13 weeks to aliyah – Friends and family

Around a year ago we started cleaning up in earnest. I went up to the attic and brought down a room full of boxes and other items to throw out or give away. Pearl worked on clearing out cabinets and bookcases filled with toys, games, books, papers and other paraphernalia. We filled the cars with items to give away to friends and family members.

When I brought some of these to one of our friends they were shocked and said something like “so I guess you really are moving to Israel”.

When we first decided for sure to go, we agreed that we would not keep our plans secret for a number of reasons. Not wanting to surprise anyone was high on the list, but also we thought that it would help galvanize us to ensure that we would not chicken out and it would also perhaps give others a certain degree of “chizuk” to encourage them to go as well. There were practical reasons too – we had to sell our house and to do so, we needed to get the word out.

Yet even though our plans were quite public and most of our family knew that we talked for a long time about moving to Israel, the reality of it seemed to come as a surprise to some. I guess they were a bit more in denial about our move than we had been over the years. Closure is very important for most people - our kids wanted to see the house that they grew up in "one last time" and I am sure that our friends and family will want to throw a big bash for us before we move ;-)

The world is a lot smaller today than even just a generation ago. When my family went for the first time to Israel in 1970, it was a major expense that took a long time to plan and to save up for. A domestic long distance call was expensive and an international call was a major event. Now, we can call for pennies using a calling card or free from Israel with most of the cellphone plans. Skype, MagicJack and VOIP are ubiquitous and even annual trips to Israel are common for many of us. All of this lessens the pain just a bit of moving so far away from the ones that you love, but nothing can remove that pain. We just hope that they will all follow us there some day very soon.