbat dinner here, I was asked what convinced me to move here, to which I replied that I didn't need too much convincing, as my decision was not based on a religious imperative, or any sense that Israel is the proverbial "land of milk and honey", or that, as a Jews, Israel is the only place to truly feel personally fulfilled - reasons that are often given by Olim, and which certainly are valid.

Rather, my decision was a political one - one (as I stated in my essay in the Exponent) predicated on a belief in the inherent righteousness of the Zionist cause, a genuine fear of the existential threats that Israel continues to face, a determination to contribute to her defense, and, more broadly, an increasing sense of the weight of Jewish history on my shoulders...that the Jewish longing to, as Israel's National Anthem "Hatikvah" dreams, "to be a free people" has not yet been fulfilled.

Indeed, I was thinking about this when I visited the Stern House the other day, where Theodor Herzl slept when he visited Jerusalem in 1898 - a year after he published Der Judenstat, his manifesto urging Jews to move to their ancient homeland. Herzl's Zionist inspiration was practical - a reaction (as a well-educated, secular, and assimilated Jew) to the shock of witnessing the anti-Semitism of the Dreyfuss Affair in France, and the overall failure of Jewish political emancipation in Europe that this episode portended - and, indeed, was motivated by the belief that only by having a state of their own could Jews truly be safe.

So, not only did Herzl come to the conclusion that a Jewish state in historic Palestine was necessary prior to visiting the land (and, indeed, his visit was merely a practical one, arranged to meet with the Sultan of of the Ottoman Turkish Empire to seek his support), but the overwhelming majority of the hundreds of thousands of Jews who heeded his call, and moved to pre-state Israel in the subsequent decades during the major waves of Aliyah, hadn't once set foot on the soil prior to their decision. Though they lacked practical experience living in the land, they did possess, in large measure, a sense of the importance of Zionism in the context of Jewish history, Jewish safety, and Jewish dignity.

My Aliyah was never a "lifestyle" decision.