How Basketball Led Me to Make Aliyah

As a Jew, my options are Diaspora or war. I've had Diaspora, and I choose war.

I live in the part of Brownstone Brooklyn with no brownstones, but wooden frame or brick houses built for the American working class in the 1890s, when working class New Yorkers could afford a house in Park Slope. The houses share side walls. The backyards are about the size of a small suburban driveway. Some yards are paved over, some are weedy. When we bought the house 15 years ago, our yard was paved with an old carriage house at the back, which the previous owners used as an art studio. The owner before that used it as an Elvis shrine. Very Brooklyn, felt like home.

The house next door belonged to an absentee landlord. Sometimes water leaked through the shared basement wall until we complained. Then the Super would fix it — we could only imagine what was happening on the other side of the wall. The tenants used the yard a few times a year, hanging up a Celtic banner and grilling, smoking, drinking and playing music. As the sun set, the conversations and music grew progressively louder, smokier, and drunker. The fighting usually started around 2AM, concluding with chair throwing and the inevitable, “We’ll never come here again!”

I didn’t love the parties — especially not the one that coincided with my recovery from ACL surgery — but they were a part of Brooklyn, and we were all in this together. Sometimes my husband or I would stick a head out the window and scream, “Shutthefuckup!,” and they’d return the volley with, “Fuck you, go back to New Jersey!.”

On warm weekends, the building super sat in front of the building next to a Puerto Rican flag, blasting Latin music while he sold refurbished, possibly stolen bikes. No one called the cops with a noise complaint because the cops in New York don’t give two shits about your noise complaint. It’s Brooklyn. It’s noisy. And they’re busy.

The bikes and the parties were annoying, but they were part of the Brooklyn I knew and loved. My family has been in Brooklyn since my great-grandfather Joseph Rosenberg moved to the entirely Jewish, farm-adjacent Midwood section of the Borough. I grew up visiting all four grandparents in the Jewish and Italian Bensonhurst of the ‘70s and 80s.

In my 20s, I moved from Manhattan to Italian Carrol Gardens with my boyfriend. Sometimes people hung out on stoop until 3AM, smoking pot and blasting music from a car radio. On warm days an ice cream truck parked on the corner, the ice cream jingle playing in our living room for hours.

After our son was born, we moved our small family further into Brooklyn, to a tree-lined street In Park Slope. The two-bedroom apartment was quieter, though each night as we settled into bed we heard what we referred to as “the running of the children” — the slam of a door, someone taking out garbage made entirely of tin cans, and then screams of kids for about an hour. The four-year-old who lived above us took up the drums. Brooklyn!

In our mid-30s, with two kids, we managed to buy a house in the southernmost corner of Park Slope, abutting Windsor Terrace, an Irish neighborhood, and Latino Sunset Park. For a long time Park Slope had been Jewish. Now, a different generation of Jews were moving in. We joined an egalitarian women-led conservative congregation housed in a synagogue built in 1925 by Eastern and Central European Jewish refugees.

We bought the house from an artist and an academic, who bought it from a working-class Irish family, who bought it when the first floor was a butcher shop and top two floors were living space. Over time, we turned our empty carriage house into a heated office with space for yoga.

I wrote two books and countless articles, essays, memos and reports in that office. I testified in front of Congress virtually, was interviewed on national television, and spent a year on Zoom book tour. After work, as I watched trees sway in the wind upside down from triangle pose, I marveled anew each time that I could lie in my house in Brooklyn and see the sky. How fortunate I am to own a tiny slice of the New York dream. No one else in my family had done such a thing, or even thought it possible.

But times change, as do backyards. The absentee landlord next door must have raised the rent and renovated a little. Our basement wall stopped leaking. The drunk tenants moved out. A woman who drives a BMW moved in. The Super stopped selling bikes out front years ago — lately he’s been in and out of the hospital for cancer treatment. And one building over, one architecture office moved out and a new solo architect moved in. During the pandemic, he cleared the weeds, put down rubber tiles, and turned his office’s backyard into a basketball court. For his two young boys, who did not live in the office, but came over to play basketball.

I didn’t mind at first — a little basketball here and there during my work hours, hey it’s Brooklyn we all tolerate some annoyance. The pandemic came and went, the kids grew, yet the basketball court stayed. And, it got louder. The kids were teenagers now, and sometimes had friends over who would swear and scream for hours. The architect’s backboard is about 40 feet from our living room window. The incessant pounding turned my office sanctuary into a prison, interrupting my thoughts and conversations. Sometimes we heard pounding as we ate dinner, followed by the intermittent smash of ball against the backboard.

The architect himself never appeared on the court, only the kids, so after a few months of aural assault, I opened the first line of defense in the Basketball War. I let my inner Brooklyn out and screamed.

“That’s enough basketball! It’s been an hour! People live here!” I yelled over the pounding.

What I didn’t say was, “What kind of privileged asshole puts a basketball court in a Brooklyn backyard? What’s wrong with any of the real basketball courts you can reach within a five minute walk? Or the nearby YMCA, which has hot and cold running basketball available at all times in a safe, enclosed space? Basketball Boy, have you no shame?”

It took a few more rounds of screaming at Basketball Boy to get the Architect to show his face. He was working, after all. In his office.

I explained we tolerated the basketball during the pandemic, when the kid was younger, because we were all in it together. But now the basketball went on for hours. It interfered with my work. My traumatic brain injury made it especially hard to concentrate when I heard rhythmic pounding on rubber interrupted by the smash of ball on backboard next to my house.

The Architect agreed his kids would keep the basketball to 20 minutes at a time, but he didn’t mean 20 minutes. He meant after 20 minutes, when I yelled “PLEASE GO IN” he would yell back “FIVE MORE MINUTES,” as though I were both his parent and the Wicked Witch of the West. When I threatened to call the cops the basketball stopped abruptly. These people were definitely from New Jersey¹.

Last year, seeking a little joy, my husband and I walked to Brooklyn Pride in the sunshine, shimmied at the party and munched on street food. That morning, we’d read about the IDF’s miraculous rescue of four hostages, then turned to CNN’s article reporting that Hamas had freed the hostages as an act of kindness. Later, they quietly changed the headline, as is common now for liberal media. The New York Times decried how many innocent Gazans died in the effort to rescue just four filthy Israelis, who were obviously not worth it.

But Brooklyn Pride brought joy, and the feeling that maybe we might make it here after all. Then, we returned home to the sound of pounding and smashing. What was I to do, in the face of these unrelenting attacks? I escalated the Basketball War.

I set up a speaker on our balcony and put Baby Shark on repeat, interspersed with a recording of my voice saying: “I’m sorry you have terrible parents. Please stop playing basketball,” and “All your neighbors hate you.”

Did I mention I blasted it at top volume? Brooklyn style. Of all the people I’d known in Brooklyn over the course of 50+ years, these were the New Jersey-est. Every pop of the ball on cement screamed privilege — the privilege to do whatever you want, neighbors be damned, not because we were all in this immigrant soup together, but because a man’s castle is his kingdom.

Baby Shark drew all the neighbors to their yards, screaming over the music to please, for fuck’s sake, shut off the goddamn music.

“I’ll turn it off when the basketball stops,” I hollered back. Baby Shark was my last, worst option. But the Architect had struck first, and wouldn’t listed to reason or engage in negotiations. I had no option but a full-scale aural assault.

“I don’t mind the basketball,” screamed a man in the absentee landlord building, as my speaker blasted “Mommy shark do do doo,” for the 18^th time, “but I do mind that.”

The people who live illegally in a shed behind a house that also abuts our yard, plus the people who run an illegal day care, were also totally cool with the basketball court. Mostly, they didn’t need any city housing inspectors peeking into their own yards.

“Well I mind it,” I screamed back to the neighbors, then turned toward the Architect. “I told you I have a brain injury, we agreed to 20 minutes, you immediately violated that, and now I will play music until you stop.”

Basketball started, Baby Shark started. After an hour, finally, the basketball stopped, Baby Shark stopped, and a heavy silence cloaked the neighborhood. Well, a Brooklyn silence, which included a loud conversation from the people living in the shed, sirens, and the cries of the babies in the illegal daycare. My kind of silence.

But the Architect would not be silent. He believed his children should be allowed to play in a basketball court behind his office, regardless of how I, the Wicked Witch of the West, felt about it. His wife posted on the neighborhood Facebook page, seeking help for the Architect. I guess she figured since I was a witch, I didn’t have access to the internet, nor could I be a member of Park Slope Together, because I was not Park Slope Together. I was the Park Slope Witch.

And what a witch! I screamed at her two sweet boys when they played basketball a few times a week, she wrote to the neighborhood. I even told her to go back to New Jersey, which was the meanest thing you could say! She was right and I was wrong, n’est-ce pas?

Oh yes, Park Slope Together replied. You are so right. So very right. Your husband’s neighbor is a mean witch who preys on sweet innocent boys playing a little light b-ball, and won’t respond to reason. Therefore, the only answer was to be crueler, louder, bigger, and meaner. Park Slopians offered to send large adults over for a few hours of even louder basketball. Others assured her putting a basketball court in a Brooklyn backyard was totally legal, despite my claims (and understanding of New York City housing law).

“Call the cops!,” wrote someone else from New Jersey.

“Try 311!,” posted someone from Oklahoma.

I watched the board’s automatic, furious response in horror. Was a witch trial coming next? Park Slope is a bright blue progressive neighborhood. When we moved in, the neighborhood was filling up with Jewish and Asian and Indian families, in addition to a Puerto Rican and Guatemalan community, and a few Irish families. That is: New Yorkers. Creative professionals — writers and educators, actors and authors, filmmakers and illustrators — who had made it here only to discover that making it plus having a family made Manhattan unaffordable.

But post-pandemic, Black Lives Matter and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Park Slope had begun to feel more like a brewing cauldron of anger. The city is undeniably falling apart. The subway was fully functional for a few years, but thanks to multiple floods and ancient infrastructure, nothing runs on time any more. Subway shootings are back. A man moved into our local station a few years ago. The schools are self-destructing, with teacher shortages and online videos replacing actual instruction. Last year, my daughter’s high school had a stabbing followed by one day of metal detectors, then a hard lock-down.

Park Slope needed to come together on something, and fast. But where could residents of the most liberal section of one of the bluest cities in the nation — most of whom were doing pretty well, all things considered — release layers of pent-up anger? But recently, the community had found something really big and important to come together on. The uber-cause to end all causes, the one thing that would free not just America but the world from tyranny for all marginalized and low-income people.

What was this very big and most important issue facing the people of Park Slope? Gaza, obviously! Gaza should be free. From who? Zionists. Jews, if we’re getting real. No Jews in Palestine. Where is Palestine and why is it called Palestine? Who cares. Don’t you think Black Lives Matter? Don’t you think trans lives matter? Well then so do Palestinian lives, which I just learned about and cannot define, but have a Hamas “Health Ministry” death toll number at the ready. And, I have a Jewish friend who is horrified by the “genocide” and “starvation” in Gaza, so I could not possibly be an antisemite. I’m a humanist! A pacifist! A pacifist who wears clothing for peace, with my terror scarf and watermelon sweatshirt signaling that I’m for human rights for EVERYONE. Except Jews, of course. No one is for Jewish rights. Sometimes, not even Jews, and especially not my Jewish friend.

Our local food coop (we’re not members because my husband lived in communist Russia), has been actively working to boycott hummus and reduce Jewish membership in a food coop started by Jews. Our local school system distributed teaching materials on “Stopping the Gaza Genocide” and “Freeing Palestine.” Recent fun community events included a children’s day of rage.

Last summer, at the height of the basketball feud, when I felt like a prisoner in my own neighborhood — trapped between the relentless pounding of a ball and scarves aflutter with Yasser Arafat’s dream of Jewish annihilation — my husband and I flew to the one country in the world we knew we’d be safe.

In war-torn Israel, we found quiet, broken only by sound of fighter jets scrambling far above, explosions in the far-off distance or red alerts on our phones. Our first day, we bought a falafel with no money. “Come back later,” said the falafel guy. “After you find an ATM.”

My local bodega in Manhattan used to let me do the same thing, when I showed up hung over and cashless, in need of coffee and an egg and cheese on a roll. But they knew me. And that was over 25 years ago. Was it possible this complete stranger trusted us to return with money, just because — why wouldn’t we?

“Everyone is really nice here, right?” asked our host Michal, an architect who lives in an artist village that makes their own olive oil. Unlike the Architect, whose purpose in life seemed to be annoying the local witch rather than architecting anything, Michal architecting bomb-proof low-income housing across Israel.

“Really nice!” I replied. “I don’t remember it that way last time.” The last time I’d been to Israel it was 1992 and I was a college student tagging along with my father on a work trip.

“Life here is hard enough,” said Michal. “Why not be nice to each other?”

The Architect is still at war with us. He calls in bogus violations to the city, wasting everyone’s time as city workers schedule visits to see if we are running an illegal AirBnB or renting out unauthorized space. For a while Basketball Boy kept at it, which is how I learned Elmo’s World or Alvin and the Chipmunks is significantly more annoying than Baby Shark.

Now the basketball has abated, but the Park Slope Witch seems to have gotten into the architect’s brain. He threw a bottle of bleach he threw on our front door and scrawled HATES DRIBBLING on the sidewalk in chalk. Hey, I’ll take it over red paint and WHITE SUPREMACIST ZIONIST, which has appeared outside other people’s homes in Brooklyn.

The Architect thinks he’s teaching his kids an important lesson about not backing down in the face of a witch. I think he’s teaching his kids to be power-hungry sociopaths who stomp on the other people’s needs. In other words: modern Americans.

Brooklyn has always been loud. The city is notoriously unlivable, so everyone just does what they need to get by. But now, we are no longer in this together. We are very clearly out for ourselves, while giving lip service to community. In this way, perhaps Brooklyn has become just like any other part of America. But more antisemitic, because have you noticed a lot of Jews live here? And they run everything and have all the money?

Over the last decade, my corner of Brooklyn has become a place where people do things because they can, never asking whether they should. Just because you can play basketball behind your office doesn’t mean you should subject your neighbors to hours upon hours of unrelenting pounding.

It doesn’t matter anymore. We sold our house. Our kids are almost grown, and who wants to live next door to a basketball court, surrounded by Jew-hatred, in the fading Greatest City in the World? Not I.

In July, my family and I will leave the borough my family has called home ever since my great-grandparents fled Central and Eastern Europe for a sliver of a dream in a new land. I’ve boxed up 120 years of Jewish life in Brooklyn: my great-grandfather’s shofar and prayer books, written in Hebrew and English, my grandmother’s photo album from her years in the army during World War II, a picture of my grandfather teaching high school history in Harlem during a heat strike, a rate card for Schenk’s Paramount Hotel in the Catskills, a mountain of wedding and b’nai mitzvoth kippot, plus tallit and ketubahs from generations past. The ghosts of Brooklyn will travel with me to Israel, where perhaps they were always meant to be.

When our plane lands at Ben-Gurion Airport, my husband, daughter and I will become citizens of the only semi-functional democracy in the Middle East, with full healthcare and societal on-ramps for immigrants. Our college-age son will likely follow us. During a multi-front war with no end in site, no government plan for next steps, or even much of a government, I hope to find my community. One that accepts me for who I am, be it Jew, Witch, or Older Lady Who Likes Quiet.

It’s an unusual and surprising time to make aliyah, judging by the reactions of the many Israelis with whom I’ve discussed the decision. But when I tell them my daughter’s high school friends stopped speaking to her because she’s a baby killer, or about the rage playdates and the Yasser Arafat cosplay, they get quiet. Together we grimace, sigh, and shake our heads, bearing the shared weight of people whose families have experienced something horrible just for being Jewish. I don’t mention we are also moving because I can’t stand Basketball Boy and the Architect. It seems irrelevant in the face of drones from Iran or missiles from Yemen.

But I’ve made my decision. I choose community, and I choose a nation with a soul. I’ve tried Diaspora, and I’ve tried America, from Maine to Missouri. If I have to live under an authoritarian regime, surrounded by neighbors who hate me, I’d rather be with a caring community than people out for themselves. I’m done Bowling Alone. I’m ready for the Genius of Israel, and people who trust you to return with shekels after you devour a falafel — because why be mean when you can be nice?

1. I love New Jersey. Half my family is from the state, going back to my Russian and Polish refugee great-grandparents. My great uncle played quarterback for Rutgers, and was later Bruce Springsteen’s gym teacher. I love a grinder, a mobbed-up Italian American red sauce joint, Atlantic City and many parts of the shore. It’s just not Brooklyn, that’s all. If you live in New Jersey, thank you for keeping it Jersey Strong, and go Scarlet Knights! But not the Jets. Not a fan. That is: I’m not actually FROM Jersey, but I support people’s right to be from New Jersey.