My Word: Return to sender - Advice from a younger self

There’s something to be said for being young and idealistic.

JUNE 5, 2020 09:07

NIKKY GOLDSTEIN STRASSMAN gives the 40-year-old letter back to the writer in Jerusalem last week (photo credit: Courtesy) — NIKKY GOLDSTEIN STRASSMAN gives the 40-year-old letter back to the writer in Jerusalem last week

(photo credit: Courtesy)

‘What advice would you give your younger self?” is a popular question with interviewers everywhere. I don’t have all the answers, but I have the second-best thing. In an extraordinary “Return to sender” incident, a letter I wrote to a friend 40 years ago was given back to me last week by the recipient.

Nikky Goldstein Strassman, a tour guide who found herself with much more time on her hands than she would have had in the pre-corona era, took the opportunity to do some spring cleaning and came across the letter postmarked March 1980. In it I wrote – at great length – of my experiences in a pre-army group (a Nahal garin) on Kibbutz Saad.

Nikky at the time was living in dorms and studying education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and had asked me what I thought about her doing military service in Nahal. We both made aliyah from England at age 18 in 1979, I chose to immediately join the garin while Nikky decided to study first.

We’ve known each other so long that neither of us remembers where we met. We assume it was through our activities on behalf of Soviet Jewry, the cause that we both passionately embraced in our teen years in the 1970s. We participated in marches, vigils and other demonstrations calling for the release of Jewish “Prisoners of Conscience.” And as experienced protesters watching what is happening in the US today, we can both unequivocally state that rioting and looting is not a form of protest, however legitimate the cause.

We met up last week in Jerusalem’s lovely Train Track Park as the country was easing up from the corona lockdown. Neither of us could have imagined even last year, let alone 40 years ago, that we would be wearing face masks against an invisible but nasty enemy. We’re sadly used to terrorism and real wars, but this is something different.

I didn’t appreciate at the time how close my immigration was to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which had traumatized the country, rocking the sense of security in an unprecedented way. When we came, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin had just signed on the peace treaty that although cold has thankfully held. Today, Kibbutz Saad is often described as close to the border with Gaza. In 1980, there was no border and Israelis often went there for the beautiful beaches while Gazans worked in Israel and there were strong business ties. At the time, it was residents of the North who suffered from Katyusha rockets and terrorist infiltrations. In June 1982, Operation Peace for the Galilee – what was to become known as the First Lebanon War – broke out, with a lasting impact on our generation.

REREADING THE letter today, after four decades, was like meeting my younger self.

“There’s something to be said for being young and idealistic. Now we’re ‘old’ and idealistic,” Nikky quips. Together with her husband she has four children – the youngest still serving in the IDF – and four grandchildren; while I have one son, due to start military service next year.

Although both of us are happy we came and consider ourselves full members of Israeli society, we realize it wasn’t always easy.

“Kol hahathalot kashot” (all beginnings are hard), Israelis like to comment. I say it irritatingly enough too.

Israel at the end of the 1970s was not the successful Start-Up Nation of today. Looking back, I marvel at how we managed in those early days with little Hebrew and no phone other than very public ones which needed to constantly be fed asimonim (tokens).

“If we’d had phones, you would have texted, emailed or WhatsApped the letter to me and it would be lost for posterity,” Nikky notes.

The letter itself contained personal recollections along with general impressions about life on a religious kibbutz.

“Never underestimate the difficulties of being accepted by Israelis as part of the crowd: They will probably have known each other more than a year and therefore have their own jokes and gossip about things with which you have no contact,” I warned Nikky.

“One good and bad point of Nahal is that you are very protected from general Israeli problems (especially economic and social) but it can be overprotective so that you can’t wait until your hofesh [vacation] ... just to see a falafel bar and get pushed on the bus!”

Curiously, I have no recollection of being so fond of falafel – it might have been an effort to fit in, like learning to drink my tea without milk (a statement of an end to my Englishness if ever there was one.) I do remember the buses. They were hard to forget. There was no air conditioning and smoking was permitted. Whenever the news came on the radio, the driver would turn the volume up for the passengers’ benefit.

My younger self told a younger Nikky that it was the best of times and the worst of times. I obviously yearned now and again to escape from the close confines of the kibbutz and see new faces in the big city (not that the cities were that big then) but I had enjoyed the excursions, singing around a campfire – yes, in a religious Bnei Akiva garin, boys and girls sang together – and the “general balagan.” I obviously picked up the Hebrew word for a mess very quickly.

I didn’t so much offer Nikky conflicting advice as spell out my conflicting experiences and tell her that ultimately she had to make up her own mind. I left the garin a few months later, not long after basic training, and went into the regular army.

Nikky also learned from my experiences. She decided to skip Nahal and ended up in the Education Corps. This was the result, she later tells me, of her own letter writing.

With chutzpah (or initiative) she still finds surprising – “It was self-made proteksia” – when she was finishing her degree she wrote to IDF chief of staff Raphael (Raful) Eitan and the head of the Education Corps, Joseph (Yos) Eldar, to ask what she could do in the army. Eldar, who also received the letter that Raful forwarded him, was impressed enough to invite her to an interview, where he told her she could teach him about being a Zionist. He presented her with two possibilities, serving as a soldier-teacher or as a mashakit havaya, an NCO who led trips and explained about the history and geography of the country. She took the latter path and – when there are tourists – still literally works in the field as a tour guide.

Like mine, Nikky’s army service was not easy but neither of us regretted having enlisted.

“It taught me a lot about Israeli society,” she says.

Given the recent reports of the increased number of people thinking of making aliyah, we pondered what advice we would give new immigrants. (Remember, we came to Israel before the age of Nefesh B’Nefesh and other organizations helping newcomers.)

Both of us agree that the most important thing is to learn as much Hebrew as you can before you come. And once in Israel, the guiding principle should be: Don’t compare. Consider what looking back did for Mrs. Lot. Don’t give in to the temptation of comparing the size of your home, job and lifestyle in Israel with what you left behind or might have had. (If nothing else, corona has shown us all that there are no guarantees anywhere in life.)

Dare to take control of your own fate as much as you can. There are some circumstances you can’t change but there are many more that are up to you. I’m still a firm believer in drawing up lists of pluses and minuses when I need to take a tough decision.

Four decades after I wrote to her, let me give Nikky the last words of advice: “Be idealistic, stick to your principles, and just believe that you can do things.”

And, we both agree, never underestimate the lasting power of writing letters.

liat@jpost.com