So we have an official departure date to Israel, August 14.  I want to share something interesting with you about that.

When we decided to move to Israel almost five months ago, I wrote in my planner for Sunday, Aug. 14 – ‘leave to Israel’.  Then I got busy with the details of making things happen, and forgot that I had ever written down this date.  I started to think that it would be better if we could leave July 24, to give us more time to get settled and for the kids to make friends before the school year started.

So when we found an apartment we were interested in, July 24 is the date I told them we wanted it by.  This wouldn’t have been a problem – the real estate agent told me the seller needed to know if we were interested before he renewed the lease with his tenants, and the lease was up mid July.  Perfect.  But somehow, there was some miscommunication somewhere since although we immediately told the seller we were interested, he had already renewed the lease through January.

We needed a place to land when we arrived, and this wasn’t going to work for us.  So the negotiations began.  The seller really wanted us; he and the tenants dislike each other but legally he was stuck.  The tenant said they were supposed to be able to move into low income government housing in June, and would move by then if it was ready.  I told our agent I wasn’t going to make plans for our family’s move based on a government agency doing it’s job in the time frame it was supposed to.  🙂  The real estate agents contacted the builder of the low income housing, and were told it wouldn’t be finished on schedule.

Then the seller said if the tenants would move sooner, he would give them 5000 shekels.  The tenant said she wouldn’t leave early for less than 15,000 shekels.  So the seller’s real estate agent and our real estate agent both agreed to each give 5000 shekels from their fee to the tenant to help her move.  I didn’t feel good about this and told the agent she was working hard for her money and deserved every penny (or should I say agorah?), but she said they felt better to sell the house and make some profit than not sell and have no profit.

The tenant was offered this money, but she said she wouldn’t agree to move until she had signed on another apartment that was to her liking.  This wasn’t so simple, not because apartments weren’t available but because she had a specific idea of what she wanted, and she wasn’t highly motivated to move.  It had taken weeks to get to this point, and I told the agent that we had to know we had a place to move to, and if this wasn’t going to work out, I needed to move on to look for other apartments.  We agreed to give it until the end of that week before looking for something else.

Amazingly enough, the last day of the week the tenant found another apartment.  And it was amazing how it worked out!  An Anglo family was told by their landlord that they needed to find somewhere else, that he didn’t want to rent to a large family anymore.  This pushed them to buy an apartment a couple of doors away from us in a very short time frame, working with the same real estate agent we used.

Our agent told them that we were interested in the apartment but the purchase was being held up by the tenant not finding a suitable apartment to move into.  Although their apartment wouldn’t officially be placed on the rental market for some time, our agent asked if that family would give her their landlord’s number in order to help a nice family (us :)), and she contacted the soon to be deposed large family’s landlord about this tenant.

The tenant went to go see it, and was very happy – it was nicer and cheaper than where she was.  (Dd16 informed me last week that it’s the exact same apartment as ours, just three doors away.)  And because of that, she didn’t require the 15,000 shekels compensation to move.  But they couldn’t move until the family in their new apartment moved, and we couldn’t move until the tenant moved.  When the dust cleared from our musical apartments dance, what was the move out/move-in date?  Not July 24, but August 15.

This was all resolved in the beginning of June, and I opened up my planner to write down our departure date.   Since the apartment would become available on the 15th of August, that meant we needed to leave on August 14.  But when I turned to the page of August 14, I was taken aback to see that it already said, ‘leave to Israel’.  My note to myself when the date was just a shot somewhat in the dark and I had totally forgotten about writing is what ended up happening – our flight is scheduled to depart NY on Aug. 14, and arrive in Israel on Aug. 15 at 12:25 pm!

Sometimes things happen that are frustrating and it doesn’t seem like there’s anything positive coming from it.  When I look back at all that was involved in the negotiations, it’s obvious that our negotiations had to be delayed in order to give the other family a chance to buy their apartment (now we will have one Anglo family as neighbors), and for their rented apartment to be available to ‘our’ tenant.  I often marvel at how clearly G-d’s hand can be seen, smoothing the path and making good things happen, when you pay attention long enough to see past the distractions of the irritations.

Avivah