There’s a reason Rabbenu called ‘Eretz Yisrael’ the land of emuna…

First, thanks to everyone who took the time to share their thoughts on THIS post about making aliyah as a baal teshuva, and also, to the person who emailed me in the first place, to open the discussion up.

I think it’s a healthy, useful exercise, to talk about these things honestly, and that it helps a lot of people who have moved already, or are thinking about moving, to get their bearings more, about some of the challenges they will probably face.

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Jude covered a huge amount of ground, in a very useful way, on some of the practicalities that can make or break a person’s aliyah, and if you didn’t go and read his comment yet, I highly recommend you do.

Bottom line: find the community that really reflects you, do Israel as your real self, and be honest about who you really are and what you can really hack – and spend a lot of time in hitbodedut, and trying to get to grips with the move, spiritually.

That last bit of advice is really key.

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It’s not for nothing, that Rabbenu refers to Eretz Yisrael as the ‘land of emuna’.

Circumstances force you to work on your emuna, when you live here. And those ‘circumstances’ are tailor-made for each person by Hashem, because ‘working on your emuna’ really just means developing a genuine relationship with God.

How else are you going to manage the bureaucracy, the stress, the cost of living, the daily rockets from ‘the houthis’ (ahem…) – and all the rest of it?

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I agree, that Israel is a small country.

(Presumably, people are aware of that before they move here….)

I agree, that sometimes people from chul really miss the nature, the green, the water, in their native countries.

The solution to this is not as hard as you think: book yourself a holiday back to the motherland, and go and enjoy nature as much as you want to.

People don’t ‘live’ permanently on holiday, after all. It’s clearly way, way better to spend a month or two fishing in some great lake, or whatever, then thinking you need to move out of the Holy Land because summer holidays consist of joining a million other people who are going to dip their toe in the Kinneret.

(If you really need the water that much, day-to-day – find a community by Israel’s coast, and walk on the beach every single day, if you want…. None of this stuff is rocket science.)

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I also agree, the cost of living is really high.

Guess what: it is everywhere.

My hitech sister and her doctor husband are in Boston, and they aren’t making enough to even get on the bottom run of the housing ladder there, and are sending their kids (who are still quite young) to public school, as the cost of tuition in Jewish schools is through the roof.

I know that, because my brother in the New York area told me how much they are fleecing people with school tuition in NY State, and how bad most of the Jewish schools actually are – particularly, for their pupils.

But Baruch Hashem, when my niece in NY wanted a $900 pair of trainers – same as all her friends had – my brother was still able to afford to get them. Just about. So yadda yadda yadda, you can buy a cheap pint of (chalav nochri) milk in chul, great – and you’ll need those savings, because your kid wants to drop a grand on a pair of sneakers, just to fit in with her friends.

Wonderful!

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I also agree Israel is a cholent pot.

Guess what: that is true of pretty much every big city anywhere in the world today, but especially in the West. We could argue that North Korea has got a ‘homogenous’ population, I’ve never been there, I don’t know.

But, I can tell you every European big city is a total ‘cholent pot’ today – with the major difference being that where Jews are the main ingredient in Israel’s ‘cholent’, they are just the garnish everywhere else – even in the places with really big kehillas, like New York and London and Paris.

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While we’re on that subject – my mum in London told me she stopped listening to the news now, as it’s just one ‘blood libel’ after another, about the war in Gaza.

Oh, and that a group of young Jewish boys got beaten up in a train station last week, by men with knives.

Every week, she tells me something similar.

London, at least, is not a very friendly place for Jews right now. And Manchester is even worse – my niece is in university there, and she got ‘outed’ as a Jew by a spiteful roommate, and since then, people literally spit on her as she walks around the campus.

She told me that’s happened multiple times.

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But, to come back to the matter in hand.

It’s true, you won’t get invited for a lot of Shabbat meals, or any, even, unless you live in a strong Anglo community.

Even that is no guarantee (as we found out a few years’ ago….)

But you know what? A lack of friends and a lack of ‘social’ means you have to put some effort, time and attention into your spouses and kids and… Yourself.

Maybe, there is a link between all the ‘social’ going on in the Jewish communities of chul, and the divorces and unhappy kids, who have to sit at the ‘kiddies’ table’ (until they are 19) being ignored by their parents and their parents’ friends, who excel at hachnassas orchim!!!!

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But yes, it can be lonely.

I agree with that.

Even if you have the language, and the money, and the ‘perfect aliyah’, you will still feel out of place for quite a long time, in many ways, because you didn’t grow up here, and a bit of your soul is stuck in chul.

I felt like that for the first 10 years, then BH, I actually went back to London for a few days, walked around – and came back thanking the Al-mighty that we moved when we did.

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Re: the kids.

The kids are fine in porta-cabin schools, as long as they aren’t being bullied and have at least a couple of friends.

If those conditions aren’t being met – they will sink, regardless of how fancy the school buildings might be.

Again, tachlis, if the kid isn’t happy in school, isn’t thriving there – get them the heck out, and find an option that suits them better.

Israel is full of schools, of all stripes.

I personally moved house, a couple of times, so that my kids would be in a school and a community that suited them better.

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Do I miss flowing rivers and rainy days?

A little, but not as much as I used to.

Do I miss the ‘buzz’ of Western shopping?

Very, very little – and from what I’m hearing, so many stores have gone online or out of business anyway these days, that what I’m missing is a retail ghost, an echo of the past, that doesn’t exist anymore, anyway.

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Did we have an ‘easy’ aliya, and am I sitting here surrounded by adoring friends and living in a five million dollar apartment?

Hahahahaha!

That’s hilarious!

We are renting in Jerusalem, and bought something in Katzrin, which we hope will go up enough, at some point, to let us find something small to buy, eventually, in Jerusalem.

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We are in Jerusalem, because the Rav is in Jerusalem.

And because the Kotel is in Jerusalem (not that I am going there much these days, to be honest).

And because, you can be totally yourself in Jerusalem, without having to fit into ‘boxes’ and labels that can become very cramping and limiting, very fast.

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Do I feel privileged to live here?

100%.

I say ‘thank you’, or try to, most days, that God let us live here, totally as a present.

Did I have to let go of a good career, social life and my own house to be here?

Yes.

Was it worth it?

Totally – although sometimes, still a little painful. I’d like to own my own place here, that I live in, but I can appreciate that God is doing what is best for me, even if I don’t always understand it.

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Bottom line: making aliya is complicated, regardless of whether someone is a baal teshuva or not.

Moving out of your native country to anywhere else is always a huge challenge, and not easy.

I’ve moved countries a few times, none of the challenges of making aliya are really different from the challenges involved in making any move to a different culture, with a different language and different landscape. (Except for maybe, rockets from the ‘Houthis’. Ahem).

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Is it a mitzva to live here?

Totally! Just like it’s a mitzva to keep kosher, and keep the laws of family purity, and all the other ‘mitzvot’ that often take a great deal of time, effort and money to perform.

We acquire Eretz Yisrael with suffering – and that holds for each person, baal teshuva or not, native-born, or not, rich-person-with-a-$5-million-apartment – or not.

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Can everyone fulfill that mitzva happily?

No.

Does that mean they are totally exempt from even wanting to want to make aliya?

No! But of course, it’s complicated, and it’s part of a spiritual process that could go ad 120.

Ultimately, moving to Israel is one big test of our emuna and our bad middot.

But then, so is life, generally, wherever we happen to live.

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One last word for now:

I don’t have to deal with Xmas here for three months, from October-January.

Not the carols, not the tinsel, not that whiny BandAid hit from the 1980s… It mostly doesn’t exist in Israel at all (except for certain parts of Yaffo, Tel Aviv and Haifa).

That all by itself, is a huge ‘plus’ in the aliyah column.

But maybe, only if you hate ‘BandAid’ as much as I do.