The Aliyah Survival Blog

(Continued from The Move to Israel Page)

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Post 13

My day of bureaucracy is not as straight forward as you might think. In order to receive my rights from the Absorption Ministry, I need to have already opened my bank account, but in order to open my bank account, I already need my permanent ID and absorption ID and before I get a phone I need both, but I only need one to sign up for Hebrew lessons. It is weird that in the Jewish religion there is no hell, because the Israeli government created a perfect 10the circle for Dante’s Inferno with the absorption process.

I find out that Ester is also up due to our new “friend,” the rooster, and we decide that we should get an early start on struggling through Israel bureaucracy. We decided that this process would be a lot easier to go through together than apart – and this way if one of us begins to falter and doubt our life decision after a few hours of Israeli bureaucracy then we would have the other for support. As we have been told to come prepared for long and frustrating waits, we bring some food, water, reading material and toilet paper – which always a necessity in Israel. (We actually looked like we were more ready for a hike than for paperwork.) The one recommendation that everyone had given us regarding the Internal Ministry was to get there as early as possible and some even suggested camping out in front of the doors like we were going to some rock concert in the early 1990’s. The major reason that it is necessary to get to the ministry as early as possible is because they close their doors at 12:00 PM on the dot and sometimes earlier. This does not mean that the ministry is closed; it just means it has reached its capacity for the day. In fact, when the doors close there are hundreds of people waiting inside the ministry waiting in line, hoping that they will be seen by the end of the day. The last person in the doors will most likely not be seen until around 5:00 PM, if he is seen at all.

We jump on the bus, despite promising everyone back home that we won’t ride buses. I figured that if they really wanted me to take taxis everywhere, then they should have offered to pay for them. Not to mention, that we weren’t even willing to pay full price for our bus tickets, as we asked the bus driver for minor tickets, so we could save three shekels (approximately $.75) – this is another good tactic for saving money for poor immigrants. Because both Ester and I look about six to seven years younger than we actually are, we didn’t have any problem getting minor tickets, but we were willing to put up a fight if necessary. We figured that the more experience we got at fighting the quicker we would improve and the more prepared we would be. We also asked the bus driver to tell us when we would need to get off for the Internal Ministry. In response the bus driver simply looked at us with an expression of pity and nodded. However, Ester and I were too excited about becoming real Israeli citizens that we were not even the least amount concerned about the challenges that lay ahead of us. At that time we made a pact that no matter what happened we would look at the whole process as part of the experience of becoming Israeli. After all, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” – only later did we find out that Israelis have a continuation of this a saying that is unfortunately very fitting for the country – “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and what does kill you makes your mother stronger.

After standing in isle of the stuffy, crowded and smelly bus in traffic for way too long, some seats finally opened up and we sat down. Just as we were adjusting our bags on our laps, the bus driver abruptly yelled out that this was the stop for the Internal Ministry, in the same tone that we had reached the gates of hell. We excitedly got of the bus, not paying any heed to the tone in bus driver’s voice and began heading towards the Internal Ministry. As we were walking towards the Ministry we see a large mob of people and we are both wondering what had happened. At first we think there might have been a fight, or that maybe someone is hurt and as we get closer and start hearing people screaming we get nervous that maybe there was a terror attack and people are panicking. However, when we get closer, we realize that the mob in front of us is actually the line of people trying to get into the Internal Ministry. Both Ester and I are in shock, we expected that it would be tough, but we didn’t think it would be like running with the bulls in Spain. Both Ester and I are short, skinny, small young women and we could barely speak Hebrew and much less yell in Hebrew . . . and if you are not yelling in Hebrew, then you might as well not waste the energy talking. Looking at the mob, we knew we would not be successful at trying to push through everyone and we began contemplating what would be the better option, simply sitting down on the pavement and become homeless nomads or to begin searching for the cheapest plane tickets back to U.S.