Goodbye America

Introduction

The songs of our youth accompany us throughout our lives, releasing buried memories as they resurface at unexpected moments. One such song, whose opening words have given this book its title, was a refrain I sang constantly throughout the summer of 1973. I was fourteen at the time, and it was my second summer at Yemin Orde, the Youth Aliyah village located in the Carmel Mountain range, near the artists’ colony of Ein Hod, some twenty minutes south of Haifa. Together with an American Jewish youth group, I spent that summer participating in “the real Israeli experience,” sharing a Spartan dorm room with three other girls, showering in open-plan showers, and eating on industrial plastic plates in the communal dining room.

With our days spent half in class and half in the pool at nearby kibbutz Beit Oren, our group’s big thrill was the “overnighter.” At least once a week, in the late afternoon, we would march down the hill from Yemin Orde to a large field bordered by a lane of giant date palms where we would spend the night under the starry Mediterranean skies. “Goodbye America, goodbye forever, welcome to Is-ra-EL” we would sing over and over while following the winding road down what had become “our mountain.” The Austrian Alps may have been alive with the sound of music, but that year, the Carmel Mountains rang with the voices of sixty American Jewish teenagers enthusiastically declaring their fealty to the Jewish State.

Hearing us sing as we set off one time, Yemin Orde’s Director, Yitzhak Meir,¹ remarked in jest that our “forever” was somewhat limited, in view of the fact that we would be returning to New York in less than five weeks. But as we marched past, carrying our backpacks and sleeping bags, he and I shared a private smile. Hearing that my parents had bought an apartment in Israel and were eventually planning to make aliyah (immigrate to Israel), he had already taken me under his wing, inviting me for a Shabbat (Sabbath) meal with his family, and introducing me to immigrant girls ←9 | 10→from France and Morocco for whom Yemin Orde was home. Listening to our marching song for the first time, he later told me in Hebrew, the language in which we always conversed: “About the other boys and girls in your group I’m not so sure, but before you know it, your ‘forever’ will indeed be forever.” He was correct. Within twelve months I had left New York with my parents, saying “Goodbye Forever” to my country of birth when we moved to Israel.

Our immigration did not take place in a vacuum. We were part of a larger movement of some 60,000 Americans who had made aliyah to Israel since the State’s establishment, over half of whom had come between the Israeli victory in the Six-Day War of June 1967 and the late 1970s. Many of them did not say “goodbye forever,” and eventually returned to the United States. More than a third of the American olim (immigrants) who came to Israel between 1967 and 1973 ended up leaving the country, and the numbers were even greater for those coming after that date.² But at least half of them remained in Israel, making it their home for the rest of their lives.

Who were these immigrants? Studies of American olim in Israel of that period show their geographical origin to be representative of the American Jewish population of that time, with the immigrants from the northeast somewhat surpassing those from other areas. The vast majority were American-born, with anywhere between 14% and 30% having begun their lives outside the United States. Most were under thirty-five and there appears to have been an overrepresentation of females, other than among the very young and those over sixty-five. By and large, the immigrants were educated; most families had three children or more. At the time of their immigration, they were primarily Democrats, the vast majority was Orthodox, and most had visited Israel at least once.³

What made them come to Israel? As sociologist Chaim I. Waxman notes in his study of American aliyah: “Rarely there is one motivation […]. Invariably there are a variety of factors involved […] every migratory movement is motivated by the migrants feeling of some type of insecurity ←10 | 11→and inadequacy in his original social setting.”⁴ To this he adds that “Israel usually had a special meaning for them.”

American immigrants of that period were characterized by additional traits. Most remained overwhelmingly urban, continued to identify as Americans, and wished to retain that identity even after they assimilated into parts of Israeli culture. A large number of older olim came to Israel with a low level of proficiency in Hebrew and were unable to learn much of the language after immigrating.⁵ Some older olim, knowing Yiddish, were able to read Hebrew fluently after attending ulpan (Hebrew language school), yet they hardly understood a word of what they read. As my mother learned to her dismay, knowing how to read the Hebrew alphabet was very different than mastering modern Israeli Hebrew.

* * *

This book tells the story of eighteen American young women who ended up saying “Goodbye Forever” to their country of origin when they moved to Israel sometime between 1967 and 2017. All were between fifteen and forty-five years old. Some came to Israel because of ideological Zionist beliefs. Others were “dragged” there by their parents. A third group came because “Israel is the religious Jewish homeland.” For some, it was also a solution to various issues they were facing in America which they hoped would be solved by changing locale, along the lines of mishaneh makom, mishaneh mazal (“change of venue, change of luck”). Whatever their reasons were for taking this step, making aliyah was a major turning point in all their lives.

The women whose chapters appear in this volume come from very different backgrounds and geographical trajectories. Some are Orthodox, others are traditional or secular. Most were born between 1940 and 1985; some, but not all, lived in various cities near or on the East Coast. Authors include first-, second-, third-, and fourth-generation Americans. A number are children of Holocaust survivors. Some work in formal and informal education, academia, literature, the private and public sectors, and the medical profession. Others are retired professionals.

The women writing in this volume fall into three categories. The first made aliyah as teenagers and as part of a family group, either during or ←11 | 12→right after high school. Some had unmarried siblings who moved to Israel separately. Others had married siblings who remained in America. By moving to Israel in a family group, most reaped the benefits of having a social (or financial) security net by not being completely alone after their move. But they were also burdened with challenges that those coming alone didn’t experience: having their own absorption influenced by that of their family, the added burden of responsibility for older or younger family members, or limitations stemming from the nature of their family unit, to mention just a few.

Why focus on these categories of women immigrants? Because all had been old enough to be influenced by American culture, while being young enough to acclimatize in their new homeland. In practice, some ←12 | 13→ultimately preferred speaking Hebrew, including with their children, while others were die-hard English speakers. Some consider themselves culturally Israeli, others still feel more American, while a third group identifies as a hybrid, either equally comfortable or uncomfortable in both cultures.

The idea to write a book about American Jewish women who made aliyah has two sets of roots. The first was professional and is connected to my training as a historian. Many years ago, I decided that at some point in my career I would write about “my aliyah.” At the time I was not referring to my personal aliyah experiences but rather to this history of “my immigration wave,” in other words, the (at that time) hitherto overlooked immigration of American Jews to Israel after the Yom Kippur war of 1973. Several years later, my friend and colleague Chaim Waxman did more than that, publishing a prominent and comprehensive study of American aliyah as a migration movement, focusing not only on the immigration wave that I had been part of, that of 1974–1982 (taking place between the Yom Kippur and First Lebanese wars), but including those coming earlier and later.⁶

He wasn’t the only one. Gerald Engel had already examined the early years of American immigration to Israel, American and Canadian Jews who made aliyah between 1950 and 1966,⁷ and Maxine Sellers would later explore the lives of early olim looking back.⁸ In addition, a number of American-Israeli authors have written memoirs of their own aliyah experiences and those of others. These include Joan Cass,⁹ veteran author Ruth Seligman,¹⁰ Daniel Gordis,¹¹ and Liel Leibovitz.¹² None, however, ←13 | 14→explored the personal and professional world of American women who made aliyah, and how they view their past and present.

Initially, I thought to write a book about aliyah from America after the Yom Kippur war through the lens of my own experiences, but having edited or contributed to a number of collective academic autobiographies,¹³ I ultimately chose a different format. Instead of being the book’s author I decided to become its editor, broadening its chronology and participants. Having spent years specializing in Gender and Women’s studies, I decided to compile a collective autobiography of women who had made aliyah from the United States over a fifty-year period, from 1967, the year of the Six-Day War, until 2017, the year I began conceptualizing this project. Turning initially to close friends with whom I had long discussed our immigration experiences, I then approached family members, friends, acquaintances, and finally, friends of friends, to see if they were interested in participating in such a volume. In almost all cases, they agreed with alacrity.

I soon found myself not only editing a volume, but creating a “community.” The project began taking form just as Covid-19 turned our lives upside down, but at the same time, moving us closer together, at least virtually. From the initial plan to hold face-to-face workshops as preparation ←14 | 15→for the book, we switched to zoom meetings, making it easier for women situated all over the country to meet in the evening, once a month, and discuss their aliyah experiences. From a diverse group of women, most of whom were connected to me, they gradually became a virtual community, now connected through me. As we read out our opening paragraphs and discussed what parts of our stories we wished to emphasize and what we preferred to omit, we grew closer. Differences in age, geography, background, and religious observance began to blur, in view of the strong ties of mutual experiences connecting us.

This volume is divided into three sections, corresponding to the participants’ personal histories. The first, entitled “We Came With Our Parents,” contains three personal essays, or “ego-documents” in academic parlance, describing the lives of three women – Aura Hammer, Chani Preizler, and ←15 | 16→Prof. Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz – who came to Israel in their teens together with their families. Aura and Judith came in the middle of high school; Chani had completed her high school studies a year early. All were old enough to have absorbed American culture, norms, and expectations and young enough to be completely absorbed into Israeli society if they so wished. But did they? None of them had initiated the decision to move to Israel, and there were those who even opposed the move. These elements would play a part in all of their aliyah experiences and stories.