(the photo is from the We Are All Elohim party at Boom, that's artist Devorah on the left, me talking to a lady friend in the middle, and Miki and a friend to the right)

A Diaspora of Young Israelis, Decompressing


Miles Ladin for The New York Times Times

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, has become a center for young secular Israelis. An Israeli theme party in SoHo. (The Hebrew on the hanging sign says, "Wise is he who can foresee the future.")

By JENNIFER BLEYER

Published: October 5, 2003
N an art gallery converted from an auto repair shop in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a few dozen young people milled about in chic black eyeglasses and designer sneakers. They laughed and swirled wine in plastic cups. Some dipped into a Brie wheel. The artist whose opening was being celebrated, a lanky 26-year-old with disheveled hair and ponderous eyes, darted around explaining his installation.

The recent scene was no different from many others in the neighborhood — except that virtually everyone was chatting in Hebrew. The artist, Uri Aran, glanced around at his friends, an amalgam of Israeli designers, musicians, students and filmmakers who had recently emigrated. "A lot of us want a normal life, where we don't have to read in the newspaper about explosions and make phone calls to see if everyone's O.K.," he said.

His sister, Tal, 27, a dancer, moved to New York from their Jerusalem home four years ago. "I miss home," she said, "but it's too much right now." She shrugged. "I feel guilty about not being there. We're young, and we need to take care of ourselves."

The Aran siblings and their friends are part of a subculture of young secular Israelis transplanted to New York's bohemian precincts. They have left behind political conflict, violence and a depressed economy.

At sleek bars like Pianos on the Lower East Side, at places like Cafe Orlin and Cafe Mogador on St. Marks Place in the East Village and at the Grand Cafe and Anytime, both in Williamsburg, they are as much purveyors as consumers of youth leisure.

"The East Village is so full of Israelis," said Mr. Aran, with a wry smile. "Sometimes you hear so much Hebrew you want to avoid it." Citywide, Israelis are not a new phenomenon. The Department of City Planning counted around 20,000 Israelis living here in 2000 as authorized residents, a number that has changed little from 1990. They have long been noticeable in parts of Queens and south Brooklyn, and to anyone hiring a moving company in Manhattan. (Los Angeles and Miami also have sizable Israeli populations.) There is no way to tell how many are here on student, artist or tourist visas.

"They're definitely here — their impact is out there," said Ido Aharoni, a spokesman for the Israeli Consulate in New York. He observed that with many younger Israelis here on nonresident visas and a minor number here illegally, the population is difficult to quantify, though he estimates it in the tens of thousands.

Whatever their numbers, the image of young Israelis living in New York has apparently improved in their homeland.

"People who left in the 70's were considered losers who couldn't hack it," said Daniel Bailey, 34, an architectural welder and furniture designer, at Mr. Aran's opening. Back then, Mr. Bailey recalled, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin denounced Israelis who left as cowards. Even the Hebrew word for those who move away — yordim — translates as "those who descend," a phrase that connotes treason. "Now, things have changed," Mr. Bailey said. "Today, people say, `You're so smart that you left.' "

Many expatriates wrestle with inner conflicts. "My friends and I worry that we are yordim," said Vardit Gross, 30, an administrator of a nonprofit arts organization, who, like many contemporaries, participated in the peace movement in the 1990's. But, she emphasized, "We're not just here because it's bad in Israel; we're here because it's good for now, and it's fun."

Daphna Mor left Tel Aviv seven years ago to study at the Boston Conservatory. After graduation she made a beeline to New York. "Boston is boring," she said. "We're used to living in a rough environment. New York is chaotic, dirty, people are rude — just like home."

Ms. Mor, 29, has woven a successful life as a musician and educator, with a band that plays at Joe's Pub in the East Village and the Knitting Factory in TriBeCa, and with regular gigs teaching at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has a SoHo-born-and-bred boyfriend, a network of friends and a stream of Israeli guests crashing on her couch.

Ms. Mor's best friend, Yael Cohen, 31, joined her two years ago and now goes to a community college, does freelance interior design and works as a waitress at a Williamsburg haunt not far from where they both live. The two seem utterly at home, as if they have spent their entire lives sipping cappuccino and chain-smoking in cute Brooklyn cafes. On weekends, Ms. Mor says, "sometimes we don't even go into Manhattan."

They talk on the phone nightly and have the keys to each other's apartments. Being in New York together makes them feel closer to home. Still, they are never far from "the situation," as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is called. They served in the army, and their feelings about the conflict — passionate, contradictory, exasperated — illustrate how inseparable it is from their lives.

Ms. Mor grew up in an urban left-wing household, and, like Ms. Gross, is a former peace activist. "I'm disturbed on a daily basis with our struggle," she said intensely. "I love Israel because it's my home, but it's like a family — sometimes you're ashamed of your parents' view."

Ms. Cohen grew up in an agricultural moshav in the Jordan Valley, in the West Bank. A classmate was killed in a terrorist attack, as were several other people there, she said. "Some things I just choose to avoid," she added. "It's too emotional. It's a tragedy, and I cannot deal with tragedies in my daily life."

Ms. Cohen sounded despondent, but Ms. Mor is optimistic, at least about incremental change. Living in Tel Aviv, she hardly ever met Palestinians, she said. In New York, the people running the delicatessen below her Williamsburg apartment are Palestinian, and she and Ms. Cohen have become friends with them. "None of us talk about politics, but there's something so similar about us," Ms. Mor said. "Sometimes you have to go outside your country, I guess, to see the similarities."

Like many compatriots, they do not show hipness the way American counterparts do. Among those who stroll on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg in trucker caps and white belts, they look a little less ironic and a little more European. But as is customary in the neighborhood, they're enjoying an extended adolescence, postponing what Ms. Cohen called "the dogma of life."

For Israeli women, she said, that means high school, the army, traveling for a year, college, getting married and having a baby, all by the age of 26 or so. "I needed more time," she said. "Maybe because I'm curious. Or immature."

At a trance party last month in Hell's Kitchen, hundreds of Israelis bounced around all night to a relentless beat, with a smattering of Japanese, Americans and Europeans among them.

"It's a lot of young, progressive-minded people who just want to live a peaceful life and have fun," said Shai Raban, 26, one of four D.J.'s working. A mix of Eastern mystic and downtown cool, Mr. Raban finished his army service three years ago and because of "bad vibes" in Israel came to New York, diving head first into a scene that closely resembled the one at home. "There's this whole Israeli trance community here — D.J.'s, promoters, musicians," he said. "People come here for decompression."

Indeed, there's a trance party just about every weekend — some celebrating Jewish holidays like Purim and Rosh Hashana (New Year), though not the more solemn Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which begins tonight.

The music — a lush, psychedelic, upbeat genre of electronica — attracts huge Israeli crowds, mostly in their early 20's. At 1 a.m. on a Friday, a line had formed outside a trance party in Chelsea. Friends welcomed each other with European-style kisses on two cheeks. They waited patiently, knowing that the main set — two Israeli D.J.'s spinning for the first time in the United States — would not start until 2 or 3 a.m.

Unlike the more artsy, sophisticated Israelis in Brooklyn, the trance crowd is younger, wilder and fresher from the army. They work as movers, retailers and waitresses. Some say they are here just to make money and are eager to go home. Others say they are here as a temporary stop on their global wanderings, planning to head to India or South America next. Still others say that they love it here and would like to stay.

Many say that they are having fun but just cannot imagine what the future holds — a sentiment that does not necessarily change with age.

Oren Kaplan, 37, who came in 1996, plays with Gogol Bordello, a band that has performed its mix of gypsy music, Russian punk and cabaret at the Whitney Museum. Mr. Kaplan has the chill, laconic demeanor that is de rigueur on the Lower East Side, where he lives. Sipping tea at a cafe, he perked up to consider whether he would ever return to live in Israel. "I would go back there one day when I'm older, if there's peace and quiet," he said. "The weather's great. The food is great. It's beautiful." He paused. "Or maybe Barcelona."

full article at http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/05/fashion/05ISRA.html?pagewanted=1&ei=1&en=39128c1abffa23cc&ex=1066410612
(must have pasword to log in)