When we married 16 years ago, we were on the “five year aliyah plan.” My wife, Rebecca, would get her doctorate in psychology, and I would finish law school and start a career as a corporate lawyer—because it was realistic for a American to practice corporate law in Israel. We had our plan!
But as we soon learned, life was more complicated than our plan. I wasn’t satisfied with corporate law, and began exploring assistant rabbi positions. Before we knew it, we were pursuing a different dream, and living a deeply meaningful and interesting life as a community rabbi and rebbetzin. We got our feet wet at the Young Israel of Staten Island, and then came to Synagogue of the Suburban Torah Center in Livingston eight years ago—where we immediately threw ourselves into the joys and challenges of community life.
The rabbinate is all-encompassing. Between long-term projects, lifecycle crises and the day-to-day intensity of work and family life, the aliyah dream slowly moved to the backburner of our consciousness. The cognitive dissonance of believing in the imperative of aliyah while working day and night to build up a community in the diaspora was simply too great—and so we tried not to think about it, at least not too often.
But just beneath the surface, the yearning was always there, periodically muscling its way to the forefront of our minds and shouting for attention—the inevitable disappointment of the American Yom Ha’atzmaut experience; the pang of jealousy we felt when hearing that another friend was making aliyah. As one sibling after another moved across the ocean, Rebecca and I couldn’t help but feel left behind. Most of all, it was the yearning that every Jew feels, the cry of the soul that God directs to every one of us: “And I will put my spirit in you, and you will come to life, and I will place you in your own land…” (Yechezkel 37:14)
When we shared our aliyah plans with the Livingston community, we were astounded by the reaction. The vast majority of the congregation reacted in the same way: “We wish we were going, too!” Rav Yaakov Moshe Charlop writes that “the nature of a Jew is opposed to exile, and is constantly seeking ways to leave exile and return to the root of his nature.” (Mei Marom, Volume 6, Chapter 57). It’s one thing to read these words, but quite another to see and hear this yearning expressed throughout the community.
Still, why now? Why give up meaningful jobs that we both love and are deeply grateful for, to make aliyah this summer? The answer is multilayered.
With children already in high school, Rebecca and I feel that the clock is ticking. In a few years, our older children will be graduating high school and leaving our home. Though we are far from old, our window for making aliyah together as a family is closing.
On a deeper level, turning 40 this year strikes us as an opportune time to take the leap. The Mishna in Pirkei Avos teaches that “with the age of 40 comes understanding.” The source of the Mishna’s teaching is a verse from Moshe’s final message to the people of Israel, after 40 years in the desert: “But Hashem did not give you a heart to understand, or eyes to see, or ears to hear until this day.” (Devarim 29:3). The people of Israel achieved a new level of understanding of life as they entered the land after 40 years of wandering in exile—a transformation we hope to experience ourselves.
At the same time, our decision to make aliyah is based on more than purely personal considerations. In the last two years alone, we’ve seen a spate of anti-Semitic attacks in America, from extremists on both the left and the right. Never before has our community felt so vulnerable, and so afraid to speak its mind. Rav Meir Simcha of Dvinsk, in an oft-quoted passage, explains that we are experiencing a pattern of events that has repeated itself throughout our exile:
“For the thousands of years that swept over the diminutive nation, so weak and helpless, it was the way of Divine Providence that they would rest for close to a hundred or two hundred years. Afterwards, a storm wind would emerge and give rise to many waves; it would destroy, decimate, wear them out, demolish, and sweep away without mercy. The Jews would flee to a distant place and there they would reunite into a nation. They would grow, rise up, their wisdom would lead them to success, until they would forget they were strangers in a strange land. They would think this is the place from which they originated, and lose hope for Hashem’s spiritual salvation at the appointed time. There, an even stronger storm wind would come and it would remind them with a raging sound and an earthquake: “You are a Jew. Who made you into a man? Go for yourself to a land you do not know…” (Meshech Chochmah, Vayikra 26:44)
At a protest this past spring, Jacob Frey, the Jewish mayor of Minneapolis, was speaking with a crowd of angry protestors, trying to show them how much he empathized with their pain. Suddenly, one of the leaders of the protest—looming over the mayor—put Frey on the defensive, asking him if he would commit on the spot to defunding the Minneapolis Police. “Yes or no!” She then handed the microphone to Frey, who responded in a barely audible voice, “I do not support the full abolition of the police.”
With that, the crowd began to scream at the mayor, over and over again: “Go home, Jacob, go home!” Defeated, Jacob Frey slowly walked away with his head down, on the walk of shame. “Go home, Jacob, go home!”
There are times when God speaks through prophets, but there are also times when the words of those prophets are written on subway walls and tenement halls, when God’s message reaches us from the most unlikely places. “Go home, Jacob, go home!” Watching this scene unfold in Minneapolis, we heard an echo of similar words first uttered thousands of years ago, to the original Jacob.
After living in exile for 20 years in Lavan’s house, Yaakov was confronted by an angel of God: “I am the God of Beit-El, where you anointed a monument, where you vowed to Me a vow. Now arise, leave this land and return to the land of your birthplace.” (Bereishit 31:13). “Go home, Jacob, go home!”
We are not running away from America, a country that has been so good to us personally and to our people. In moving to Israel, we do so with Jewish pride and strength, as a fulfillment of the words we say in Birkat Hamazon: “May He … lead us upright to our land”—komemiyut l’artzeinu! We pray that the United States should remain a nation of chesed and a hospitable home for American Jewry. And yet—the events of our time seem to point in one direction: home.
It cannot be said enough that we are living in miraculous times, that we are blessed to witness events our great grandparents could only dream of. It is awe-inspiring to play our small role in fulfilling the great hope of the Jewish people: “Sound the great shofar for our liberty, and raise a banner to gather our exiles, and gather us together from the four corners of the earth…” May we merit to soon see all of our people return home, in joy and celebration!
Rabbi Elie Mischel is the rabbi of Synagogue of the Suburban Torah Center in Livingston.
