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.

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.

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