My First Home in Israel Was in a Dark Alley
Visiting family in the U.S., I remember arriving in Jerusalem 17 years ago.
Dear Healthy Jew,
We’re in the United States now, visiting our family. So today’s post will be on low-power mode, meaning I’ve got for you this picture with a short reflection.
I was born and raised out here in Baltimore, and came to Israel over 17 years ago to study in the renowned Mir Yeshiva. (I was 19). I don’t know how it works there nowadays, but when I first arrived (with an actual printed plane ticket), the admissions process was similar to how it had been for the previous 200 years.
Entering Jerusalem on one of those shared taxi things, I had two things to get me settled:
A letter from my rabbi to the Rosh Yeshiva asking him to let me to study in his yeshiva.
An address in a dark alley called Zecharia HaRofeh (don’t ask me who that was), around 5 minutes from the yeshiva. The underground apartment there would be my home for the next year.
Several months ago, I returned to the neighborhood on some errands, and walked past my first dwelling in Israel. A decade-and-a-half later, everything was the same: garbage everywhere, broken streetlamps, random piles of floor tiles, and the crazy neighbour talking to himself on the bench while he smoked his brains out.
I wonder who lives there now.
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Rabbi Shmuel Chaim Naiman
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