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Holy Land or Professional Purgatory? |
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 by Abbey Greenberg Onn, November 10, 2009 |
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From this Series
Today at work, someone peed their pants. No, I am not being idiomatic - nor am I am being funny. I work somewhere where someone literally peed their pants. This would have been quite a tale to tell had it been at my last job, a large non-profit in Washington, D.C. As I am currently living a few bus stops north of Tel Aviv, I no longer work there. I now work with mostly 7 year olds, teaching them English for 3 hours after their school day ends. In many ways, this could be an important, even effective job. Some days it probably is, but most days it feels more like glamorized babysitting. Peeing your pants barely makes the headlines.
I use this example not as a vehicle to complain about life or rue my choices (Masters in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies?) or lack of Hebrew (really, even with the masters?). Instead, I wish to examine the life of the immigrant, or in my case, the pseudo-immigrant biding her time on a tourist visa. In a nutshell, I am qualified for nothing. I am not a nurse, nail artist, carpenter, or one of the other very popular categories of job possibilities. I, as many of my friends, have woven a complicated web of education, jobs and even publications that qualify for nothing outright when plucked from an English speaking work world and dropped on the corner of chutzpah and hummus.
I have been lucky in my three weeks in Israel. I have found gainful employment, I have found a magazine who will pay me to write (in English!!), and I have the ever-attractive lure of Hebrew classes three mornings a week to get me out of bed. All in all, it is enough to keep me busy and even make enough money to pay for those Hebrew classes and the bus to get there and back. I am lucky. English is my first and best language and it will carry me the world 'round - if I am willing to take whatever job I can get.
This is the source of my frustration. I am willing to take whatever job I can get as I know that without Hebrew, my choices are limited. I am frustrated that I can't have the jobs I want. I want to work at a nonprofit and spend the daylight hours dreaming of how I can help hungry people eat and homeless people find homes. There are many things I love--writing, traveling, teaching--but mostly I love to know that I am making a difference in someone else's life, no matter how small. I am frustrated that without Hebrew that passion of mine is stifled.
I will find a way to express it. I will look harder, I will volunteer, I will network. You always hear about engineers and doctors who come to the US and drive cabs because their qualifications no longer exist once they are an American citizen. Where do they find their meaning? Is it enough to put dinner on the table and some money in savings? How hard do you fight to do what you love even when there is no job title for it? I know the answers are not simple so I will keep searching. In the meantime, I am hoping my students learn to raise their hands when number one is imminent.
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Perestroika
As someone who made aliyah and came back, my advice to you is to do as much as you can to avoid hangingout with Americans, or English speakers in general. My Hebrew improved drmatically when I was put in a dorm room with a Russian immigrant who idn't speak English. Also, avoid Israelis who want to use you as an "English whore" where they practice their English with you but yoru Hebrew stays at a basic level.
What you don't want is to become like those people in Ra'anana who live in Israel for 20 and 30 years and still can't speak Hebrew.
It's also best if you can avoid jobs where you have to depend on your English language skills. This may or may not be an option for you.
You will never fully integrate into Israeli society without becoming fluent, I mean really fluent in Hebrew. As long as you have an American accent peopel will try to speak English to you - this only makes it harder, keeping you an "outsider" longer than other immigrants (like the Russians) who can't get decent jobs (with the possible exception of high tech, and even then, English is probably STILL more useful since they usually export the products they develop) or socialize outside their immigrant group unless they do so. Just about every Russian I met under the age of 50 spoke better Hebrew than Americans who had been in the country for the same amount of time. I once went on a date with a Russian guy who was fluent after only 10 months in the country - and he didn't even have a head start on hebrew before coming to Israel like the South Americans did.
Of course, the younger you are, teh easier it is. if you can, I would also suggest switching careers to something with better earning potential in Israel. Go back to school if you have to. I met people, (again, Russians), who did whole BA degrees in Russia and were doing a whole other BA from scratch in Israel inorder to change careers. A friend of mine (American) went to a vocational school and learned how to program computers. Now he makes a good living in the high tech industry. You should consider that. English speaking women in Israel tend to get stuck in these low paying professional ghettoes, usually in marketing and technical writing, because they avoided math and quant-related careers. Again, Russian women tended to avoid this trap because women were encouraged to be good at math in the Soviet Union (so I've read). If you suck at math, grab teh bull by the horns and tackle math and try to get into a quant related profession - in part because your language skills will matter less that way.
The average American immigrant lasts about 5, maybe 7, years in Israel max before returning to the US. I really hope you can beat the odds.
ezg
You've made psuedo-aliyah (why not real aliyah?), and now you wonder why you can't find a job in the nonprofit Happy Shiny People Holding Hands sector. Maybe that's because Israel likes to pour its money into productive activities, or maybe it's because you got a professionally worthless cultural diploma.
Anyway, have a nice time with the whole thing of thinking that Being A Jew In Israel is the greatest thing evar. Maybe all those American Jewish nonprofits will open branches here to provide employment for people like you.