[img]96|left|||no_popup[/img]Dateline Jerusalem – I am exhausted trying to pack and get myself ready for next week's move to a new apartment. I will still be in Rehovot, Israel, on the same street, just a block away. For the last five years since I made aliyah, I have been living in the same apartment. Because I did not speak Hebrew, it was difficult communicating with some neighbors in the building. Gradually I learned how to respond in Hebrew to their questions about how I was doing. Eagerly, they tried to speak to me in other languages, like Yiddish, Spanish, Russian, French, German, occasionally English. I speak Spanish, German and Yiddish like I speak Hebrew – badly. I do not speak Russian or French at all. Finally I am able to communicate with them and now I am moving out of the building.

I have the greatest friends in the world. I do not know how they put up with me. This move has made me a wreck. I cannot wait until I will be calm and my normal self once again. I am so blessed to have such wonderful friends. They are really a gift from G-d. They help me pack, schlep shopping carts of boxes and suitcases filled with a myriad of items, take me shopping for appliances and furniture in nearby cities, invite me out to lunch and Shabbat meals so I do not have to cook, shop for fruit and snacks for me so I do not get hungry while I pack, even take apart and put back together my grandmother's 100-year-old table so that it could fit through the narrow doors of the new apartment. My friends arranged for movers and a cleaning lady. They even found the new apartment for me. They speak Hebrew to all the technicians involved in getting me set up at the new apartment, as well as accompany me to deal with the bureaucrats at City Hall, various utility companies, post office, and ministries I must visit to change my address. Yet with all their help, I am still overwhelmed by the move.

Where We All Get Along

Rehovot is one of Israel's larger cities, about 150,000 people. It is unique because it is one of the few cities in Israel where religious and secular Jews live, work, and shop side by side while getting along with one another. Much of Israel is divided about religious observance. Neighborhoods tend to be religious or secular. Few are mixed communities like Rehovot. One reason I chose to live here was Rehovot's reputation. Although I am religious, my family and most of my friends in the U.S. are secular Jews, Reform or Conservative Jews, or not Jewish at all. I wanted to live in an area where family and friends would feel comfortable visiting me, and where I would be accepted by my neighbors when they did so. I found Rehovot to be the perfect city with respect to religious-secular relations. Many of its neighborhoods tend to be mixed with secular, Conservative, Modern Orthodox, Orthodox, and various Chassidic sects living in the same apartment building. It is not unusual to see women in shorts and jeans walking side by side with women wearing long sleeves to the wrist and skirts to the ankle. The casual observer will see some women walking around without head coverings next to women in sheitels (wigs), headscarves, hats and snoods. Bareheaded men could be seen next to those in knitted kipot (yarmulkes) and men with black hats. It is so nice when people can live together in peace.

Well, back to packing.

L'hitraot. Shachar