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Aaron Leibel, on his Israeli Cats

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My wife, Bonnie, is a cat person, and, over the years, her creatures have been nice enough to let the two of us share their homes.

For those not familiar with felines, they’re like dogs, except when a bad guy tries to break into the house, they don’t bark. Instead, they run for cover and stay hidden until the danger has passed.

Don’t misunderstand me, I love our animals — at the present time, it’s Trevor and Glenda — and I try not to hold their species against them. After all, they didn’t ask nature (I doubt if the Almighty is anxious to take credit for them) to make them cats.

On the positive side, my long association with Bonnie’s felines have helped to increase my understanding of, and compassion for, the idle and the unemployed.

But my love does not match Bonnie’s Just let me say that if you believe in reincarnation, pray to come back as one her cats. You couldn’t do any better.

Our first foray into the world of cats in Israel was our adoption in the late 1970s of an orange tomcat whom the daughters insisted on naming “Mickey.” One warm summer evening, the window was open in our sixth-floor apartment in the Neve Ya’akov neighborhood in Jerusalem, and Mickey was on the window’s ledge. Maybe he jumped, trying to get away from the cloying affection of the females in the apartment or from the shame of his name, or, perhaps, he fell — I was never able to determine.

In any case, my distraught women immediately had me scurrying downstairs to scrape up Mickey’s body so that he would be given a Jewish (cat’s) funeral. But to all our surprises, I found nothing in the garden into which the cat had plunged.

So, apparently, Mickey had survived his long fall, joining the many wild cats in our neighborhood trying to eke out a living from the scraps in the garbage dumpsters and seeking companionship from those felines of the other sex.

He apparently was very successful in the latter enterprise —he was not spayed before we got him — for we spotted many orange kittens in our neighborhood in the ensuing years.

But I digress. It seems as if Bonnie’s love for felines has been passed down genetically to our daughters — especially to Abby, daughter number 3. (Lauren, number one, takes in strays: Debra, number two, shares her abode with a cat named Golda.)

I recall during a visit to her apartment in Ramat Hasharon, Israel, in the late 1990s — she presently lives in the western suburbs of Boston — how she and her boyfriend, now husband, Meir, fed the hungry felines.

There are thousands, probably tens or hundreds of thousands, of cats who live outdoors on their own in the Jewish state. The humane society tries spaying and neutering them, but there are so many that it’s really mission impossible.

Abby and Meir already had two kittens — Tuli and his sister Tula (in Hebrew, a male cat is a hatul, a female hatula). So, every afternoon when they got home from work, after they fed T&T, they would put two big plates of dry cat food in the parking lot of their apartment building, and some neighborhood strays had dinner.

Not everyone in their building on Naomi Street liked the idea. One of their neighbors threw water at the diners who would temporarily retreat, but quickly returned to the meal when “the rain” ceased.

When they came to America, the four of them lived in the basement of our home while the two humans looked for jobs. Tula, the very incarnation of “scaredee cat,” rarely left their basement room. Tuli is best remembered at our house for stripping the bark from a newly planted tree in our front yard, killing it.

Tuli and Tula long ago have left their earthly paradise for whatever form of gan eden awaits cats.

As if to show how independent of her mother she has become, Abby has replaced them with two dogs.

^^^

Veteran journalist Aaron Leibel writes for The Jerusalem Post and Washington Jewish week. He is the author of the acclaimed memoir, Figs and Alligators: An American Immigrant’s Life in Israel in the 1970s and 1980s, available from Amazon in Kindle and paperback, Barnes and Noble, and at every local bookstore in the U.S. and Canada.

Photos: Tuli (left) & Tula

Israeli soldier

Aaron Leibel, on having a daughter in the Israel Defense Forces

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In an earlier post, I wrote about daughter number one Lauren’s service in the IDF.  Debra, daughter number two, also did her army service, but it was much more complicated.

She had returned to America with Bonnie, her sister Abby and me when she was 16, at the end of her sophomore year in high school. She had no legal obligation to return to be drafted, because she hadn’t received her first in a series of call-up orders from the army before we left the country.

But Debra says she never had any doubt that she would go back to do her service. It wasn’t patriotism, she says. Rather, being in the IDF was part of life in Israel. All her friends and acquaintances would do it, and she knew she would join them.

For some reason, by going to summer school the year we arrived and the following year completing the 11th grade — she and her sister, Abby, spent that first year as students at the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Md. — she would have enough credits to graduate without going to the 12th grade.

So she graduated a year early and spent what should have been her 12th-grade year at Montgomery College. The 30 credits she earned were considered the equivalent of having passed the bagrut exams — a series of grueling tests that Israeli youngsters need to pass to be admitted to university.

She returned to Israel in July and worked as a waitress in the cafeteria in the Knesset (the Israeli parliament), waiting to be called up. She was supposed to be drafted in September. But the army had not finalized her physical profile by that fall, and so her induction was postponed to February. That was very fortunate because had she gone in in September, she wouldn’t have met Nadav — one of her instructors in a course she took, who later became her husband.

Female soldiers then did three weeks of basic training, but after 10 days, she and other trainees left for a three-month-long course in Intelligence.

At the completion of the course, she was assigned to a base in the Negev for the remainder of her time in the IDF. Her job required a good knowledge of English. That’s all she will allow me to say. (Lauren also was in Intelligence, stationed at the main IDF facility in Tel Aviv. After more than 30 years, she still refuses to tell me what she did.)

Photo: Debra, in her uniform, looks a little disheveled and very tired.

Prior to her induction, Debra lived in our apartment in Jerusalem with Lauren and her boyfriend Dror, soon to become Lauren’s husband. After she met Nadav, Debra spent most of her leave from the army at his parents’ house.

She was classified as a hayelet bodida, a lone soldier, someone serving without his or her parents living in the country.

The army provided those soldiers some extra benefits to try to compensate for the absence of their loved ones. For example, Debra got a free but time-limited telephone call to her parents once a month. While taking her course, she and her fellow soldiers got to go home every Friday and Saturday. She was permitted to leave the base two hours before the others — the rationale being that she would have to do shopping for herself for Shabbat. Because the other soldiers would return to the base with baskets of food from their doting parents, she was allowed, as compensation, the privilege of having a toaster in her room.

The more substantive benefits included a salary that was almost twice as large as her fellow soldiers. However, she notes, the sum of money was nonetheless very small, inadequate for paying for housing had she been forced to do that.

She also received three weeks a year to visit us. The first year, we came to Israel for Lauren’s wedding and the visit was in the Jewish state. The second year, Debra came to our house. (This extra three weeks vacation had a downside. She was told that would have been named a mifakedet [literally, commander, but maybe better translated as team leader] in her unit were it not for those extra three weeks off.)

All in all, Debra’s very glad she served in the IDF. Not only did she meet her husband, but those years put her on the path to her current life.

^^^

Veteran journalist Aaron Leibel writes for The Jerusalem Post and Washington Jewish week. He is the author of the acclaimed memoir, Figs and Alligators: An American Immigrant’s Life in Israel in the 1970s and 1980s, available from Amazon in Kindle and paperback, Barnes and Noble, and at every local bookstore in the U.S. and Canada.

Figs-cover-for-Audere

Veteran Journalist Aaron Leibel Revisits Israel’s Past — and His Own

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In 1972, Aaron Leibel uprooted himself and his family to move to Israel, making aliyah and fulfilling a dream for so many Jews. In the years since then, he has become a successful, veteran journalist, writing for newspapers such as The Jerusalem Post and Washington Jewish Week and has twice won Rockower Awards for Excellence in Journalism from the American Jewish Press Association. But as for aliyah, it was eventful, but it didn’t last forever. Today, Leibel is back in America. But his life as an Israel citizen, during some of the nation’s most eventful and precarious years, has now become Figs and Alligators, an acclaimed and entertaining memoir.

Figs and Alligators (the title refers to two confusingly similar Hebrew words) has already picked up impressive pre-publication acclaim. Kirkus Reviews calls the memoir, “a remarkable introduction to a complex country … brimming with historical drama,” Gershom Gorenberg, senior correspondent for The American Prospect, writes that “Figs and Alligators is a wonderful journey through the forgotten Israel of the 1970s and 80s, spiced with just the right mix of nostalgia and irony,” David Horovitz, editor-in-chief of the Times of Israel, calls the book “a warm and candid memoir,” and Hesh Kestin, author of The Wrong Jew and The Siege of Tel Aviv, writes, “For western Jews who dream of living in Israel, Aaron Leibel’s darkly funny near day-to-day account serves as both warning and invitation.

Leibel spoke to Audere recently about his new book.

Audere: Figs and Alligators tells the story of your life in Israel in the 1970s and ’80s. How did you and your wife decide to live there? Was this a tough decision?

Leibel: Ironically, my wife, Bonnie, was the first to suggest making aliyah, going to live in the Jewish state. Bonnie was born into a rural Protestant family, and she converted to Judaism in 1967, four years after we wed. According to ancestry.com, I’ve had only Ashkenazi Jewish ancestors for at least 500 years. But I was appalled when I heard her idea to move to Israel.

Why did she want to do it?

We became Zionists, which means we believe the Jewish people deserve a country of their own, like scores of other peoples in this world. For me, that was the deciding factor.

How did the kids handle the change?

They were simply too young to understand what was happening.

But the 1970s and 1980s were a time of wars and terrorist activities directed at the Jewish state. Weren’t you concerned about your family living in what was almost a war zone?

I was and I still am worried about our two daughters, their husbands and our five grandchildren who call Israel home. We lived through the Yom Kippur and first Lebanon war, the opening salvos of the First Intifada and many unspeakable acts of terrorism — especially during the four years we lived on Kibbutz Kfar Glad, about a mile from the Lebanon border.

But we also witnessed some very positive developments. We were living in Jerusalem when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made his historic visit, leading to the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab country. We saw Israeli leaders finally tame the runaway inflation that had ravaged the country. That led to a period of great, long-lasting prosperity. 

And, on a personal level, we saw our daughters grow up to be proud Jewish women, a result I credit at least in part from growing up in Israel.

Were you or your family ever in danger?

One fact of life in Israel while we lived there and after we left has been the threat of terrorism. Our daughter Lauren — on a visit to my synagogue some 10 years ago — told a story that illustrated the dangers. When she was pregnant with her oldest child, she was feeling big and unattractive. So she took the time to put on lipstick and eye shadow, something she rarely does, before going to work. As a result, she missed her bus. Terrorists attacked that bus as it made its way to Mt. Scopus where she worked and was a student.

Why did you write this memoir?

I still write articles and review books for The Jerusalem Post and Washington Jewish Week. One day, while working in my home office, my mind wandered back to my life in Israel, and I began to type. I found that the more I did, the more I enjoyed the process, as the memories came flooding back. 

Of course, you and your wife had to learn Hebrew.

It was full of hurdles, which we mostly surmounted with some hard work and a lot of laughter. We even coined a new language — Heblish —which may cause language purists to flinch, but, I hope, readers to smile.

You served in the Israel Defense Forces while living there?

Yes, I was in the IDF reserves for 14 years, meaning 35 days a year of service in not always pleasant surroundings. But I had some fascinating adventures while in the army, especially witnessing the work of a soldier-entrepreneur, whose spirit the Soviet Union had failed to squash. I also witnessed some low-level, unofficial international trade between Lebanon and Israel while serving on the border. And I experienced a depressing day guarding in a military court in the West Bank. 

Why did you leave?

To put it in a nutshell, we financially imploded.

What do you miss about Israel?

I loved everyday life in the Jewish state —the food, TV, my work, the pace of life, the great feeling of solidarity with other Israeli Jews.

I hated our poverty. I think we made two correct decisions: going to live in the Jewish state. And leaving.

^^^

Figs and Alligators: An American Immigrant’s Life in Israel in the 1970s and 1980s, will be published by Chickadee Prince Books in 2021, and is available to order from Amazon in Kindle and paperback, Barnes and Noble, and at every local bookstore in the U.S. and Canada.