One Year Home: How Israel Made My World Bigger

Yesterday marks one year since I made aliyah, and for me, this first year deserved to be celebrated — and captured in words.

I don’t know that I will write something every year, but this first anniversary felt different. It felt important to stop, look back and preserve what this year has been: what I discovered, who I met, how I grew, and how much my life expanded.

Before moving to Israel, I had heard the comparison countless times: Israel is about the size of New Jersey.

It was always meant to emphasize how small this country is.

But coming from Toronto, where so much of Jewish life seemed concentrated along one main stretch of Bathurst Street, Israel felt enormous.

Cities. Neighborhoods. Mountains. Beaches. Wineries. Shuks. Ancient streets and new communities. Sephardi shuls, Ashkenazi shuls, religious neighborhoods, secular neighborhoods and everything in between.

And then there are the things so ordinary here that you can almost forget how extraordinary they are.

Mezuzot everywhere you turn — on apartment buildings, storefronts, restaurants, offices, government buildings. Doorway after doorway quietly reminding you that you are living in a Jewish country.

The whole country shifts as a chag approaches — the signs, the shopping, the music, the preparations, the hustle and bustle. You don’t just know a holiday is coming. You feel it.

You hear the siren announcing that Shabbat is about to begin.

Living across from a school, I hear Rosh Chodesh celebrations — music, presentations, children singing.

The Jewish calendar isn’t something happening quietly inside your home or synagogue.

It is happening all around you.

And everywhere I went, I kept thinking the same thing:

I am surrounded by my Jewish brothers and sisters.

Not because I drove to the Jewish neighborhood.

Not because I walked into a synagogue.

Because I am home.

Building a life — without putting life on hold

Making aliyah required more courage than I probably understood when I boarded that plane.

I left behind the city I had known most of my life, decades of professional experience, friends, family and familiar routines, and arrived in Jerusalem needing to build again.

A home. A career. Friendships. Community.

Finding work took nine months. I applied, interviewed, networked and did my hishtadlut.

But one of the most important decisions I made was not to put my life on hold while waiting for everything to fall into place.

I volunteered. I went to shiurim. I explored. I traveled. I accepted invitations.

Most importantly, I stayed open.

Open to friendships. Open to possibilities. Open to people and experiences I could never have planned.

So many olim arrive here rebuilding at the same time, and perhaps because of that, there is an openness to connection that I didn’t expect.

You meet someone at a shiur, through a friend, on a tiyul or at a Shabbat table, and suddenly that person becomes part of your life.

Not everyone is meant to stay forever. Some are there for years, some for a season, some for one conversation.

But each can bring something — friendship, wisdom, laughter, opportunity, Torah.

Learning to breathe again

There was something else Israel gave me that I hadn’t fully expected:

I could breathe again.

I had been through so much before coming here. Grief doesn’t disappear because you move countries. You carry the people you have lost with you always.

But here, I found room to breathe, to share and simply to be.

I no longer felt the same need to measure every word or navigate layers that made relationships feel complicated. I could show up as myself.

I described it to someone recently as connecting neshama to neshama.

That is what so many relationships here have felt like to me.

Less performance. Less pretense. More honesty. More heart.

You meet someone, you talk, you share — and sometimes, very quickly, you are simply two neshamot connecting.

After everything that came before, being able to breathe like that has been one of the greatest gifts of coming home.

Only in Israel

There is one phrase I seem to say all the time:

Only in Israel.

Recently I went to my osteopath, and somewhere in the middle of treating me, he started giving me a dvar Torah on emunah and bitachon.

I remember thinking: Of course.

Only in Israel do you go to have your body worked on and leave with your neshama worked on too.

And then there are the taxi rides.

Some of the most memorable conversations of my first year have happened sitting in the back of a taxi. A ride that begins with an address somehow becomes a conversation about family, faith, Israel, life — sometimes all of the above.

My favorite taxi driver, Avraham, became part of that experience. What could have simply been transportation became connection.

That is what I love here.

Ordinary encounters rarely feel entirely ordinary.

A conversation turns into Torah. A stranger notices you need help. Someone you barely know invites you into their home.

Life here can change from one day to the next. Someone can be called to serve without warning. Families live with uncertainty in a way many of us from North America never had to.

Perhaps because of that, there is a clarity about what matters.

Family matters.

Friends matter.

This country matters.

And life is meant to be lived.

In North America, it can sometimes feel as though we spend years working with our heads down, telling ourselves we will make time for life later.

Here, I see something different.

People work hard, but they also make room for family, friendship, food, celebration, Shabbat, laughter and simply being together.

There is an awareness that tomorrow is never guaranteed, so today matters.

And the more I get to know Israelis, the less I think tough is the right word.

Resilient feels closer.

Because beneath whatever toughness people may see from the outside, I have found tremendous warmth, generosity and heart.

They love this country.

My country.

They show up for one another. They cherish the people they love. And they have reminded me that living a good life should not be something we keep postponing.

The families who serve too

One of the greatest privileges of my first year was becoming involved in workshops supporting miluim couples and families.

Before living here, I understood intellectually what reserve duty meant. Living in Israel allowed me to see something much deeper: when someone is called to serve, an entire family serves with them.

The spouse suddenly carrying the home alone. The children missing a parent. Plans postponed. Work rearranged. The constant uncertainty of not knowing when someone will be home — or when they might be called away again.

Through the workshops, I had the privilege of meeting some of these women and couples, listening to their experiences and seeing both the sacrifice and the extraordinary strength behind them.

What struck me most was that the workshops weren’t simply about surviving something difficult. They were about helping couples reconnect, laugh, cook, spend time together and remember that their relationship also deserves care.

It brought home something I have seen repeatedly this year:

In Israel, service does not belong only to the person wearing the uniform.

Families serve.

Communities serve.

And then other people step forward to support the families carrying that weight.

Being able to witness even a small part of that was one of the great highlights of my year — and another reminder of the kind of country I now have the privilege to call my country.

Choosing to report the good

The longer I lived here, the more aware I became of how much negativity is spoken about Israel.

And somewhere along the way, I made a promise to myself.

I wanted to try to be like Yehoshua and Kalev — to come back with a good report.

That doesn’t mean pretending Israel is perfect. No country is.

It means choosing not to let the imperfections become the story.

Because what I have seen here is so much bigger.

The kindness. The courage. The emunah. The generosity. The resilience. The way people show up for one another. The way Torah and Jewish life weave themselves into ordinary moments.

The good I have experienced here surpasses anything negative I could choose to focus on.

And that is what I want to write about.

If I am going to tell stories about Israel, I want to tell the stories that remind people what is here:

The beauty.

The heart.

The people.

The holiness.

The good.

Discovering Israel — and a voice

I spent this year exploring.

Jerusalem. The north. The coast. Wineries, restaurants, holy places, neighborhoods and communities I had never even heard of before aliyah.

Some of my favorite experiences weren’t really about the destination at all. They were about who I was with, who I met along the way and what happened unexpectedly.

And somewhere in the middle of all that exploring, I started writing.

The ordinary moments I was experiencing here didn’t feel ordinary to me.

A lemonade stand became a story about Israeli children raising money for chayalim.

A siren became a story about strangers looking after strangers.

A wedding became a story about remembering those who could not stand beneath the chuppah themselves.

A job search became a story about emunah.

A road trip became a story about friendship.

Israel kept giving me stories, and I began sharing them through The Times of Israel.

I never made aliyah thinking I would become a blogger.

But perhaps that is another lesson of this year: when you stay open, you sometimes discover parts of yourself you didn’t know were waiting to emerge.

Finding my words

My Hebrew still has room to grow, but it has also come a long way.

I have learned so many words this year, and I use Hebrew whenever I can.

Sometimes I get it right. Sometimes I probably invent grammar that doesn’t exist.

But I speak. I listen. I try.

And every conversation feels like another small step toward becoming more fully part of the country I chose to call home.

One year later

My emunah did not begin when I moved to Israel, but it deepened here.

This year taught me what it means to trust Hashem while still doing my hishtadlut.

You apply for the job. You go to the event. You accept the invitation. You speak the Hebrew. You take the next step.

And then you trust Hashem with what you cannot control.

Again and again, things came together in ways I could not have planned myself.

One year ago, I made aliyah thinking I was moving to a small country.

Instead, my world became enormous.

There are still cities I haven’t visited, neighborhoods I haven’t explored, people I haven’t met and stories I haven’t written.

And that excites me.

I don’t feel like I have finished anything.

I feel like I have just begun.

I came here to build a life in Israel.

What I did not fully understand was how much Israel would build me too.

So yes, this first anniversary needed to be marked.

Because I grew.

Because I learned to breathe again.

Because I stayed open.

Because I learned to look for the good — and found it everywhere.

And because Hashem brought me here and guided me, step by step, through my first year home.

Thank You, Hashem, for this year.

And now, on to year two????????????????????.