13/10/95

If Every Last Jew Made Aliya

Thirty-five thousand flights landed that evening. But nobody suspected a thing.

    "Problems, ladies and gentlemen. We got big problems."
    You could see it on Pinhas Farkas's furrowed face. The head of the Immigration and Absorption Department looked terrible, as if the Cost of Living Index had just risen half a point. God forbid.
    "Maybe you need a glass of water," said Ben-Ami, the infrastructure coordinator.
    "No!" Farkas yelped frantically. "Save every drop,  we'll need it later."
    Damn, thought Levy. The office plumbing clogged up again. Big problems indeed.
    Farkas took a deep breath. "I don't know how to tell you this. We've got an aliya crisis you won't believe."
    "It stopped?" Levy (the other one) had dreaded this day since he came to work for the department as a neo-idealist in '52, straight out of the ma'abara.
    Farkas shook his head. "You remember I put Ehrlich in charge of our emissary program? I told you he was good. He dreamed up a can't-fail one-time-only offer. Then he went on the road with it, door to door from Kamchatka Peninsula to Tierra del Fuego, and now they're coming, all of them, every last Jew on Earth, from Aabarbanel to Zyzzyvitch, is coming to live in the Jewish State. Ten million people are this minute getting on planes, boats, donkeys, to fulfill the Zionist dream, to ingather together in the land of their forefathers, and I can't figure out why."
    Shvartz fainted. Indig threw up. Begleibter mumbled "oh God, oh God" over and over again.
    "Maybe our message finally got through," said Touti.
    "You naive cretin," sneered Snir, ever the nabob of negativism in the department. "When we urged them to come live here, they said no, but we'll come visit. So then we got real and said okay, don't live here, but you have to visit, and they said no, we're going to Italy instead, but we'll send money. So we took the money and said great, at least they're thinking of Israel occasionally, until some shmendrik announces we don't need money but if they really  want to be Zionists they should help the Palestinians. Meanwhile the Christians send big checks, come to visit, settle here, and you know why? Because they're punch-drunk with Zionism. Yeah, our message got through, but to the wrong people."
    "Enough," snarled Indig indignantly. "We have until sundown to find 10 million extra beds; tomorrow morning, you can bicker all you want."
    "Tomorrow morning," The Other Levy corrected him, "we'll be busy scrounging around for 10 million extra breakfasts. When everybody wakes, the Kinneret will be emptied in one flush. We'll need nine million kilowatts of electricity even if everyone turns on just one 60-watt light bulb. By the end of the week we'd better have 50,000 new synagogues or there'll be hell to pay. And I'm not even talking about jobs and housing. Or the traffic. Farkas is right. We have a problem."
    "This calls for extreme measures," Farkas said, taking a deep breath.   
    Touti was thunderstruck. "A committee?"
    Farkas nodded gravely. "A committee."
    "We'll need a slogan."
    "And posters."
    "Jeez, we'll need financing. Call the UJA."
    "Yeah, maybe they can take up a collection tonight in their absorption center."
    "Oh. I forgot."
    Farkas got an ill feeling that the Jewish State was on the brink of  invasion, and he was the supreme commander, and this was to be his finest hour. Or his worst. He steadied himself. "Never in the field of aliya," his voice rang out  compellingly, "was so much needed for so many by so few..."
    "Yeah," Snir interrupted, "and we have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and a cup of orange juice at the airport. And frankly, I'm not so sure about those first three."
    "Now we're getting somewhere!" Farkas thundered. "Snir, you're in charge of the complimentary juice. One cup per person. Ben-Ami, order more luggage buggies. Levy -- no, the other one -- find me 10 million beds by supper-time. Double up every Israeli if you have to, and if you're still short maybe the Palestinians can put up a few million for the night --"
    "Home hospitality in Gaza?" Levy was aghast.
    "In refugee camps if necessary," Farkas snarled.
    Begleibter suggested maybe giving every Israeli a free trip to Turkey, providing they leave instantly. Farkas thought about it for a moment and then said no, diplomatic relations wouldn't last the day. 
    Shvartz came to. He whispered to Touti that if Elizabeth Taylor was making aliya, he wanted her autograph.
    Farkas heard. "... And Shvartz has volunteered to be in charge of paperwork." Shvartz fainted again.
    When the eight department staffers were given their assignments (and only after a squabble broke out between Indig and Ben-Ami over whether the western Negev was truly habitable), Farkas adjourned the meeting. "Just one more thing," he said. "This airlift is a secret, so let's not raise any suspicions."

THIRTY-FIVE thousand flights landed at Ben-Gurion Airport that evening which, newspapers noted the following day, was a new record. "Statistical blip," Farkas explained dully to an investigative reporter.  
    The secret held for the first week, then the second. Nobody suspected a thing. Sure, the country was in a state of manic bedlam, but only quantumly more than usual.
    Nobody knew for sure, but it seemed that traffic jams had become longer than ever before. That was the reason, the tourism minister grumbled, Jewish tourists had stopped coming. Bureaucracies seemed more crowded than ever, but they always do, so no one suspected anything. Unemployment officials could not explain why their figures suddenly showed half a million jobless lawyers, but no one seemed very upset.
    One day a tabloid ran a front-page photo purporting to be Steven Spielberg at an ulpan in Karmiel. A competing paper went one up by reporting that all the Rothschilds, Bronfmans and Reichmanns were sighted standing in line at a bank in  Ashkelon. Yet a third paper said Jonathan Pollard was missing from his American prison cell and was rumored to be working in a kibbutz cowshed. Nobody, of course, believed any of it.
    Hollywood was, for some mysterious reason, having its worst year ever. A gossip columnist blamed it on a Zionist conspiracy; nobody believed that, either.

SOME TIME later, Pinhas Farkas gathered his staff together for an emergency meeting. They were jubilant at their astounding success, back-slapping and high-fiving. But Farkas looked nauseous.
    "Problems," he announced.
    "Did we forget somebody?" asked Snir.
    "Not a soul," Farkas responded glumly. "For the first time since the days of Noah, every Jew on earth is here, together, paying taxes to one government, bickering about the same things. Not even the wildest Zionist dreamer could have imagined this."
        Shvartz tsked impatiently. "So?" 
    "The country is flourishing like never before. We have the best people in every field contributing to make this society a light unto the nations. We're fast becoming a world power. And yet..."
    "And yet you would have us drink Alka-Seltzer instead of champagne," said Levy the Other. "What gives?"
    Farkas sighed. "What's going to happen when Washington realizes there's no more Jewish lobby? Who will challenge revisionists in Japan or anti-Zionists in Britain? For that matter, when our foreign minister goes abroad, who will be there to organize a nice kosher reception or a pro-Israel rally? We used to have a worldwide network of Zionists to represent our interests, to push our exports, to inflate our influence so that the whole world knew the Jews had to be reckoned with. We were high-profile, prominent, we couldn't be ignored. And now? Without a diaspora, we'll become as relevant to the family of nations as Nyasaland."
    Indig was aghast. "You're not saying..."
    Farkas nodded. "When we drained the Hula it was a marvelous triumph, a cornerstone of Zionist principle, an inspiration to mankind. It was also a mistake: we diddled nature. The next thing you know, it's a Zionist achievement to reflood the Hula."
    "You're mad!" shouted Begleibter.
    Touti was beside himself. "This is how you interpret the Law of Return -- that immigrants should go back to where they came from?"
    "And quickly," Farkas said. "Before the rest of the world notices their Jews are missing."