Following on from all the comments about ‘aliyah’, I felt I should try and write something to cut through all the emotional knee-jerk reactions so many of us have about this subject.

And to try and build more bridges between us, those who live in Israel, and those who live in chul.

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On the one hand, there are people who have made aliyah, often under very difficult circumstances.

I know some people have had ‘dream’ aliyah stories (at least, initially….) but I think it’s fair to say that for most people, making aliyah has been an extremely challenging process that totally smashed any ‘comfort zone’ they had to smithereens.

Think for a moment, what it means to move somewhere where:

• you don’t speak the language,
• don’t feel ‘at home’ in the culture,
• can’t get the job you really are (over-qualified….) for,
• can’t find a house anywhere you really want to live, and / or in the sort of condition you’d prefer,
• can’t make friends easily (or perhaps, at all),
• can’t work out what favorite recipes still even work in this country with weird ingredients,
• can’t pop round to visit your sister when you want to (or vice-versa)…

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Everything you are ‘familiar’ with is gone.

And that’s even if you are lucky enough to be able to actually buy a nice enough house in a nice enough area, and have regular parnassa come in.

It’s still a massive, massive test to up sticks and move country.

Moving to any country is hard.

That’s the reality.

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So, on the one hand, I think part of what is making this discussion so loaded is that the people who move here do move here with a lot of mesirut nefesh – a ton of mesirut nefesh – even if things go ‘perfectly’.

And I don’t know anyone, honestly, who has things go ‘perfectly’.

Because that’s not life. Not in Israel, and not anywhere else.

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But the people who don’t move here tend to not acknowledge the real, palpable mesirut nefesh of the people who do take the plunge and do move here.

And not only that, they often tend to look down their noses at people who make aliyah, like they are retarded for even attempting to do that, and like there isn’t a clearly stated mitzvah to make aliyah and live in Eretz Yisrael.

That’s not OK.

I understand, it’s human nature to try and pull other people down, especially if those ‘other people’ are doing things that are making us feel uncomfortable about our own choices and decisions.

But it’s not what God wants.

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So on the one hand, I think it’s fair to say that people who didn’t move here could perhaps develop a little more humility and appreciation for the people who did move here – usually, perhaps always, with tremendous self-sacrifice.

Drop the arrogance, and say to the people who moved here kol hakavod, you did something awesome!! I wish I would have the guts to try to do the same, and God is very proud of you!! But right now, for me personally, I can’t / don’t want to / am scared to move myself.

That would be an honest, good place to approach ‘aliyah’ from, and could only be helpful, spiritually.

For all of us.

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Then, there are the people who made aliyah already, and who also fall into the trap of the yetzer by developing something of a judgemental, superiority complex about it.

On the one hand, it’s understandable.

Again, no-one moves country – any country – without experiencing enormous challenges and tests, that can often shake them to their core.

Even when the move is 100% voluntary, and even when it’s viewed as being totally ‘good’, i.e. moving country because you got offered the perfect job in the perfect community etc.

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People who make aliyah are like people who ran a marathon.

You can agree or disagree with whether running a marathon is a good idea – but the person who ran a marathon still achieved something hard and difficult (that perhaps personally, you wouldn’t do in a million years….)

But the difficulty comes when the people who  make aliyah forget that GOD IS WHAT GOT THEM TO ISRAEL, AND GOD IS WHO IS KEEPING THEM IN ISRAEL.

When we get arrogant that we did all this by ourselves – that’s when the problem starts.

Because really, we didn’t.

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Making aliyah is a gift, a present from Shemayim.

There are all sorts of much nicer, better, kinder and holier people than me who live in chul.

I admit that honestly.

And I know that if those people ever got to live in Israel, they would leapfrog over me spiritually by a billion light years.

I don’t know why God has arranged it that those people don’t live in Israel (yet….) but He for sure has His reasons.

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So from my side, I see that the people who made aliyah also need to come off the high horse, and have more humility that we just got given a present, and stop assuming that we have some innate superiority over people in chul.

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But.

Of course, there’s a ‘but’.

And the ‘but’ is that Chazal teach that Israel is the place where a person really learns emunah.

(And a bunch of other stuff about it being better for a Jew to live in Eretz Yisrael, than in chul, which I won’t rehash here.)

If someone takes Chazal seriously, these statements have to count for something.

And honestly, part of the reason living in Israel is so very challenging is because God often puts you in situations in Eretz Yisrael that are simply impossible to bear, without learning some real emuna.

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God’s eyes never leave the land of Israel, and its inhabitants – and that’s why every time you put a foot wrong here, God makes sure you know about it, fast.

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If God is not in the picture, living abroad can seem preferable, to having constant challenges where you have to work on overcoming things like fear, jealousy, worry, hatred, despair – every day, on an intense basis.

It can get very difficult, very fast, in Israel.

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I know I’ve been through the wringer here, loads of times, in loads of different ways.

And if I didn’t have Rebbe Nachman, hitbodedut, and the Rav’s ‘sweetening’ in the picture, I really don’t know how I would have managed it all.

But thank God, I did have that – and I can honestly say, I am so happy we moved here.

Even with all the challenges.

At this stage, I am just becoming more grateful every day, that I live here, and that my kids live here and are ‘Israeli’.

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At the same time – I understand that not everyone has my priorities, or my mindset, or my path to follow in life.

I personally believe that every Jew is down here to work on their emuna, work on overcoming their bad middot, and to figure out how to get closer to God in a real, humble way.

If someone is doing all that without living in Israel – maybe, they don’t need to be living in Israel.

And if someone is living in Israel without doing all that – maybe, they actually aren’t really ‘living in Israel’ after all, in the spiritual sense of the word.

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All of us, wherever we live at the moment, are feeling quite scared about what’s lurking around the corner.

All of us are being invited to include God in our coping strategy in a real way, and to consider what changes, improvements and teshuva God is requiring from us right now.

There are no exceptions to this, no matter where a person happens to live.

We ALL still have our work cut out for us, and middot to work on, and traits to improve and fix.

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I get that.

I understand that.

I truly believe if someone is talking to God for an hour a day, and they have Rebbe Nachman’s teachings and Rav Berland in the picture, they will get to wherever God wants them to get to, the sweetest way possible – wherever they live.

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I am not trying to ‘scare’ people into aliyah.

And honestly?

I am incapable of ‘scaring’ anyone into doing anything, just by writing a blog post. We all have our free choice, we all filter out stuff we don’t want to hear, believe, or engage with.

If I closed the blog tomorrow, DJT would still be shaping up to introduce marshal law in the USA, the UK would still be turning into a police state worse than the former USSR, and ‘15 minute cities’ would still be part of Agenda 2030.

The world is a scary place right now.

Wherever we live.

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But, when the Rav says ‘Jerusalem is the safest place’ – I take that at face value.

And I want that level of ‘safety’ for every other Jew on the planet.

So, I’m going to share what the Rav says about the importance of living in Jerusalem / making aliyah, at least occasionally.

And if this stuff is ‘scary’ to you – that’s OK. It IS scary. For all of us.

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If it’s not helpful to read this stuff right now – take a break from the blog, and come back in a week or two.

Understand that I am not pretending that making aliyah is ‘easy’, or even possible, for everyone.

AND AT THE SAME TIME, I am still stressing that anyone who tries to make aliyah – even if it ends up failing, and they can’t stay here long-term – has done something very precious in God’s eyes, that makes Him very happy.

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We come with the effort and the self-sacrifice, and God provides the outcome – also with making aliya, and managing to stay in Israel.

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All this is a long-winded way of saying – can we please all climb off our soapboxes, me included, and try to understand where the other people are coming from.

Chul people – give those of us who did make aliyah a kol hakavod for the effort. And don’t talk ‘down’ to us, like we were retarded to make the move, or that making aliyah is not a mitzvah.

Israel people – tell people in chul that you really get how hard it is to make the move, and don’t talk ‘down’ to them, like they are retarded for not making the move, and that making aliyah is the only mitzvah that counts. It isn’t.

And may God help us all to serve Him happily, with everything we’ve got, in exactly the way He wants to be served, in whatever location He happens to put us in, or keep us in.

Amen.