It always lingers in the air; it’s the black hole of the aliyah process:
Returning to the motherland from where we came; financial reasons, social reasons, relationship reasons… It lingers over all of us. Lately, it seems the lingering has become more of a hovering, which seems to be really weighing in on quite a few friends of mine.
You start out the aliyah process ideological, passionate, confident, even cocky. Even if you’re not cocky, you are, because everyone around you makes a big deal out of it. There is so much pride involved. So to return – that must be so hard.
Whereas before I got to Israel and at the beginning of my aliyah, I might have tsked at those ‘making yeridah,’ I just can’t do that now, after almost two years of living here. I don’t believe that just anyone can make aliyah, either.
Even the word aliyah (ascent, to go up) evokes so much pride and ego; with the state of the Israeli state these days, maybe we should all just say we are ‘moving to Israel’; it hasn’t felt like so much of an ascent, lately.
Whadya got: