LIFE IN ISRAEL
Israel has changed a former
Detroiter's music, broadcast and
national identities.
Idele Ross-Slepkov:
"We can send a
satellite into orbit, but
you can't get your
phone bill clarified."
A Different Sound
DAVID HOLZEL
Israel Correspondent
I
t is 10 in the morning of
Yom Hashoah and Idele
Ross-Slepkov is running
down the little alley that
leads from her house to
Bezalel Street, the nearest
thoroughfare. The siren
marking two minutes of
silence for the victims of the
Holocaust already has begun
to blare. Ross-Slepkov is run-
ning so she can spend the mo-
ment with other Israelis.
The clogs on her feet are
slowing her down. She kicks
them off and without looking
back sprints the rest of the
way in her stockinged feet,
past the century-old houses of
her neighbors in the
Nachalat Tzion quarter. She
clambers down some steps
and reaches Bezalel where
she meets a microcosm of
Israel frozen in a moment of
suspended animation.
Traffic has ceased; cars are
stopped in their tracks. A few
drivers are standing in the
street next to their vehicles.
Like Ross-Slepkov, they don't
want to remain inside at this
public/private time of reflec-
tion. On the sidewalk, a
woman in a leopard suit, a
burning cigarette in one
hand, is standing silently.
Farther down the road stands
an old man carrying a bag of
groceries. Some people have
their heads bowed.
Then the siren falters. The
cars rev their engines and
drive away. The leopard
woman puffs her cigarette.
Israel comes back to itself.
"That's one of the reasons I
stay here," Ross-Slepkov says
a few minutes later after pick-
ing up her clogs and return-
ing home. "This happens
nowhere else in the world.
Israel is all we've got."
Idele Ross-Slepkov, born in
Detroit and raised in Livonia,
came to Israel in 1972. Since
1975 she has been known to
Israel Radio's English-
language listeners — both
here and abroad via short-
wave — as the unhyphenated
Idele Ross. The graduate of
Michigan State University is
the host of three programs:
the "Mainstream" consumer
and community affairs pro-
gram, "Living Here," a show
about immigration and ab-
sorption in Israel, and "Shab-
bat Shalom," where Ross-
Slepkov treats her listeners to
an evening of Israeli folk
music.
While many Americans
who make aliyah leave Israel
within a few years, Ross-
Slepkov has persevered to
marry, give birth to two
daughters and to carve a
niche for herself and her fami-
ly in Jerusalem.
Her profession allows her to
pursue two of her passions:
consumer rights and aliyah
issues. But the 39-year-old
broadcaster says living in
Israel has its own rewards.
"It's a challenge to live here.
It's a new society. You're
speaking a language that's
not your mother tongue. And
it belongs to you."
Ross-Slepkov, who says one
of her missions is to keep the
Motown Sound alive in
Jerusalem, belives that
although an idealistic
western immigrant may not
be able to right all of Israel's
wrongs, he can certainly have
an impact on the community
in which he lives. Proudly she
points to a bi-lingual parent-
run nursery school she helped
found in the neighborhood.
"That's one of my
achievements in this coun-
try," she says. Another is a
flower garden she and her
husband Norm planted "in a
place where people were
throwing bags of garbage."
If Ross-Slepkov has a
crusade, it is in the very
American field of consumer
rights. While she says she has
seen improvements over the
last decade and a half, she
reports that anger and
frustration are still the major
byproducts of dealings with
Israel's bureaucracy, business
and service sectors.
"It takes light years to get
things done here. You have to
do everything in person.
Nothing can be done on the
phone or by mail. We can send
a satellite into orbit, but you
can't get your phone bill
clarified."
She says being from Detroit
gave her a psychological edge
when it came to survival in
Israel. "I loved Detroit as a ci-
ty. But it was a hard city."
When she considers the in-
tifada, she recalls the Detroit
riots in the summer of 1967.
"Tension between com-
munities is old hat to me," she
says.
S
he is sitting at her
kitchen table that
actually is in the entry
room of her one-story house.
Coca-Cola advertisements
from the 1940s or '50s hang
in frames on the walls. In this
house coke isn't the real
thing, but the pause that
refreshes.
The front door is open and
Ross-Slepkov looks out to her
courtyard. The sun does its
work on a line of laundry. The
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
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