Immigration Bureaucracy

The truth is that we would not be living in Israel now if not for my brother-in-law. We would have likely given up back in May after a few frustrating calls to the ministry of absorption, internal affairs or education. Everyone was very polite and understanding but no one was able to give definite answers to our questions. As much as we tried we couldn't sign the kids to schools in advance, left with a risk that a 39 student class in the neighborhood school may be filled (to 40) and we would need to drive one of the kids to a different school. Even with a universal and free medical insurance policy in Israel we could not get any assurance that on the 7th months of pregnancy I will be eligible to medical insurance as soon as I stepped down from the plane. We were getting brief refusals (rejected the status of Returning Citizen) without any explanation. Phone calls to ElAl, which was supposed to proudly bring us back home on a discounted rate, were stuck after a few selections leading to a dead line.

Imagine doing this while still working full time, trying to sell the house, finding a place to live in Israel, managing kids' school and activities, possibly looking for a job here, planning to ship your all posessions - and you may very well give up right at that moment. Life is good enough in Boston. Why fight through such resistance? We were angry, disappointed, exhausted and we almost gave up. But it was spring - the season of high hopes and endeavor, plus we had a guarding angel with a sword.

My husband's brother has been through such immigration process with his family a few years ago returning from a dream-like Central park apartment back to Israel. He is also a lawyer by training and unlike us is very verse in understanding and interpreting the law, using his wit to get to people in high places and persuading them to help him. He has been calling us daily well aware of the fragile nature of the process and guiding us through the confusing maze of the steps. I should admit that even with his enormous help almost nothing has been accomplished before we arrived but at least we got to learn why and prepare an itemized plan of action set in place as soon as we stepped in Israel.

When we arrived my brother-in-law took a week off and patiently drove us daily to tens of various offices: social security, ministry of internal affairs, ministry of education, medical insurance agency, luggage taxation, bank where we slowly managed to put our life back in place. He taught us where and how to park (a crucial survival skill in Tel Aviv) and where to grab a bite in-between to remind ourselves why we really came to live here.

Three months into the adventure and we are almost there. We learn to know our rights, to demand and to follow up after every fax or phone conversation. We also learn to be patient because the year is really just starting now, after the long holidays. Half of our kids' teachers still have no clue that they have some alien creatures in their class for whom Hebrew is not a native tongue. But as soon as we take it upon ourselves and tell them, they hug the kids, share their home phone and promise that everything will be all right.

And while such "all right" promises made me really angry in the US - I wanted to know when exactly, how and at what price it will be all right - we learned to live with it here.  Because things do work out at the end, somehow... Not in a straight and structured way of law we used to in the US, but through the help of caring, welcoming and passionate people. 

High holidays with the family: the best of it, the worst of it, plus the food.

Proximity to the family has always been a big source of discussion for all the Israelis in the US who, like us, found themselves bringing up their kids half way across the world from the rest of their relatives. The arguments were:

• Kids need a family to be loved by.  They also need someone (other than webkinz)  to reciprocate with affection and care.  The larger this circle of love and support is, the more comfort and confidence it gives our kids. However, this love is also expressed through the smoochy lipsticky kisses from your aunt and you being called strange chicken names like"Kapara sheli."
• Who are we going to invite to our son's Bar Mitzvah? Not enough relatives in the US, too many relatives in Israel.
• Parents are getting older and it is so difficult to advise, support and help them from across the ocean.  On the other hand we can provide them with a secondary medical opinion and some material support from the US.
• Israel offers a plenitude of family babysitters. Chess or biking with grandpa is priceless. But don't be surprised that your kids have learned a song from grandma about teacher's underwear by the morning. Or that your mom told your son that boys don't cry.
• Need help moving furniture? If this would be in Israel I could call my brother, brother-in-law or my uncle.  Whom can I call here on a spur of the moment? At the same time, no favors taken means no favors returned.
• You are used to getting family phone calls once-a-week, in Israel everyone will be calling you daily.
• Your weekends, they belong to you in the US. In Israel, they are shorter and they belong to your extended family.

All these short previews we played in our heads turned into realistic melodramas since we arrived to Israel.  However, while in the dark cold night in Boston we were focusing on the worst of it, waking up in sweat, terrified of the consequences of the decision we made, the reality turned out to be much more pleasant and manageable. Kids really enjoy seeing grandparents on a weekly basis. A grandma stopping by for lunch (and bringing delicious food with her!), grandpa coming to babysit anytime we need to go out, grandma playing the tooth fairy, another grandpa on call with any Tanakh questions. While our kids' social life here are still fragile, the friendship and care of the family pad them with enough self-confidence to be very happy.


There are of course challenges. During the holidays we are laughed at when we are trying to explain that seeing the family day after day is too much for everyone. I go berserk observing the typical Middle Eastern table chauvinism with women cooking, serving men and cleaning the dishes off the table and trying my best to make sure our kids do not absorb it.  My Sephardic mother-in-law is reprimanding me for not folding my husband's clothes in his closet, while my Ashkenazi mother is openly showing her surprise that my husband's academic position does not come with car benefits like management positions in the industry. Taking this all with a sense of humor and some understanding helps us stay calm.


To our surprise, we are enjoying time with the family much more than we anticipated.  While we have been concentrating on the benefits it can bring our kids, we completely forgot how much calm, happiness and sense of purpose it can bring to us and our relatives. 


Binding all the family gatherings is of course food. Large potluck meals with 2-3-4 tables assembled in a row. When our 16 piece Crate&Barrel plate set is not enough.  When everyone brings large bags with homemade bread, salads, quiches, chicken, meat, fish, hummus or desserts and everyone takes someone else's dishes left-overs for the day after.  These are meals that tell family stories. Here are some dishes from our Sukkot gathering:


Moroccan soup (Chrira - Silk) from my sister-in-law


1 kg beef meat 
3-4 bones
1 cup brown peas
1 cup hummus beans from the can (or dried hummus that have been put in water overnight)
2 cups of fresh tomatoes crashed in blender
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup lemon juice
4 liter water
1 cup noodles
1 head celery
1 bunch of parsley
1 bunch cilantro
3 onions, diced and fried
1.5 teaspoons black pepper
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
salt


Dry and clean canned hummus beans from any transparent shell.
Add meat, bones, peas and water and boil for 2 hours on a medium fire.
Meanwhile dice and fry onions.
After 2 hours add onions, celery, cilantro and the rest of ingredients into the soup and boil for additional 30 mins
5 min before the soup is done, add noodles and flour mixed with 1/2 cup of water.


Delicious eggs stuffed with mushrooms from my mom's collection (Russians love mushrooms and know how to pick them and cook them)


10-12 eggs. To my surprise eggs are sold in dozens in Israel despite the use of the metric system.
400 gram of any mushrooms,
2 large onions
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 teaspoons sugar


boil hard eggs and remove the shell
cut each egg in two halves, removing egg yolk into a large salad bowl
mush all the egg yolks in the bowl
dice and fry onions and add to the yolks
cut mushrooms into small pieces and fry, adding soy sauce and sugar when they start to brown
add mushrooms to the yolks
mix all the ingredients in the bowl, adding mayo
place all the egg white halves on the flat plate
make little balls from the mix in the bowl and fill the yolk holes in the whites
refrigerate, take out of the fridge an hour before serving




Colorful salad from my dear Bostonian friend Julia (kids friendly - they are always happy to help make it and gladly eat it)


use equal volume of hard  boiled eggs, radishes and cucumbers
cut them all in equal size small pieces
add salt and mayo
serve in a transparent bowl to enjoy the purple-green-white-and yellow mix


Chicken in Cola sauce from our Israeli friend in Boston - Amit Milshtein

Fry onions (cut to rings) in a little vegetable oil.(2-3 onions)

Add soy sauce to the browning onions (half a cup)

Add thinly sliced garlic cloves (the more the better)

Throw in some boneless skinless chicken thighs 

Add coke (half to full cup).

Add some chili powder and black pepper.

Close the pot and let cook for 30 minutes.

You could also add some dry plums with the chicken, if you like it.

This can also be cooked in the oven, if you just throw all the above ingredients in a bowl, mix and let them marinate for an ghour in the refrigerator, then throw them all in a baking pan, cover with aluminum foil and cook for one hour. At the end remove the alum foil and let it get a little crispy on top.

Salmon with Maple Glaze (a Gourmet recipe. Remember there used to be such an amazing food magazine...)


Need: 1 large salmon

glaze:
1/2 cup maple syrop
1 tablespoon ginger
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1.2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon minced garlic

scallions or parceley for decoration

In a small heavy saucepan simmer all the glaze ingredients for about 20 mins and let cool.

Clean salmon, cut into slices, salt, and put in a lightly-oiled shallow pan for broiling. Broil in the stove or grill without the sauce till salmon looks ready and no longer rare in the middle. Put a teasppon of sauce on top of each salmon piece and decorate with scallions when serving. Serve the remainder of the sauce aside so people can pour more on the plate.

White in October and some rules of Israeli etiquette that we learned

Nights are becoming cooler but midday is still hot and humid. To us it is a continuation of a long summer and I enjoy wearing white weeks after Labor Day. (It is an American tradition to wear white shoes and clothes only during summer crowned between the Memorial and Labor Days)  But October here is so warm and clean that white reflective linen, cotton and silk are still the most comfortable materials.  Unlike me, some fashionable locals are already using this small drop in the temperatures (around 80 F now) to switch sandals to high ankle boots.

Mediterranean sea here is a privilege. It is so pleasantly and surprisingly warm (after Atlantic and Pacific oceans), beaches are clean, sandy and shallow. However waves are always dangerously high allowing for dipping, jumping, surfing, boogie-boarding but not swimming. We are lucky to live just 10 mins away but given that the country is narrowly stretched along the sea, you can get to the beach in 1 hour from almost any location. We still fantasize about the beach more than we go there. Routine daily life is expectantly hectic and most of the Israelis have to challenge themselves to get to the beaches more often.

Kids are finally happily go to and from school yet still think and talk about their American friends more than about their local buddies. Just today Naor mentioned that if we end up going back to the US, he would like us to live in the Boston area. Nadia attended her first class birthday party, after a lot of encouragement. She really enjoyed it and we all learned a few rules of Israeli etiquette:

1. Everyone was invited and everyone came (30 or 40 kids!) No RSVP was required.
2. Party was on a school day, at 5pm, in the park. Almost everyone showered and changed from the school uniform to a fancy clothing. We didn't...
3. There was a store-ordered pizza and home-made chocolate cake. You heard it: home-made! I love home-made cakes and cupcakes and we usually made them in the US for small home birthday parties but I do not recollect any large scale event for 20+ kids or adults than didn't have store-bought sheet cake with a disgusting colorful frosting. I should start practicing making chocolate cakes for my kids' birthdays in April.
4. Another surprise: no goody bags.

We invited a family from Naor's class for Friday night dinner and at the end of the dinner, after a few beers, the father admitted that he realized we spend a lot of time abroad when the dinner invitation arrived via email two weeks in advance (instead of a casual phone call or instant message a day before) and the invitation was for Friday night - time customary set aside for family gatherings. Saturday lunch or dinner turns out to be more appropriate for non-family friends.