Yuppie Zionism

It was the end of a beautiful afternoon. The sky was clear, not a cloud. The water reflected the light blue backdrop as the currents moved inwards to the shore. Far off in the distance was the horizon, where the sky and sea met. In the middle of it all stood a blazing yellow orb, making its steady descent behind the Mediterranean. The sun was about to retire for the day.

My wife and I are celebrating the occasion with a six-year old bottle of Arbel White Semi-dry Wine. We are enjoying our night off along the boardwalk in Netanya. Next to us is another couple doing exactly the same. The boardwalk has benches around 10 feet apart, all facing the water. There must be 30 couples right beside us enjoying this Divine performance.

As you watch the sun set, life slows down. A smartphone can move in milliseconds. A wearable device can move in nanoseconds. G-d created all of it. He can take His time. As you witness the fiery ball slowly become a semicircle, then a crescent, and finally a tiny dot peeking over the water before disappearing, your internal clock decelerates. Everything is slow, constant, and soothing. Your mind begins to relax.

We finish our wine as the curtain falls on the day.

“I can’t wait till my next evaluation. I will ask for a raise. We can get new tents, better Shabbat plates, and bigger clothes for the kids.” I brood.

“Don’t get your hopes up, baby. If it doesn’t work out, so what. Go back to Lynda.com, get some new skills, and find a job that pays more. You put in the time, and you now have some real experience.”

It’s like this every week. We make a good living, but there is always an exciting opportunity somewhere else.

We walk through Independence Square and do a little browsing. I want a new summer hat. Shula has her heart set on an exotic eastern outfit which would look great for Shabbat.

We get ice cream. I order the halva/dates/banana combo, and Shula gets the strawberry/pomegranates/berries mix. They throw the fruit in, add a stick of ice cream, and crunch it all together. We can’t just sit. The night is too lovely to pass in one place. We walk slowly along the square as we nibble our treats. We can’t help but hear an ABBA classic on the loud speaker. I try to dance but my wife indicates that there will be no distractions during the eating of our weekly ice cream.

It’s a magical night.

“You know, baby, according to the Rambam this mitzvah, living by the water in Netanya, is equal to all of the mitzvot in the Torah.”

She smiles and holds up her spoon in a toast.

“Here’s to the Rambam!”

Ever so slowly, we head back. For a four hour evening, we pay our babysitter around $20. A sixteen year old with lots of experience handling kids nods in approval.

Now it’s time for the nightcap: our special Hebrew course. We pop our favorite show into the DVD player. Serugim is the Israeli version of Friends, except this show chronicles the lives of five religious singles living in Jerusalem. We see an episode with English subtitles, then, with the dialogue fresh in our minds, we see the same episode again but this time with Hebrew subtitles.

It’s working. Beyond the limitations of always saying “Todah Rabbah,” we know all sorts of chic words like “Achla, Me’ulea, and Sababa.”

We no longer love Israel for political reasons, religious reasons, or personal ideology. We love it here because we have never known such happiness, and we know that anywhere else, for sure we never will.