Two Steps Back (Article #27) 11/9/2006

In life it sometimes seems as if every time you take three steps forward, you take two steps back. This was one of those weeks. If you opened the paper today looking to read about another “fantastic” week, close the paper right now.

The week started of well with a Chicago Bears victory to remain undefeated for the season. I enjoyed watching the game with a group of my friends at Shai and Leslie Goldmeier’s house in Chicago. It has been a long time since I sat around with my buddies for a BBQ and the Bears, and it was a real pleasure.

Since our trip was dual purpose, I spent the rest of the day planning for the next night’s parlor meeting as well as helping Rav Susman (our Rosh Hayeshiva) and Rav Pflanzer (our Menahel Klali) prepare for their recruitment meetings with HS seniors which were to begin Monday morning.

Monday was a tough day for me. I had been away from home for a week, was busy worrying about that evening’s fundraiser and it was also the first Yahrtzeit of my friend Jay Gottlieb. Jay’s tragic death was one of the catalysts for our deciding to pursue Aliyah, and he and his family are regularly on my mind. I had wanted to go to the Kotel to daven for him and not being in Israel on that day was difficult for me.

Since the parlor meeting was going to be my first fundraising event with the Yeshiva, I expected to make mistakes. I was worried about a lot of things, but in the end, the real mistake was in not preparing early enough. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what to do, it was that I felt that there was no time with which to do it.

In the end, we had a pretty decent event. Rav Pflanzer spoke about his experiences as an operations officer in the paratroopers in the recent war in Lebanon. It was a very moving presentation. He really connected with the audience, many of whom came specifically to hear his story.

The turnout was nice, we already outperformed the prior year’s event and assuming that the three or four donors we did not yet speak to end up participating, we will be very close to our goal for the event. Which is more than we really could have hoped for.

Yet, I wasn’t thrilled. I knew that we/I could have done better and needed to take a few lessons from the experience, and I hope that I do.

By Tuesday morning I was exhausted. I never really sleep well in America and this trip was no exception. I had stayed in town a couple of extra days to try and catch up with those people who we had not seen at the parlor meeting and planned to leave town Wed. afternoon.

Late Tuesday morning I got a message from my old secretary at the Yeshiva of South Shore. It seems that they were in a panic about one of the Yeshiva’s volunteers, Larry Gorman. Larry had come to the Yeshiva as a retired CPA looking to give back to the community by donating his services to us.

Although we were initially quite skeptical about his motivation and commitment, over time Larry proved to be one of the most responsible and dependable people in our office. He was truly a great guy who was focused on trying to do good by the Yeshiva. From a couple of hours three days a week, his commitment grew to four or five hours a day, four days a week.

He took control of his duties and became a major part of the team that helped the Yeshiva reinvent itself and its financial identity. His suggestions were always offered with the conviction that he was trying to do what was best for the Yeshiva, and we all knew that even if we didn’t ultimately follow his advice, Larry was a team player and would roll up his sleeves with us to get the job done.

He was always quite organized and very particular that we should all work together as a team. Although he was a volunteer, he took his responsibilities very seriously and would always let us know in advance if he was going to be late or absent. He had been going through a difficult time of late; we knew that his relationship with his “co-workers” at the Yeshiva was a source of strength to him.

So when he missed a Monday morning appointment and didn’t show up for work on Tuesday, the people at the Yeshiva were seriously concerned. By the time I got a call, one of his Yeshiva “co-workers” who is a member of Hatzola had gone to Larry’s house with the police where our worst fears were confirmed. He had tragically passed away at home over the weekend.

This news hit hard. We all loved Larry as part of our family. My kids knew him, since we had given him a ride to some of the Yeshiva simchas that the kids had also attended. Telling Goldie any bad news is tough. Doing it over the phone is worse.

I spent a lot of time on the phone that day, talking to my kids about Larry, talking to Goldie about how tragic this is and talking to the people in the South Shore office who will notice his absence the most. He was a fixture in that office for over five years and it will not be the same without him. His death shocked and saddened our family in Israel and the South Shore family as well; he will be missed.

Having been away from home for over a week, I entered Wednesday looking forward to finally going home. I was totally loaded up with stuff to bring back and ran around like crazy the last morning getting the last couple of meetings out of the way.

(I won’t even mention the speeding ticket that I got in Lincolnwood on my NY driver’s license, for which I will either have to take four hours of internet driving school to have the ticket erased from my record or pay the fine, which is cheaper than the driving school, since the points don’t transfer to my Israeli license anyway)

I headed off to the airport later than planned and was concerned that I might have lost my aisle seat (try being six foot two and not having the aisle to stick your legs in). Of course, the rental car agency overcharged me, so I had to waste fifteen minutes fighting with them about an added charge (I won).

By the time I got to the terminal, I was expecting a long line and a changed seat. Instead I got a short line and a closed ticket counter. Confused, I looked at my itinerary and it dawned on me that my flight was for 18:30 which was 6:30 and not 4:30 as I had thought.

Furthermore, until two days earlier I had been under the impression that the plane flew directly from Chicago to Tel Aviv. It didn’t. Although there was only one check in, the plane stopped in Toronto to pick up more passengers, making the trip even longer than I had thought.

After moving items from one suitcase to another in order to be under the weight limit and checking in, I spent an excruciatingly boring hour and a half on line waiting for the TSA security check and x-ray.

I had originally planned to write about a fascinating group of people from Champaign, Illinois (a small town in Central Illinois) who were on our flight. Broadcasters, listeners and supporters of the Great News radio show were making their fifteenth trip to Israel in the past six years to bring toys and other items to hospitalized children, to volunteer in disadvantaged communities, to paint a mural in Tzfat and to do other volunteer work in Israel.

Their sincerity and the joy they displayed in coming to Israel to help out in any way they could was inspiring. I had planned to describe their efforts in a lot more detail than is contained here, but I was inspired even more by another group on the plane.

We had boarded the plane exactly on time. Everyone was seated and ready to go when the pilot came on the intercom to tell us that there was an instrument problem that needed to be fixed and we would hopefully be moving shortly. So we sat cooped up in the plane at the gate, with the plane door open, waiting for the part to be fixed.

Two hours, one snack bag distribution and two drink distributions later, the part was fixed and we were on our way to Toronto. Since we were late, they decided to clean the plane with the passengers in it and then load the Toronto passengers on as quickly as possible. I think that in the end I spent more than fifteen hours straight on that plane.

While we walked around on the plane in Toronto, stretching our legs and waiting for the cleaning crew to finish up, I introduced myself to a fellow sitting four rows in front of me. He and his wife were traveling with their two little girls. We started playing Jewish Geography, with me telling him that while I was originally from Chicago then NY, we had recently moved to Beit Shemesh.

He then told me that he and his family were making Aliyah on that very flight, moving to Maaleh Adumim. They had tried to go on a Nefesh Bnefesh flight, but the timing didn’t work out for them, so they were going solo. Although I was excited for them, I was also disappointed for them too. The experience of being on a Nefesh Bnefesh flight, where all the passengers are making Aliyah and thrilled to be on the plane, is an experience that shouldn’t be missed.

We continued talking about careers and experiences when he really shocked me, telling me that both he and his wife were Geirim (converted). I was astounded. Not just that they would find Judaism and convert, but that they would find the conviction to take their newfound Jewish identity and make the ultimate move to Israel.

He had talked about the sacrifices that they were making, financially and emotionally and how he hoped and planned to restart his academic career in Israel after learning Hebrew. He talked about the fact that his wife’s parents had never seen their grandchildren and how they hoped one day to have them visit from Romania.

I was moved by their simple commitment to the land of Israel. I was impressed by their desire to be in the central location for Jewish life. But perhaps most of all, I admired their courage for doing much more than the typical Olim, they literally turned their backs on their entire upbringing to make the move to Judaism and Israel.

Although we had arrived in Toronto two hours late, the speed of the ground crew and the quick loading of all the Toronto passengers cut our delay to just forty five minutes and we took off, settling in for the long flight to Tel Aviv.

Thankfully, the three Tylenol PM’s that I took got me about 5 hours of sleep so that I would be somewhat rested for what (I did not know) was about to come.

After landing forty minutes late at 5:30, we were taking our belongings from the overhead bins and waiting for the crew to open the door when the pilot came on the intercom to tell us that there might be a small delay in getting our baggage delivered. This turned out to be somewhat of an understatement.

As I walked to passport control, Goldie called me to tell me she was on her way. I warned her that there might be a small delay and that she might want to park. The passage through immigration was very quick, taking five minutes or less. For those people who have never been to Ben Gurion airport before, the baggage hallway is just past the immigration/passport control booths, and as I entered the baggage area it was clear that something was definitely wrong.
There were bags and people everywhere. People were just milling around, and there was a definite sense of anger in the air. Although there are normally hundreds of luggage carts waiting for arriving passengers, there were none to be found in the baggage hall that day.

Suddenly, there was a lot of shouting at the Information Desk, and the people gathered there began to chant “Mizvadot! Mizvadot!” (Baggage, Baggage). After talking to some of the other people in the terminal I began to get an idea of what was happening and I called my sister to confirm.

Apparently, the airport temporary workers went on strike because they were about to lose 120 jobs. Every year the airport cuts back on seasonal employees once the tourist season ends and the union wanted to keep the jobs.

Although there was a court order issued Wednesday to return to work on Thursday (which was overturned Thursday afternoon anyway), the strike continued through Thursday. There was no air conditioning running in the terminal, only limited baggage service and things like the collection of luggage carts from the parking lots were sporadically being taken care of.

My coworkers had flown in on a NY flight that landed a half hour earlier than my flight, and we conferred to discuss what we should do.

Many people had decided to leave the airport and return only once they had confirmed that the luggage had been processed (security allowed passengers to return to the baggage area with passports and boarding passes to prove that they had baggage waiting for them).

Others stayed at the baggage claim to wait for their bags, since they were concerned that someone may take their bags. It wouldn’t have been too hard for anyone to steal bags that night, since there were so many bags all over the floor waiting for people to return to the airport to claim them and nobody was watching over them.

My initial reaction was to wait, but I exited the baggage area (with Ron Baruch who had been on the NY flight) in order to discuss it with Goldie. We were about to leave the airport (planning to return with Ron at midnight to get our bags) when I got a phone call that my flight’s bags had been posted as “about to arrive” in carousel ten.

As I made my way to carousel ten, I noticed that Ron Baruch’s bags were on carousel eight, so I called him and caught him before he left. His wait was about an hour or so.

Assuming that my bags would not be far behind, I made my way to carousel ten to wait for the bags to arrive. Although the NY flight’s bags came out over a two hour period, our flight’s bags had yet to make an appearance.

After two and a half hours, both Goldie and I were losing our patience. The kids were anxious for me to get home and the El Al people kept insisting that our bags had already been distributed. We convinced one agent to come with us to the carousel to see that NO BAGS had come.

That agent became our advocate, eventually convincing the El Al ground staff to send a person to the plane and see where the luggage was. When we got the call that the bags were still on the plane, we realized that it would be quite some time before they arrived, and decided to go home (after three hours of waiting) at 8:30.

At midnight I called to check on the bags and was told that they still had not come out and when I called El Al at 8 AM the next morning, they had no idea if the bags had or hadn’t been distributed yet. After talking to another passenger on the flight, I found out that the bags had only come out after 1:30 AM, a full eight hours after we landed.

Locating the bags at the airport was a treat. Apparently, the bags not claimed immediately, were offloaded randomly, so although the bags had come out of carousel three, I eventually found one bag between the wall and carousel one and the other next to carousel three.

At least I got my bags. The strike lasted at least through Friday, and I cannot imagine what people who arrived on Friday did without their clothing for Shabbat.

We went into Shabbat looking for a little rest, but I had been away for a while and the kids really wanted some attention. Each one has their own concerns and needed to be reassured that we care about them.

So I oohed and ahhed over Chaya’s new braces, talked with Aliza about ulpan, heard about Batya’s library books and just held Moshe in my lap. The hardest kids to deal with were Mordechai and Chaim.

Mordechai just wants to either understand Hebrew or go back to English. Although he is doing better in Gan now that Goldie sits with him for at least 20 minutes in Gan each morning to find out what they will be doing and tell him in English about his upcoming activities. He still doesn’t understand the language, but at least he is beginning to know what they are doing.

He doesn’t realize it, but he is actually doing better than he had when he first got here. He plays with the Hebrew speakers a lot more, and there is Hebrew interspersed with English in his speech. Although we can definitely see improvement, he is still frustrated and the frustration turns into anger.

It is tough to watch. He doesn’t know why he gets angry so quickly, and his frustration/anger/worry has different manifestations. He doesn’t like to sleep alone. He gets very clingy. He is prone to tantrums. The whole process is agonizing both for him and us.

Chaim on the other hand has much more mature and thought out concerns. He is concerned about his future and getting into college. His school opened a tenth grade for the first time this year, and despite repeated promises to improve their staff and program, they just don’t seem to be getting the job done.

We have plans and backup plans about his academic career, yet he is so concerned about his lack of progress this year that it is a source of extreme distress to him. We are also concerned, but at the same time we are also quite pleased. After all, how many kids would complain to their parents about the fact that “they are doing nothing in school”.

He wants to do well so badly that we can hear the emotion in his voice when we talk about it, and we cannot act fast enough to please him. So, we will spend the next ten days looking for another school for him and trying to make it work out for this year before we have to go to a backup plan.

I guess we should actually consider ourselves lucky. Out of six kids, we are having issues with only two, and we think they are solvable problems. While we know and appreciate this fact intellectually, it didn’t help us sleep any better Friday or Saturday nights.

We hosted the Cederbaums for lunch on Shabbat. They are here on a pilot trip for what may be their summer 2007 aliyah and wanted to check out our neighborhood. With kids currently enrolled in the schools that they are considering for their kids, we were thrilled to share our thoughts and experiences with them.

It was kind of weird talking to them, since we had such a difficult week to deal with. We were so tired and worried about the kids and how they are doing that it was a real effort to get ourselves keyed up for them. It was a good thing that they came, since it gave us the need to pick ourselves up and refocus.

Hopefully, the difficult weeks will disappear and we will continue to have positive growth for our children and ourselves.