Sitting in the Airport

[Note: some of these posts may be out of order, but I'll try not to confuse the reader too much]

We’re sitting in Newark International Airport, about to board El Al flight 28 to Tel Aviv; our tickets are one-way. Emotions are running high, and many tears were shed by mothers and reassuring pats delivered by fathers. But we can’t get emotional now, because we need to stay focused on the next 24 hours.

Here’s the plan:

We land at 6:30 AM in Israel. When we do, a volunteer from AACI (Association of American and Canadian Immigrants, a non-profit kind of Nefesh B’Nefesh, just slightly less well-known) is supposed to meet us along with the 6 other olim on our flight, and bring us up to the misrad haklita, where we will hopefully receive our teudat oleh, mispar zehut, some cash, and two vouchers – one for health care and a second one for a free cab to our destination: our new apartment in Haifa. When we get to Haifa, the shippers will come deliver our things from the lift, and we’ll have everything under our roof when we go to sleep Monday night.

That is, if everything goes as planned. There could potentially be several hiccups.

First of all, we don’t have original copies of our documents (birth certificates, marriage license, proof-of-Judaism letter, etc.), only photocopies. Our originals are on the lift. This means that the misrad haklita in the airport could theoretically deny us some or all of the things we need to get from them. If they do, we will have to wait until we get the documents, and then go to a misrad klita in Haifa, or possibly go back to the misrad haklita in the airport.

In theory, that means they might not give us the voucher for the free cab we need. Since we have way too much stuff to consider taking a bus or train, we’ll have to pay out of pocket for a cab if the government doesn’t.

In theory, the processing at the airport should not take very long, and we should be on our way up to Haifa at most a few hours after our 6:30 landing, plenty of time to make it there by 12-1 PM. But if, for whatever reason stuff at the misrad klita takes longer, then we have to call the shippers and tell them to postpone our delivery until Tuesday morning. Not the end of the world, but considering the fact that we also might have to redo the misrad klita stuff, and that we still have a whole laundry list of chores that we need to take care of this week.

So that’s the story. Differences of advice abound regarding the best way to deal with Israeli bureaucracy. Some say to play dumb, or even be sweet. Others suggest fighting fire with fire – if they ask you rhetorical questions (“Why don’t you have your documents, don’t you know you’re supposed to have them?”), answer back with your own (“Are we the first people to ever make aliyah?”)

We’re hoping to keep these hiccups to a minimum, but, then again, it wouldn’t really be aliyah without one or two.

UPDTATE: We’re on the plane, and it’s every El Al stereotype rolled into one. We are seated among an army of chassidish bochrim, who decided to rearrange half the plane in order to optimize their seating arrangement, while arguing with the flight attendants. The flight took off an hour later than scheduled, though the pilot assured the passengers that we’ll land on time (maybe he knows a shortcut). And, just before takeoff, as if on cue, one or two babies began screaming hysterically. Oh, how we miss US Airways.