It isn’t quite right to say that Yale Roe moved to Israel on a whim. But he did decide to move to Israel that way. It was on a fateful day in 1971 when another couple visited the Roes — assimilated, not-very-religious Jews — and the husband asked, “Why don’t we all move to Israel?”
That is the start of the story Roe tells in an engaging new book, “I Followed My Heart to Jerusalem” (Barricade Books). It is a story not only of life in Israel, but also of transformation.
Roe begins his story in childhood. He was born in Oak Park in 1929 and, as he puts it, “I had grown up Christian.” Not literally Christian, he explains, but at a time and in a place where “Christian was the way of life. Stores were closed on Sundays because that was the Christian Sabbath. It seemed that every house except ours had a Christmas tree.”
Although he went to Sunday school and celebrated the Jewish holidays with his family, he writes that “we were about as American as you could get and still be Jewish.”
Roe emerged from this all-American boyhood with a vague plan to go into politics. He received a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s in international relations from Northwestern University. Shortly after graduation, he began writing for television. His experience was the subject of two books about the industry, “The Television Dilemma” and “The Business of Broadcasting.” The latter became a standard text in college and university broadcasting departments.
He spent the next 15 years as “a migrant worker for ABC-TV,” moving from Chicago to New York, back to Chicago, then to San Francisco and finally to the network’s New York headquarters, climbing the corporate ladder all the way. Meanwhile, he married and started a family.
After 15 years he left the network and joined a small broadcasting company in Chicago. The family bought a house in
Winnetka, a stolid suburban community, he reports, solidly behind the Vietnam War that was then raging — an issue he was fervently against.
In 1969 Roe discovered that his congressman, Donald Rumsfeld, was resigning to
join the Nixon administration. True to his proclivity for jumping into things and doing the unexpected, Roe decided to run for Rumsfeld’s seat in the Republican primary. Running as an anti-war Republican in a staunchly conservative district, he admits now that his marketing plan was misguided. Twelve other candidates had the same idea, and Roe was one of 11 who lost.
After the election, Roe once again settled into his suburban life. Into this scenario came Rita and Mike, another suburban couple with whom Roe and his wife had become friends. Mike, who had grown up in an Orthodox home, was in the diamond business but, as he revealed on that evening in 1971, was growing tired of it. He expressed to the Roes a desire to change his life radically.
“Maybe I’ll go to Minneapolis,” he told them. “Or maybe Texas. Rita and I used to live in Texas.” His next words were: “Why don’t we all move to Israel?”
“Why don’t we all go to the moon” Roe replied, and the subject was dropped.
By this time the once-assimilated Roe and his equally assimilated wife had joined a Conservative synagogue and were keeping a kosher home. Nevertheless, Roe writes, “Israel had nothing to do with my life.”
The rest of the book details how the Roes dealt with their decision to move to Israel, the disbelieving and often hurtful comments from friends, and the actual move and its aftermath. The Roes lived there until 1986.
Perhaps most amazing of all is the fact that Roe found a way to make a living producing documentary films in Israel. He started Yale Roe Films the same year he moved to Israel and, during the next 14 years, created TV documentaries about life in Israel that aired throughout the world in eight different languages.
“This book is just one part of my commitment to tell the story of the Jewish people,” Roe said during a recent a book tour.
“I’m a very passionate Jew,” he said. “Any way I can get out the word about Israel with a book, a film, a speaking engagement, I want to do that.” (Or a Web site: his is yaleroe.com.)
Is he doing a job for Israel that Israel can’t do for itself? He doesn’t necessarily think so. “Ever since I first moved to Israel, all I’ve ever heard is that the hasbarah (public relations) is terrible,” he said. “I just sort of take that as the perception, right or wrong, that everyone has.
“But it’s not so simple,” he continued. “Of course you could always do better, but when one says that, it sort of implies that we control our destiny. The truth is there are so many factors that affect people’s perceptions of Israel — what your cultural background is, what your religious background is, what your prejudices are …”
He believes it is important to show the rest of the world what Israel is and what it stands for: its democratic government and social structure, for instance. ” All we can do is try and make people aware of Israel,” he said.
“The biggest misperception about Israel is that Israel is an occupier,” he said. “That’s a very broad misperception, and the reason it exists is that people don’t know the history.”
Although “officially” retired, he still makes films, he still advocates for Israel and, although he and his wife live most of the year in New York, they still visit Israel frequently. With good reason: Roe has two children and 10 grandchildren there.