{"id":12000,"date":"2015-04-17T00:09:52","date_gmt":"2015-04-17T07:09:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=12000"},"modified":"2015-04-16T18:38:19","modified_gmt":"2015-04-17T01:38:19","slug":"familys-tale-of-immigration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2015\/04\/17\/familys-tale-of-immigration\/","title":{"rendered":"Family\u2019s tale of immigration"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Home, New Hope<\/em> edutains on aliya and the Soviet Union.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

With the themes of Passover still reverberating, I read Aliza Ziv\u2019s book New Home, New Hope<\/em> (Contento de Semrik, 2014). About a single mother making aliya from the Soviet Union with her two young children, the book is about freedom, being strangers in a new land, becoming part of a community, respecting the past while trying to create a more promising future.<\/p>\n

\"book<\/a>The story centres on Marina, Boris, 9, and Tanya, 4, and their experiences integrating into Israel from 1985 through 1995. It is both a specific and universal tale about immigration, and the challenges and opportunities new immigrants face anywhere in the world. However, the specificity is what most intrigued me. Ziv writes with authority and in detail about both the absorption process in Israel at the time and the political situation there and in Russia during that decade.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis book was written on the basis of my vast experience teaching new immigrants who came to Israel (olim hadashim<\/em>),\u201d wrote Ziv in an email to the Independent<\/em>. \u201cThese immigrants had to face a new culture, language, values, and had to adapt themselves to their new homeland.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ziv explained that she first published the novel in Hebrew in 2002 with the title Difficulty Beyond Words<\/em>. \u201cLater on, my husband Joe and I decided to translate it into English. It was published in October 2014, with a new name, New Home, New Hope<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe book is also based on what we had to face when we and our three children made our aliya in 1967,\u201d added her husband in a separate email. \u201cAliza was a shlicha, sent to teach modern Hebrew using the ulpan method. She taught in Halifax, Toronto and, finally, in Vancouver at the Talmud Torah.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Aliza was born in Jerusalem, Joe grew up in Vancouver, went to VTT and King Edward High School, and graduated from the University of Alberta. \u201cI was active in Young Judaea, one of the first organizers of Habonim, and one of the founders of Camp Miriam,\u201d he said of his local connections.<\/p>\n

The Zivs\u2019 personal experience with immigration comes through in Aliza\u2019s writing. She doesn\u2019t sugarcoat the difficulties of leaving an established life, family and longtime friends and integrating into a new country, having to learn another language, find a home, (re)start a career, build relationships, etc., etc., all the while worrying about those you\u2019ve left behind. And your new fellow citizens must also get used to your presence in their country \u2013 immigrants seem threatening to some people, to their job security, their traditional way of life, and Ziv also tackles these issues in her novel.<\/p>\n

One particularly interesting scene is a party on a moshav at which the more established Israelis are playing old Russian songs, wondering why the new immigrants aren\u2019t joining in. One of the Israelis explains how the chalutzim<\/em> (pioneers) \u201ccame to build the Jewish homeland, and within them was an integration of socialist and even communist values and concepts. And so they established cooperatives, kibbutzim and moshavim\u2026. We grew up with lots of love of the Russian culture, its music and especially its songs. It is really in our blood.\u201d The new immigrants are not convinced, and one points out that many of these songs \u201cnot only have a romantic base but also have an antisemitic and militaristic, murderous one. About Bogdan Khmelnsiky, Simon Petliura, have you heard of them?\u201d The debate continues, and it is these parts of New Home, New Hope<\/em> that I found the most compelling. (I have since looked up both of these men online.)<\/p>\n

From a literary perspective, New Home, New Hope<\/em> is not one of the best books I\u2019ve ever read, and the formatting and editing is not as clean as it would be if it had been put out by a conventional publishing house, but it is one of the more interesting books I have ever read. Ziv is a good writer and she is a fount of knowledge on topics that many readers would profit from \u2013 and enjoy \u2013 learning about.<\/p>\n

New Home, New Hope<\/em> is available in both digital (Kindle) and printed formats through Amazon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Home, New Hope edutains on aliya and the Soviet Union. With the themes of Passover still reverberating, I read Aliza Ziv\u2019s book New Home, New Hope (Contento de Semrik, 2014). About a single mother making aliya from the Soviet Union with her two young children, the book is about freedom, being strangers in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12004,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[3590,3591,4330,3592],"class_list":["post-12000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-aliya","tag-aliza-ziv","tag-israel","tag-russia"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}