Israel needs to talk to the Diaspora Jews

In 1972, when I was sixteen, I knew an Israeli named Itzik.

More than half a century later, I still remember him.

He was a shaliach, working with Jewish youth organizations and visiting schools. He had recently served in the IDF. We became friends. What I remember most is that he did not talk about Israel like a travel agent. He talked about it like home.

The land. The people. What it felt like to live there. The things that drove Israelis crazy and the things they loved. He was young enough that we could relate to him, but he had already lived a life that seemed very different from ours in Montreal.

Israel was not a brochure when Itzik was in the room.

Israel had a face.

Fifty-four years later, I think Israel needs Itzik again.

I am preparing to make Aliyah at seventy.

The infrastructure available to someone like me is remarkable compared with what existed when I was sixteen. Healthcare, benefits, shipping, banking, housing, taxes, bringing my dog. I can email people in Israel and North America, attend online meetings and fill out forms without leaving my house. Nefesh B’Nefesh and the Jewish Agency do work that would make this process enormously more difficult without them.

I know, because I am using that system.

But I have also discovered its natural limitation.

Most of the machinery begins working once you have already reached the point of saying, “I think I want to make Aliyah. What do I do next?”

I am interested in everybody who has not reached that sentence yet.

Those are the people I keep meeting. I have written here before about what happens when I ask them the obvious question back. They tell me I am brave. They tell me they have thought about Israel. They tell me they are worried about what is happening around them.

Then I ask:

“So what about you?”

And quite often they go quiet.

That silence is where Israel needs to be.

Not with another advertisement.

Not with another webinar.

With a person.

I think Israel should undertake a new worldwide shlichut initiative aimed specifically at Jews who have not yet decided.

Send people into the communities.

Choose them carefully.

I am not talking about somebody whose principal qualification is that he or she is available for two years overseas. I am talking about exceptional communicators: Israelis with emotional intelligence, curiosity, warmth and patience. People who speak the language of the community fluently. People who can listen as well as talk. People who understand that persuading somebody to uproot a life cannot be a sales presentation.

Send men and women. Different ages. Different backgrounds. Religious and secular. Israelis who can represent the complicated, argumentative, funny, frustrating and extraordinary reality of the country rather than a polished version that falls apart the moment someone lands at Ben Gurion.

Give them desks at JCCs. Have them visit synagogues, schools, seniors’ groups and universities. Let them sit in a coffee shop for two hours every Thursday afternoon and say:

Come talk to me.

No application. No commitment. You do not have to be making Aliyah.

You are allowed just to wonder.

Because that is the group we are missing.

Programs exist for young people. Missions and tours exist. Organizations exist to help the person who has already decided.

But what about the 48-year-old couple whose children are nearly grown and who whisper about Israel after dinner?

What about the 62-year-old widow who cannot imagine starting over alone?

What about the 70-year-old man who thinks he waited too long?

What about the Israeli who left forty or fifty years ago, built an entire life in Canada, and suddenly wonders whether the last chapter belongs back where the first one began?

What about the family that is not frightened enough to flee but is no longer comfortable enough to stop thinking about leaving?

Who sits across from them?

A website cannot look somebody in the eye. An FAQ cannot say, “No, that is not a stupid question.” An online calculator cannot give somebody a hug.

Sometimes that is what people need.

This is not a criticism of the organizations doing the work now. Quite the opposite. Once I made my decision, I discovered how much expertise exists and how many people are prepared to help me navigate the bureaucracy. I have been guided toward documents I did not know I needed and people I did not know existed.

Keep all of that.

Expand it.

But put something upstream of it.

The shaliach I am describing is not there to process Aliyah.

The shaliach is there to make Israel imaginable.

There is a difference.

If somebody says they could never afford Israel, sit down and talk about what life actually costs in different cities.

If somebody says their Hebrew is terrible, tell them what that really means in daily life.

If somebody has grandchildren in Canada and cannot imagine leaving them, listen.

And if somebody says, “I am too old,” introduce them to somebody who went at seventy.

I can volunteer for that one.

If a single man my age quietly wonders whether moving to Israel means giving up on companionship, community or even love, that is a legitimate question too.

I am not moving there to retire from life.

I am moving there to live it.

I hope to make new friends. I hope to become part of a community. And yes, I would be very happy if somewhere in that next chapter there were a woman with whom to share some of it.

Aliyah is not merely a logistical relocation.

It is a human relocation.

We should treat it that way.

Israel has spent enormous energy explaining itself to the world. I am suggesting that some of that energy now be directed inward, toward its own extended family.

Not only after an antisemitic incident.

Not only when somebody has already opened a file.

Come when Israel is still a sentence that begins with “Maybe.”

There is another reason the timing matters.

Something has changed in Diaspora conversations. People who would once have talked about Israel as somewhere their children might spend a year are asking what it would cost to live there. People who once said, “I could never leave,” now say, “I don’t know.”

That is not a decision.

But it is an opening.

Israel should not wait for those people to find their way through the door by themselves.

Imagine two or three carefully selected Israeli representatives embedded in every substantial Jewish community for a period of years.

Do not judge their success simply by the number of Aliyah applications they generate.

Measure conversations.

Measure families who visit Israel differently because of them.

Measure the number of people who walk in saying, “I’m only curious,” and come back six months later saying, “All right. Tell me how.”

Itzik could not have known that a sixteen-year-old boy in Montreal would remember him at seventy.

That may be the most important thing about shlichut.

You do not always know when the seed grows.

In 1972, Israel sent somebody into my world.

In 2026, I am finally coming into his.

There are Jews all over the Diaspora right now who do not need to be sold Israel.

They need permission to imagine themselves there.

Some need reassurance. Some need an argument. Some need somebody who will sit with them long enough to discover what is actually keeping them from going.

The ones who have already decided are the easy ones.

Go find the ones who have not.

Don’t send us another advertisement telling us Israel is home.

Send someone from home to come and get us.