Reborn again : vimarsana.com

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The first Shabbos after making
aliyah, I sank into a (borrowed) plastic chair, reeling from the shock of our move. Rather than rapture and excitement, I felt simultaneously as though I had narrowly escaped from a burning car, and as if one of my limbs had been suddenly chopped off. The latter was not surprising: we had left behind all of our relatives (we have none in Israel), all of the relationships that we had spent years cultivating as we raised our kids in the only place they knew. The shock of suddenly leaving all that overnight and moving somewhere new and different in almost every way took (takes) a long time to process.  But it was the feeling of narrow escape that surprised me; after all, we were not running away from anything when we moved here. Our kids were in good schools, I had finally started making friends (it was New York, after all), we had nice neighbors and every convenience, both Jewishly and practically, that one could wish for.