I am delighted to share with you that an important milestone in our preparation to move to Israel has been accomplished – we’ve found a place to live in Israel!

I’ve been looking for a place in Karmiel since March and at the beginning of June (yes, this is one more thing I was busy with at the same time I was planning the Torah Home Education Conference! :)), we signed a contract on an apartment for our family.  It involved eight weeks of smoothing out lots of bumps, and I am so grateful to have this piece in place.  The apartment will be available on August 15, and having a concrete date to work with makes everything else easier.  (Eg, you can’t buy tickets until you know you have a place to go, and I can’t tell potential buyers when our home is available until I know when we’ll be leaving!)

Though apartment living is normal in Israel and I’m comfortable with the idea, I was concerned about having to live in a much smaller space than what we were used to.  I’m trying to make the transition as smooth as possible for the kids – there will be enough transitions without me drastically changing their standard of living.  The challenge was finding something that was big enough that was also in our price range – housing in Israel is expensive, even in the less expensive areas like the north.  There are a number of beautiful large homes available in Karmiel, but they are pricey (and though it’s true that housing is much more expensive in the central areas of Israel, it doesn’t make other areas cheap), and apartments tend to be on the smaller side.  I wanted at least four bedrooms (5 rooms, as it’s called in Israel) which I don’t think is being a prima donna considering we’re 11 people.  But once you’re looking for more than a three bedroom apartment, you drastically narrow down what’s available. 

But Hashem (G-d) sent us just what we needed!  It’s a large apartment, according to Israeli standards – 160 meters (approximately 1700 sf).   If I were to figure the actual living space in our home now, not including the finished basement (which is basically just used for storage) and half of the attic that we use for storage, it comes out to basically the same square footage.   We’ve given away lots of our belongings and since we won’t be taking much stuff with us, the apartment should be a reasonable size for us all. 

It’s called a duplex apartment, meaning that it’s on two floors.  There are six rooms (five bedrooms – actually, more like 4.5 bedrooms because of the layout – you have to walk through one room to get to another).  The main floor has a kitchen, combined living room/dining room (this combined area is known as a ‘salon’ in Israel), small porch off the kitchen for the washing machine, three bedrooms, and a small porch off the salon.  There’s a spiral staircase that leads upstairs, where there are two rooms.  The staircase enters directly into the first room, and then directly from that room you enter into the second bedroom.   As of now, I’m thinking the best use of space will be to give the littles the open room because they won’t care if their older brothers walk through their space.  🙂

The kids are all used to sharing bedrooms, and they’ll actually be more spaced out than they are currently if we have three of them in each bedroom as tenatively planned.  Ds18 will be away at yeshiva and only home for one Shabbos a month, so there will just be ds9 and ds12 in the older boys’ room when he’s away.  Dd16  asked if she could sleep in the extra bedroom when we don’t have guests; if we agree to that (this isn’t a given by any means), there will only be two girls in the other room.  Though most families our size don’t have the luxury of a guest room (due to the compact size of apartments in Israel), by using our space as described we’ll be able to have one room for when guests visit!  I feel very abundant.

We’ve been very spoiled in our current home in that we have 3.5 bathrooms, and though I know it’s a luxury to have so many bathrooms, I’ve really loved having the privacy of dh and I not sharing a bathroom with the kids. (When we renovated the attic, we turned it into our bedroom and put in a full bathroom.)   The apartment was listed as having two full bathrooms, one upstairs and one downstairs, which I was glad about since only one would be very tough for us and a number of the apartments listed had two toilets but only one shower.  Imagine my surprise when dd16 (who went to see it two days before she came home for Pesach) offhandedly mentioned that there was a bathroom in the master bedroom!   I thought that meant that there wasn’t a bathroom upstairs (since there were only supposed to be two total), but she told me that there are actually three bathrooms – for some reason there was an error on the listing.  So we’ll still be able to have one bathroom just for us, the boys will share the one share upstairs, and last one will be on the main floor for the girls and guests.  This many bathrooms is so unusual for apartments there – amazing, isn’t it?

I ideally would have loved a ground floor apartment with a garden, or alternatively a huge porch.  But that’s not what I found, and now I won’t have to worry about the upkeep or water usage to maintain a yard.  This apartment is on the first floor (14 steps up) and has a small porch – maybe 4′ x 8′ – it’s fine for daily use, and for Sukkos we’ll have to figure out what to do.   The apartment building has only four apartments total, which is nice because it is more personal than a huge building.  It’s on a quiet street that is very central, with easy walking access to everything.   A huge and beautiful park is just five minutes away, food shopping is a two minute walk, and the shul is a five minute walk.  (We’re not planning on having a car so how close things are by foot is important!)

Since it’s been rented for over 15 years, it hasn’t had much in the way of asthetics invested in it. The top cabinets in the kitchen don’t match the bottom cabinets, and the entire apartment could use a coat of fresh paint.  But those are cosmetic issues that can be dealt with without much difficulty if we want to.  We asked a contractor to check it out since there was a mildew spot on one wall upstairs, and we needed to make sure there wasn’t a mold issue.  It turns out there are a couple of broken tiles on the roof that led to a small leak, and by replacing those tiles the issue will be able to be resolved.

Though it’s simple, it meets my most important criteria of space and location: location was very important to me, since it’s hard to feel involved in your community if you’re a big hike away from where the nucleus of your friends are living.  I would have loved it if we were able to find a place that already had some furnishings there, just so there would be something in place for us when we get there.  But Israeli apartments don’t come with appliances, let alone furniture, so we’ll need to purchase a stove, refrigerator, and washing machine as well as all of our other furniture pretty much as soon as we get there.  My plan is to just keep putting one foot in front of the other and eventually it will all get done. 🙂 

Avivah

“I would love to know what is prompting you to move back there after so many years.”

When I first wrote about our decision to move back to Israel after eleven years, I wan’t able to detail some of my thoughts due to constraints on my time at that point.  I’ve been asked about this a lot, so I’ll  try to share more fully about some aspects of our move that I only wrote briefly about in the past.

When I first arrived in Israel as a post high school student, I fell in love with the country. I felt at home in a very deep core level way, and when my husband and I met, we agreed that was where we wanted to make our home. I felt more strongly about this than dh, who is very amiable and would have been satisfied with wherever we lived.  For the first eight years of our marriage, that’s where we lived. Our first four children were born there (the fifth was born two months after returning to the US), and I never anticipated that we would one day leave.

 But my husband had begun to feel that there wasn’t a place for him to move forward with what he wanted to do in a way that was financially feasible.   So when he was offered a rabbinical position in the US where he felt he could use his potential in a way that didn’t have an outlet in Israel, we agreed to make the move.  At the time of our move, my oldest was 7 and though we spoke English at home, he was culturally Israeli- and the adjustment to the US school system was difficult. 

After some months he fully adjusted, but when the two years we had committed to for the position was over, I knew we couldn’t return to Israel and force him to reacclimate again – as hard as it had been at age 7, it would be much harder at age 9.  It was our idea to move to the US, and I didn’t want him to be the one paying the highest price.  And financially it wasn’t feasible – an overseas move is enormously expensive, and though our moving costs had been paid to the US by the organization he worked for, no one was offering to pay for us to get back to Israel!

And that’s how we ended up staying in the US.  Often I would tell my husband I wished we could move back, but as time went on, it seemed more and more impossible.  Once my husband’s parents and then my mother moved to the city we were living in to be close to us (7 and 5 years ago), the door in my mind to moving back slammed shut.  How could I consider leaving here once they were living in the same area?  So every time the thought would niggle at the back of my mind, I would firmly squash it.

Then dd16 went to school in Israel this past year, and through Hashem’s amazing kindness I was able to visit along with dd14.  (Dd14 emptied her account of money she spent years saving to pay for this.)  Dd16 had told us several times since she had gotten there that she wished we would move to Israel, and that she planned to live there once she was married.  I had told her I hoped she would be able to live there, but for us it wasn’t realistic. 

Then dd14 and I got there – we arrived at about 1 pm, and by 9 pm that night, dd14 told me she loves it there and wishes we could live there.  Dd14 is a very well-thought out person who doesn’t impulsively say things like that, and I saw how deeply she felt connected to being there.  I asked her more about her feelings and thoughts about this, but I didn’t share my own.  Repeatedly during our ten day visit, dd16 and dd14 would ask me if we could move to Israel, and I repeatedly told them it was a very nice thought but simply impossible. 

“But why?”  they kept asking.  Because, I explained, it would cost a lot of money to make a move for a family of 11.  We wouldn’t have the advantage of free tickets or financial subsidies offered to new olim, but we would face all the same challenges they faced.  My husband didn’t have easily transferable job skills, and would have the pressure of supporting a very large family.  It would mean starting over.  You can’t move back with kids over the age of 10 – it’s too hard an adjustment and there’s a high rate of problems in families who do.  And even if we could work all of that out (highly unlikely), it would be hurtful to their grandparents if we left.

So that was it.  I totally closed the conversation with them and told them it wasn’t going to happen for years, if then.  But when I returned to the US, dd14 stayed behind for an additional week, and I had time to think about it without any outside voices.  My short visit had confirmed for me that Israel was still where my heart was.  Though it seemed wildly unrealistic, I still thought about it a lot.  I thought about where we would live – I knew we couldn’t move back to Beitar, but didn’t know where we could go.  I thought about the challenges of acculturating for the kids, of finding work for my dh, of financing the move.

The more I thought about it, the less crazy it seemed.   While I was thinking about this, dd14 still was in Israel.  Her feeling of wanting to be there only intensified during her time there – when I spoke to her the night before she flew back to the US, I asked her if she was looking forward to coming home.  Her answer: “I feel like Israel is my home and  I’m just going back to Baltimore to visit, which is kind of sad because we’ve lived there for so long.  I feel like this is where I belong and I don’t want to leave.”

It really makes you think when you hear your child say something like that.  Here I was assuming that it was best for my kids to be in America, that it would be too hard for them to transition at their ages – and two of the three oldest were strongly telling me they wanted to live in Israel!

Though I casually mentioned to dh a few days after getting back from Israel how nice it was there and how wonderful it would be if we could live there, I didn’t discuss all the thoughts flying through my mind.  I was thinking very intensely about all of it but needed to put my thoughts together before broaching it with him.  The first thing I had to clarify for myself is if it was the right thing to do for our family at this time, and why.  Once I concluded that it would be a good move to make, I had to think about how to translate the desire into reality.

I mentally went through each issue that I felt would be of concern, starting with the children: I realized that as homeschoolers, we could alleviate a lof of the most immediate difficulties with transitioning.  (I’ll try to detail this in a future post.)

Where would we live?  I began researching different communities, using the NBN website.  I thought a lot about what features were important to us and looked for a community that met those criteria. This is how we ended up choosing Karmiel, even though we’ve never been there.  (Yes, I’ll write more about this in a future post. :))

How could we afford to move?  I’ve sometimes felt somewhat like a frugality semi-failure – yes, frugality has enabled me to live very abundantly and happily on one modest income.  But when I would read about people who pay off their house in full by the time they are 30 or accumulate huge savings, I felt inadequate.  But as I considered our finances in light of a potential move, I realized that we weren’t in such a bad situation.  a) We don’t have any debt (outside of the mortgage on our home) – I never really actively considered this a plus, until speaking to a number of friends who also want to move to Israel but have such large debts ($50,000 and up) that it doesn’t seem viable.  b) I had been able to save some money – not as much as I would like, but enough to pay for tickets for our family.  A couple of years ago I had made some small  investments that did well, and when cashed in would give us a cushion to live on in Israel for our first three months (frugally, of course!).  c) We purchased an apartment in Israel when we were first  married, and unlike most people who move back, chose not to sell it.  Though we wouldn’t live there, perhaps we could sell it and use the proceeds to help us get a fresh start.  (That ended up not being possible to do but is still an asset.)  So, I concluded, we were actually in a decent position. 

The main question that remained was about employment for my dh.  Since the work he does now isn’t economically viable there, it would mean he would have to be willing to really start over – this is very intimidating for us both to think about.  But as I repeatedly reminded myself, it’s Hashem who provides for us here and it’s Hashem who will provide for us there. 

After I had worked through all of these things in my mind – it took about a week or so – I shared my thoughts with dh.  He really wasn’t interested in moving back, not even a little bit.  Not one bit.   So you can see how it’s a credit to him that he was willing to listen even when he didn’t want to listen! 🙂  I felt really strongly about this and had to remind myself to back off and give him time to process what I was saying, so he wouldn’t feel too pressured.  We talked about this pretty much constantly for a few weeks: what the benefits would be, what the challenges would be, and how we could deal with them.  (Though he agreed to make the move, initially he was going along with what I wanted rather than really wanting it himself; coming to fully embrace the idea and actually feeling enthusiastic and positive was a gradual evolution but we are now very much fully on the same page in every way.) 

In addition to how we could make the move, I shared a lot about why I wanted to move, about my feeling that there’s a feeling of emotional connection to others, as well as spiritual connection to G-d, that you simply don’t have outside of Israel.  There’s a sense of belonging – I don’t feel like an outsider in the US, I was born and raised here, as were our parents and almost all of our grandparents – but there are things like stopping to daven (pray) mincha at a rest stop or even saying brochos (blessings) over foods, the way we dress, times when our kids feel very aware of being different that just isn’t an issue in a Jewish country.  Kids have more freedom and independence – there are more eyes than just your own looking out for them – and along with that comes a feeling of increased safety and security.   And along with all of that, there’s a mitzva of living in Israel.  This is all hard to verbalize because it’s something that I feel so strongly but just don’t have words to express properly. 

Then there’s the negatives, a place that I try not to make decisions from but are relevant to take into account.  I have serious concerns about what is happening in America right now.  I believe this country has been blessed by G-d in large part because of the commitment to biblical values from the time of its founding.  Morally and now financially, our country is collapsing and the outlook to me is very concerning.  I very, very much hope that the US will be able to restore its position as the amazing and unique country it was for so long, and that my concerns will be shown to be baseless. 

That’s the story of how a month after returning from my visit to Israel, we came to the decision to make the move with our entire family approximately five months later!

Avivah