The Anglo Bubble

The RBS Experiment

It’s been called a bubble, a mini America where you can commute on a plane to work, speak English with the shopkeepers, and never have to worry much about Israel just beyond your borders. But the soft landing awaiting those Anglo adults who make aliyah to Ramat Beit Shemesh might be a dangerous crutch to their kids, who grow up more American than Israeli. Or is that a bad thing after all?

It was far and away one of the most thrilling moments of my life. As the Nefesh b’Nefesh charter plane swept the Ben-Gurion runway and came to a stop amid cheers and sobs and ecstatic applause, I looked out the window, tears streaming down my face, and was overwhelmed with the knowledge that I was now doing what generations of Jews could only dream of: coming home to Eretz Yisrael. It had taken months of arduous work, both physical and emotional, but there was no doubt in my mind, not then and not now, that it was worth it.

Whether we’ve gotten here by camel, boat, or airplane, making aliyah has always required a good dose of sweat, sacrifice, and siyata d’Shmaya. Moving to any new country involves the daunting hurdle of starting from scratch — new language, new culture, new job — with no connections, reputation, or familiar point of reference to pave the way. And modern-day Israel, as a country built by immigrants, has seen the acculturation saga played out again and again by the various immigrant groups that have arrived to build a new life in this ancient land of ours.

But a new phenomenon has emerged over the past decade and a half — a plot twist in this age-old narrative of the immigrant’s experience. It is a community where greenhorns can be successful without mastering Hebrew, where the values and mores of the “Old World” are not judged obsolete, where the younger generation respects, rather than rejects, the foreign culture of their parents. It’s been derided as a bubble, but it’s better described as a social experiment, one with far-reaching implications.