Surprisingly, neither of us was that upset about the theft itself. We both felt foolish for our naïveté and shaken by the prospect of even worse scenarios that, chas veshalom, could have happened.
My first proactive decision was to join the community online email list and post a warning to the thousands of members who read its List multiple times a day. That act of altruism had mixed results.
As luck would have it, the real water company was staging an initiative just then: distributing free water-saving devices as a conservation project. Needless to say, an inordinate number of spooked neighbors refused to open the door for the actual water company representatives, as a result of the impostor wreaking havoc on our neighborhood!
After my own embarrassing incident, I began to hear tales of other recent local robberies large and small, all eerily matching my own scenario and the robber’s description. The only apparent differences were what was taken and the particulars of the circumstances, the most brazen being when the ganif burglarized a house in broad daylight, taking keys, purses, jewelry etc. while a women’s shiur was taking place, with nearly two dozen women in attendance! If indeed “Misery loves company,” I was certainly far from alone.
Whereas my timing was far from perfect, a neighbor a few houses down was literally saved from an identical fate by her very fortunate timing. Her husband, b”H, returned home during the few minute window between the “water man’s” initial fact-finding visit and his subsequent tachlis “second coming.” When her better half responded to his knock, the ganif staged a hasty retreat, mumbling, “I’ll come back later…” knowing that his ploy could not possibly succeed if both the husband and wife were monitoring his movements.
Despite my less fortunate outcome, I managed to find an apparent limud zechus even in this far from warm and fuzzy “Only in Israel” experience. The fact that so many frum women unsuspectingly opened their doors and homes to a stranger who was obviously Jewish, although in retrospect foolhardy, also indicates how much we intrinsically trust each other in the Holy Land. The fact that that trust was so blatantly violated does not negate that fact, although all of us victims will certainly think twice before repeating our mistake.
Eventually, the robber was caught, repeatedly using the same ploy in the city of Modiin. The other victims and I were asked to come to the local police station several times to identify the perpetrator from a photo lineup. Some time later, we were requested to appear in a courtroom in Yerushalayim to provide legal testimony at his sentencing hearing. I was somewhat startled to see the ganif sitting in the back of the courtroom, but even then, the sight of him evoked pity and compassion, but not fear.
For the record, I never did recover my stolen jewelry or money. The police had confiscated his latest stash and showed it to us to ID, but our stolen items had apparently long-since been pawned or otherwise disposed of.
All in all, it was far from my favorite aliyah experience, but, b”H, it was less traumatizing than it would have been in chutz laaretz. Sadly I was unceremoniously forced to learn a sobering lesson regarding the universal nature of people, Jew or non-Jew: We all are born with a yetzer hara, and we all have the very real potential to rise or fall.
Thankfully, that unfortunate incident did little to sour me on the overall aliyah/klita experience. It was merely a slight snag in the magnificent tapestry of my life in the Promised Land, an annoying bump in the road. But nothing more.
Perhaps, out of necessity, my eyes and ears are slightly wider open and more attuned ever since; but I still, b”H, find it blessedly easy and pleasant to follow the dictum, “Ur’eh betuv Yerushalayim.” And despite that undeniable glitch in our rosy-hued Israel dream, there is absolutely nowhere in this vast universe that my family and I would rather be.