Anticlimactic, and Goodly So

This period between making the decision to move and the impending flight has been oddly anticlimactic.

Here's where I am going to get in trouble, potentially alienate half my readers, and maybe, just maybe, encourage people to think. Which is what I like to do.

I suppose it is a testimony to the Aliyah propaganda machine (which, I suppose, I am now an unwitting and unwilling member of) that some people look at moving to Israel as some sort of minor, personal Messianic exercise, in which they leave the Land of the Unbelievers and arrive, breathless and arms outstretched, to the Land of G-d full of song and prayer, secure in the belief that they are fulfilling the prophecies of old.

They may have insane ideas about their futures, believing in the mysterious Hand of G-d that will Provide their every need, inventing jobs for them and friends as well; they invest little in planning, in research, in understanding their destination, instead preferring to live in the fantasy they are returning to the cocoon they inhabited in yeshiva, seminary, college, or similar period in their life. Their Israel may be the size of the northern quarter of modern Jerusalem, perhaps with some sites and sights to see elsewhere on Tiyulim and the like. They might come when their kids are blooming, in the most vulnerable and breakable periods of their lives, speaking no Hebrew and knowing no Israeli culture, in the trust that "HaShem will help the kids adjust and make friends". Perhaps they may move to Ramat Bet Shemesh Aleph, because its American, decide they are charedi because they wore a black hat in the US, and doom their children to failure when they are inevitably reminded they are NOT (Israeli) charedi, when they are thrown out of school.

You can read blogs like mine, of other olim, and read about the excitement, the joy, they sheer WOW of it all. Their writings can read almost like a novel - the inspirational dreamlike state of seeing the יד ה׳ in everyday life, the simple emunah in G-d's השגחה פרטית in bringing them all they need...

And sometimes, just sometimes, you can see the cracks in the facade...the assertions of the daily day to day grind of life, the petty and the small showing up amidst the grandeur and the pomp and circumstance. The vain attempts to balance a budget, navigate bureaucracy, make friends, find schools and services...the living life, as opposed to the declaring it - life has a funny way of reminding you that it shall always be a work in progress, until it progresses no more.

My Rebbi once mentioned, almost off the cuff, that Aliyah is a fascinating phenomenon - people feel the need to define (and defend) their reasons for moving to Eretz Yisrael. And, oddly enough, whatever they define Eretz Yisrael to be, is exactly the life they have there. Those who move to the Israel of religious inspiration and financial hardship, the Israel of their post high school years, get exactly that - a land that they may experience their relationship with HaShem, openly and visibly, and one of little to no income. Those who come for careers, find those - and little else. Those who come to fulfill a mitzva, have that - and other woes. In short, the Eretz Yisrael that G-d Gives you is the Eretz Yisrael you ask for.

Mashiach is not here, the Geulah barely begun, if at all. (I am already dreading the party at the airport for this reason - moving to Israel is a bittersweet move - one leaves behind what they know, their family, friends, culture, careers, neighbors, and embarking on a joirney filled with doubt, wonder, confusion, and perhaps happiness along the way. It is not something to dance about, as if none of this matters...) Coming to Eretz Yisrael is part of making a life for yourself, and family - not an abrogation of doing so. It is for this, I think, our experience has been so anticlimactic. There is no messianic component to our move, no wondrous belief that we are fulfilling anything (though, I am sure, we are) other than our desire to live in the most authentic and fulfilling way we can, engaged in the millennia long enterprise called Yisrael.