Life in Israel: The Big City Boy Moves to the Village

30 July, 2006; the 6th of Av, 5766

We just could not afford the rental prices in Jerusalem and we had to move elsewhere. Money was hard to find, so we put out several different calls for help - one of them went here. One of those calls for help worked and we are now ensconced in a small village of 96 families in what is known in Hebrew as Matéh Binyamín, the Benjamin District of Samaria.

We now live in Ma'aléh Levoná. Ma'aleh means "rise" in Hebrew. We live on a hill. Beneath us in a valley, is a well plowed field worked by the Arabs who live there. It's flat, like the fields in Minnesota. That's a rarity in this part of Israel, which is all hills, valleys and mountains.

We've benefited by moving here. In Jerusalem, we had a relatively roomy apartment, and we paid a very high rent for it. Here we are living in a house - and while it is not totally as roomy as the one we sold when we left Saint Paul, it is certainly bigger than the apartment we rented, has two stories, and stairs that the cat can climb and keep limber on. At least he will lose weight, even if none of the rest of us does. And the rent is less than half of what we paid in the City of David.

It is QUIET here. And I do mean quiet. You can hear the crickets chirp at night and see Jupiter rise in the evening sky. You can hear the bus as it comes at 6:00 in the morning traveling all through the village. Here, the cock crows in the morning - and he keeps crowing all day long. Maybe if he had a few hens to keep him happy... Nobody honks his horn here. Nobody has to. If you have some really good binoculars, you do not really need a telescope. The binoculars will let you see the four biggest moons of Jupiter. On a really clear day, you can see the snow capped peak of Mount Hermon, the highest mountain in the country.

Small town life is very different from big city life.

In the big city, a stranger knocks at your door asking for charity and you can give or not - it's your own business. Here, a stranger knocks at your door saying that the village rabbi is making a charity collection, and you dig into your pocket and pull something out. In the big city, you move into an apartment and that's it. Here, it's news for the entire community, and you find about a week's worth of groceries for a gift, not to mention offers of help from all sides. Here, you look to see if you can find things to give to charity. Your neighbors help you, and you need to be prepared to help your neighbors. And, because of the way you are treated, you want to be. Here you see the saying, "what goes around, comes around" in a very real way.

Another example; that charity we gave left us without enough money to go to Jerusalem - a fact I didn't realize until the 7:30 came lumbering into the bus stop. I told the driver we were missing two shekels of the 22 shekel fare into town because we had given charity. He just rang up the fare and took the twenty shekels we offered and pointed to the receipt coming out of the machine. Returning from Jerusalem in the afternoon, my wife pointed out that this was the same driver as had picked us up in the morning. At one of the stops along the route, I walked through the bus, and offered him the two shekels. He waved it away. This never would have happened in New York. We would never have been allowed on the bus. It might have happened in St. Paul but would have been unlikely. In Jerusalem, the likelihood would have been greater - but it still would have been small.

Ma'aléh Levoná is a religious community. Everyone who lives here is a religious Jew. Naturally, non-religious Jews fleeing war or disaster will be put up and given refuge - you do not turn your back on your fellow Jew. But the residents are all religious Jews.

This has consequences.

Male Jews pray three times daily, in the morning, the afternoon, and the evening (women are not bound by timed prayer as are men). So, there are prayer times posted for the village synagogue, and while men may or may not be able to come to prayers during the week because of reasons of employment (they either pray at home or find a shul in the town they work), they are expected to show up for the Sabbath. And we do. Except for the security person, nobody drives a car on the Sabbath, or rides a bike, or violates its rules. We follow the laws of the Torah because we believe in them.

We've been given the opportunity for a new start here, and we're grateful for it. It is my own hope that Ma'aléh Levoná and communities like it in Israel are the wave of the future here - that this country will slowly evolve to become a truly better place, a light unto the nations.