[Interview conducted by Sharona eshet-Kohen]
Sharona Eshet-Kohen (SEK): Shalom Judy, thanks for taking the time. Let's jump right in. Did you grow up in a Jewish community?
Judy Simon (JS): I grew up in a Modern Orthodox community in Chicago. My parents were raised traditional but not Orthodox, and I have the distinct memory of often coming home from school and teaching them things about Judaism they had never learned before. I will never forget the day my father made the decision to sell his pharmacy so that he could keep Shabbat. I saw him sitting at our kitchen table with his head in his hands - it was one of the most difficult decisions of his life and it had a big impact on me. My parents were also extremely Zionistic.
SEK: Tell me more about that. What contributed to your decision to make Aliyah?
JS: My mother had spent nine months in Israel after she finished high school in the 1950s, at a time when it was really unpopular to come here, and people thought she was crazy to travel to an underdeveloped poor country on her own. But she was really inspired by her time there and she instilled that in me. Once, we were at a store, and the Jaffa oranges were so much more expensive than the other oranges for sale. When she chose to buy the Jaffa oranges I couldn't believe it. She said to me, "Do you know how hard those halutzim [pioneers] worked in the hot sun to grow these oranges? There are Jewish oranges with the love of Eretz Yisrael imbued in them." I was also very involved in Bnei Akiva growing up, and in the United States, Bnei Akiva has three missions: Torah, Avodah, and Aliyah. Aliyah was so central in fact, that when I came to Israel, I was surprised to see that the youth group existed here as well. I couldn't understand the point since everyone already lived here!
SEK: And what made you ultimately choose to spend your life in Israel?
JS: Despite being a Zionist, I had a happy childhood in Chicago and always imagined raising a family in the same neighborhood, at the same schools, and in the same community as I grew up. But when I came to Israel for a year after high school, I met all these people from all over the world - Morocco, South Africa, England Yemen - and it hit me that this is the place of our people's future, that we belong here. But the truth is, the thought kind of depressed me. I had this image of raising my kids in a certain place and in a certain way. I wanted to be in Israel and raise my family here, but I also had to, in a way, mourn my former dreams for my future, and it took me awhile to come to terms with it. But I also felt committed to this new dream. So I wrote to my parents and told them I was joining the Israeli army ... and they said "Oh no you're not!" So I agreed to a compromise - I would go back to Chicago and earn a degree in teaching special education and have a few more years of kibud av v'em [honoring one's parents], but I would only date men who wanted to make Aliyah.
SEK: And I assume one of those men was your husband, Yehuda?
JS: Correct. Although our story actually begins before we were born. Our mothers first met when they were pregnant with us - we were born only 18 days apart. But we went to different shuls and schools and lived in different neighborhoods, so we only met when we were older. We would occasionally run into each other in high school and even during our gap year in Israel. But when we both ended up at the same university, we became friends and I really liked him. Our first date was a concert that got cancelled, but when he suggested nervously that I might want to postpone the date until another concert came up, I quickly said we should go out now somewhere else. After some period of time I told him I'd like to marry him if he'll make Aliyah. Amazingly enough he too had decided during his gap year that he wanted to live in Israel, so he promised me we would make Aliyah before the age of 30, and we got married!
And then life happened. We got married at the age of 22, graduated college, started great jobs, and began settling down...in America! I remember one Rosh Hashana [Jewish new year], before we had kids, we were walking home from shul and the subject of Aliyah came up. We both felt that getting too settled was dangerous for our plans and we decided then and there that by the next Rosh Hashana we would have a date for our move. We just knew too many people who every couple years would say "I'll make Aliyah in a couple years" and never did. We didn't want to get caught in that cycle. So the next summer we took a pilot trip to Israel and when we returned from our month there we had a date. We actually beat our age 30 deadline by a couple years!
SEK: Did you come straight to Bet El?
JS: Nope. We started out in an absorption center in Raanana. After 6 months, we moved to a small apartment my family owned in Haifa. There were very few English speakers so it forced us to learn Hebrew very well and very quickly. We had many important experiences there but we felt we were missing a sense of community. So we began visiting communities all over Israel that met our priorities - we spent about two years looking and visited maybe 30 different places - until we finally came to Bet El, and we just fell in love with the people here.
SEK: I know you're very involved with the community here in Bet El. Tell me about different initiatives you've been involved in here.
JS: We moved to Bet El in 2000. In 2005 after my youngest son was born I felt I needed to take some time off from teaching and focus on being a mother. In 2007 I began doing a radio show on Arutz Sheva called Life Lessons, which I still do today.
One day during this period of my life, I was on a tour in an area of Bet El I had never been to before. The tour guide, the famous Hagi Ben Artzi, was showing us the rock upon which Yaakov Avinu [Jacob, our forefather] had his dream. He told us that this is the place Yaakov was given Divine promises about the Jewish people and the Land of Israel, the challenges of Diaspora and the promise of our return. I listened to this incredible story with goosebumps. I was very moved by it and I started thinking - "How come no one knows about this?! There needs to be a tourism center here; there should be thousands of visitors here daily! People make pilgrimages to Kever Rachel [Rachel's Tomb] and the Ma'arat HaMahpela [Cave of the Patriarchs], but people don't even know about this place!" For two years this kept bothering me and nobody, including me, did anything about it.
Then I found out that a group of English speaking tour guides was coming to Bet El. A couple friends and I decided to take the lead and introduce them to this treasure, this place where a huge biblical event took place! We organized a full day for these 35 tour guides, including a three hour tour of the site of Yaakovs Rock and also the offices of Arutz Sheva. We made a timeline for them of all the events that took place here, beginning with its being the second place G-d showed Avraham when he arrived in the Land, and ending with the recapturing of Bet El in 1967 and the first modern resettlement of Jews here in 1977. It was such a success that the group sent another 25 tour guides to do the same tour with us again.
A couples months later the mayor of Bet El approached me and asked me to open a Tourism Department in Bet El. I didn't have any experience working in the tourism industry, but he assured me it was just like teaching and convinced to me give it a try. I began working on a volunteer basis, and by the third year, the local council had secured funding from the government for a Tourism Department. I did that for eight years and I feel very proud of what I accomplished. We brought thousands of people from all over the world to Bet El. And we connected the people living in Bet El to their heritage here.
One of the things I felt like I was missing in Bet El, as opposed to in a big city like Haifa, was the opportunity to get to know Jews from all over the world and from all walks of life. Now don't get me wrong, Bet El is incredibly diverse, but 98% of the people who live here are some form of religious and some form of nationalist. So I got involved with a project called Anywhere in Israel, which would send us people looking for an interesting place to stay for Shabbat. Over the past couple of years though, we've been getting more involved in another local project. A woman in Bet El invites Haredi men studying at the Mir Yeshiva to be hosted by families here for Shabbat. I love this because it's so great to meet and talk with people who in some ways are very much like me - they believe in G-d and in the Torah and try to live according to its laws - and in other way are completely different - they have a totally different opinion about Zionism, our connection to the Land of Israel, the government, the army. It's given me the opportunity I crave to help close the chasm between different communities in this country.
SEK: You mentioned you took off time from work because of your son. Tell me a little bit about your family.
JS: Our oldest daughter was born in Chicago before we moved. We came on Aliyah expecting our second, a son who was born six months later in Raanana. We had two more boys while in Haifa and two more boys in Bet El! Our two oldest children are married. Our daughter is expecting her first child in a couple months and our son just gave us our first grandchild two weeks ago!
SEK: Mazal tov! Now that your kids are all grown up, did you ever go back to teaching?
JS: Yes, I did. After eight years of working as the Director of Tourism I decided I want to return to teaching. Back in Haifa I had gotten myself another degree in teaching English as a second language. Four years ago I began teaching English again, both in regular and special needs classes, this time at an elementary school in Adam, a village between Bet El and Jerusalem. I'm also the English coordinator there and I am very much enjoying it.
SEK: Last question, as a grandmother you are now the bearer of great wisdom. Tell me, what are a few life experiences that have changed you as a person?
JS: Oh I like this question! There are three things that come to mind. Firstly, getting married to my best friend, my sweet Yehuda. Being married has taught me to live as a member of a team, in a partnership, to compromise. It has taught me commitment even when things get tough, communication skills, being careful not to hurt another person with my words. It has made me a better person.
Secondly, becoming a mother. Being a mother is this incredible responsibility of raising other little people, trying to help them become good people, caring individuals, people who can see the good in others, who have big hearts. It is dealing with issues that come up every step of the way. It is teaching communication skills. It has taught me to be more patient, more firm (some might call it stubborn), to see life through fresh eyes. It has showed me that the capacity to love is not limited to loving one individual, but rather that it grows as each new person comes into my life.
Thirdly, making Aliyah. It has changed me, becoming a part of this country where I am the majority and not the minority. Where my people celebrate my holidays and government offices are closed for them. Seeing signs on city buses that read "Shana Tova" [Happy new year] for our new year, hearing on the radio what time candle lighting is for Shabbat. I have gained a sense of belonging, meeting Jews from all over the world and becoming connected to them. Feeling a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood with people whose backgrounds are so vastly different from mine on paper, and yet we share this heritage and ancestry. It is an incredible experience.
Living in Israel has its challenges but everything worthwhile in life has challenges bound within them. Just like being married and being a mother can be very challenging, so can living in Israel. But these are the best kinds of challenges we could want, because they force us to grow and become better, and they give us a tremendous amount of satisfaction. I feel extraordinarily blessed.