When I first moved to Israel (Aliyah), I lived on a wonderful kibbutz. The relationships I made there still remain strong today.  One of my (many) roommates was a French Oleh (immigrant) who had moved to Israel with his family.  For whatever reason, my roommate had chosen to live on the kibbutz during his absorption process while his family had settled in a yishuv (settlement).

Since he had his family close by, and I did not, he was kind enough to have invited me to his family’s home for Pesach. Although extremely welcoming and more than hospitable,  I opted to leave the kibbutz for the holiday and travel with my friend.  Bags packed, we started our journey, which would change my life forever.

Having only been in Israel a short while, my Hebrew was pretty rusty and I didn’t speak French.  I understood enough to have accepted my friend’s invitation , but not enough to know where we were going.  His family lived in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank).   It took several buses to finally get to our destination (the last one was bullet proof).  There, to greet us at the bus stop inside the settlement was the most beautiful girl.  She had an intoxicating smile and long, silky hair.  My friend told me he had an older sister and I assumed (due to our inability to fully communicate) it was her.  She drove us back to (what I thought was) my friend’s house where we were greeted by several French families that had all moved to Israel together.  The grill was going strong and we dove right in.

After we finished, my friend said to me, “ok, now we go to my house.”  I was totally confused.  I thought we were already there.  “No”, he said, “this is not my house.”  “We live just down the street.”  As we were leaving , I asked him why that nice girl, his sister, wasn’t coming with us.  He explained to me that she was not his sister, but the daughter of the people’s house we had just left.  Yes!  She’s not my friend’s sister!

Later the next day ,we were all gathered around the Seder table at my friend’s house.  The conversations were mainly in French, a language I had never studied.  I had also never been to a Sephardic Seder before.  Everything was so new and different, and well, so exoctic.  The beautiful girl had a brother, and he told me we were even eating brains and eyeballs (which turned out to be a joke, it was really fava beans and chicken). I had several brief exchanges with the girl from the bus stop and something inside clicked.  Butterflies started to dance around in my belly.

After the holiday finished, and I had a chance to use the phone, I immediately called my Aunt and said, “I met my wife”!  About a year and a half later we were married.

The settlements, namely the West Bank, hold so many meanings for so many different groups of people (the Israeli left hates them, the Arabs claim them as their home, the Israeli right won’t give back one grain of sand and the EU is planning on boycotting anything produced by them).  For me, it’s simply the place where I met my wife.