a little slice of what has influenced next year's aliyah....

this is the third time i've started writing this post.

when westbankmama asked everyone to write about their decision to make aliyah, i thought for sure that would be an easy topic. after all, almost every other post on my blog has something to do with making aliyah, or how much i love israel or some combination of the two. and yet, to isolate that exact moment that i knew i just had to live in israel, and then to blog it, well, suddenly--writer's block. and not just once, but each time i've wanted to put this in words.

there were a few moments at various times in israel--those moments of awakening, you know, when it hits you: how you've never felt as at home anywhere as you do at this moment in israel, even though you've just been pushed far from the condiment stand at melech hashwarma by someone who felt that they better deserved first pickings of the hot peppers, or maybe when the bus driver orders you off of the bus, because it's better that you should be stranded in the desert in the middle of the dark night, rather than vomit on his bus. or when a friendly south african jew carries you up a mountain because in your nineteen year-old drunken stupidity, you realized that there was absolutely no way on this earth that you were making it back to the base.

but seriously, i mean, these things can happen anywhere in the world.

what really got me, and i'm just going to cut and paste, and then give some commentary, was the following moment, the first time i was ever in israel:

i miss eretz israel. not a day goes by that i am not reminded--either by the way the light shines in that early morning where everything seems pink or in the afternoon where everything is bathed in an orange glow, or right before a storm when the sky turns dark, the world brightens, the colours are heightened and i know that i am almost there, and i hear the wisps and sighs of jerusalem calling, calling, and i can almost touch her.... dudu said years ago that "it's something in the air," as we looked out over ma'aleh adumim. now? i'm not so sure. i think it's not just in the air, but in our souls. it's that fire, those sparks, those divine sparks bringing light to this dark world.

there are so many moments that i've had, but that one moment, was definitely one of the most defining moments. i knew i'd been "infected" but was not exactly sure what that meant. i knew that one day i would make aliyah, but it would take other trips over, more experiences, and then several years and two kids to be able to determine that yes, the time was nigh.
strangely, it was actually a negative experience in the US, at a family gathering, that made us decide that yes, it is time to get it together to make aliyah.

you see, there are so many opportunities to make aliyah, but with each opportunity, there are so many more opportunities to make excuses as to why we shouldn't, or cannot possibly do it at any given time. so for years we made excuses. one of mine, and i'm embarrassed to say it, was that it would be irresponsible, and certainly, people, more specifically, family, would see it as such. and even if they never told us that they thought that (and by the way, they have) it would always be an underlying issue. if we made aliyah, we'd be disappointing people. and so, we mustn't do that!!!

so back in december, while we've always put off making aliyah, an incident with a family member convinced us that our excuses have been ridiculous. while everyone else in our family has done what they wanted to do, and has attempted to live their dreams as best as they can, we've been concerned that they might not approve of our decision to live our dream, and that had kept us from living ours.

now of course, we're making aliyah for the important reasons--we have our land, we need to LIVE there to keep it, we want our kids to be proud jews and of course, we want our children to grow up not just learning torah, but living it and embracing it.

i just keep remembering the langston hughes poem "a dream deferred" and i know that this is one dream that i cannot defer any longer.

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore--

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over--

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?