Between the photo of our arrival at Ben Gurion and the one from this summer, we have graduated from preschool, elementary school, and high school. We’ve switched schools more than once. We’ve become an IDF family. We’ve become Israeli.

 

We have consciously improved our Hebrew and worked on giving back to the community. We’ve learned to set boundaries and to take care of ourselves. We serve more salads at our Shabbat table now than kugels. We’ve hosted Shabbat meals, shiurim, day camps, and countless parties, though almost not at all during the pandemic. We’ve discovered new favorite music and books, and for some of us, those will always be in English.

 

We have learned. We’ve each learned a lot of Torah here, formally and informally, as the opportunities are all around us. We’ve learned and continue to learn valuable lessons from COVID, including a reminder of the cliche that “man plans and God laughs”. We’ve made trips to the ER and endured hospital stays. We’ve benefited from the kindness of friends.

 

We have mourned painful losses on both personal and national scales. We’ve worried about our homeland. But we have also celebrated. We’ve experienced the elation of national triumphs and Independence Day festivities. We’ve danced at happy occasions of family and friends, each of which we loved attending, and marked several of our own milestones as well.

 

I could have posted a dozen (or dozens of) pictures from the past six years, representing a sort of highlight reel of our Aliyah experience until this point. But visually, these two photos convey the most important reality of all: The family on the left, though happy to have arrived, mostly clutched their bags and pillows and were jetlagged and disoriented, excited but bewildered and overwhelmed; while our latest family shot — taken somewhat spontaneously this summer just after a long period of dancing — instead caught each of us holding onto one another.

Not only happy. Content, oriented, and fully supported.

 

Here’s to our next six years, and beyond."

 

- Rachel Holzer