Summer is Done (9/9/2009)

Each summer I get the same concerned e-mail from Larry Gordon. "Shmuel," he asks, "where have you gone?" What can I say? The summer is a slow time of year for us. Many of our friends disappear on vacations. Even our kids head off for camp. So there isn't much to report, and I don't write as much. Hopefully we will now be back to regular life until the next big vacation.

I don't remember being this relieved for school to arrive when we lived in the U.S. School starts earlier here (September 1) and ends later (the last week of June), so you would think the summer break would be easier to handle. Yet, with no camp programs that run eight or nine weeks, the last month is a killer. With kids all over the place with nothing to do, and my first U.S. trip for my new job with Puah, August was a terribly hard month for Goldie.

She had to balance keeping the kids busy and involved with running the household and having to do everything all alone (in truth, she does everything even when I am there, but it is different when she is alone). I, on the other hand, took a couple of days off to do some fun stuff, flew to the U.S. for 10 days, and then came home to another couple of days off with the kids.

We went to the Bloomfield Science Museum (lots of fun, but needs maintenance on the exhibits), an amusement park, the beach, shopping, playing-everything we could to keep busy. Although there is nothing like being here in Israel, I sometimes miss the wealth of fun, educational, or cultural activities that we used to enjoy in New York. There are so many more things to do to keep little kids occupied-probably because there are so many more people there.

As I mentioned, I made my first work-related trip to the U.S. for Puah, my new employer. It was more of a "get to know you" trip than anything else, giving me the opportunity to meet the Puah USA staff and some of our supporters. I am amazed at some of the things Puah is doing in fertility and health issues and the incredible technologies that are involved in helping people have children.

As a benefit of the timing of the trip, I was able to take Chaim up to YU on the first day of orientation. He has been looking forward to this day since grade 4. I know it sounds like a cliché, but it was so much harder for me to drop him off than it was for him to take his leave of us. As any parent knows, while our pride in him has no bounds, our fears and concerns for him can be overwhelming.

We wonder if we made the right decisions for him in life. Schooling. Camps. Friends. Activities. And we had the extra worries about our aliyah and its impact on his life. Let's face it: he only really had one year of high school. He has a diploma and certainly did well on his SAT, but he hasn't written anything or been responsible to study and hand in homework for over three years. So we wonder if we hurt his career potential by making this move.

We personally know some families who have been successful in leaving a child or two behind in the U.S. to graduate with their friends. While we never really considered it as an option for us, it is certainly something we could have done to make sure he was better prepared for college. So we worry.

We also realize that our being 6,000 miles away means that he has essentially moved out. I know I covered this earlier this year, but it is definitely on our minds. Goldie had a terrific minute when he mentioned to her earlier this year that he is now open to the possibility of living in Israel long-term. He even mentioned a couple of yishuvim he would be happy in. So we still have hope on that front.

We are also quite excited with the arrival of several new olim families over the summer. Our shul is getting more crowded and we are getting close to a nexus point for the city, one in which the decision will be made about which direction the city will follow in the future. The municipality can show its equal commitment to the non-chareidi public by encouraging more of us to move here and by continuing to fund services to our schools and shuls. Hopefully they will choose this path.

Although there are many other families who have come on aliyah, I want to wish a special welcome to Dan and Audrey Rosenstein, who joined us from West Hempstead with their family, and to Donny and Ellie Fein, who came from Cedarhurst and have moved to Ramat Shilo (very close to our good friends Doni and Tzippy Lieberman, who often appear in these pages).

Water Update

My regular readers know that I have become quite fanatical about the falling levels of the Kinneret Lake. To refresh your memory, since our aliyah, the rainfalls in Israel have been well below average. Up till this year, consumption had been on the rise, leading to dramatically low levels in the Kinneret, our main source of water.

There are three significant water levels mentioned when measuring the Kinneret. The high water level of the Kinneret is 208.8 meters below sea level. At this level, the lake overflows and the floodgates of the Deganya Dam near Teveria are opened to allow the waters to flow into the Jordan River. This is called the upper red line.

The lower red line is 213 meters below sea level. At this level, the amount of unhealthy contaminants found in the water rises above safe levels. We are currently below that level, and have been so since around July 9, 2008. The next significant level of the Kinneret is the black line, at 215 meters below sea level. At -215, the water pumps of the Kinneret become exposed to the air and must be shut down, eliminating the Kinneret (which provides 40 percent of our total water supply) as a water source.

The good news is that the conservation efforts of the water authority here have had tremendous results. Last month they announced that summer water consumption in July had dropped 13.5 percent from last year's level. So the country is getting the message. As a result of this, in my estimation we will come incredibly close to the black line this year, but will not pass it (depending on when the rains begin to fall).

As of last Thursday (September 3), the Kinneret was 214.04 meters below sea level. Last year on the same date it was 213.72 meters below sea level. The lowest level last year was 214.43 meters below sea level, a drop of an additional 85 centimeters from the September 3 level. Assuming that the conservation efforts totally fail for the remainder of the year and we use the same amount of water as we used last year, the Kinneret should fall to 214.89, a mere 11 centimeters above the dreaded black line. An important 11 centimeters.

At that point, we all need to pray for rain-and I mean pray hard. There are desalination plants being built to help relieve the stress on the system, but they won't be ready for another couple of years, and we could have real problems before then.