Honeymoon

"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. Therefore, there's still time to see snow in Israel, maybe. They are always excited when we spend 16 shekel on 8 pouches of real hot chocolate mix (something that can be retrieved at the American food store but not your average Israel supermarkets). 

In reflection, I personally cannot say that our honeymoon stage is over. At times, when driving around on the roads, I still can't believe we are here (hubby can). For both of us, when we see on a holiday chain the letter פ for the dreidel, it's still like a sword twisting at the gut, realizing we are here.... what we gave up... and how much Jews should be home. Each and every one of us, to some degree, has an ounce of hope, even if it's just to believe in the Messiah's return and to arrive then. 

In that sense, our honeymoon relationship with Israel is still very much around. 

There are other ways in which our lives are more settled and less tourist-like. We haven't gone to the Western Wall in exactly a year (we hope to fix that tomorrow and next week). We are no longer filling out many papers and forms to get settled (endless forms). We have learned which alerts from school to ignore and which to pay attention to. 

Our wish, to remember this Channukah and G-d willing into the third and beyond, is to always marvel at the ways Judaism is so alive and relevant here. And in that way, the honeymoon stage, will always, even in some small pockets here and there, stay very much alive....even though we miss family back in the United States, Entenmanns raspberry and cheese danishes, and Starbucks.