Productive citizen of (which) society?
Even at an early age, work was my main conduit to independence, self-reliance and self-confidence, and I loved knowing that if I wanted to buy something that my mother wasn’t able (or didn’t want) to afford, I would be able to “take care of (my) business” myself.
Somewhere along the line, my work ethic simply became an indelible and ingrained part of me. So, when I decided to make aliyah, I just declared a financial prerequisite and deadline for myself, and prepared to step on the plane as soon as I reached my goal. I took every job I could find that last year in America – full-time nanny from the wee hours of every morning, babysitting in the evenings, teaching Sunday school and advising a USY group on weekends. And within the year, I had amassed enough savings to fully finance my first two years in Israel, including the expense of aliyah itself. Part of my plan for this first year was to focus fully on my absorption into the culture and this primarily entailed full-time Hebrew ulpan classes.
So I threw myself into my new goal, trying to convince myself that my Hebrew education was really just “like a real job” and that I would enjoy the pseudo-vacation from work-work. And I did enjoy that period of my life, while consciously distracting myself from the little nagging feeling that something was missing. When I concluded that first year of ulpan and threw myself right into my next adventure, an M.A. and then a Ph.D. program in social psychology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, I again excused myself for not working, on the grounds that studying for an advanced degree – in Hebrew, no less – would be “work enough,” and then some.
And then, alongside my never-ending dissertation came the work of being a wife. Then being a mother was added to the mix, as one kid and then another came along, creating more exhaustion than I have ever experienced. So there I was, just a few months ago, approaching the end of nearly a decade of non-employment.
And that little nagging feeling had grown, bit by bit, and was now making its presence known on a daily basis, a roar of discontent, frustration, and doubt in my own self-worth. Because I am now 36 years old, and have yet to contribute to my adopted homeland and society in any real, “productive citizen” kind of way. Oh yes, I’m bringing up the new generation and all that noble stuff, but I just couldn’t help but feel that I was simply not holding up my end of the bargain as a useful member of society.
It was, thus, a source of absolute delight to be offered a job at the local teachers’ college here in Be’er Sheva two months ago. I immediately accepted, although I have no certification and little teaching experience. “No problem,” they said, and it was only then that I realized why they were jumping at the chance to hire me. I would be teaching “English for Academic Purposes,” they informed me, and it was essential that the teacher be fluent in English and have an understandable (read: American) accent. So really, as soon as I opened my mouth, I had the job.
I suppose this shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did. After all, I will soon have a Ph.D. in social psychology, and I am qualified to teach and mentor in my field at a university level, among many other things. So why, after nearly 10 years of living here, would the only job offer I receive be to teach English?
The more that nagging feeling crept back in, the more I realized that, on some level, this had been my biggest fear: that I would make aliyah, work my butt off at learning the language and integrating myself into society (as much as possible), only to find that I would never really succeed. That I would always remain an American whose only real asset is her English. That after all that (emotionally) back-breaking work, my only possibility of achieving that long-sought-after status of “productive member of society” would lay in something that actually had taken no effort or choice on my part … that my value as an Israeli would be only as an American-Israeli.
Don’t get me wrong; at this point, I am interminably grateful to be working at all, given my limited skill set (no one is looking for a qualitative psychologist these days) and the state of the economy worldwide. And at least I am providing for my family, something that I have sorely missed doing. But I worry that I will get stuck in this job, stuck in the English bubble, stuck doing something I don’t love because it has turned out to be the only thing I can do here.
The (ambivalently) good news is that the job involves teaching mostly Bedouins, which means I am actually acting more like an anthropologist than a teacher. I have found an entirely new subset of the Israeli population that I inevitably misunderstand, misjudge and misinterpret at every turn. At least I’m still learning, every day. And clearly my work is not at all done here.
ALISON STERN PEREZ (alisonsternperez@gmail.com or alisonsterngolub.com), a native of Seattle, is a 2000 Brown University graduate.
