[Interview conducted by Sharona eshet-Kohen]
Hillel Fendel (HF): I'm originally from West Hempstead, Long Island (NY), where my father was the founding rabbi of the local Young Israel synagogue and the founding principal of the local day school – Hebrew Academy of Nassau County (HANC). So I was fortunate to grow up on a sound Torah base, mixed with maybe just a bit too much "appreciation" for American music and major league baseball. But it's all good – I anyway moved to Israel for high school.
SEK: What originally brought you to Israel and what did you do when you got here?
HF: I originally came to Israel for 10th grade (Netiv Meir in Jerusalem), mainly because neither I nor my parents were thrilled with the other possibilities. Until then, I had been in one warm community and school for 10 years straight, and suddenly I found myself in a different country, without family, in a Hebrew-speaking environment. It was hard, but even so, I had no regrets.
I was happy when my family came to Israel for a Sabbatical the following year, and I even remained for yet another year when they returned to New York. I agreed, however, to return to New York for university – interspersing my time in college with some years in Israel, learning in Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav Kook.
SEK: What happened next? And how did you ultimately make your way to Bet El?
HF: After one final year in America post-college, where I worked in systems programming in the World Trade Center, I returned to Israel for my final, official Aliyah. Within a few months, I met my future wife, and we were privileged to sample life in a few different parts of the Land of Israel: Jerusalem, Afula, and Mevaseret Zion. We then ultimately moved to Bet El, where we have been now for over 25 years.
I remember that a real estate agent in another part of the country that we were considering - where many friends of ours were living - tried to dissuade us from moving to Bet El: "With this new Oslo Agreement," he said, "you're headed for a hard time living in Yesha [Judea and Samaria]; what do you need that headache for?" He was partly right, of course – except that the "headache" was totally outweighed by all the amazing advantages of living here! We are thrilled that our eight children grew up here, and so are they.
Not to mention that I can't see how I would have ended up with Arutz Sheva Israel National News and the Bet El Institutions had I not moved here.
SEK: How long have you been working with Bet El Institutions and in what capacity?
HF: I was fortunate to join up with the English Arutz Sheva Israel National News site in its very first weeks of existence – and remained with there for its first 15 years! Baruch Gordon first asked me to come in for just a few minutes each day to translate Arutz Sheva’s independent news reports, and this gradually developed into a site in which we wrote and investigated some of our own reports, while still relying on and working in tandem with the "parent" Hebrew site.
Giving our "Torah Zionist" angle on the events, it was extremely gratifying knowing that we were helping connect Jews outside Israel with what was going on here, and reminding them of the historical context, and why they should really be here.
SEK: How did you get into the translation line of work? Do you, or have you, done other work for Bet El Institutions?
HF: I was always drawn to translating from Hebrew into English. I still have some excerpts from Rav Filber's classic religious-Zionist work Ayelet HaShachar that I translated during my time in Merkaz HaRav. I studied technical writing at one point, and worked in that field right here in Bet El for a couple of years, and then it all came together a Arutz Sheva, barukh Hashem.
These days, I continue to write, translate, and edit – and have written some books myself and with others – and I'm happy to still occasionally translate or write for this blessed enterprise of Baruch and Sharona!
SEK: Hailing from New York, how did you learn Hebrew well enough to translate for a living?
HF: I learned Hebrew in the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County (special thanks to Mr. Schiff and Mr. Lilintal), but throughout my first year here in Israel I still had to walk around every day with a Hebrew-English dictionary! I guess I have improved since then.
While on the topic, I would like to make a public call from here to the general public: Please stop mixing third-person singular with first-person in the future tense (e.g., ani yishlach)!
SEK: Tell me about your family - how did you meet your wife? Where are your children today?
HF: In 1981, I spent a Shabbat in the sea-side caravan community of Atzmona - in the midst of the struggle to prevent the withdrawal from Sinai. In fact, the community itself had been founded just two years earlier to signal refusal to accept the withdrawal from parts of the Land as called for in the Camp David Accords.
I went to see firsthand the idealism of the pioneers there (and also because someone mentioned that there was a nice girl there named Bina). Originally from Connecticut, Bina was then wholly involved in chessed and the Land, Torah, and Nation of Israel - just what I was looking for. We were married the next year.
When Oslo began tightening around the Jewish communities in Yesha [Judea and Samaria], and the Labor-led government made it particularly hard to live here, I remember Rav Melamed's* sister and longtime Bet El resident, Mrs. Remer, saying, "If they don't want us in Yesha, fine – we'll live all over the country."
And to a certain extent, that's what happened; many garinim [core groups of religious-Zionist residents] opened up throughout Israel, sharing the ideals of healthy Jewish life throughout the country. Our children live with their children in several of these garinim, including in Nazareth Illit, Gedera, Ramat HaSharon, and elsewhere. And we have one son and set of grandchildren in Yesha, in Kokhav HaShachar.
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| Hillel (back middle) with wife (front left), father (front right), daughter (back left), and others of his children and their spouses |
SEK: What is the single most important message you would like to transmit to our readers?
HF: Wow, that's quite a challenge! I would say this: Heighten your Jewish senses! Look and see that the words of the Prophets are no longer just a text to study in school; they are like a playbill – and we're here at the play! Even though they were written 2,500 years ago, they're describing what is happening in front of our very eyes.
The same with the siddur [prayerbook] – we still have lots to pray for, but many of the prayers we say every day are for our return to the Land and our national resurrection - and that's what's happening now! Come and join us as we shape history, fulfilling the prophetic predictions of building a world-leading Torah society in our very own land that waited so patiently for us for so many centuries!
*Rav Melamed is the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Bet El.
[Interview conducted by Sharona Eshet-Kohen, Online Media Director of Bet El Institutions]