'South Africa is home'

"If I were to leave, it would be to the US. But South Africa is not that bad."

By RICKY BEN-DAVID
Michelle Purwitsky, 26, is not interested in making aliya, ever. "If I were to leave, it would be to the US. But South Africa is not that bad. Everything is talked about in such an exaggerated way," she says. Michelle and her sister Nicole, 23, grew up in Johannesburg and went to a public school that had mostly Jewish students. They go to an Orthodox synagogue, keep kashrut and want to raise their children Jewish. But to them, "Israel is a place, not home. South Africa is home," says Michelle. "We don't buy into the whole 'Israel is the home of the Jewish people' angle. It's like saying all the Chinese people should go live in China," says Nicole. Growing up, the girls were uninterested in youth movements and Jewish camps. "It looked like a bunch of indoctrination to us. If they sent you to Israel, then you had to come back and do community service. It wasn't for us," says Michelle. Their parents, Clare and David, claim that it is easy to be Jewish in South Africa. They doubt it is like that in Israel. "We'd love to go there for a visit but we would not live there." What about the Zionist dream? "The frummest people we know went to Australia! What does that tell you?" says Michelle.