Crossing the Yarden

By Yarden Frankl

My House

I, Yarden Frankl, now own a house in the land of Israel.

Sounds nice, doesn't it?

The house is quite small and we will be doing extensive building and renovations before we move in. But all the same, it is in Israel, and we own it.

We have learned a great deal about the process of buying and building a home and securing a mortgage here. At times, it has felt like an enormous scavenger hunt as we traipsed around the land getting everyone to sign, stamp, and stick ribbons on our plans. I kid you not, we have two documents that are now festooned with red ribbons. As part of the mortgage process, we needed to pay someone a nice sum of money to tie these cool looking ribbons to a piece of paper. The ribbons prove that the documents are indeed valid because it would be next to impossible for someone else to tie a red ribbon to your plans, right?

One morning we found out we had to go to Tel Aviv immediately and pay 70 shekels (about $16 or 2 large shwarmas) to have someone hand us a sheet of paper that then had to be rushed back to the bank in Jerusalem. I know that Israel is considered fairly high-tech, but sometimes you just have to wonder.

Besides the ribbons, we needed various stamps of approval from many different people and agencies. First, the Yishuv had to approve the plans. Everyone here is allowed a say on your plans. Of course the number of people who reviewed our plans was actually less than the number of people who voted for Olmert here. (I've been told that one person did – vote for Olmert that is.)

Then we had to get stamps from the Jewish Agency, our future neighbors, the Army, the bank, the pizza guy, the regional authorities, and a few other people whose role I am not quite sure about, but they did own a stamp so I didn't argue.

Of course I mentioned how we were running around trying to get all the proper approvals to one Israeli friend who laughed and mentioned that he had only gotten a few of the approvals and had actually finished building a few years ago. (The final stage in Aliyah is listed as being able to "casually disregard excessive bureaucratic regulations." I'm not quite there yet).

But I digress. I just saw a video of former peanut farmer and one-term President of the United States Jimmy Carter explaining why he is not happy about my house. Well, he didn't mention me by name, but referred to all of us crazy settlers who build houses in the West Bank. He is unhappy because of the impact it has on the Palestinians. But as far as I can see, the impact is to give lots of them jobs (and some of them Mercedes).

But we don't spend our days worrying about Carter or all the other people who have a problem with where we decided to live. We spend our days working, raising our kids, and wondering what is for dinner and other mundane facts of life.

But every now and then it hits us. We are one and a half years into our dream and going strong. We don't just live in some suburban development. We live close to the Holy City of Jerusalem. We live where the Jewish faith began. We live where Avraham walked. If you are Jewish and reading this in the States, you face my house when you pray.

And no one, not even a former U.S. President, can tell us we don't belong here.

Shabbat Shalom from our blessed nation.

© 2007 Yarden Frankl