Arrivals: Every day is a blessing

The parents and son are all smiles as they talk about their successful aliya while sitting in the living room of their penthouse apartment close to the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens.

By ABIGAIL KLEIN LEICHMAN
STANLEY DALNEKOFF, 83; DONNA DALNEKOFF, 72; DAVID DALNEKOFF, 44 (photo credit: ABIGAIL KLEIN LEICHMAN)
STANLEY DALNEKOFF, 83; DONNA DALNEKOFF, 72; DAVID DALNEKOFF, 44
(photo credit: ABIGAIL KLEIN LEICHMAN)
David Dalnekoff’s supervisor in the kitchen of a Connecticut private school broke down and cried upon hearing that David was moving to Israel at the end of 2014. David, who has a mild developmental disability, had been a reliable and hard-working employee for 15 years. Perhaps, the boss suggested, David’s parents could go to Israel without him.
But David very much shared his parents’ dream. He had always told members of the family’s New Haven synagogue that he wanted to live in Israel one day. For 27 summers he’d basked in the Zionist atmosphere at Camp Ramah in Palmer, Massachusetts, and he was more than ready to experience the real deal.
For nearly three years now, David has worked happily and diligently on the 3 to 11 p.m. shift in the kitchen of Jerusalem’s Ramada Hotel, earning the approbation of his Arabic-speaking supervisor.
“People have been very nice here and they help me out,” says David, 44, who takes the bus or walks home from work in the wee hours and then rises early to go to minyan at any of several synagogues of which he is a paid member.
“I want everyone to know that people like David have a place in Israel and it is possible for them to find work here,” says David’s father, Stanley, although he acknowledges that these accomplishments required an active parental role. He and his wife, Donna, arranged for David’s job interview at the Ramada and fought for David’s right to attend ulpan, where he made friends and enjoyed learning Hebrew.
The parents and son are all smiles as they talk about their successful aliya while sitting in the living room of their penthouse apartment close to the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens. Donna’s cousin, brother and sister-in-law live in the same building and they often get together for Shabbat meals.
“We’re happy and contented here and we feel that David’s happy and contented here,” says Stanley in a soft Scottish accent.
In the 1950s, Stanley was vice chairman of the Federation of Zionist Youth of Great Britain and Ireland and also headed the Glasgow Young Zionist Organization. He came to Israel in 1959 at age 25 and attended a five-month live-in ulpan in Bat Galim, Haifa.
A chartered accountant, Stanley then opened a Beersheba office for a Tel Aviv accounting firm. A year later, his father took ill in Scotland and he went back to help him sell his business.
“My sister had moved to New Haven, Connecticut, where her husband was a professor at Yale, and I took my parents over to be with their grandchildren in 1965. But my father passed away six months later and I didn’t feel I could leave my mother,” says Stanley, explaining why he didn’t return to Israel.
Looking for a change of career, he founded New Haven Travel Service, which prospered over the next 40 years until he sold it in 2010.
In 1969, he met Donna Isaacs through a client. A Radcliffe graduate from New York City, she was finishing her PhD in comparative literature at Yale and had accepted a teaching post at Tel Aviv University to start in December. Thus began a long-distance relationship for the next three years, punctuated by their wedding in September 1970.
Stanley went into partnership with Promised Land Travel in Jerusalem and was able to visit frequently until Donna’s stint in Tel Aviv was over.
David was born in Connecticut just before the Yom Kippur War in 1973. The Dalnekoffs decided to stay in the United States for reasons including the special needs of their young son and their aging mothers.
“We always planned to come back,” says Donna. “In fact, we left our stuff in storage in Israel for almost 15 years until we finally shipped it to the States. So now my library of books has traveled here and back and here again.”
Meanwhile they had two more children: Daniel, who lives in Seattle with his wife and three children; and Rachel, who lives in Rockland County, New York, with her husband and three children. They touch base daily on Skype or Facetime and see one another about once a year. Rachel plans to send her kids to camp in Israel next summer.
Every Sunday morning, while Stanley takes a class in spoken Arabic at Ginot Ha’ir Community Center, Donna volunteers at the Israel Museum information desk. Stanley takes over manning the information desk in the afternoon. On Tuesdays, they go to Ginot Ha’ir for courses in S.Y. Agnon and modern Israeli literature, both taught in Hebrew. Donna also takes three courses at Matan Women’s Institute for Torah Studies and has a weekly study partner in her building.
After listening to the Hebrew news for an hour every morning, Stanley works in his home business, HeritageVideo.net, producing audiovisual personal histories for clients. At the moment, he’s working on a short movie, The Art of Giving, about the fine art Donna’s aunt and uncle bequeathed to the Israel Museum.
David joined his parents and 21 other participants last August on a kosher tour of Scotland organized by his father, but he’s quite independent. “I like to wander around the city,” he says, and he enjoys getting a bite to eat at Sam’s Bagels on Ben-Yehuda Street or at Roza in the German Colony.
Donna relates that when they were taking care of paperwork at the Absorption Ministry following their arrival in December 2014, an official pulled her aside and beckoned her into an office.
Donna was understandably nervous that something had gone awry. However, the woman simply wanted to relate that another ministry employee had noticed David and was interested in introducing him to his sister, who also has developmental disabilities. This has become the family’s favorite “only in Israel” moment. (David did date the sister for about a month, though in the end they parted ways.)
Stories like these underline Stanley’s assertion that his favorite aspect of Israel is its people. “They’re open, kind and generous,” he says.
The Dalnekoffs would love to see improvements in Israel’s banking and postal services, but overall they love everything about their new lives.
“Every day I wake up and say, ‘Am I really here?’ Every day is a blessing,” says Donna.