I was thinking a lot, about this whole discussion about ‘aliyah’.
And I did a fair bit of hitbodedut on this, before sitting down to write, because while this subject is frequently so polarising, I wanted to find a way of addressing it that would bring us more ‘together’, and more understanding where ‘the other’ is coming from.
First, I was pondering on this comment from a reader on the bottom of this last post:
G-d took us out of Mitzrayim, He will also take us out of our current galus no matter where we live. We can be with Hakadosh Baruch Hu anywhere. Putting fear in Jews by claiming that there won’t be enough planes to take us home is IMO fear-mongering and a lack of bitachon. G-d is limitless. He can take us home by any way He so choses. Our job is to pray and do teshuva.
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On the one hand, as someone who with God’s help made the very difficult transition to living in Israel, I do believe that living in Israel is ‘the ideal’ for a Jew.
And I also believe that just like God ‘held a mountain’ over the heads of the Jewish people to get them to accept the Torah, there is an element of that going on here, too, with the whole idea of being ‘scared into’ leaving the comfort zone and making aliya.
I know for myself, my aliya wasn’t motivated by lofty ideas of ‘doing the right thing, religiously’.
I loved coming to Israel for holidays, I loved the kosher food, being surrounded by Jews, the whole ‘vibe’ of being here (on holiday….)
But the real reason we made aliya is because I started having a series of repeated, terrifying dreams that there was going to be a terrorist attack in London, and that I was going to get ‘stuck’ there, somehow.
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I woke up from that repeated dream in a cold sweat, and I told my husband:
We have to sell our house and move to Israel…
We’d been talking about aliya, on and off, for about 2-3 years before that point, ever since the Twin Towers came down, and we understood the world really was changing, and that London no longer felt like ‘home’.
But, the intifada was happening in Israel back then…. London was filling up with Israelis running away from the terrorism, and telling us we had to be crazy to try and go and live there – especially as we didn’t even speak the language.
Somehow or other, we still managed to get here, despite all the odds, and even more incredibly, to stay here, despite all the odds, and all the very many difficulties.
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I often ponder, in what merit a person seems to get to Israel, and in many cases, it seems to me that it’s connected to giving a lot of charity.
That’s just what I’ve seen from my own experiences, that the people who give their 10% as mandated by the Torah are often the ones who manage to get here, somehow, even if they are still stuffed-full of bad middot.
But that’s not a cast-iron rule.
We have family members who don’t fit that profile, don’t keep anything, much, don’t believe in God – and they still had the privilege of moving to Israel a couple of years ago.
And I also know very impressive people, spiritually, in chul, who give a ton, and try to serve God with so much mesirus nefesh and yearning – and still, they haven’t managed to get to Israel.
Yet.
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Which brings me around to the point of this post.
If we learned one thing from the whole ‘pandemic’ episode we’ve all just lived through, it’s that the real test here is not ‘the thing itself’, but how we react to it.
In terms of moving to Israel, I think that each person has to go through the process of trying to figure that out for themselves, and of really engaging with the idea, at least.
It may well be that at the end of that process, you’ll understand that culturally, you can’t do it.
Financially, you can’t do it.
Practically, you have elderly relatives to look after, still.
Or a grandchild that you are the only link to ‘yiddishkeit’ for, in a bewildering sea of confusion and atheism.
Or plain and simple, you really just can’t face the fact of leaving your comfort zone – your shops, your home, your community, your family, your friends, your TV shows – and going somewhere else.
Again, living in Israel is a Jewish ideal, but it’s just not possible for everyone.
But the point is – to be real about what the real problem is, and to not look for excuses.
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I know quite a few people where half the couple wants to make aliya, and half don’t.
Personally, I don’t think anyone should ever split up over a question of ‘making aliya’.
Keeping your marriage strong and stable and loving and accepting is the epitome of how we fix the world, wherever we happen to live in the world.
I can tell you for a fact, that all those people who really are ‘yearning’ to get here, but really can’t, have the same merit as those who live here, because each and every day, they have to work on the same emuna that God is in charge, that they can’t get things how they want them, that everything is for the good, even when it’s sometimes so difficult and painful.
Ditto, people who are going through difficulties that bring them to that same ’emuna’ mindset, where they understand that God is all there is, and they are putting their main efforts into prayer and teshuva.
Dafka on some level, those people are already living in the ‘land of emuna’ – and that’s why Rav Eldedi stressed that the real work to be done here is actually just on the teshuva side of things.
Once a person understands that God is all there is, that God is doing everything, that God is providing everything, that God is arranging all the tests and difficulties – that person will be in a mindset where making aliya will probably seem much less intimidating, and more possible.
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At that point, there still might be ‘practical factors’ that make aliya impossible, but if the teshuva has been made, sincerely, that’s really the main part of the spiritual work of ‘aliya’ done, anyway.
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So, that’s the first half of this equation.
The second half of this equation is probably more painful, namely that many people prefer to ‘dodge’ all this spiritual teshuva, all this emuna work, and cultivate a false belief about how they can continue on, totally business as usual, until Moshiach magically appears, then whisks them all off to their villa in Israel, on a magic carpet.
We are down here to work, spiritually, to fix ourselves, spiritually.
There are no short cuts.
And usually, I hear this type of argument from externally ‘frum’ people who seem to be deeply sunk in their gashmius and their doctor appointments, and who usually strike me as having a lot of bad middot still to work on – not least, their over-weening arrogance and sense of entitlement.
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God doesn’t owe us anything.
All the mitzvahs we do, we do them to ‘fix’ ourselves, we don’t do them to ‘bribe’ God to look the other while we continue living a life that hurts ourselves, and others.
Many people have a mistaken belief that the good deeds they do kind of ‘cancel out’ all the bad things they do.
It doesn’t work like that.
We will get rewarded for every single ‘good’ thing, every single mitzvah we do – and we will punished for every single aveira we didn’t make real teshuva about, or at least, try to.
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In terms of how this relates to moving to Israel, if a person has gone through the process of at least exploring the idea, and come to the conclusion that they can’t do it – for whatever reason – then they are already in the spiritual position of ‘making teshuva’ for the fact they can’t come, in some way.
They’ve already acknowledged the fact that, yes, it is a mitzvah. Yes, it is something that God wants a Jew to do, ideally. But I just can’t do it….
Do you know how much humility a person develops, when they live with this reality day in, day out?
Do you know how much nachas a person like this gives to Hashem – because they stick to the truth, and they don’t tell themselves lies, just to make themselves feel better?
We probably can’t fathom the awesome spiritual level of a person like this – regardless of where they live.
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If someone is living outside of Israel with this sort of headspace -they are actually in a very ‘good’ place, spiritually.
There are no guarantees anywhere, of course, but as we keep stressing, the point isn’t so much ‘where a person lives’, the point is more, ‘how is a person living and believing and acting towards others’.
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Here’s the thing:
Most of the people who live outside of Israel are not in this headspace.
In fact, they are usually a million miles away from this headspace, and of course, I’m talking about externally ‘orthodox’ Jews here, not anyone else.
If a person isn’t doing this sort of spiritual work, AND they haven’t been through the challenges of ‘coming out of the comfort zone’ to make the move to Israel – things are probably going to be pretty difficult for them, going forward.
Of course, this is also true of many people who were born and raised in Israel itself.
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You meet so many ‘entitled’ Jews in Israel whose are still living off the merits accrued by their ancestors’ mesirus nefesh to get here.
They own half of Israel… they have all the connections, all the privileges… and they literally spend their times wishing they could get a passport to the US, UK or Switzerland.
When this whole judicial reform hoo-ha started up, there were literally thousands of ‘elite’ secular Israelis talking about how they were going to move out of Israel, if the reforms passed.
(If that’s the only reason it should pass, dayenu.)
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Another thing I’ve noticed here, is that the people who are not on a path of emuna in Israel frequently get shown a very ugly face of Israel, to deal with.
I had a friend who moved here when she was ‘secular’, many years ago, who ended up leaving the country.
Then, she got religious abroad, and moved back – and she told me, the difference was literally night-and-day.
So that is something else to factor in to the discussion, about how easy or difficult it is to live in Eretz Yisrael.
It’s a function of a person’s own teshuva and middot, way more than any other place in the whole world.
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So, to sum things up here.
Of course it’s a mitzva to live in Israel, and anyone who claims it doesn’t apply to them is not being honest.
At the same time, not everyone can live in Israel – this is a fact.
It takes a lot of emuna, teshuva and humility to hold on to both of these ‘facts’ together.
The people who are doing that, are doing the spiritual work required, regardless of where they live.
And the people who live in Israel without doing the spiritual work required, without seeing Hashem, without working on their own bad middot, are not in a good place, spiritually, despite their geographical location.
At the same time, anyone who thinks they can get a free ride, and pay lip-service to the ideas of developing real emuna, and a real, tangible relationship with God, and then just get the red-carpet rolled out for them when Moshiach shows up – it doesn’t work like that.
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Sooner or later, everyone has to cross this narrow bridge, if they want to get to the other side, and into the ‘world of truth’.
Everyone will have to face themselves down, and the lies they tell themselves, and own up to the bad middot they ignore and justify all the time.
There are no shortcuts.
But moving to Israel can for sure speed that process up, and give you pinpoint coordinates on the stuff God really wants you to work on.
And if that’s the only reason to yearn to be here…. dayenu.
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