Category Archives: aliyah

Why a family dynamic is constantly evolving

aliyah, homeschooling, parenting

My husband looked at a family picture of when we had just six children that was temporarily moved to his desk, and commented, “The older half of our family!”

This past Friday night at the Shabbos table, I looked around at everyone there and thought about how our family has completely changed through the years – not one person sitting there was alive at the time that the above mentioned photo was taken.

A friend who grew up as almost the youngest of a large family told me that her experience growing up in her family was very different from her older siblings. Now I’m seeing for myself how true that is.

Younger and older children in a family will always have a different experience growing up in the same home, with the same parents, because things change over time.

Getting older and more mellow – My husband and I have been parenting for almost thirty years together. We have gotten a lot of experience and consequently are fairly secure as parents, and feel relaxed in our parenting at this stage. We aren’t constantly questioning ourselves and wondering how to deal with different things that come up. We genuinely trust that our kids are awesome people who are going to grow into amazing adults. We know it. We don’t have to work hard to remind ourselves of that, to affirm it, or to agonize over the challenges they experience. We know who we are, what our approach to parenting is, and our relationship with one another is steady and consistent. This is a product of time.

Living in a different country – Not every family will experience the major moves that we did, but moving to a different country has made a huge difference in what our children experience. Growing up in the US provided different opportunities and challenges than living here in Israel. The children who are now teens in our home moved here as young children eleven years ago. They speak an additional language, they interact with different people, and they have different interests.

I could give lots of examples of this! Here’s just one: my two oldest boys were excellent baseball players, the top in their leagues. During baseball season, our family spent hours every week attending their games. This activity has been completely absent from our lives from the time we moved to Israel. While their younger brothers have the potential to be just as athletic, there isn’t a framework for that here.

It’s been interesting for me to notice my homeschooling style evolve, and that has been specifically related to living in Yavneel. Until moving here less than three years ago, I’d self-identified as a ‘relaxed homeschooler’. That meant that we had regular daily academic activities of reading, writing and math, integrated read-alouds of historical fictions, lots of trips and outside activities. This was consistent of our family homeschooling style for almost twenty years, wherever we lived (except the trips – after we moved to Israel we did very few trips).

Now our boys have opportunities to follow and develop their interests in a way they never could before, and my style has evolved to almost completely unschooling. While they periodically pull out a math workbook at my bequest, that’s no longer an important factor for me. I trust not only their own inner desire to learn, but I trust the external framework provides the possibility of them being able to independently pursue their interests. For example, I mentioned my boys helping someone out with his horse a couple of weeks ago. Well, one son has continued working with the horses daily. Where will it go? I don’t know. But there’s the opportunity to do learn and experience much more.

My thirteen year old began traveling locally by bus last year when he took a year long sailing course at the Kineret. He’s now expanding his comfort zone and learning to use public transportation to get to RBS, so he can stay in relationship with friends made when we lived there. When someone can get to where he wants to go independent of being driven by a parent, it opens up possibilities. This is something I’m comfortable with in Israel that I would not have allowed in Baltimore due to safety concerns.

How your family is ‘built’ – Of our oldest five children, three were girls. For years people thought of us as a girl-family, because the presence of our daughters was so significant. When our next six boys joined the family, their presence obviously made a big impact as we had a very busy home with lots of young children. But our older girls remained highly involved and visible in our family life. When our oldest two daughters got married within twelve days of one another five years ago and they weren’t a daily presence anymore, things changed a lot.

It’s been years since anyone has thought of us as a girl-family! Right now the younger boys are 20, 16, 15, 13, 10 and almost 6. We have a lot of male teen energy. I was watching my fifteen and sixteen year old sons wrestling tonight, and remembering how for years I never allowed wrestling in our home. Now I see it as appropriate and healthy.

Parents don’t independently create a family atmosphere and impose that on their children. Children are partners in creating the family with their own personalities and interests, too. For years, we enjoyed singing at the Shabbos table. Then we had a few years when our two middle children were the oldest at home on Shabbos, but they didn’t enjoy singing at that stage (now they do) and we naturally sang together less as a family. Our Shabbos meals became much shorter and more discussion-heavy.

Life continued to evolve and our three teens who are usually home now enjoy singing chazzanus (cantorial music) together when they are getting ready for Shabbos. It’s not my personal style but they enjoy it and it’s a nice thing to hear them enjoying together. Our sixteen year old went to the Friday night tisch of a chassidish rabbi, and heard a beautiful complex tune which he took time to learn well. He taught that song, and another equally complicated song, to the rest of us. Those songs are new to us, but are now becoming staples at our Shabbos table, and we once again have lots of singing at the Shabbos table.

Not only that, our family itself has expanded, with the addition of four spouses and seven grandchildren (so far). Each of these people have added to our family dynamic, too!

So life is continually evolving, even at my stage when it would seem that we’ve been doing this so long and you might expect that it’s the same old, same old!

Avivah

How my kids are staying busy during vacation

aliyah, homeschooling, parenting

>>I’m trying to keep everyone happy and occupied during the summer break.  Do you have any good suggestions?  What are your kids doing to keep busy? <<

I believe the question is directed more towards younger children, so I’ll begin with that. Fortunately, my ten and five year old boys are close friends and so they always have someone to play with. A single child is more easily bored and generally looks for more outside assistance in structuring his time.

Having a pool makes a huge difference for our two younger boys. They are in and out of the pool all day. Though that results in towels and clothing dropped throughout the house during the day, it’s a worthwhile tradeoff. During the week before Tisha B’Av when they couldn’t use the pool, I opted to send them to camp. Swimming is great exercise, it keeps people cool and during the heat of the summer (and it’s very hot where I live) that means being less irritable. Swimming is the single biggest activity for them. My daughter who lives locally also comes to visit daily with her children, so they join our boys in the pool.

Otherwise, it’s the usual: including them in meal prep when I’m cooking or baking, reading together, occasionally I’ll play something with them but generally they play on their own. I encourage my kids to occupy themselves, as I think it’s very healthy. They find things to stay busy with around here.

With a day old chick

Collecting eggs from the chickens
View of the chicken coop in the spring

The shade cloths above all the local parks have been removed due to older kids climbing on them and tearing them, so this summer I haven’t taken them out to parks since it’s too hot without the shade. That means that we’re home most of the time. My husband takes the younger boys to shul most evenings during vacation, and their older brothers have taken them an a couple of hikes, which has been really nice for them.

I don’t take them to the beach at the Kineret during vacation season, since it’s too crowded. I prefer to take them before and after the summer vacation, and am so grateful that I have that possibility.

As far as our teens: my sixteen year old is running the yeshivas bein hazmanim at shul for teen boys (until he got married, my 23 year old son did it), and all of our boys ages 13 – 20 spend several hours each morning learning in shul. (My sixteen year old also took on himself to raise all the funds for the program, which wasn’t easy for him but he did a great job and he ‘grew his muscles’, as I call it when they do things that are outside their comfort zone.)

We’re blessed to live where the older boys have a lot of opportunity for purposeful activity and outdoor fun. All the boys ages 13 and up have as much paid work as they want, and I’m wondering what the people they’re working for are going to do when they go back to yeshiva! They are all good workers and they spend a few hours working every other day or so. We don’t give our sons pocket money so this is a good opportunity for them to earn money for the coming academic term. They schedule their work in a way that they still have time for fun.

They do a lot of hiking/biking/camping. The friends they go with differ from time to time; for example, this week a friend from yeshiva of my twenty year old son is visiting, so our 13 year old took him on a morning hike to a spring. Then my older son got back from learning, and all three of them went on another hike.

Meanwhile that same day, ds16 took a group of younger boys on a hike.
He does this as a community service, since there are no local camps and he sees the boys appreciate the outings. Last week he took them on a bike trip, and this week is taking them all on a hike to a natural spring.

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This week in yeshivas bein hazmanim, they had a shiur given by a visiting rabbi about how to kosher meat. That was followed by a trip to a farm to see a chicken being butchered and then kashering the meat. The same rabbi gave another shiur about Sukkos and the mitzva of lulav, and then they went out to harvest palm fronds. Hands on learning!

A couple of days ago I took ds16 and ds13 driving in the dirt roads among the agricultural fields. (Meaning, I let them drive for the first time.) That was such a nice thing to do with them; we all enjoyed it so much! I’ve never done that before, but would love to do it again before their summer vacation ends in a week. In Israel we don’t have the possibility of getting a learner’s permit and then driving with an adult; all driving happens only with paid instructors until a person gets a license. Driving isn’t a very hard thing to do, and practice is what makes a person good at it. But there’s nowhere to do that with a minor here; hence my realization that I could do this in the back roads meant a new opportunity.

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It’s really nice to see how constructively busy and happy they all are. A vacation is an opportunity to recharge and connect with your family and friends, and I love that they’re doing that. Life is made for happiness and meaning, but too often the day to day grind that has become the norm.

Someone staying in my vacation apartment commented that living here, I probably never need to go away on vacation. She’s right. I live in a place and in a way that is relaxing and renewing for me, and I have no desire to ‘get away’ at all. My vacation time is special to me because I have all my boys at home, and I cherish that.

Eleven years ago today, our family left the US to make aliyah. It’s a very wonderful thing to be where we all are after all these years!

Avivah

Teachers – how to help kids adapt to a new culture

aliyah, parenting

A couple of weeks ago, a teacher from a different city that I used to live in called. She was asked to address a group of younger teachers about how to teach students who made aliya, and wanted my thoughts on that.

Oh, boy, did I have thoughts to share!

The first thing I told her was to have her audience imagine being new in a group that didn’t speak their language, not understanding anything going on. How would that feel for them, mature adults with a stable sense of themselves?

Then I talked about it being an act of courage for these kids to come to school every day, and appreciating the challenge they face. They don’t need someone to tell them to try harder (not even ‘encouragement’ – “I know you can do it if you just try harder!”) and they certainly don’t need criticism for not doing better than they are. They need to feel safe and accepted, and be allowed to have their personal timeline of adjusting.

I gave her specific examples of things my children were told or experienced because teachers/tutors didn’t understand their perspective. Among others: 1) a teacher complaining to me about my son leaving his seat to copy from the board and telling me that was disruptive – I explained that as someone new to reading Hebrew, he couldn’t read what it said from his seat in the back and moved to where he could see enough to do what was asked of him. 2) A tutor telling me my daughter was lazy and uncooperative when the school’s Hebrew speaking tutor was teaching her advanced vocabulary words before my daughter even had basic Hebrew words – she couldn’t participate because she had no clue what she was being told. Do you think the negative emotions they had towards the student due to their mistaken perspective came through to the child?

I told her that the main focus shouldn’t be on getting a child to learn something, but rather setting the stage for success in learning. That means showing him genuine warmth, kindness and appreciation so that he will feel safe. A person will struggle to learn when he feels unsafe. And pushing a person beyond his emotional safety level can backfire, as a child may close up into himself or act out as a result. (This is true and relevant of all children, not only those making aliyah.)

The morning after I had this conversation, I went to the home of a new choir member. She had just joined and I saw she was uncomfortable not knowing what was going on, so I offered to teach her the songs up to the point we were at. This lovely woman shared that she moved to Israel when she was nine, and described to me the extreme difficulty she experienced, the struggle to read and speak Hebrew (she spoke French and Arabic), the social ostracization she experienced, perceiving herself as completely incompetent and unsuccessful in every way. As I listened to her, I could see how painful a memory it was for her, even now as a successful woman close to 50 years old.

I told her about my conversation the night before, and she emphatically agreed with everything I had said about the importance of a child feeling emotionally safe and understood, of recognizing the challenge he/she is facing and appreciating the courage it takes to face each new day.

Now, obviously not every child will respond the same way. But regardless of personality, a bit of understanding and appreciation of a child goes a long way.

Avivah

Ten year aliyah anniversary

aliyah

Can you believe that today marks ten years since our family arrived in Israel?

It’s been a full decade, and here you’ve lived through a lot with me. Through tons of challenge – tons! – and lots of nachas, too.

Three married children, three spouses joining the family, three granddaughters, two grandsons, two grandchildren on the way…and now the wedding tomorrow.

It’s particularly poignant to me to be celebrating the wedding of our fourth child at this time. He was 12.5 when we made aliyah, and was the child who had the hardest time leaving his friends. And somehow, he completely put himself forward into a new life, new culture, new language, becoming successfully integrated into Israeli culture while maintaining his American qualities.

Coming with a large family of so many older children wasn’t recommended, and I wouldn’t tell anyone else to follow in our footsteps. It seemed crazy to a lot of people but it made sense to me. (My husband, not so much! He went along with me because he said my decisions until that point were always good ones and one day he knew he would say it was the right thing, so he agreed even though he didn’t want to move.)

It was a hard transition, but we all agree that we’re so happy and grateful for the life that we have now.

If there’s something you really want to do, but you’re afraid, think about the payoff down the road. In the short term change can be daunting, but if you really feel there’s something that will qualitatively change your life, then I’d encourage you to listen to that inner voice.

Avivah

A harrowing ride home

aliyah, miscellaneous, personal development

It’s been an eventful few days!

On Monday I went to Beit Shemesh with ds13 and ds12 to take care of a bunch of errands. On our final errand, at about 6 pm, the missile warning siren went off. The boys looked at me and one asked, “Could it be a siren for Yom Yerushalayim?” As I heard the pitch begin to go up and down, I realized it was a real alert and we quickly made our way to the underground parking lot and got in our car.

Only a few others made a move to find a safe place – almost everyone around us continued with their shopping. Ds13 afterwards told me how surprising he found it that everyone kept acting normally; I explained that they probably had no idea what to do. What we do in situations like this is look around to assess how others are responding, and then act accordingly. And this is a challenge, when those around you don’t know how to respond.

As soon as we verified that the coast was clear, we zipped out to get home. The traffic was clear and I was relieved to be going north, to safety. We passed several tanks being transported, something we had never seen before, but otherwise everything looked normal.

The north is filled with Arab neighborhoods, and unlike other parts of the country, the main roads travel directly through these neighborhoods, all considered safe. I didn’t know that riots were breaking out in Arab neighborhoods across the country. Once I got an hour from home, traffic suddenly became extraordinarily heavy and I had no idea why. My boys noted the heavy police presence, the horses they told me were used for riots – when we drove around burnt, still smoking items in the road, I wondered if somehow a rocket had hit this area and was relieved to see the infrastructure looked undamaged. My bias was to see the areas I was in as safe and I was looking outside for the threat, and wasn’t putting the pieces together yet.

I was less than twenty minutes from home when I drove into a crowd of about 100 young Arab men blocking the four lanes of the main road (near Shibli), yelling and waving flags twenty minutes from home, sitting on cars in the middle of the street. For the first couple of minutes I was only puzzled- there was a huge truck blocking my view, a police cruiser two cars behind me, and I saw that ahead in the distance cars were slowly driving up the hill. The police had gotten out, said something to the crowd and then walked back to their cruiser to watch, so I assumed things were safe (that’s what I told my kids to reassure them). It was when the truck was allowed to pass that I could see what was just ahead of me – men running back and forth across the road, jumping on the car ahead of me, others beginning to push some large burning object into the road – that I made a quick decision to make a u-turn and get out of there. No other cars followed me. (I was told that rocks were thrown at the drivers soon after.)

It was at this point I realized that the first traffic jam had been due to a riot that had been cleared by the time we drove past. The benefit of hindsight.

I thought I would take the long way around, and followed the alternate route suggested by Waze. This route went directly through two Arab towns, and I again ran into heavy traffic. As we slowed to a stop (this time near Nazareth), we heard firecrackers going off up ahead, and ds13 said, “I don’t feel safe to drive forward.” I was thinking the same thing, and began to make another u-turn, and for the first time saw other drivers doing the same thing.

This was part of our exhausting drive to try to get home, as every possible route became blocked with traffic jams caused by rioting. I felt trapped, like everything around me was closing in on all sides. I was confused about where I was – I have a good sense of direction but I was in areas that were completely unfamiliar to me – and was afraid to follow another Waze route and drive into a riot that I wouldn’t be able to get out of. I wanted to get off the smaller roads I had been diverted to and get onto a main highway, and after looking at the options, made the decision that we would stay on the route that I finally chose no matter what.

At this point I put on a relaxing meditation to listen to, and this was the best possible thing I could had done. It totally shifted our energies, and helped us feel safe and protected in an alarming situation. As we were in yet another traffic jam, fireworks began going off a short distance to our right (fireworks are shot off at celebrations and riots). This time, ds13 smiled and said, “Nice, we can enjoy the show while we wait!” He felt so much more relaxed that he began giving friendly waves to other drivers sitting in traffic with us. (If you’re wondering, ds12 had fallen asleep in the back seat; I needed ds13 to help navigate – even though we had Waze I wanted him to confirm that I was turning on the right place – I didn’t want to make a mistake that could take us into a dangerous situation – so he didn’t close his eyes until were were finally on a bigger highway.) We only talked about how everything was working out for us.

We got home at 11:30 pm, five and a half hours after leaving Beit Shemesh (usually a two hour drive). When I lay down, my entire body was buzzing with tension and exhaustion.

The next morning I didn’t see anything about rioting in the north being reported, and was uncomfortable sending Yirmi to school. (He began the week before Pesach and loves it!). I was debating until literally made the decision a minute before his bus arrived, and decided since they travel on main highways and anyway, no one would be rioting in the morning that it would be fine. I then took Rafael for his interview at the school, and he did great. I was able to see Yirmi in his classroom and meet his teachers, which was really nice. (Due to covid, we were limited when we visited the school back in November for his intake interview.) Yirmi only stays until 1 pm every day, due to the availability of the van that takes him home, and that day we took him home with us, which was really nice. He’s asked me a number of times to pick him up from school but it’s a one hour drive in each direction so it’s not something I’m usually able to do.

Meanwhile, ds15 was at his high school in Kiryat Ono and was woken at 3 am to a missile alert. They all filed to the protected area, and classes continued for the next day and a half as usual. They heard a number of alerts that they were in the protected area for, and at other times saw missiles high above headed for locations farther away. They were all sent home on Wednesday, around 1:45, and I’m happy to have him back at home. He’s hoping that things will clear up in time for him to return to yeshiva for Shavuos (Sunday), but I think the likelihood of that happening isn’t high.

Avivah

Nine year aliyah anniversary – loving spending time with all our married kids

aliyah, parenting

Nine years ago this week, we arrived in Israel with eight of our children (one was waiting at the airport to greet us), ages 2 – 18.

Coming with children above the age of ten isn’t recommended, due to the challenge in adjusting. And we had five children in that age range.

We made the decision to move very quickly in order to move as an intact family unit; if we waited any longer, we would leave older children beginning their independent adult lives behind. Our hope was that as our children married, they would choose to live in Israel and we could continue to stay connected in person.

On the anniversary of our aliyah flight we had a family barbeque. All three of our married children were there with their families. One has been with us for two weeks, one was here for a week; they both returned home to Jerusalem later that night. Another married child arrived from Jerusalem that night for a five day stay.

Ds18 managed to evade being in the photo but otherwise we had everyone except for dd19 together.

Our nineteen year old daughter missed it (she left a few days ago) but otherwise, everyone was here. When I got on the plane nine years ago, this was the vision of what we wanted to have – meaningful connection with each of our children between us and our children, and them with one another, as their personal lives expanded outside the immediate sphere of our family.

My husband and I switched places as the photographer so here he is with everyone. 🙂

Moving to a new country with a new language and culture is going to be a challenge no matter what. And there were a lot of big bumps in the road for us in the early years.

Due to events in the US, a lot of people more people than usual are considering aliyah. I know it’s scary to think of starting over, it’s hard to leave the familiar. Where will you live, will there be social and educational supports for your family, and how will you make a living?

Those are real issues that need to be addressed. And there’s probably going to be a good dose of hard in the adjustment.

But hard doesn’t last forever. And even in the midst of the hardest of the hard, none of us regretted making the move to Israel.

I’m fortunate that when I believe in something, I can see the potential difficulties but assume we’ll make it work. (That’s also the same thinking that allowed us to make a move to a different part of the country – twice! – in the last nine years.) And truly, it always works out for us.

If your heart is calling you to move to Israel, don’t let your fears get in your way. You definitely need a plan. And even more, you need a reason to move, a vision of what you want to have because this is what will keep you going when things are bumpy. And finally, you need to believe you can and will succeed.

Avivah

Get clear on what is most important to you – first step towards your best life

aliyah, personal development

This week marks eight years from the time we arrived in Israel!

Living here is something I continue to be very grateful for.  Though it has become my normal I don’t take it for granted.

When we were considering making aliyah, my husband and I went through a lot of soul searching, clarifying our highest values and getting ready to act on that decision. We spent a month intensely hashing it out, and five months after making the decision, were on the plane with eight children ages 2 – 18 (one child preceded us).

It was a very intense period. There was so much internal work and external actions that needed to happen for it all to unfold as it did.

At that time I didn’t share much of our initial discussion about the idea of moving to Israel, because I didn’t know if we would actually decide to make the move. Then once we made that decision, I didn’t share much because I didn’t know how it was all going to work out. We experienced soooo much personal growth at that time; I later regretted not sharing any of it here because it was a powerful experience for us as individuals and as a couple.

Right now I’m going through another deep exploration of goals and ideals, and this time I’ve decided to include you in my process while I’m walking through it. Even though I prefer to share afterward when it’s all clean and neat and wrapped with a bow. 🙂

Although I don’t yet know how it will work out – and that makes me feel vulnerable when talking publicly about it – I hope you’ll find value in this.

******************

About seven weeks ago, I attended a beach festival for women on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

As I sat there by the water, gazing out at the beautiful view, my entire being simultaneously expanded – and contracted.

I was filled with a deep peace and gratitude to be there; I literally felt as if I was filling up my parched soul with the beauty and stillness of nature.

But I was also filled with a deep pain of longing and sadness, craving more of this experience of nature in my day to day life yet knowing that I couldn’t have it. Yes, I go on regular nature hikes with other women, I take my children on outings to national parks, I love gardening and have plants all over my yard and my porch.

And as I sat there, it became so clear to me that…it’s not enough.

It’s not enough.

It’s not enough.

Over those two days away, I had a lot of time to think. I spent much of the time reflecting, gazing at the sea, the sky and the mountains in the distance. I had several great conversations with like-minded women, listening to how others navigated this wantingness and not- havingness.

Over these two days, something became crystal clear to me. Something that I’ve pushed down and pushed away and denied and minimized for years.

I don’t just love being in nature. I NEED to be in nature. And there is a voice crying out inside that I don’t have that in my life to the degree that is optimal for me.

Never have I even considered making this preference for a more pastoral setting to be a primary criteria for any decisions about where to live. In fact, I’ve always made choices to be in larger urban centers, based on the belief this will provide my children with the most opportunities, socially and academically.

This small voice was like an inner child, trying for years to be heard but continually ignored or thrown a small bone – an outing, a new plant, an early morning walk in the park. And finally, with everything in my life thank G-d going smoothly, this little voice seemed to be saying, ‘There are no other big issues to be focused on or distracted by. So NOW can you listen to me?!?’

When I moved to my home four years ago, I was blessed to be living on the outskirts of the neighborhood, with a large open valley opposite my home. I commented a number of times to my family that G-d found us the perfect home because even in a larger bustling community like this, I had the beautiful calming sense of nature being close by.

I loved just standing on my porch, hanging laundry and seeing that view. I didn’t need to physically explore the valley – seeing it was enough.

I was told there were no plans to develop the area opposite our home. However, it wasn’t long after we moved in before down to the right and over to the left, the valley began to be cleared for different building projects.

Then the large earth moving tractors and dump trucks began to make their daily appearances, all day long – right across from me. Then nonstop hammer drilling began, continuing for many hours a day, for months. Noise that left me feeling jangled and out of sync.

And then across from me higher up just a little in the distance, yet another building project began. I felt like everything was closing in on me – from the top and bottom, from right and left, yet I told myself repeatedly, ‘How wonderful, more Jews living in the Holy Land!’ I meant, it, too, and continued to be grateful for the home that I have.

But.

Four years later, the somewhat quiet bypass road on the edge of the community that I live on has been expanded to a four lane boulevard that has constant foot traffic and vehicle traffic. Lots of people wouldn’t mind this, but I am me and I do mind it.

It’s in so many ways a fabulous location, central to buses, synagogues, and a beautiful huge park that people visit from all over (even outside the city) is less than a five minute walk away. I have great neighbors, and our apartment itself has many features that are hard to find all in one package. Not to mention all the work we did to expand the space that makes it a great home for us.

But as I gaze at the landscape that has been so dramatically transformed I often wonder, ‘What am I doing here???’ This busy, energetic bustling pace is great for many but just not in sync with the person I am.

So where does that leave me? This is the question that kept pounding at me for those two days and I felt anguished that I couldn’t think of a solution – I couldn’t pretend anymore that it was fine for me and I couldn’t think of how to change the situation. Such a difficult experience for a person like me, who really believes you can have the life you want if you’re willing to be honest with yourself and take appropriate actions.

Finally, I came to some inner peace as I realized that I don’t have to have an answer. All I have to do is sit with my increased clarity and let myself accept that yes, nature really is very, very important to me. For me, it’s much more than just a nice view to look at.

I gave myself permission to sit with this awareness, and to accept that it doesn’t have to lead to any actions at this time.

Just honoring my own wants and desires and recognizing how deeply important they are to me is a huge step, an act of respect and honoring of myself, and I felt a sense of inner quiet returning by the time I returned home.

I tend to be a person who is quick to act, so it’s also very healthy for me to not take action, not need to do something, and just feel the feelings.

I considered sharing about this inner conflict earlier (I actually wrote this post a month ago), but thought that the lack of being able to resolve this neatly and quickly would be unappealing to my readers. But you know what? This is the reality of life.

Clarity isn’t easy.

It takes courage to feel your feelings, it takes courage to know that you want more than what you have, and it’s uncomfortable to sit with that feeling and do nothing.

Some of my most significant life decisions were preceded the discomfort of not feeling in sync between what I wanted and what I had.

Next up…the discussion with my husband about this newfound awareness when I got back home.

Avivah

Free time?? Staying on top of things takes lots of time!

aliyah, parenting, Trisomy 21

Someone asked my husband what I do with all of my free time now that the youngest two kids aren’t home with me all day. It’s down to just three of our boys homeschooling.

Guess what? I’m still plenty busy. But I definitely have more breathing room, which I’m super grateful for.

I’ve been having regular meetings with teachers and therapists for both Yirmi (6) and Rafael (almost 2). Though it seems the school year has hardly begun, I need to start preparing for Yirmi’s placement for next year. The first step is to get a certain kind of evaluation done, which has to be organized through the Dept. of Social Services. Most kids have this done at an earlier age but since he’s never been in the system until now, we’ve never had him tested.

You think it’s easy to reach a social worker at social services? No, they’re backed up and phones aren’t answered, messages aren’t returned. I was very lucky because after two weeks of trying to get through, someone spoke to the social worker directly about me and got permission to give me her personal phone number.

Once I had that, it took just a few seconds to get through! I had to get together various paperwork and reports for appointment, which was a pleasure – she even told me to bring flyers for my Leadership Parenting workshops so she can give them out to her clients!

While I was sitting with her, my phone rang. The Ministry of Education wanted to arrange a home visit for the next day regarding the kids who are homeschooling. Sure, why not? I have nothing to do with my days but have appointments. And so three representatives spent an hour at my home, asking all about how we homeschool and speaking to our three boys currently homeschooling.

Then the next day I had an appointment with Rafael’s speech therapist, who has asked me to have regular daily sessions in Hebrew with him working on language, and another daily session in English also working on play skills.

Then the day after that I had yet another hearing test for Yirmi. His hearing tests have been inconclusive – they show some kind of hearing loss but we can’t tell if it’s due to fluids or something permanent. That test had to be done in two parts because his patience for participating ran out. That test has confirmed significant hearing loss and now we need to see the ENT again, and from there hopefully we can start the process to get him hearing aids.

Then today I got a call from Rafael’s speech therapist that she just saw his hearing test that I sent her, and though I was told it was fine by the audiologist, she says he is showing some degree of hearing loss as well. Now I need to move forward on more testing for him.

Tomorrow I have blood work scheduled for both of them to have ready for the pediatric endocrinologist next week to check thyroid function. And the next day a school Chanuka party for Yirmi to attend (all parents are invited).

Then there was the meeting in Jerusalem that I attended to learn about the changes to the inclusion law in Israel and how that will affect Yirmi’s school placement. Basically, discrimination has now been legalized. It’s very clear that inclusion in this country is only an option for the children whose parents have a willingness to fight for their child (every parent there who I spoke to, hearing that he will be going into first grade said something along the lines of ‘Get your boxing gloves on!”), combined with ample financial resources and/or the luxury of a parent who isn’t working full-time to facilitate his inclusion.

Very sad that despite it being well known that inclusion benefits not only the child but the other children in a positive way, a country as advanced as Israel is moving towards the Dark Ages.

I’ve spoken to one school about Yirmi and they said they might consider it for the year after next but not the coming school year. The problem is they hear ‘Down syndrome’ and they’re so concerned his needs will be too much for them that they don’t want to meet him to see who he actually is and what he’s capable of (much, much more capable and much less extra effort on their part than they’re thinking).  I’m going to need to have a follow up discussion with that principal.

It’s never boring and I haven’t yet found myself with an abundance of extra time to sit around in a quiet house and nothing to do but meditate. 🙂

Avivah

The joy of watching dreams manifest in my life

aliyah, parenting, personal development

Two nights ago we had the official engagement party for Tehila and Meir. The only thing missing was that we didn’t get a family picture with our new couple. 🙁  It wasn’t for lack of wanting one! Fortunately, the wedding is in just seven weeks so we’ll make up for that soon. 🙂

I’m happy to have a picture of our lovely new couple, though!

Tehila and Meir at their engagement party

We are so deeply grateful and happy to welcome Meir to our family. It’s a very special thing to watch your child find the person she wants to spend her life with, and we all like him almost as much as she does!

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Several months ago, I was contacted by a writer for Mishpacha magazine. They were planning a new column that would come out monthly over the course of a year, interviews with women who had fulfilled a dream. She wanted to know if I would be willing to be interviewed.

At that time, I shared with her about my most recent vision that had come true, of Rafael joining our family.  They held off on printing my interview since they said I was too well- known and didn’t want me to be featured in the beginning of the series.

My interview for the Dreamscapes column came out last week in Mishpacha’s Family First, right in the middle of this very special season of celebration for our family.  And as this issue came to print, I’ve been thinking a lot about the manifestation of a different vision that has been very close to my heart for years that is unfolding right now.

In February 2011, I spoke to my husband about the possibility of making aliya that summer, with nine children ranging in age from 2 – 18. To say he was lukewarm to the idea would be putting it mildly! One of the things I told him then was the following:

“In another five years, our kids will be dating and getting married. We already know that the older two girls want to live in Israel when they’re married. It’s not likely that Baltimore will be very compelling for any of them.

We’ve invested so much in our family and that connection is very important to us, but over time our kids will end up living in completely different parts of the US and even the world.  The older our family gets, logistically it’s going to be very hard to continue to physically be there for one another.  But if we move to Israel now while all the kids can make the move with us, hopefully by the time they’re ready to get married, they’ll want to stay in Israel. And hopefully being in the same small country, we’ll be more able to be physically present for one another even after they’re married.”

It’s a huge credit to my husband that he agreed to make the move, despite his hesitations. We shared the vision of continued physical proximity and connection as our family expanded, and it continued to be an important factor in our decision making process when we moved from Karmiel in the periphery of Israel to much more centrally located RBS less than three years ago.

I don’t take it for granted for a second that we’re been able to be present for these moments in the lives of our adult children. And I don’t take it for granted that each of our three couples is starting their lives here in Israel. What I feel is a very deep sense of humility and gratitude for Hashem’s kindness to us.

Avivah

 

What our aliyah journey has taught me – don’t give up on your vision!

aliyah, parenting

Can you believe that this week marks six years since we moved to Israel?!?

Moving to a new country with nine kids (ages 2 – 18) wasn’t an easy thing to do. Moving to a part of the country where there was very little support for new immigrants made it even harder. I’m not going to belabor the difficulties.  I’ll just say that it was really challenging.

Moving 3.5 years later to a different city in an entirely different part of the country was yet another new beginning to be navigated, and starting over is always hard.  I have to admit that I had a bias against living in an Anglo enclave, which is why I didn’t consider moving to Ramat Beit Shemesh directly from the US.  I’m glad to have completely released that negative thinking and am very, very happy to be living here now.

A couple of days ago, two different sons shared with me their unsolicited thoughts.  One said, “It was a really good move to RBS.  It seems everyone is happy and keeps getting happier.”  The younger one said, “Everything just keeps getting better and better!”

We went against almost all the standard advice that is given to those considering making aliyah (and I’m not recommending anyone do what we did!), but we are SO grateful to be making our lives here.

Our kids are happy, they have friends, they have no longings for the US.  My husband and I both do work that we enjoy, we live in a home that we enjoy, in a community that we enjoy. Does so much good news sound boring?

The path to get here wasn’t boring! It took time to get where we are now along with plenty of bumps in the road.  (If you’ve read my blog for long enough, you know about some of these challenges.) There were lots of frustrations and difficulties that included intense financial stress, struggling to figure out where we fit religiously and socially, determining what educational paths were right for our children, dealing with the medical system and in general, starting over in every way. The starting over piece is HUGE – after years of building a life, you move to a new country and start all over as a new immigrant.  It’s not fun.

But it was worth it.  It was really, really worth it.  While I’ve had an attitude of ‘bloom where you’re planted’ in each place that I’ve lived and appreciated everywhere I’ve been, I’m happier now than I’ve ever been.  And I think my family members would say the same thing.

So my message is: when times are tough, just keep going forward.  If you keep taking the next right step, eventually it will lead you where you want to go.  It may take more time than you want it to take, and you’ll definitely have surprises or detours along the way.  But if you’ve thought about your course of action and determined that moving forward is the best option for you, then don’t give up on yourself and your vision.

Avivah