The Freedom to be Jewish
Israel is in my heart, even though I don't live there
This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.
As a third-generation American-born Jew, I have deep roots in this country—yet my family also has a profound connection with Israel. My father grew up in Queens, only dimly aware that he was Jewish; his home life contained no meaningful expressions of religion. After serving in the Korean War and graduating from college, he set out to find his way in the world. When he visited Israel, he unexpectedly felt at home. My mother, on the other hand, was raised in Brooklyn by a single mother and a Yiddish-speaking grandmother, secure in her Jewish identity. She felt at home in New York, and never dreamt of being anywhere else.
I was raised in a “kosher-style” home and I attended an Orthodox Jewish day school in New Jersey, but I never quite fit in. When the principal deemed my fifth-grade poster project on the religious freedom of Huguenots inappropriate, I bristled against the school’s narrow-mindedness.
During my early childhood, my father’s dream of living in Israel was never far from his mind. In 1977, when I was 14, our family packed up our worldly possessions and moved to Israel. In our first seven months, we lived in an absorption center, sharing our immigrant experience with South African Jews fleeing apartheid, Jewish Russian dissidents and Zionist Argentinians, all seeking refuge from a hostile world.
My brother and I enrolled in public school and soon integrated into Israeli culture, but my parents struggled to navigate the foreign bureaucracy and a new social scene; they mainly hung out with other English-speaking immigrants. And my father, an engineer, was disappointed by the job market. Our “Israeli experiment” lasted only three years, though it planted the seeds of Zionism that would continue to grow in our family.
Before graduating from college, I took a brief trip to Israel—a stopover en route to Europe. I reconnected with old friends, and my visit felt like a homecoming. I vowed to return. When I was 22, I made good on that promise, packing two suitcases and moving to Tel Aviv. When I second-guessed my decision, my mother—understanding that I wanted to test my own grit—encouraged me to stay, at least until I got Israel out of my system.
It took seven years. In that time, I married my Israeli high school boyfriend, completed a master’s degree at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and gave birth to twins in Israel’s Soroka Hospital, alongside Jewish and Bedouin women. Then, in early 1991, the Persian Gulf war broke out.
With sirens blaring and scud missiles firing in the background, we donned chemical masks, whisked two five-month-olds into airtight cribs, and sealed up the safe room on a daily basis. It was during those rough nights that we began to dream of an easier way to raise our family. The next year, we moved back to New Jersey.
We settled in a comfortable suburb with good public schools, a synagogue, and a diverse community. While we had planned on the U.S. being only a temporary reprieve, I soon realized that I could not leave again. We were grounded in American Jewish life, and we both felt like we belonged. In an act of true selflessness, even my Israeli mother-in-law begged us to stay in the U.S., where her grandchildren would be safe from the Middle East conflict.
Our twins were finishing elementary school when we finally admitted that we would not be returning to Israel. It was tough for me to accept that I was altering our family’s Israel legacy forever, and it was especially difficult for my husband—the son of Zionists who had immigrated from Iran to Israel in 1948; the soldier who had served his beloved country—to accept that he might never live in Israel again.
Yet our Jewish identity and our love for Israel are never far away. I need only look to the mezuzahs on the door frames, the menorahs on the windowsills, the boxes of matzah in my shopping carts, and taste the Israeli salad on our kitchen table and hear the Israeli music playing in the background.
My family’s Jewish-Israeli path has taken many twists and turns, and now we find ourselves at a crossroads. Some of our closest relatives have left Israel; my children are in blended marriages. As our family grows and changes, we are focused on passing on the core of our Jewish identity and time tested rituals to the next generation.
Lisa Schor Babin is Founder & Principal of Schor Ethics Consulting, LLC. Prior to starting her ethics consulting business, Lisa spent 17 years at Dun & Bradstreet, most recently in the role of Global Compliance & Ethics Leader. Lisa has published many articles on ethics and compliance topics for The Anti-Corruption Report and for Corporate Compliance Insights, including articles related to her Jewish and Israeli experiences.
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This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.
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