Double Life – Kol Oleh

You know you have a double life when you have to start separating parts of your life that it’s a lot better if they never meet. In my case, work, and the rest. When you work in marketing, it is really easy to end up treating everything in your life in terms of good and bad communication, branding, targets, meeting standards, reaching goals. And I would like to say that I am able to make a switch, but the truth is that no, I am not. I am a planner and I constantly find new ways to plan, also in the (never enough) hours I have left in my busy week. That is, after sleep and some time dedicated to the holy cinema.

My new toy is an initiative called “Kol Oleh”, “voice of the Oleh”, or “every Oleh” if you don’t read the way we spell it in Hebrew. On the duplicity of the name we could spend some good time, but the bottom line (Israelis are all about the bottom line) is: new immigrants (Olim) don’t go to vote. The elections are near. Voting is a fundamental right of every Israeli. How to bring to the polls those Olim who don’t know the electoral system in Israel, and got disconnected from politics after arriving, may it be due to linguistic issues or because of the different system of our most wonderful but complicated Country?

Kol Oleh delivers information in English and French, occasions to meet candidates and ask direct questions, and overall serves as a bridge to an active political life. No matter which is the party the Olim would choose. No matter why, and if with full passion, or with a lukewarm attitude.
We meet at night, eat chocolate chip cookies, and plan. Nothing better for a planning junkie who also happens to be a fairly new immigrant and only after seven years in Israel can say: I got it, I can vote because I understand enough about the system, the parties, the candidates and let’s hope for the best.

*Daniela Fubini (Twitter @d_fubini) lives and writes in Tel Aviv, where she arrived in 2008 from Turin via New York.