Our One-Year Aliyaversary: A Lifetime in a Year

One year ago, we (Terri and Hayim) made one of the boldest moves in our many years together: we made Aliyah on July 9, 2024, during the war between Israel and Hamas, which later developed into a 7-front war. Soon, I will fly to the U.S. for a visit. In addition to visiting our family, we will also prepare to sell our home in St. Louis Park, the neighborhood where we have lived since moving to Minnesota in 1985. We had initially thought we would wait to sell it for several years. But when we asked ourselves why we should hold on to it, we couldn’t produce an answer.

Besides, any thoughts we had about waiting to sell vanished by January 2025. That’s when Medicare denied my appeals (all the way up to a federal administrative CMS law judge-how horribly demeaning and absurd) for my IVIG infusion medication, which I had been receiving for years, and which I am eligible for in Israel. Within a few months of becoming citizens, we decided that the only property we wanted to own was in Israel, because Israel is our home.

What was so transformative about this year? At most, it’s a slight exaggeration to say I feel as if I’ve been through a lifetime of experience during this past year. We have experienced shattering pain and tremendous joy, simchas and sorrows, fear and hope, inspiration and disappointment, and the tremendous heart and generosity of family, friends, and neighbors who have looked out for us during the year. Do you remember the saying, “It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon” (so pace yourself for the long haul)? We’ve learned to sprint through our marathon year and understand that both styles of running are necessary to thrive here. We move quickly but are here for the long run. We pivot and maintain our course.

The pace of life and the commitment that people have to each other quicken human connections. I often feel as though I’ve gotten to know someone well after socializing with them just once or twice. I think it’s because we’re grounded in our historic land and living together in a transcendent dimension of time. Time in Israel rarely feels insignificant, and life’s everyday experiences can touch you deeply when you least expect it. Each of those kinds of experiences grounds me more deeply.

I have joked that learning new skills at our age is important to maintain cognitive acuity. Does learning how to interpret a sometimes-confusing set of instructions on how and when to prepare for a missile attack, and learning how to traipse up and down stairs in the middle of the night while on sleep medication to our shelter, count as maintaining healthy brain function?

That’s why I say it’s as if I’ve lived a lifetime this past year in terms of the depths of experiences and range of emotions. Newborns and teenagers take tremendous developmental strides, more so than at any other time in life, and at the age when most people begin to slow down a little, I feel like I am growing like I haven’t since my teenage years (maybe there’s hope I’ll still grow a few inches taller?)! Time counts for much more here, and its significance has also deepened my awareness of what matters most in life.

Making Aliyah during a war that has expanded to include a direct confrontation with Iran has given us experiences that those who have been born and raised here have known for too long. But our decision to make Aliyah during this time has felt even more important to us because we are living out our values when it’s especially difficult (“especially” difficult, because when has living in Israel been without its challenges?). And rather than waiting until the situation was “quieter,” we kept our Aliyah date, and we have repeatedly spoken about how much better life is here, even during wartime (although I write this as someone who does not have children or grandchildren in the army or in miluim).

We’re incredibly grateful to take a small part in our historical drama at an inflection point in contemporary Israel. It has only been a year, but in some ways, it feels as though we’ve lived a lifetime of experiences, and we’re grateful to HaShem for the privilege of living here.