Room for All (Article #53) 8/23/2007

It has been such a long time since we had an Aliyah related milestone event that I almost didn’t recognize it when it happened. After months of waiting and numerous delays, we finally got a car that fits the whole family.

It sounds spoiled for this to be such a big deal. We probably are a bit spoiled, there is no denying it. After all, there are many many Israeli families (quite a few with more children than ours) who never own a vehicle in their lives, much less a new one. Public transportation here is pretty efficient and most of the country is accessible by bus/train or other forms of transportation.

I even have a neighbor (who walks 10 minutes to work each day) who made a calculation that it doesn’t pay to get a car unless you commute to work no less than 9 one way trips each week. He calculated the costs of hiring a taxi for tiyulim and other trips and computed that it was cheaper. He does have much younger kids than us though. We’ll see what he says when he has 4 kids at different friends houses/trips/shopping who all come home with taxi receipts.

Yet, as I wrote when we first got our long term rental car, we consider the “convenience” of having the car as a necessity.

Ever since we got that rental car, we had been working toward getting a car of our own, especially one that had room for all of us. The rental was a compact car with seating for 5 in which we could sometimes squeeze 6 or 7 and even all 8 of us if the trip was short, but it was definitely unsafe to do so and we found ourselves renting vans for holiday weeks (at a significant cost) or having the 2 older kids travel by bus and meet us at our destination, while the rest of us went by car.

Psychologically if not practically, this deterred us from doing things as a family. A trip to visit my sister as a family was impossible because of the logistical nightmare involved in getting all of us there reasonably. The same with things like going to the Kotel together or going away for Shabbat.

Unfortunately for us (or maybe not), there were many different events that happened to postpone the arrival of the car for quite some time.

After researching various options, we had chosen (mostly because of financial considerations) to buy a Hyundai H1 cargo van last February. It was the cheapest of only 3 options available to us, since there are very few automobiles available in Israel that seat at least 8 and this was the cheapest option. It was also available for delivery within a 2 to 3 week period.

All 3 eight seat options were actually converted cargo vans that are imported as shells. They come with no seats or A/C and in some cases even without windows in the side panels. Why? Well, the import taxes are set based on the value of the imported car and they try to import as stripped down a vehicle as possible in order to reduce the import taxes, adding all the “extras” to the vehicle only once they are physically in the country.

Minivans do exist here, yet (at the time we began to look) there were no longer any minivans with seating configurations for 8 people. Mazda had sold an 8 seat minivan several years ago but had discontinued that design in favor of a 7 seater.

In the process of ordering the van, we became aware of a Metzia (deal) on a 6 month old car that was available from people who had bought the car and returned to the USA shortly thereafter. We were arranging to get that car instead when Goldie first took ill and when we tried to process the paperwork, the appropriate agency was on strike (that seems to happen a lot here).

After Pesach we were about to restart the process when we had to rush off to the US for Goldie’s treatment and surgery and it wasn’t until late May that we found out that the tax free benefits for that specific car were no longer available and we would need to find another solution.

After finding out that there was a 12 month wait for the Hyundai and that Toyota no longer sold the Hiace as an automatic, we were stuck with no options at all, until we heard about the Ssangyong Rodius. Seating 9, this minivan was only introduced to the Israeli market within the last year and was our last hope to get a new car.

We went to order the car right before I went to the USA and a few days after I returned we got the call that it was ready. We got it last week and are busily adjusting ourselves to it.

It isn’t really something that we needed this week per se, since the smaller car fit the family for the summer (since three of the kids have been gone). But this week the world gets back to normal as they begin to arrive home and we become a normal family again.

The summer has been very interesting. The departure of the older kids has actually been tougher for us; we lost our babysitters and primary assistants in the house. We had forgotten what it was like to have only little kids in the house and the kids were more than happy to remind us.

Last week was the end of camp for the kids. They had an awesome time at their camp (Kee Tov) and having the chance to spend time focusing on them was great. I know that it seems a bit early to be ending summer programs, but this is Israel and August is the month of Chofesh (vacations).

The entire country seems to go on vacation during the month of August. It is amazing how many people leave home to travel (a large percentage of them travel to the cooler temperatures of Northern Israel). Shul is half empty all the time and wherever we go (outside tourist attractions) the lines are nowhere near what they would be normally. The only places you see lots of people are at tourist attractions and public transportation, like the trains.

I know that I should be happy for the train company on the revenues and profits that they gain through all the people who seem to be on the trains, but it is quite frankly making me crazy. I am used to a quiet and relaxing ride and instead I have full trains with a trillion wild kids making tons of noise and peering over my shoulder at the computer as I write (they all want to know what movies I have on the computer).

School has started (for chareidim) or will soon start (for most of the other kids). In religious circles, the schools (which normally open September 1) will open about a week early because the chagim (holidays) come so early in the year. Of course, the schools didn’t actually tell us this information until earlier this month and many people, including our daughter Aliza, had to change their travel plans to make sure they were back home in time for school.

This is one of the things I don’t think I will ever get used to. The last minute way things are done here. After all, it isn’t as if they didn’t know what the calendar would be. A little bit of planning and we would all have had plenty of advance warning. But that seems to be too much to ask here.

I for one am looking forward to the return of the school year and everything (including my quiet train ride) getting back to normal.