Tag Archives: Israeli passport

Israel

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My trip to Israel was timed to coincide with two of my four cousins’ return to the country for Passover. The eldest cousin, Nir, has lived in L.A. for seventeen or eighteen years (we overlapped during his first / my last year in the city, the only time I ever lived remotely close to any of the four). The youngest, Rachel, moved to Norway with her partner and two young children about a year ago.

Irit, the cousin who is closest in age to me, picked me up at the airport when I arrived in Tel Aviv a couple of weeks before Passover. We took the train to Zichron Ya’akov, the beautiful town near Haifa where she lives with her husband and two kids. I had never met her kids — my first cousins once removed — in person, even though they are already a teenager and a tween, respectively. It was really nice to finally spend time with them. I got ice cream in the old town with Ella and I watched Almog play video games and learn to drive.

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Ová it

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When I used to do silly things as a child, my mother would tsk tsk me, “Rootie Schtootie,” because schtoot in Hebrew means nonsense. Today I am Rootie Schtootie-ing myself on her behalf, because my idiocy / vanity has cost me my best West African adventure yet. (Though my mother – who is, to put it mildly, not a fan of my travels – will be thrilled.) Continue reading →

passport, please

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world passports

Though I was born and raised in the United States, I’m a dual American/Israeli citizen. I stopped by the Israeli consulate this morning to renew my passport for the fourth time in less than ten years. That’s because the last two times, they inexplicably extended my current passport for a year instead of actually renewing it. This consisted of pasting an extremely forged-looking document onto the second to last page, so that at first glance it still looked to foreign border agents as though my passport was expired, and I had to point the extension out to them while praying they wouldn’t accuse me of fraud and/or send me back to where I came from.

So this time I made sure to ask whether I could get a brand new ten-year passport as per the terms I had read online. I was told that while I was finally eligible for a new passbook, it would only be valid for three years. This seemed completely arbitrary to me, but I learned it’s because the last time I visited Israel was seven years ago, and my passport cannot extend ten years beyond that date.

Now, I don’t know whether this is customary practice in other countries. It may well be de rigueur around the world. But it struck me as a quintessentially Jewish thing to do: punishing me for not doting enough on my mother (country).

It is almost as if Israel is telling me, “You don’t call, you don’t write.* Oh, but you want something from me? First come for a visit, then we’ll talk.”

The day I return to Israel I become eligible for a ten-year passport. Until then, I’m in the doghouse. As annoying as this is in a practical sense, I can’t help but enjoy the appropriateness of this policy for a people who have perfected the guilt trip.

[Photo: Baigal Byamba]

*You don’t speak.