Two Olim, Two Israels, Two Cups of Coffee

I reconnected with an old Hebrew school classmate of mine, who had also made Aliyah.

We had both grown up in the same affluent suburb of Boston, and attended the same reform Jewish synagogue.

After our Bar Mitzvahs we continued to participate in the Temple's teen programs, which involved hanging out with the Rabbi once or twice a week, and discussing the issues in our lives.

We learned about how Judaism could be a relevant part of our day-to-day experiences. But more importantly we formed a social group which was inherently Jewish, and therefore special, because it was separate from our normal life.

We sat together drinking coffee at the Aroma on Karlibach St.

Two Olim, raised in exactly the same Jewish tradition, living out their Aliya in strikingly different ways.

Ben had become an ultra-orthodox Jew. I met him at the central bus station. His beard and peyas looked wild, and he wore a black kippah covering his thinning hair. He had gained weight, and seemed to roll down the street like a hairy eight-ball across a pool table.

I, on the other hand, am starting to dress more and more like an Israeli every day.

My wife works at Castro, a popular Israeli clothing store. Whenever there are sales, she buys for me the clothe she would like to see me in. She stopped consulting me a long time ago, and the longer I am married the more I understand the wisdom of picking your battles.

The consequence is a wardrobe filled with T-shirts with low cut v-neck collars, so that my chest hair is exposed, jeans with stylized back pockets, and flip flops. I have also stopped shaving regularly, as scruff is par for the course in Israel. With my bag slung over one shoulder, and my sunglasses, I looked like a typical Tel-Avivite... dressed for the beach, or the office.

Ben is studying on a yeshiva. He lives in a caravan west of Jerusalem. Many might call his community a settlement, however, he insists that it is not. He says the territory has always been Jewish, and would remain in Israel's possession, in any of the land for peace deals discussed.

He has no Job, as he spends all his days studying Torah and Talmud. He lives humbly on a small government stipend.

I live in Holon, a suburb of Tel-Aviv, and if anything I have become less religious since making Aiya.

I work for an American company, entirely in English, and because we sell exclusively to the United States, I work Friday nights. I eat bread on Passover and I don't fast on Yom Kippor, both traditions I kept every year, while living in America.

I am working my butt off every day, putting in 10-12 hours regularly, trying to earn enough money to buy the things my wife and I need to start our family.

Both Ben and I agreed, that we have never felt more Jewish since moving to Israel.

We reminisced. Caught each other up on the stories of the people from our past. We couldn't believe that we were the only two people we knew, from our class, who had made Aliyah, while we could name a dozen who had gone to law school.

We talked politics. We compared our Hebrew abilities. We shared funny Israeli anecdotes.

It was fun.

And although I didn't realize it at the time, there was one moment, which was poignant.

Ben received a phone call from one of his neighbors. He was told that something bad had happened in Bat Ayin, only 5 minutes away from where he lived.

Only after I got to work that day did I read in the news that a terrorist had killed a 13 year old boy in a brutal attack with an axe.

We had made the same journey and ended up in very different places.

I understood that we were living in different Israels, but none the less, we were now both Israeli.