It’s been an awful year but I’d be neglectful if I didn’t at least make some space to celebrate a full twenty years since making aliyah and building my life here in Israel. So here goes.
I built a life. Brick by brick. Twenty years is a life.
Professionally, I’ve done a lot of growing and experimenting and this comes with age and wisdom, at least for me, hopefully faster for you, but the takeaway is… people. It’s mainly people.
Something I’ve been realizing lately is… how hard, how rough around the edges I am, we both are, having moved here in our early 20s and building brick by brick. As young adults navigating adulthood from rental contracts to work contracts. Sorting out a new healthcare system after exposing ourselves from under the cover of parental care. As immigrant parents with no family support the way so many have it here.
I realize people all over the world do this for various reasons, of course. I’m just at this weird new clear-eyed point where I look around at my friends with 20-year-old kids and think, “wait, I looked like that when I did this?” It’s jarring. And surreal.
It makes me wonder what my own kids will do…
And twenty years later? My brothers have families; I experience having nieces 60 kilometers away and also 9,000 km across an ocean. My in-laws have all moved here by now, as of two months ago, and my kids are surrounded by a humble diversity of cousins and family events.
Humility is a main ingredient in a successful aliyah. Leaning in to the chaos of not understanding all. Of not agreeing with all. If you can’t lean in while adding your own inputs to this malleable but stubborn country, then your inputs won’t make a difference.
Whadya got: