4 | SEPTEMBER 28 • 2023 J
N

for openers

First Aliyah . . . Then IKEA
M

y wife and I have 
moved to Israel. 
Some people 
move their furniture and 
appliances in an industrial 
shipping 
container, 
called a lift. 
We did not. 
We bought an 
airy and empty 
apartment in 
a fairly new 
building in (the 
biblical city of) 
Beit Shemesh. We planned to 
buy about all of our furniture 
at the new IKEA branch in 
(the biblical city of) Eshtaol. 
So, we arrived at IKEA with 
a team of helpers, ready for 
the mammoth expedition.
We had done extensive 
planning for this expedition. 
I had done a reconnaissance 
mission, exploring that 
branch of IKEA in an earlier 
trip. My wife had spent 
hours upon hours on the 
IKEA website, checking the 
measurements of attractive 
items against the floorplan 
of our apartment, and 
developing a list of the 
winning products. We had 
done a practice run through 
our local IKEA in Michigan, 
to discover if that table looks 
big enough and that chair 
feels comfortable. 
The IKEA in Eshtaol 
looks and feels just like the 
IKEA in Michigan: wide 
aisles, bright lights, lines on 
the floor leading customers 
through the maze of 
departments, products with 
Swedish names. The store 
uses some English, too, along 
with the signage in Hebrew. 

Unlike IKEA in Michigan, 
the Israeli IKEA highlights 
items useful for Jewish 
observance: In a display of 
storage boxes, for example, 
one bears the label, “Purim 
costumes.” 

‘ASSEMBLING’ A TEAM
Our team arrived punctually 
at nine in the morning. Our 
high-school student grandson 
and his friend went straight to 
the warehouse section, armed 
with the list of items we had 
already identified by IKEA’s 
product number. 
Our married granddaughter 
and our son (her father) 
accompanied us through the 
shopping maze, each pushing 
a cart. One member of our 
team has mobility limitations; 
the staff at IKEA provided 
a motorized vehicle right at 
the entrance. We need some 
of everything; we chose 
some items at nearly every 
department of the store. 
We coordinated operations 
with the boys in the 
warehouse by cellphone. 
We also used the cellphone 
when we lost each other in 
the maze. When the battery 

of the motorized vehicle 
gave out, we alerted a staff 
member, and another helpful 
staff member showed up to 
replace the battery. 
The store became 
progressively more crowded 
during our expedition; 
Friday is not a full workday 
in Israel, so people have 
time to shop. Young couples 
brought their children 
along on the shopping 
trip. Even close together in 
crowds, the customers from 
disparate segments of the 
Israeli populace treated each 
other politely, respectfully 
maneuvering to make room 
for fellow shoppers young 
and old, Jewish and Arab, 
religious and secular, Black, 
Brown and white. 

ORDEAL AT CHECK-OUT
About three hours later, when 
we arrived at the check-out 
line, we had four shopping 
carts filled with household 
goods of every description, 
while the boys brought seven 
large rolling pallets piled high 
with large items from the 
warehouse. We advised other 
shoppers not to get in line 

behind us, as we anticipated 
spending a long time at check-
out, and other lines, we pre-
dicted, would go more quickly. 
The young woman doing 
checkout valiantly pointed 
her laser at bar codes on all 
our purchases. She looked 
through the piled-high items, 
trying to record every item, 
each item once, and no item 
twice. The expected delay 
materialized. The cashier 
alertly noted that one item 
from the warehouse came in 
two huge cartons, carton one 
from a certain model, carton 
two from a similar but not 
identical model. We needed 
to return the mismatched 
carton to the warehouse and 
bring the matching carton 
to check-out. Fortunately, 
we did not have to do that 
ourselves. 
The cashier summoned a 
crew to make the exchange. 
Some members of the same 
crew helped us bring the 
heavy items across the store 
to the shipping department. 
Now the boys could go home, 
having completed their part 
of the expedition. 
The crew, like nearly all 

 IKEA

PURELY COMMENTARY

continued on page 8

Louis 
Finkelman 
Contributing 
Writer