It is often said that our ancestors’ dreams are the blueprints of our reality. But what happens when those dreams are forgotten or never shared with the next generation?

For as long as I can remember, my parents, especially my mother, always said that it was too expensive to go to Israel. Israel was never a place any of us thought much about as somewhere we had to visit. In fact, the furthest we ever traveled on a family vacation was Canada.

I was connected to my faith and believed that Israel was our homeland, but I never gave much thought to the fact that I had never been there. After my parents became empty nesters, they began traveling to other countries, including Israel for the first time. Even then, there was never any pressure for me to visit.

I didn’t feel the pull until I was a young married woman listening to friends talk about their gap years in Israel or family vacations there. Still, it would be nearly twenty years before I would make my first trip.

In 2017, a year after my maternal grandmother passed away, my mother brought me several Israel bonds that had been purchased in my........

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