My grandfather passed away

On September 25, my best friend in the whole world, my grandfather, Peter Tsypkin, passed away, at almost 87 years old. I was already flying to the US, because of the rapid cancer progression (he was only sick for 2 weeks), but I didn't make it just by a few hours. My world has been kind of empty since then.

Who thought I would get to use my one time exit letter from the Misrad HaPnim that they give you when you get your Teudat Zehut, especially for something like this. Luckily the border control didn't even flinch at it.

During my grandfather's last night he woke up, tried to sit on his bed (although he already couldn't move, because the cancer got to his spine) and said "... going to my people". Those were his last words. Then he fell asleep and slept straight until he passed away at 3 pm with my mother and grandmother at his side, exactly as he always wanted, in his own bed. When I heard this, it hit me that these were the last words of Yakov Avinu. And as Chazal said, he didn't really die ...

Rav Yehuda Henkin's seforim

I have been running around seforim stores to find Rav Yehuda Henkin's Teshuvos - Benei Banim. Nothing. Finally I decided to call him and pay him a visit (he lives in Yerushalaim in Kiryat Moshe). He sold me the 4 volumes of the Teshuvos and even the 2 volume set of his Grandfather's Kesavim, which is also impossible to find. The seforim are amazing. I finished the first 2 volumes during the first evening I sat to read them. His ideas and psakim are so refreshing (especially after lots of recent nonsense going on in the Charedi world) that I got really excited. There is an awesome peirush on Chumash in the end of the 2nd volume. I finally saw a realistic pshat of why Avraham decided to tell the Egyptians that Sarah is his sister. The collected quotes from his grandfather, Rav Yosef Henkin (in the middle of the 2nd volume) is another master piece. Haven't seen anything like it since Rav Baruch Epstein's Mekor Baruch. Definitely not Artscroll material, if you know what I mean.

If you're in town, this is the one man worth to meet in person and definitely get the seforim. It made my week.

Appliances

The next week I spent running around buying new appliances and getting the apartment ready, which despite many promises from the Israeli landlord (who lives in another city) that it will be ready, fixed and clean, was not even looked at. I have to say the previous tenant warned me about this landlord, but I was so tired of searching for something from the US by email and there were only 2 weeks left until the move, that I decided to take the risk anyway. I went to a local chain appliances store, Lior, to buy my appliances. There was a really nice Russian sales guy who told me lots of stories about his adventures in the army and explained the Israeli appliances situation.

He told me that I am not allowed to hook up the gas stove myself and I have to call the gas company to do it, because that's the law. So being a good citizen once the stove arrived that's what I did. I called about 5 gas companies who all told me that they do not service our building, until I finally I got to the one that does. They said that they don't have time to hook up stoves, it costs a ton of money and they won't do it. Now what? I go to ACE and look for a gas oven hook up kit (like the ones in the US) - no such thing. Finally, all frustrated and hungry (5 days after delivery still no oven) I bump into someone I know and ask him where do you buy a hook up kit for a gas oven? He says, "What kit? All you need is a rubber hose and 2 metal clamps." So he walks with me into a little local hardware store and shows me the clamps (the kind that in America you put on water pipes) and tells me to ask the sales clerk for a Tzinor Gaz - gas pipe. The sales guy bends down and pulls out a huge roll of rubber tubing and asks how long of a piece do I need. Cuts me off a piece and there is my "kit".

I tell this whole story to the Russian guy from Lior. He says that if the gas company finds out that I did it myself I will get fined. So I call up the Gas company (now that I know which one) and tell that I already installed the oven myself and they need to send a technician to check the hook up. No problem, that they can do right away. So the guy shows up, looks at it, says that everything is fine (despite the fact that the pipe is 2 meters long and supposed to be as short as possible according to the oven manual), give me a receipt and leaves. There is the Gas Safety Law at your finest.

The washing machine was not as exciting, but all of the knobs were labeled only in German (it was a Bosch). The instruction manual was in what language? Yes, you guessed it, Turkish. No English, not even Hebrew. But I downloaded a manual from the US Bosch web site fir a similar model and it turned out to be close enough. By the way, if you think that these machines are self explanatory, that's may be for a local. But to an American who is used to US machines they are nothing like it.

The food processor I got here was much better and cheaper than our US Cuisinart. And it take with a separate blender built-into it.

The only appliance that I brought from the US, a portable Maytag dishwasher, arrived broken in our lift. So I had to get a new one here also. But otherwise we got set with appliances.

In my opinion, everything that we bought here is a just as good or even better than US appliances. Although most of them are a bit smaller they work great. Our Bosch washing machine cleans clothes better than the US Whirlpool and it doesn't rip clothes because it loads from the side. The only down side is to it, is that it takes 2 hours to run instead of the 45 minutes on the US one, but no big deal. The Bosch dishwasher leaves dishes perfectly clean and dry, much better than the Maytag we had in the US.

Arrival

We arrived in Israel on the Nefesh B'Nefesh flight on August 18, 2005. The flight was great. Once in the airport we had to listen to some speeches at 5 in the morning. I wasn't sure why Ehud Olmert was invited as a guest speaker during the week of disengagement from Gaza to a corwd who was mostly made up of religious people, many of whom weren't so fond of Olmert and the Disengagement. Be that as it may, he made some really dumb comments like "If all of you would have come earlier may be we would not be leaving Gaza today", which did got some people really hiped up. People were jumping from their seats, screaming, and I really thought the whole thing might turn ugly. But luckily he stopped speaking and the crowd settled down.

When we took our sherut from the airport to our hotel in Jerusalem (courtesy of Intel) the driver decided to take a short cut and give us a tour of the West Bank. I was never there before, so at first I thought that the fence on both sides of the road was just a fence. Only later I realized that it was a portion of the security fence to prevent the Palestinians to throw rocks at the drivers. We arrived at the Crowne Plaza Jerusalem safe and sound.

The next day many people who were relocated from Gaza arrived in Jerusalem hotels and protestor demonstrations against the Disengagement began right down the street. I had to go to work to get my company car (yey Intel!). I show up at the car office and everything is ready except that the manager does not like the fact that I have my American driver's license and not an Israeli one. I explain to him that by law I have 3 months to get an Israeli one and that I am allowed to drive. They give me the car and I leave. The next day I get a phone call from the car office saying that I have to go the DMV and get an Israeli driver's license or they will have to take the car back. Obviously, all of this is impossible, because I have to wait for at least a week until my information with my Teudat Zehut and Teudat Oleh gets passed into their computer system and then I need to schedule a driving lesson and a test. So I tell the clerk (there is that word again) who calls me on the phone that he needs to explain to his boss that he has no idea what he is talking about. I call NbN, my manager in the US, and complain, beg, cry, but no one can really do anything about this. This story repeated for 2 days. Finally I walk into the car office and start screaming at the car manager that he is full of it and there is no way for me to get an Israeli Driver license right now and that I am not giving him the car back no matter what he says. And suddenly he says, "OK, when ever you get your Israeli license just bring us a copy". And that's it. It's like he wanted me to come and yell at him so he could feel better about his power trip.

It all depends on the clerk

The bureaucracy started with us showing up at the Jewish Agency in Maryland for our interview. My wife's and kids' paperwork was not questioned. But once they found out that I was born in Russia and not in the US the attitude changed. Suddenly the letter from a Rabbi that said that we were Jewish was not good enough and I was handed a special form which was about 30 pages thick to fill out about all of my ancestry, living relatives, deceased relatives and more. I hoped that the form would be the end, but then they asked for some fun stuff. They wanted me to send them my original Russian birth certificate on which it was written that my parents are Jewish, plus my mother's birth certificate, and my parents' marriage and divorce certificates as well. Now where was I supposed to get those, when none of these documents have been in use for years and I don't have them. Besides you can tell who I am from a mile away, with my garb and my peculiar nose. Do they care? Of course not. No papers, no aliyah.

So I go home and call up my mother to ask her if she still has my birth certificate. I did not tell her what it was for, since she wasn't fond, to put it mildly, of the whole idea. Luckily she had it and she mailed it to me without questions. A few days later I asked for the other stuff and here I got a big NO. I guess she thought she could change my mind by not giving me the papers.

I call up my grandparents and ask them if they have any of this stuff. My grandfather happened to have a copy of my mother's birth certificate, which I sent in. The Jewish Agency was not satisfied. I pleaded and pleaded explaining that I can't get my mother's marriage certificate and they have everything they need, but no way. They would not even go to the Misrad HaPnim without it to submit our file.

Then I call up my father in Russia and ask him to fax me the divorce certificate. He said that he did not have the original from the Soviet Union, and he has to go get a new one from the records. He faxed it to me within a few days and I forwarded it on. Done, you think? Of course not. The Jewish Agency says, "but it does not say on it that your parents are Jewish". Of course it doesn't, Russia is not communist anymore and they don't write this type of stuff on official documents. Apparently, some clerk in Israel who was handling my file really liked the communists back in Mother Russia and wanted their stamp of approval for my Aliyah.

But the best part was this. Out of paranoia that they won't let me make Aliyah I made the local Jewish Agency rep ask the Israeli office what will happen if they decline my application. They said, "No problem. You can still make Aliyah - as a husband of a Jewish woman." This reminded me how once upon a time there already was someone who was accused of not being Jewish due to his grandmother's paper work and some how he ended up being the husband of a Jewish woman whose son built the Beis HaMikdash. Of course, he had red hair so it must have been his Irish looks that made people skeptical. (For those confused, I am referring to King David. :-)) But me? With my peculiar nose?

I got furious. 2 months went by since our interview at the Jewish Agency. I started calling up different Rabbis, officials, but everyone just kept sending me somewhere else. Finally, a Russian Jewish Agency worker in New York sent a nasty gram to some high up manager in Sochnut in Israel to tell the clerk who was handling our file to buzz off. And suddenly we were approved. Seemingly the Misrad HaPnim did not care much for any of this stuff, since I was a US citizen and not a Russian citizen, and was quite apparent that I am not trying to fake my Jewishness in order to get out of Russia.

How it all began

My wife and I wanted to make aliyah since we got married, but finances were always an obstacle. I don't mean to live richly, just to pay for the move. Debt and tuition were killing us.

To get the process itself rolling G-d had to intervene. In November 2003 I had my first trip to Israel on business with Intel (for whom I worked in the US). It was my first time here. In the same week that I was here, my boss' boss, who is not Jewish, happened to be here as well on an unrelated matter. After spending a few days here he comes over to me in the hall way and asks: "Do you feel here at home?" I said, "Of course, I do". He said, "Want to move?". And so Intel arranged the relocation. It took them about a year to schedule it, but if not for them I doubt it would happen any time soon. We were coming employed and not just employed, really well employed. In addition Nefesh B'Nefesh helped with the bureacracy and here we are.

The Navi (Yirmiyah 3:14) says:
.שׁוּבוּ בָנִים שׁוֹבָבִים נְאֻם-יְהוָה, כִּי אָנֹכִי בָּעַלְתִּי בָכֶם; וְלָקַחְתִּי אֶתְכֶם אֶחָד מֵעִיר, וּשְׁנַיִם מִמִּשְׁפָּחָה, וְהֵבֵאתִי אֶתְכֶם, צִיּוֹן
"... I will take you one from a city and two from a family, and bring you to Zion."

So if I could not pick myself up, G-d had to pick me up by the scruff of my neck and move me. But I didn't know yet that His services were not free ...

About the blog

We decided to start our Aliyah blog to share our adventures. We moved to Israel on August 17, 2005, and it's been busy. Although nothing happened to us that could not have happened somewhere else, we feel like G-d has been paying lots of attention to us here, lots more than before. Will have to begin at the begining ...