בנשמה

  A little secret...about a week before my Ima's yortzeit, I took a couple around to see Beit Shemesh and really didn't feel well. I couldn't tell if it was the heat or something else. A friend back in the states encouraged me to take a pregnancy test. The plus sign immediately appeared.  Pregnant in Israel. The road to our sabra.  First Trimester After having four pregnancies in the United States (one blighted ovum early miscarriage), I really wasn't sure what to anticipate in Israel. Except for the horror stories we'd hear in the United States of Israeli friends laboring in the Emergency Room or in the hallway. Sorry to say, but with my second pregnancy, I almost had a baby in the lobby. I was given a room at 8pm and our daughter was out at 8:30pm. With our third child, I thought I would deliver in the car. That labor was 4 and a half hours and he was born in the hospital I was registered at.  This post will not focus on generalizations, because that's really ...

"Our honeymoon stage is over," an olah from the Aliyah 2019 WhatsApp chat group wrote. Between corona posing challenges of travel for family and the general schedule for immigrants, she made honest, very raw points. In the first year of aliyah, she expressed that there's excitement, support and sympathy. By the second year, she shared the continued need of that support, but is considered now an "oleh vatika" and her kids, being older, have not yet fully adjusted. Only one other olah on the group claimed to be fine, given lack of support she had from family and friends anyway in the United States. This attitude might be rare for the average person. Most of us leave support systems behind.  A second celebration of the festival of lights is upon us in Israel. Our children do remember snow, the winter chill and heavy winter coats. They don't miss it per say, but more just the shift of season. "It isn't yet winter there, Ima," our eldest declared. T...

A friend saved the day (literally) by making it count.