Aliyah – Thirty Years Later

About thirty years ago my wife and I decided to move to Israel with our three young daughters. The move was not based upon dissatisfaction with our lives in the USA, rather upon a yearning to come home to the Land G-d promised to our ancestors. There were no “guarantees” and we did not really know what was in store for us. But we were young and filled with hope for a bright future.

Our first attempt was to live on a moshav shutafi, a cooperative settlement somewhat like a kibbutz. Moshav Katif was located on the Gaza Strip on the sandy Mediterranean coast. We were given a small house overlooking the sea and we worked with the others growing tomatoes and flowers in plastic hot houses.

After a year the members had to vote to approve our membership. They decided that we were not suited for their moshav and we had to find another place to live and work. A friend of ours had a friend who lived in Kiryat Arba. We contacted her and soon found employment and a nice apartment there. My wife, Andrea, almost immediately got a job as a nurse in the local clinic. I tried my hand at several different jobs until I found myself working with Rabbi Waldman at the yeshiva in Kiryat Arba.

Soon after we moved, our son was born to us. He was born on a Friday nite and his brit milah came out on Shabbat of chol hamoed Succot. Although we did not realize it at the time, we made history in a building which is over two thousand years old! The Cave of Machpelah building, beneath which repose Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Yaacov and Leah, and Adam and Eve, was returned to Jewish control in June of 1967. The Israeli government, however, failed to establish complete Jewish control over our second most holy site.
It was just prior to our moving to Kiryat Arba that the Israeli government agreed to permit Jews to pray with a minyan in the large hall of Isaac (where only Arabs were permitted to pray)… but only on Shabbat. As a result of that arrangement our son’s circumcision ceremony was the first ever to be held in that large hall! After prayers we all walked to bet Hadassah to join the families there where we had the festive meal, seudat mitzvah, in their communal succah. It was truly a glorious event.

Two years later our youngest daughter was born to us. In Kiryat Arba a family with five children is relatively small. It has always been a community of Jews who have a fierce love of the Land of Israel. Over the years we endured murders by knife and gun-wielding Arabs. We lived through two intifadas which included drive-by shootings as well as numerous stoning of cars on the roads. We lost friends in such attacks. Andrea learned how to treat bullet wounds. . . something they didn’t teach her in nursing school.

Our children all grew up here as proud Jews. My son served in a combat unit in the IDF. Today he is married with a new daughter, a rabbi ordained by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate, and he works here, in Kiryat Arba, as a school teacher.

On January 1 of this year I reached another milestone in my life. I retired from my job at the yeshiva after 24 years of service. It is hard for me to believe that I am already 65 years old, but, looking back on my life I am completely satisfied that I made incredible, difficult but correct decisions when I was younger. All of our children are proud Jews living in our homeland. All of our seven grandchildren were born here and are growing up here. I still have the old story books I used to read to my children when they were little. I now have to break my teeth trying to translate them as I read them to my grandchildren who do not understand English!

To say that I am happy with my lot is a vast understatement. I created Project Shofar as an attempt to share my happiness with others and to encourage Jews to express their faith in G‑d simply by coming home. In my own life I discovered that such an expression of faith is rewarded beyond imagination. Faith means proving that you really believe by taking steps that seem to be foolhardy and even dangerous. It is totally irrational to pick up and leave a home in the United States and move to Israel. That is exactly why doing so is a true expression of faith…

If you truly love G‑d and love being Jewish then coming home is a very normal thing to do… especially now when it is under Jewish control. Of course things are not perfect. There is much yet that needs to be done. But the mitzvah to live in the Land has nothing to do with the government of Israel. Each of the nations of the world has a guardian angel watching over it… except for the Land of Israel. G‑d Himself watches over this land night and day. If this weren’t true this country could not have been reestablished in the first place, nor could we exist for even one day. The existence of the Jewish State is a defiance of logic. It is a continuing miracle which no power on Earth, not even the Jewish government, can destroy.

Although I am now retired from my work at the yeshiva, Project Shofar continues. It is limited only by the generosity of its supporters. As long as there is funding I will continue to make trips to the states and elsewhere if called upon. Redemption is advancing at a rapid pace and the Exile is coming to an end. If we choose to close our eyes it will eventually vomit us out. If we but open our eyes we can come home as proud Jews and participate in the exciting climax of Jewish destiny with great joy. This is the message of Project Shofar. This is the alarm which I seek to sound.