This week’s piece holds special meaning for me in a number of ways. First, it is my first bit of communication to you dear friends since taking leave some three weeks ago. On a side note, it actually has taken that long to get over the dreadful experience of the most inappropriately named Dreamliner; that nightmarish flight which practically flies over Israel, continues for four hours to London after which the leg must be retraced. Seventeen and a half hours of a flight is not ideal in any situation but when it is, in fact, elongating the experience of being trapped with delirious kids 32,000 feet above sea level by many hours, it is positively torture.

Second, as I am writing it is still Anzac day in Israel. Considering the fact that I have recently listened to a thirty-hour podcast of the Great War, this year Anzac day has even greater meaning.

Today is also my Jewish birthday, the only birthday I knew for the first 24 years of my life. It is one of the ironies of life that a person for whom birthdays don’t mean very much at all gets to celebrate it twice over.

Finally and much more substantially, over the past three weeks I’ve had an opportunity to absorb life in Israel with its questions, contradictions, and one resolution I’d like to share with you.

The questions are many. Why does everyone feel the need to scream merely when they say hello? Doesn’t anyone sleep around here? When someone is on an electric bike zooming past shopfronts at 50km per hour on congested footpaths, how is it that nobody gets hurt? Why do the police have lights flashing at all times? For such a developed IT country how come there is no app for getting around on a bike?

How come nothing makes any sense around here especially when it comes to bureaucracy? A younger brother of mine the other week was trying to prove his identity to the Interior Ministry and somehow the only way he was to prove beyond doubt that he was in fact my mother’s son was to provide my mother’s discharge papers from Cabrini Hospital thirty years ago!

More significantly, how do people maintain such stressful lives without permanently crashing out? How can Israelis afford anything? Earnings of 12 to 15 dollars an hour is common, yet that is less than the price of medium size Weetabix box or free range eggs!

And to the million dollar question, why can’t there be, in the immortal words of a famous Peppa Pig song, peace and harmony in all the world? Or at least in the Holy Land. Between Jews and Palestinians. Religious and antis. Right and left. White and black. And everything between.

Yet despite all this according to the UN 2018 World Happiness Report, Israel Ranks 11th in the world out of 156 countries!!! No one can afford anything, everyone is fighting with everyone on multiple fronts, accidents about to happen wherever you turn, nothing really makes sense, yet Israelis are amongst the happiest in the world!

Even more contradictory, a recent study published in the Times of Israel showed that a significant proportion of Israelis, as high as 30% in some demographics, would rather live overseas. Such a happy people, yet so much dissatisfaction! And the truth is, anecdotally when Israelis get past my look and ask after the accent to find out the Australian connection, the response is always a real yearning to be in ‘chul’ – overseas.

The cynic may want to do away with all this by saying that Israelis, like all middle easterners, are a very proud people and prone to vast exaggeration. Along comes a UN researcher and asks if Israel is good the answer will be ‘betach’ – of course – with arms raised and facial expression to match with the result being a distorted sense of happiness.

But of course you all know by now that I am anything but a cynic and, therefore, could not possibly buy into this. Besides, if that were the case then this entire neighbourhood would do very well on the happiness index. Yet every other country in this region is way way down the list of happy countries. That, and trust in the research, must lead us to conclude that the happiness is genuine and we must find an alternative explanation to the apparent contradiction.

The answer dawned on me in three extraordinary minutes of silence. About two weeks ago was Yom HaSho’ah and last week was Yom HaZikaron followed by Yom Ha’Atzmaut. When the siren went off on all three occasions, the entire Israel came to a literal silent standstill. An overwhelming sense of unity in the intensity of the moment permeated everything and everyone. Whether in a busy thoroughfare in Tel Aviv, a military cemetery in Kfar Saba, or on a rooftop in the middle of Tel Aviv nightlife, each of the emotions of grief and joy was a shared common experience with thousands of absolute strangers who were at that moment members of one’s extended family.

I often quote Victor Frankl “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.” And there is no doubt that the more meaningful connections we have in life the greater our ‘why’ to live and that family constitutes meaningful connections of the highest order.  Israel, in a nutshell, is a country brimming with meaningful connections, like one big extended family. That is why Israelis rank so highly on the Happiness Index. This does not mean that the problems go away as in some romantic novel, rather the difficulties are endured and tolerated.

Like every big family except mine, its members have their quarrels and noisy differences of opinion. But a few times a year in intense moments of silence our unity takes front and centre. Our shared history and sense of destiny binds us and gives us a sense of genuine belonging. That is why, even though life is so tough in Israel, its people are so relatively happy. It is no wonder that Finland, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada rank highly as well. Life is simply good and the living is easy. The astonishing thing is that Israel, with all its difficulties, is part of that club.
I have no doubt that this is why we love experiencing Israel. We come here because we want but one small dose of that sense of transcendent belonging. Lucky for us we got three huge doses in as many weeks.

A few days ago my wife showed me a clip of an El Al flight on Yom Ha’Atzmaut flying from Poland to Israel over Germany. The pilot got over the loudspeaker to say: “My grandfather and grandmother, who were killed by the Nazis, would be proud to know that their grandson is flying a plane with the Israeli flag on it over Germany”. He then picked up his guitar and the whole plane proceeded to sing “Gesher Tzar Meod (A very narrow bridge)” and “Am Yisrael Chai (the nation of Israel lives)”!

May our unity last forever!

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Shneur