A Love Letter to the Land- 10 Years In

This week in Parshat Shlach, we read the story of the meraglim — the spies who entered the Land and returned with a report grounded in fact, but shaped by fear.

They didn’t lie. They acknowledged the land’s beauty: “It is indeed flowing with milk and honey.” They weren’t wrong about the challenges either — the cities were fortified, the people strong. But their sin wasn’t in what they saw — it was in what they refused to believe.

It wasn’t their eyes that failed, but their spirit: they could not envision a future shaped by both effort and faith. And so, paralyzed by fear and lacking the courage to dream, they lost the very destiny they had been promised.

These were redeemed slaves from Egypt who had seen miracles with their own eyes — the plagues, the splitting of the sea, the daily manna from heaven. And yet, as they stood at the threshold of their national destiny, they could not imagine a reality in which they would be called to act, to fight — and still be supported by the very God who had carried them this far.

They assumed that if they were to conquer the land through natural means, then they would truly be on their own. They couldn’t grasp that a life of human effort could still be infused with divine presence.

They failed to see that miracles and nature are not opposites. They’re partners.

That inability to hold both truths at once — human responsibility and divine support — didn’t just cost them their confidence; it cost them the Land.

Ten years ago, our family stood at a very different threshold — but faced a similar question: Could we say yes to this Land, with all its complexities and demands?

We saw the challenges clearly, but we also saw the beauty and the promise. And unlike the 10 meraglim, we believed the question wasn’t if — it was how.

This post is a tikun, a small act of repair for their rejection. It is a love letter to the Land they could not trust.

In the decade since, we’ve continued to raise our children here and added one more — our sabra — born not only into our family, but into her homeland. We’ve changed jobs, switched professions, learned Hebrew, made friends, built routines, and moved five (almost six!) times. We even bought an apartment that, God willing and with carefully managed expectations, will be built before our two-year-old becomes a bat mitzvah. Every step, every struggle, every celebration has helped root us more deeply in this land. 

We’ve lived through election after election — with their recycled slogans, familiar faces, and uneasy coalitions — and stood among crowds as protests surged through the streets. We’ve watched the skyline evolve, cranes carving new lines into the sky, trains stitching neighborhoods together, and towers rising where old buildings once stood. We’ve experienced moments of economic optimism and stretches of uncertainty, felt the tension of sirens and the relief of calm. We’ve danced in the streets on Yom Ha’atzmaut and stood frozen in silence on Yom HaZikaron, marking joy and grief with the same unshakable devotion to this place.

And now, in the shadow of October 7th — in a time of ongoing war, displacement, and national reckoning — we are not just bearing witness to history; we are part of it. These past 621 days have demanded more of us than we thought possible: courage, compassion, presence, and patience. They have revealed our heartbreak and our strength, our fractures and our solidarity. And through it all, through every moment of uncertainty, we’ve never once questioned where we belong.

Because for us, aliyah was never a trial run.

Before we made the move, people would ask, “How long are you going for?”But we weren’t going. We were coming home. When asked, “What if it doesn’t work out?” we couldn’t even understand the question. We weren’t trying it. We were choosing it.

The miracle of the modern State of Israel is that we fully understand what we are up against — and still, we forge ahead. Like Yehoshua and Calev, we believe not only that the land is good, but that it is possible.

We have never relied on miracles — but the miracles have been abundant.

Just today, a missile struck a building at Soroka hospital — a building that had been evacuated the day before. That wasn’t luck. It was something more. This is the nature of life in Israel: a constant fusion of the miraculous and the mundane.

This was the mistake of the meraglim. They couldn’t conceive of a world where you fight with natural strength and are still supported by divine hands. They thought it had to be either human effort or God’s protection. But we know better. We live in a land that teaches us, every single day, that it’s both.

Our strength lies in seeing that fusion. In knowing that this land is not an if. As much as we can — and do — debate the how, we can never, must never, again question the if.

The 10 meraglim saw the land but could not see themselves in it. We, and so many others, have chosen differently. We have chosen to see not only the beauty, but the possibility — not only the obstacles, but the promise. Living here is not a denial of reality; it’s a declaration of faith. Like Yehoshua and Calev, we say: “The land is very, very good” — not because it is easy, but because it is ours. This post is for them — and for all who have said yes to this land. For the dreamers and the builders, the soldiers and the sabras, the olim and the children who sing Hatikvah in gan.

May we continue to live with open eyes and open hearts — willing to wrestle with the how, but unwavering in our yes. Because this Land is not just part of our past — it is the only place where our future can unfold.