We sure picked a great time to make aliyah - now
Coming on aliyah is always a [worthwhile] hurdle, but you have to be an idealist to come on Aliyah during the time of Covid-19.
Att'y Stephen M. Flatow
Stephen Flatow is a New Jersey attorney, vice president of the Religious Zionists of America and the father of Alisa Flatow, murdered by Palestinian Arab terrorists in 1995 on a study trip to Israel when the bus she was on exploded on her way to the beach in Gush Katif. Her organs were donated to save others.
It was the spring of 1960, I was 11 years old and living in Middle Village, Queens. My parents gave me a couple of dollars and told me to go to the movies for the afternoon because they had “to go to the closing on our new home.” So, I walked up the hill on 75th Street to the Arion Theatre on Metropolitan Avenue. You could do a lot of things with two bucks in those days, so I paid my 35 cents admission and bought some nosh.
The movie playing that day was “On the Beach.” It starred the always stoic Gregory Peck, the sultry Ava Gardner, a still dapper Fred Astaire, and a new actor, Anthony Perkins.
On the Beach is set in 1964. It’s a tale of the aftermath of nuclear war. Spoiler alert – everyone dies in the end. Peck is a US submarine captain whose ship and crew made it through the war and is now in Australia. The nuclear fallout cloud has spread around the world and Australia is the last remaining place on the planet where people are alive. But they know the cloud is coming, the government is handing out cyanide pills, and it’s just a matter of time before the end comes.
In 1960 New York City and many other major American cities were surrounded by the Nike missile system that was designed to shoot down high-flying bombers and we were still having air raid drills at PS 87. A hallway alarm would go off, and we would get under our desks, direct our rears towards the classroom’s large windows and bend towards the floor with our hands folded behind our necks.
At the end of the movie, we are shown an Australian street scene where a sign warning of the end flaps in the breeze and discarded newspapers and trash swirl through the air. It was all very real to me. And the specter of 1964 being five years away, kept me up for more than a few nights.
And here I am, 60 years later, sitting with my wife in Jerusalem in the midst of the Covid-19 outbreak. It’s our aliyah trip.
Rosalyn and I talked about making aliyah in the mid-1970s, Alisa had been born, and the subject just popped into our heads. But I fretted about moving to Israel as a new American lawyer, not knowing the language, and worrying about how I’d put food on the table. So, we put it out of our minds.
Please continue to the full article on Arutz Sheva, Israel National News
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