The Blogs: Aliyah is Catchy

Aliyah is catching

Since I wrote my first piece about leaving Montreal and making Aliyah, something strange has been happening.

People keep congratulating me.

“Good for you.”

“You’re brave.”

“Hatzlacha.”

And then, very often, something else follows. They lower their voice a little and tell me that they understand. That they have been thinking about Israel too. That things here do not feel quite the way they used to. That this is something a lot of us are struggling with right now.

So I have started asking a very simple question.

“So what about you?”

That is usually when it gets quiet.

I am not an Aliyah shaliach. I am not working for anybody. I am a seventy-year-old Montrealer who finally made a decision that I had spent a lifetime finding reasons not to make.

I am going home.

Apparently, saying it out loud does something to other people.

Today I was at a garage sale at a friend’s house, talking with two sisters I have known for years. Both are Israeli. Both have spent most of their adult lives in Canada. They built lives here. Family, children, grandchildren, community. Montreal became home.

One of the sisters is caring for her husband. He is mentally very much himself, but physically he has serious mobility problems. His body is failing him in ways his mind has not.

We started talking about healthcare.

That subject matters to me. I have lived with Type 1 diabetes since 1967, so when I think about moving countries at seventy, healthcare is not an item somewhere near the bottom of my checklist. It is one of the first questions I ask.

She told me about the frustration she has been having here. The medical message, as she experiences it, has increasingly become that there is not much more to do for her husband. She does not accept that easily. A physiotherapist believes work can still be done with him, but getting the care arranged and paid for is another matter. She has found someone who can come in and work with him physically because full private physiotherapy is simply too expensive.

I listened and then asked her something.

Forget Israel for a month.

Forget a vacation.

If your husband is medically able to travel, and if you genuinely believe that another healthcare system might offer him possibilities that you feel you are no longer finding here, would you consider taking him to Israel?

We talked about the practical problems. How do you travel with someone with major mobility needs? What assistance would he require? What would the doctors have to say? Those are real questions, and none of them should be minimized.

But practical problems can be investigated.

Then the conversation changed.

Why go for a month?

She is Israeli.

Her husband is Israeli.

They have spent roughly half a century building a Canadian life, but Israel did not somehow disappear during those years.

Maybe, she began to wonder, this was not a question about visiting Israel.

Maybe it was time to go back.

Her sister was sitting there too.

She is my friend, and she was already ahead of both of us.

About a week earlier she had picked up the phone and called Nefesh B’Nefesh herself.

She had returned to Israel years ago for a period, and she is now establishing what that means for her today, what rights or assistance might still apply, and what going back would actually involve.

Nobody talked her into it. I did not know she had made the call until she told me.

So there I was at a garage sale in Montreal, and somehow a conversation among three people in their seventies had turned into two sisters seriously discussing Israel.

So I gave the number to the other one. Call, explain your history accurately, and find out what applies to you. They are both Israeli, so this may be a question of returning-resident status rather than the process of a new oleh. Let the people who know the rules tell her what the rules are.

But that was not the part of the conversation that stayed with me.

The part that stayed with me was how quickly the impossible became discussable.

There is an enormous difference between saying, “Maybe someday,” and watching somebody you know actually do it.

For years, Israel can sit in the back of your mind as an idea.

Maybe when I retire.

Maybe when the children are older.

Maybe if things get worse.

Maybe.

Then somebody you know says, “I’m going.”

Suddenly you start asking him what rent costs. You ask what happens to your pension. You ask whether you can bring the dog. You ask how much Hebrew you really need.

And somewhere in the middle of all those practical questions, without realizing it, you have stopped asking whether Aliyah is possible.

You have started asking how.

I have noticed it repeatedly since announcing my decision.

People who have known me for years know that I am not twenty-five years old and looking for an adventure. I have a life here. I have history here. I have family history here. Both my parents were born in this country, and I am not a newcomer who never put down roots.

My roots are deep.

That may be precisely why my leaving makes some people stop and think.

If Mark can pick up his life at seventy and start again, what exactly is stopping me?

I am not suggesting that everyone should pack tomorrow. Aliyah is an enormous decision. People have spouses, children, grandchildren, jobs, medical needs, houses, obligations and lives that cannot be reduced to a slogan.

Nor do I pretend Israel is easy.

It is Israel.

Anyone expecting uncomplicated is going to the wrong country.

But perhaps we have made the decision too complicated in another way. We sometimes behave as though you must first possess absolute certainty before you are allowed even to investigate the possibility.

You do not.

You are allowed to ask.

That is what happened today.

Nobody signed anything.

Nobody bought an airline ticket.

Nobody sold a house.

One woman started asking questions. The other, it turned out, had already made the call.

That matters.

Because I am beginning to suspect that there are thousands of conversations like this waiting to happen in Jewish communities across Canada and the rest of the Diaspora.

People are not necessarily standing up at synagogue announcing that they are considering leaving.

They say it quietly. They say it over coffee. They say it at somebody’s kitchen table.

Apparently, they even say it at garage sales.

And often they say it only after somebody else goes first.

I have spent much of my life talking. Anyone who knows me will confirm that this is not a newly acquired skill.

But this time I may be saying something people were already waiting to hear.

Not “You have to leave.”

Not “Israel will solve everything.”

Certainly not “I know what is right for your family.”

Just this:

I am going.

Here is what I am learning.