Noting from my badge that I was a "Speaker" from "Israel" and my American-accented English, countless delegates at the Hadassah Women's Zionist Organization of America's 94th national convention ask me: "So how long have you been away from home?"
When I reply "26 years," every one of them is flabbergasted and asks, "How could you stay away from the country of your birth for so long?" In fact, when they ask for details, I explain that my last arrival in the US, in the winter of 1982, was to cover the state visit of the fifth president of Israel Yitzhak Navon.
"Israel is such an exciting country that I didn't want to miss anything," is my standard answer. But, in fact, my full reply would have been: "I am an Israeli. Having being part of the majority in the Jewish state since February 1973, I have not been keen to be part of a minority, even for a short time."
And that is exactly what I felt during my recent week's visit to the US, three days with relatives in Westchester, a New York suburb, and four days in Los Angeles. So estranged and alien did I feel that not even once did I ask to be photographed there.
I certainly can't claim to have "discovered America" during a week's stay on the East and west coasts - without having seen anything between. But my temporary return gave a kind of perspective to changes that might not be noticed by someone who goes there regularly. And as a veteran journalist who tries to pick up details and early trends that others might miss, I hoped to get a feel for the country.
My, how things have changed!
I had not even contemplated seeing the US again until I interviewed Nancy Falchuk, the national president of HWZOA, in Jerusalem. At the end of our conversation, she asked me when I had last been in the US and seen what Hadassah does - and she too was shocked by my answer. "I will do something about that," she said. Not long after, I received her personal invitation to participate in the convention, as well as to address delegates. I decided to cover the event as well, since as the Post's health and science reporter I knew very well what a massive, positive impact HWZOA and its beneficiaries - the Hadassah Medical Organization, the Hadassah College of Technology, Youth Aliya, Young Judaea and numerous others - have had on the state and people of Israel.
As a Zionist and modern Orthodox Jew who believes every Jew should live in Israel, I nevertheless went to the US with an objective, open mind. But my trip gave me doubts whether HWZOA, as well as much less powerful and committed American Jewish organizations (except for those that are Orthodox or haredi) will exist in another generation or two. I would not be surprised if - due to growing assimilation, intermarriage and the low Jewish birthrate - its 120th national convention will not be held in 2034; sadly, Hadassah could cease to exist by then.
BRUCHIM HABA'IM in Hebrew letters was one of the greetings on the videoscreen in front of my Continental Airlines seat - along with similar greetings in Spanish, French, Arabic and a variety of other languages when I landed at New Jersey's Newark Airport. It was certainly a warmer welcome than that accorded my late father, then about six years old, at Ellis Island. He and his older sister were taken by their mother from Palestine just before the British Mandate began to the US after an older brother died of starvation in Safed, where the family had been living since they arrived from Prague in 1780 and even survived the town's devastating 1832 earthquake. My grandmother, aunt and father had left to join my paternal grandfather, who had made his way a few years earlier to New York and then Baltimore to make a living and send for his family.
After many weeks in steerage under horrible conditions, my father was green in the face, and officials at Ellis Island were not inclined to admit another Jew when America was about to clamp down on immigration quotas to halt the deluge of by-then-unwanted newcomers. They were about to send my father back where he came from. But my grandmother pinched his cheeks until they were red.
My father learned English, excelled in Jewish schools and received rabbinical ordination from Yeshiva University. He served as a chaplain to US troops in the Pacific during World War II and reached the rank of colonel in the US Army reserves. He would have been pleased to know, less than a year after his premature death, that his two children had made aliya, married native-born Israelis and produced his 12 Hebrew-speaking grandchildren.
As prearranged, I was picked up at Newark Airport by Al, a professional driver born in Colombia and a US citizen for more than 20 years. "This is a wonderful country," he told me. He had passed a qualifying test about American history and English comprehension to become a citizen, he beamed. Yet being an American was not so easy. The high price of gasoline, the unemployment, sinking economy, violence and crime, he said, were sometimes overwhelming.
On the drive through New York City, Al assured me it had become much safer and cleaner than I had known it. I had no urge to detour to Ocean Parkway in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, where I had grown up - and Italians, secular Jews, Syrian and modern Orthodox Jews mingled in sweet coexistence. Now, I had been told, wealthy and insular haredim had bought up many properties and built little mansions there. My Yeshiva University High School for Girls had long ago disappeared, replaced by another Zionist yeshiva day school that, due to the lack of pupils, is moving and soon will be replaced by a haredi school.
Beyond the Bronx lay leafy, wealthy Westchester. We reached the suburb where my cousin and her husband have been living with their three children for over a decade. Nearly 100 years ago, Jews had been barred from owning homes there to due to anti-Semitism; today, parts of it have a Jewish population reaching 50 percent.
Huge homes, often with only a handful of people living in a dozen or more large rooms and green lawns all around, rise up on both sides of the streets. There are no sidewalks, as residents rarely go about on foot; they go almost everywhere in their two or three gas-guzzling SUVs or imported cars. From the looks of it, the US auto industry is in big trouble. Landscaped gardens carved out from a forest present animal life I am no longer used to: robins, chipmunks, squirrels and fireflies, which light up the darkening sky as Shabbat departs at a late hour.
