Fabulously Observant: Aliya is like coming out

With each life change, I've heard "Just wait - you're going to change your mind back."

By DAVID BENKOF
gay parade 224.88 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [file])
gay parade 224.88
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [file])
As my aliya next year approaches, I have begun to notice the similarities between deciding to move to Israel permanently and the other momentous life decision I've made: coming out as a gay man. Now, it's true that I've been celibate for eight years, starting a few years before becoming a "returnee" to Orthodox Judaism. I no longer plan on having same-sex relations or a male partner ever again. But the fact is coming out is the other major life choice I've made that has such large ramifications in my self-image and lifestyle. Even becoming Orthodox wasn't so momentous, because I had spent most of my life as a fairly observant Conservative Jew. For example, I made both key decisions in a sudden way after months and even years of little hints that it was the right thing for me to do. In coming out, there were lots of small attractions, fantasies and curiosities that added up to a decision one morning to visit my college's peer counseling center and tell a gay counselor I thought I was gay. The decision to make aliya was even more subtle, and sudden. I LITERALLY woke up one morning about a year ago with a strong desire to move to Jerusalem. The immediate impetus was a conversation with my rosh yeshiva about what jobs (all in America) l should and should not consider once I finished my advanced degree. I realized the next morning that I didn't want any of those jobs - I wanted to spend the rest of my life in Israel. But that was only the immediate cause. For months and even years little things had pointed me toward aliya, without my even noticing (consciously). A news report about a terrorist attack would have the opposite effect on me than on most people I knew - it made me wish I was in Eretz Yisrael. Hearing that a friend from yeshiva had made aliya would arouse in me a sort of jealousy. Hearing an Israeli song would make me feel what I now recognize as, well, homesickness. But I didn't put those hints together until that morning last fall when I woke up and realized, with little hesitation, that Israel was supposed to be my home from now on. The reactions of people I'm close with to both decisions has also been similar. With each life change, I've heard "Just wait - you're going to change your mind back" and "Why would you want to do this?" and "Terrific! Good for you." Finally, I've even found that the same folk song - Cat Stevens's "Father and Son" - has spoken to me at both transition points in my life. Surely the artist currently known as Yusuf Islam didn't intend to write a song about both coming out as gay and moving to Israel, but I find the lyrics have an eerie echo of the issues faced by someone going through each kind of change. HERE ARE some of the words as they relate to coming out of the closet: "It's not time to make a change, just relax take it easy You're still young... Find a girl, settle down, if you want to you can marry... How can I try to explain? When I do he turns away again. It's always been the same, same old story. From the moment I could talk, I was ordered to listen... All the times that I cried, keeping all the things I knew inside, It's hard, but it's harder to ignore it." NOW CONSIDER the lyrics from the same song, with regard to making aliya: "It's not time to make a change, just relax take it easy You're still young... Take your time, think a lot, Why, think of everything you've got. For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not... If they were right, I'd agree, but it's them they know not me. Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away. I know I have to go." DavidBenkof@aol.com