Home and Away: An American In Israel

Getting Hosed On Independence Day

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 01 May 2012 17:03:00 +0000

Abigail Pickus

Special To The Jewish Week

As Israel celebrates its 64th year with joy and a haze of barbecue smoke, it’s easy to feel nostalgic.

After all, the creation of Israel is nothing short of a miracle. To think, on the heels of such destruction, to finally have a country of our own!

That despite the setbacks and the many innocent people who have lost their lives, what a thriving and impressive country Israel is. A real start-up nation.

Israel Israel at 64 Israel Independence Day

The Drive To Fit In

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 15:42:48 +0000

Home and Away: An American In Israel

Abigail Pickus

Special To The Jewish Week

A funny thing has come over me recently.

I’m suddenly way into cars.

Well, let me qualify that. I’m not into cars. I don’t particularly like to drive them and I never liked to ride in them. In fact, I’m the world’s worst passenger on account of a certain vomiting problem.

But it’s like I’ve opened my four eyes for the first time and noticed that Jerusalem is chock-full of the cutest little cars I’ve ever seen. Or maybe it’s that the country suddenly erupted in adorable specimens of motor vehicles.

Chance Of Snow

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 17:58:00 +0000

Home and Away: An American In Israel

Abigail Pickus

Special To The Jewish Week

It was supposed to snow in Jerusalem.

You can imagine the excitement!

And by “excitement” I mean that all the good and honest people of Jerusalem were practically working themselves into a frenzy.

I even received a text message telling me that because of the impending “storm” my newspaper would not be delivered. Three days away!

“Oh, they get crazy here when it snows,” an Israeli told me. She was standing in my kitchen with one hand on her hip and the other pantomiming the universal sign for cuckoo.

‘Good’ For Israel?

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:07:16 +0000

Home and Away: An American In Israel

Abigail Pickus

Special To The Jewish Week

‘Where to?” the cabbie asked.

Since I was running late to meet someone in the Old City, a place perpetually bewitching and confusing to me, it was worth my shelling out the extra moola to have a driver take me as close as possible to my destination without actually hitting the Western Wall.

Which is sadly kind of possible, considering they let cars drive in alleyways there that are barely big enough for a mule. A very skinny mule.

But this is actually a column about Obama.

Look To The Rainbow

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 18:50:50 +0000

Home and Away: An American In Israel

Abigail Pickus

Special To The Jewish Week

It was date-night Saturday night and we were set to spend a rockin’ evening in Rosh Pina.

We even had a car.

Which is another way of saying, when one is visiting relatives in the Galilee, which, however beautiful and verdant, is nonetheless no Tel Aviv, why not hop, skip and jump it over to what was once one of Israel’s oldest Zionist agricultural communities and hang with one’s fellow senior citizens at the Cinematheque?

Running The Shabbos Gauntlet

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 23:46:56 +0000

Home and Away: An American In Israel

Abigail Pickus

Special To The Jewish Week

The thing about Shabbat in Jerusalem is that it’s lousy with holiness.

So holy, in fact, that the streets, normally bursting with honking drivers, on Shabbat becomes a sea of families pushing baby strollers and sauntering hither, thither and yon in their holiday finest.

Gilad And Me

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 16:47:00 +0000

Home and Away: An American In Israel

Abigail Pickus

Special To The Jewish Week

News that Gilad Shalit would finally be going home after five long and cruel years in captivity had just reached Israel and the entire country was rejoicing.

Except for me. Because at that precise moment, I was oblivious, waiting for my aunt to join me at Ben Gurion Airport to board a flight to the States.

“Something’s going on!” my aunt clued me in once she found me. A longtime resident of the Galilee, she had taken the train to the airport where she had discovered the good news through osmosis.

Gilad Shalit

A Sense Of Belonging

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 16:57:44 +0000

Home and Away: An American In Israel

Abigail Pickus

Special To The Jewish Week

There is nothing like waking up to the siren song of the shofar to remind me that I’m not in Chicago any more.

Which is another way of saying, if I had forgotten that I had up and moved to Jerusalem, suddenly, I remembered.

It could have something to do with the fact that my bedroom is so close to a synagogue that when they blew the shofar during morning minyan every day this month of Elul, I felt like my bed had catapulted out the window and flown straight into the middle of the sanctuary, hovering mid-air near the bima.

Where The Ends Aren’t Meeting

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 17:52:54 +0000

Home and Away: An American In Israel

Abigail Pickus

Special To The Jewish Week

‘Did you know that people in Israel are out protesting because only a few families control the entire country?” asked someone who shall remain nameless.

Let’s just say, she’s related to me.

“Oh, she just read the Ethan Bronner article in The New York Times, so suddenly she’s discovered the protests in Israel,” said my girlfriend knowingly. Her relatives back home in America pull similar stunts.

The Road Taken

Dani Shetrit — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 18:45:00 +0000

Home and Away: An American In Israel

Abigail Pickus

Special To The Jewish Week

I was lost.

Again.

If you want to know the truth, I’ve spent most of my life lost, and I’m not being profound.

Which explains why I got completely turned around somewhere in Afula.

Of course, I blamed the map. Where was that sneaky little Route 71 that the map had so magnanimously promised? And why, instead, was I stuck at a fork in the road with two other choices that eluded me?

Naturally, I turned to the gentleman in the car next to me for help.

That’s No Ordinary Lemon In The Juicer

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 21:00:00 +0000

Home and Away: An American In Israel

Abigail Pickus

Special To The Jewish Week

What is sickness? asks the Etrog Man.

Unhappiness. Worries. Pressure.

That’s what ails us in the 21st century.

But the Etrog Man, whose real name is Uzi-Eli, wants to counteract all of that.

“I want people to live healthier lives,” he tells me. “I want to help people from the inside out.”

Accent Marks

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 31 May 2011 17:28:00 +0000

Home and Away: An American In Israel

Abigail Pickus

Special To The Jewish Week

All I wanted was a blessing from the rabbi so that I would finally find my husband.

But it wasn’t that simple. Nothing in Israel ever is.

Because to get to the rabbi, you had to go through his assistant, and by “going through” his assistant I mean, you had to repeatedly call some man who kept telling you to call back in an hour.

And by you, I mean me.

But this is a story about the Hebrew language. Or more specifically, about being a 30-something American who relocates later in life to the land of the Hebrew speakers.

aliyah Israel

The Raw Truth About The Jewish State

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 03 May 2011 18:40:00 +0000

Home and Away: An American In Israel

Abigail Pickus

Special To The Jewish Week

There I was on a kibbutz nestled in the lush greenery of the Galilee and all I could think about was food.

Maybe it’s because my idea of a good time is to go to a raw food spa. And when I say “raw food SPA” what I mean is, I was starving, people. Seriously.
I was so hungry, I was almost in tears.

I was so hungry that I was wasting away, on account of something dreadful called a “juice fast.”

“And you paid top shekel to starve to death?” asked my sympathetic friends.

When The Bubble Bursts

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 19:31:04 +0000

Home and Away: An American In Israel

Abigail Pickus

Special To The Jewish Week

The 12-year-old girl was seated on the couch across from me, clinging to her mother, her posture helpless and afraid. She’s what they really mean when they say the words “Arab-Israeli conflict,” I thought to myself, trying to maintain a professional mien as I nodded authoritatively, jotted down a few notes, and pretended that I wasn’t about to burst into tears.

aliyah Israel Kassam rockets Sderot Terrorism

Fame, Israel Style

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 18:12:59 +0000

Home and Away: An American In Israel

Abigail Pickus

Special To The Jewish Week

‘See that guy over there?” my friend asked, nodding towards the table behind us. “I think he’s famous.”

I turned to have myself a look, which wasn’t difficult considering the Jerusalem café we were packed into was about the size of the skirts sashaying around a Silvio Berlusconi party.

And lo and behold, the guy with the slightly Russell Crowe-esque face, deep in conversation with a table full of rough-and-tumble Israeli men, all of them smoking, did look familiar to me.

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