Nadene Goldfoot
We made aliyah to Israel in the fall of 1980. I'll never forget walking between 2 flanks of the IDF guarding passengers of El Al at the Portland, Oregon airport. Chills ran through me and I knew this was a special time for us. Danny and I were boarding this plane which would change our lives. Our German shepherd had taken her pill and was boarded in her dog carrier.
Our dog was giving up her own large bedroom and double bed in Ontario, Oregon. She had an oil painting of a handsome male German shepherd on the wall facing her bed. She was one spoiled dog. I started walking more with her to get us both in shape.
When we landed in Israel, we could hear her barking in the airport, letting us know where to find her easily. She was so glad to see us. However, the Mercaz Ha-klita in Haifa was not that happy to see her. They told us they didn't accept dogs, something the Shaliach didn't realize who had made all our arrangements to come to Israel, go through a 10 month re-training and teach English in Israel. We were American teachers.
Now, Blintz, our female German shepherd, was really our daughter presenting as a German shepherd to the world. Parting with her was worse than anyone's sweet sorrow. We had to live at the Mercaz where we would undergo classes 6 days a week all day and take all our meals there which was our room and board in order to take a long test and pass it in order to get our teaching certificates and teach in Israel. We were there for the next 10 months. So we had to board Blintz with someone.
The Mercaz found a young couple nearby who would do it. He was an IDF soldier and she was a gorgeous Greek Jewish gal who looked exactly like a petite Sophia Loren. He loved to play with Blintz and they wrestled together. Blintz did get a bad report about being too rough with their cat, though, almost causing her to have to leave. She shaped up until we got the news that our Sophia Loren was pregnant and so Blintz was asked to leave.
I knew that Blintz was not wanted in the Mercaz, so decided to be very deceptive. I snuck her in, telling Blintz to be very quiet. When I had to take her out for her business, we used the freight elevator to go up and down as we lived on the 4th floor of the Mercaz. I then walked for over an hour with her through Haifa, and everyone I passed wanted to buy her from me. I felt like a soldier with guard dog sneaking out in the morning so quietly so as not to alert the house mother at the reception desk. Blintz complied. She was so good. She understood.
We kept this up until Danny and I had both passed our tests after the 10 months of study and classes and had found a position of teaching in Safed. On our day of graduation, the house mother told us that she had known all along that I was sneaking Blintz in and out every day, but she had decided to say nothing. Israel did not want to lose us. We were needed. i love Israel for that. They knew how to bend a rule when it was important to do so.
One time we went up on the roof of our Mercaz building to do our laundry. We walked up the stairs with Blintz. Suddenly she thought she could run ahead of us when I let her off the leash, a bad decision. She jumped over the guard rail and fell to the next level. I thought she was dead. I about died myself. She didn't, came too and we managed to get her to our apartment. We didn't know what to do but sat up all night with her. As new immigrants, we didn't know what to do. The house mother had left. We had no car and no vet or doctor. She healed. What had gotten into either of us; me for taking her off the leash and her leap is beyond me. From then on we were most careful.
We just moved into our ground-floor apartment building, Binyon 213 in Safed, with bars on the living room window to protect us from terrorists. We used our twin bed given to us for a couch with a cover until our lift arrived. Getting a ground floor apartment was wonderful for Blintz. We were on the edge of a cliff, so used the leash. At the end of our block was the city's well known hospital, and across the street was the junior high where I would teach English to the 7th, 8th and 9th grades, kittas Aleph, Bet and Gimel. Danny would teach further away in a high school of all girls. He had a Master's degree, a prerequisite for high school teachers. We would buy our red Subaru the next year, spending this year walking everywhere or taking a sherut or bus.
Blintz did well in Israel, and when she died, Danny buried her in the nearby forest. When the Moshiach comes, she will lead people who must go through Safed, to Jerusalem.
Resource:
My own personal experience
Letters From Israel, by Nadene Goldfoot
No comments:
Post a Comment