Selichot at the Kotel (Article #23) 10/5/2006

Aseret Ymei Teshuva. A time when we strive to repent and bring ourselves closer to H-shem. A time when the children are caught up in the preparations for Yom Kippur and even Succot. A time for all night trips to the kotel…….

That’s right. In Israel, the Aseret Ymei Teshuva are a time for everyone to try to make at least one visit to the kotel. What better place to try to inspire yourself to do teshuva?

The Yeshiva went on a tiyul on Tuesday; it was actually a tiyul that I had gone on in the summer with the Southern Hemisphere (Australian and S. African) student, Ir David and the Davidman Center. While it certainly was not as thrilling the second time around (within 3 months), I will never tire of the emotions I feel when I realize that I am standing ON THE VERY SPOT where we believe David Hamelech had his palace, or that I am standing AT THE VERY PLACE where Shlomo Hamalech had his anointing.

The Tanach comes alive here in Israel. I cannot help but feel closer to G-d living here.

I can also say that Chizkiyahu’s water tunnels are a lot more fun without lights than with lights. My first time through the tunnel, none of the students knew where we were going, so they did not bring flashlights to go through. However, this group was much larger than the summer group and some of them knew that Ir David meant water tunnel, so they brought flashlights on the tiyul.

The ability to see where I was going made it a much easier walk. However, I think a major part of the thrill of the tiyul is the fact that you normally have to take it very slowly, using your hands to see where the walls and ceiling are as you make your way through.

The area around Ir David is actually an active archeological site. Interestingly, in the nine weeks since I had last been there, they had opened an entirely new section – including a new entrance into the water tunnel. Our guide had not even seen it.

Following Ir David, I went to the Kotel and left the tiyul to return to the office while the Yeshiva went to the Davidman Center to see the Southern excavations of the Kotel. Although I didn’t have the chance to daven there, being near the holiest site on earth less than a week before Yom Kippur is a powerful moment.

The kids all get involved too. I was amazed at the amount of children who were at the Kotel that day. It seemed as if there was a new group arriving every two minutes and the entire plaza seemed full.

Our kids also took part, but in a more unusual way. Both of our older daughters, Chaya (age 13) and Aliza (age 11) had after school tiyulim to visit the Kotel for Selichot and Tehillim and for a tour of the old city. Aliza’s began at six in the evening and she (and a friend) got back to our house at around three in the morning. Chaya’s ran all night from around ten at night until six in the morning!

They each reported that they had an awesome time (even though they didn’t understand the speeches) and that there were tons of other kids in the old city and at the kotel. My brother told me that on the night of my nephew’s tiyul there were so many busses going to Yerushalayim that their bus never got there – they just turned around and went back to Chashmonaim for Selichot.

This is apparently an annual outing for the school kids here in Israel. An Aseret Ymei Teshiva visit to the Kotel for Selichot. Can you imagine how we felt when we signed the permission slip?

Another major difference between Israel and America: the concept of “Acharei HaChagim” (after the holidays). It is amazing how many different things the schools put off until “Acharei HaChagim”.

The kids do not have their regular school days (for the most part) until “Acharei Hachagim”. Many extra curricular programs only begin “Acharei HaChagim”. We have been told to expect a total change from what we have been experiencing now, since “Acharei HaChagim” is the time when the entire system buckles down and gears up for some serious learning.

This attitude seems to pervade every area of life here. Need to have the gardener do some work? He’ll get to it “Acharei HaChag.” Looking to do some repair work in the house? The repairman will schedule you “Acharei HaChag”.

While we normally accommodate this attitude as much as we can, there was one fellow who I refused to let treat us this way. Our driving instructor.

In Israel, Olim who hold foreign driver’s licenses can drive within Israel for the first year after their Aliyah using their foreign licenses. For the second and third years they are living in Israel, while they can no longer drive within the country, they can still get an Israeli license with a minimum of fuss. If they wait too long, then they have to go through the whole licensing process including written tests, multiple (expensive) professional driving lessons and a road test.

Why is an Israeli Driver’s License so important? Most significantly, a new Oleh cannot purchase a new car using his lower tax rate benefits if he is not also the holder of an Israeli Driver’s License. Although we are still holding off before we get a new car, we want to have everything done and ready for when we need it.

Initially (as we were informed by our road test examiner earlier this week), the Israeli policy was to automatically grant an Israeli license to the holder of an foreign license. However, due to a tremendous influx of driver’s licenses (especially from countries like Russia) in recent years that were issued in return for financial payments, the government felt the need to filter out the inexperienced drivers from the experienced ones.

Accordingly, after registering an application with the appropriate governmental office, each Oleh with a foreign license must take at least one professional driving lesson as well as pass a road test in order to get an Israeli Driver’s License.

We had completed our paperwork and even given it to a highly recommended driving instructor in early August. Since all we needed was one lesson, we assumed we would be finished by the end of September at the latest. We had chosen this specific instructor based on a personal recommendation and a guarantee from one of his prior students that he knows all the examiners and that his students all pass the test on the first time.

He assured us that he would schedule lessons for us right away. Each time we phoned him, we heard another excuse about why he couldn’t get to us yet. He blamed the delays on the war, slow paperwork processing by the licensing agency (even though we had already processed all the papers by hand before he got them and even a shortage of teachers in his company.

After seven weeks of getting the runaround, we were pretty frustrated about the whole thing. We knew several couples who had already gotten their licenses and couldn’t understand why we were so delayed in getting processed.

We decided to pull out the big guns and Goldie asked me to call the instructor directly and stop being so nice about the delays. Which I did. The magic phrase was, “If you cannot schedule us for a lesson this week – we will call another instructor who will.” The lesson was scheduled within five minutes for Thursday morning.

The lesson was so tedious. Stop at the stop sign. No – a complete stop. When making a right turn, turn into the right lane. Look for traffic when you enter an intersection. And so on and so forth……

I was ready to scream by the end of my half hour “lesson”. I have been driving for over twenty years and although I have developed bad habits (the rolling stop), I know how to pass a road test. The instructor was overcautious to the point of driving me nuts and he made Goldie extremely nervous.

We went straight from our lessons to the road test facility (after a brief stop to pay the testing fee at…………you guessed it – THE POST OFFICE) to wait for our test. We had heard some real horror stories about how tough the test was and how many people fail the first time, so we didn’t know what to expect.

The test was a joke. As our examiner told us, his job is to simply make sure that our foreign licenses were not purchased illicitly and that we actually do know how to drive the car. Of the three drivers being tested in the same car, I drove for the longest amount of time; my part of the test was about four minutes long – with two of the four spent waiting at a red light.

So now we are licensed Israeli drivers. Of course we don’t actually have the licenses in our hands yet. The licensing authority (different people from the testing facility) needs at least a day to process the paperwork and their offices were closed on Friday and Yom Kippur, so one day this week I will pick up our temporary licenses. Our permanent licenses (the ones that you get in the US after a ten minute or so wait) get mailed to us in four to six weeks.

On Thursday night we got together for dinner with my sister, my brother and their spouses. When we were contemplating Aliyah, one thing I mentioned to both my siblings was that if we were to come to Israel I would insist upon our getting together on a regular basis. Living within thirty miles or so of each other, there really is no excuse for us not to, and we resolved to try to have dinner together once a month.

It is intriguing to see how we each have adapted to our new environment in different ways. My sister has been here since 1982 and is really very Israeli in how she does things. Her husband is an Israeli sephardi and she has been here for so long that she even thinks in Hebrew. She lives in an Israeli neighborhood and only two of her four children speak English (the other two will eventually learn).

My brother on the other hand has been here for six years and is still very American. He travels to America several times each year, so he is able to bring in many of the American products other Olim do not have access to, and he lives in a mixed Israeli/Anglo (English speaking) community. He certainly feels very at home here and is much more comfortable with his Hebrew and understanding of the society here than we are.

In contrast, we live in an overwhelmingly anglo neighborhood (although surprisingly, there are quite a few boys in Mordechai’s gan – age five – who only speak Hebrew) and are so new to the country that we don’t understand the news on the radio yet. We have a hard time figuring out where the bread crumbs are in the supermarket and think that we may have finally (after living here for three months) actually purchased bleach for the first time, after two previous failures.

So it is interesting for us to get together and talk about how we are all doing, since we have much more that just a simple age difference (six year range from my sister to my brother with me in the middle) between us.

Another great thing about living here……. we deliberately change the clock here on Motzeu Shabbat Teshuva so that the actual ending time of Yom Kippur is an hour earlier. This breaks up the day and psychologically seems to make the finish line much closer (even though it is the same 25 hours). We also try to hold off on moving the clock forward until after Pesach so the Seder doesn’t begin too late.

Shabbat Teshuva was a bit of a downer. Our Rav gave the drasha in Hebrew and speaks way too fast for us to understand him. I was also sick on Shabbat and was actually worried that it would affect my ability to fast (I made it OK but was a bit weaker than usual the whole way through). Goldie was sick on Sunday so we were really a bit off kilter entering into Yom Kippur.

What can I say about Yom Kippur. We started davening at 6:45 and had a one hour break, so the davening was long. Yet, it didn’t really seem to shlep much until Neilah. It was certainly weird to do the Birchat Kohanim for the third time that day during Neilah (we almost didn’t get to it in time to beat sunset).

Actually, our Rav has a makor (source) for changing the order of the davening during Neilah, shifting some of the selichot to the end of the davening in order to i) get to Birchat Kohanim before sunset and ii) have something to say for the final half hour after the Kohanim finish – without having to shlep exceedingly long.

Once again, the fact that no one really seemed to care that we went over time for about ten minutes did not seem to make a difference to anyone that I could see. We all seemed to be uplifted and inspired by the davening and I am certain that our geographical location paid a large part in that.

As we close in on our first one day Yom Tov, a point that someone made at Shabbat lunch a week ago really strikes home. We were talking about a specific family and asked our hosts, “Oh – are they Israeli, we didn’t realize.” To which our host replied, “What do you mean? WE ARE ALL ISRAELI”

Chag Kasher V’Sameach!