Aliyah

I think the weirdest part about Israel, and the thing that sets it apart from other study abroad locations, is the big emphasis on aliyah. Most people who speak fluent English in Israel, which is the vast majority of the people we meet on campus-sponsored outing or events, made aliyah at some point in their lives. Even in the Forum, amidst a very, very Hebrew-heavy "Welcome back to campus sign up for our bank/buy our books/come to our events!!!"--I turned to the older lady next to me to ask what the word for popcorn was in Hebrew (one of the stands is for the cinemateque, and they've been giving out free popcorn for the past two weeks) on Thursday, and she's American! She's from DC and her husband is from Boston. Maybe it's just because I'm in Jerusalem--I've been told that if I wanted real Israeli culture, I should have gone to Haifa--but there are a lot of olim here.

It's not just bumping into them, though, either! From my first weeks here I met people who had either just made aliyah or were about to, and the reaction they got from the other people around us--usually olim themselves--was one big "MAZEL TOV!" Last Monday I "attended" (read: went for an hour and then left due to a headache) an Idan Raichel concert sponsored by MASA, one of the organizations I'm getting money from for study abroad, and in the speeches before some Important Man told us all how he hoped we'd go back to our homes, be advocates for Israel, and then came back in a few years as olim. So then, the whole point of the MASA grant is to make Jewish kids want to move to Israel?

I have to wonder, at this point, how many native Israelis I'd meet and really speak to if I weren't interning at the Jerusalem Open House. I have yet to go to any events outside of the English Speaking Group, but once a week I'm there with Dalit and Or and Yotem, and whoever else happens to be there that day. Since my fellow intern and I have meetings with Dalit at 11:00 and I don't have class until 16:30, I can hang out there for a few hours after the meeting, soak in the atmosphere. If I wasn't there, would I really see anything but olim?