Homeland Is Not Where You Were Born, and Not Where You Chose to Live — But Where You Belong

We are taught a simple formula: homeland is where you were born. It sounds natural, almost unquestionable. Birthplace equals belonging. Geography equals identity.

There is even a Russian proverb for it:

«Где родился, там и пригодился.» “Where you were born, there you are useful.”

But that formula collapses the moment you test it.

If homeland is merely the place of birth, then what are we supposed to feel if we are born into oppression? Into fear? Into a system that suffocates rather than nurtures? Does birthplace demand love simply by accident of arrival? If someone is born in a concentration camp, is that their homeland?

The place of birth is just that — a starting point. Nothing more.

Yet language quietly manipulates us into accepting one of these illusions. “Motherland.” “Fatherland.” “Rodina.” Words designed to imply obligation, inheritance—something you owe simply because you emerged there. As if homeland were a parent: fixed, unquestionable, binding.

But homeland is not a parent.

There is a second illusion, more modern and more subtle. If the old idea says homeland is where you were born, the new one says homeland is wherever you decide to settle—where life is more comfortable, more convenient, more aligned with your interests.

“Homeland is where you bought a home.”

A modern adaptation of the earlier Russian proverb appears:

«Где поселился, там и пригодился.» “Where you settled, there you are useful.”

A neat theory. And that, too, collapses under scrutiny.

Because if homeland is just a matter of preference, then it is interchangeable, replaceable, negotiable. It becomes a lifestyle choice—and lifestyle choices do not command loyalty; they expire when circumstances change.

Homeland is not where you were born. And it is not where you chose to live.

A better word is needed. Call it Soulmateland.

Because homeland is like a spouse.

You are not handed a spouse the way you are handed a birthplace. And yet, in Jewish tradition, there is a striking idea: one’s destined match, bashert, is prepared even before birth — traditionally described as determined forty days before the formation of the embryo (Talmud, Sotah 2a).

Bashert (באַשערט, pronounced buh-SHAIRT) is a Yiddish term meaning “destined,” “intended,” “meant to be,” or “soulmate.” In Yiddish usage it is historically an adjective: mayn basherter (“my fated one,” masculine) and mayn basherte (“my fated one,” feminine), while the base form bashert has entered English as a noun.

This is close, in a distant way, to the idea of a promised land—not as geography chosen, but as meaning already inscribed in the relationship between people and place.

A spouse, in this sense, is not chosen from a catalog, not assembled from preferences, and not assigned at birth by society. It is encountered as something already meant.

This is the key distinction.

Similarly, Soulmateland is not a product of trial and error. It is not something you arrive at by comparing options, weighing advantages, or optimizing outcomes. That version of “homeland” is fragile, because it reduces belonging to taste—and taste can always be questioned.

Nor is it something imposed on you at birth.

Soulmateland is different.

It is not inherited. It is not selected.

It is given—and then recognized.

In the same way that a destined spouse is not invented but encountered, there are homelands that are not constructed, but prepared. You do not build that bond. You step into it.

The recognition may happen in a moment, but it carries the weight of something that did not begin in that moment.

That is why “made in heaven” is not a poetic exaggeration. It is a statement about origin.

Some marriages are arrangements of circumstance. Others feel inevitable.

The same is true of homelands.

Similarly to marriages, some people never encounter their Soulmateland. Some live in longing for a place that never becomes home. Some live wherever they happen to be. And some recognize it when they meet it.

And when it is that kind—the kind that is given rather than assembled—you don’t explain it by listing advantages.

You explain it the only way it can be explained:

This is where I belong.

I was born in the Soviet Union. By the conventional definition, that should have been my homeland. The system certainly insisted on it—from kindergarten through high school and beyond. It invested enormous effort—as totalitarian systems do—into shaping that feeling, repeating it until it was supposed to become instinct.

I lived there. I had friends, activities, achievements. Life was not empty, but none of it translated into that deeper sense of belonging. It never felt like home.

And when the Soviet Union collapsed, what emerged did not feel like continuity. It felt like a completely different country—foreign, disconnected. Whatever was supposed to bind me to that place simply wasn’t there.

Then I made aliyah to Israel, I was 21 at the time.

From the moment the plane landed, something clicked with absolute precision. No transition period. No gradual adjustment. It was immediate.

Not a conclusion I reasoned my way into. Not a preference I selected.

It felt like home—not metaphorically, but physically, emotionally, existentially. Every moment confirmed it. Not something I convinced myself of—something I experienced.

Call it love at first sight. And, just as importantly, it felt mutual.

The depth of that connection revealed itself in an unexpected way. For the first couple of years, I had the same nightmare almost every night. In it, I was somehow forced to return to Russia—and then prevented from leaving. Trapped there.

Each time I woke up in panic, disoriented for a moment—then I would look around, realize I was still in Israel, and immediately fall back asleep, calm again.

That contrast was unmistakable. One place was suffocation. The other was home.

Later, after relocating to the United States for work, I experienced something almost absurd—but revealing in its own way.

In a Russian store in Brookline, I was standing at the counter when an elderly American man walked up behind me. When the saleswoman approached, she addressed him first. He immediately corrected her: “I came after this young man.”

I turned to him, confused: “You came after me?”

Now it was his turn to be confused. “I just wanted to buy something.”

We stared at each other for a moment—and then both burst out laughing. He understood before I even explained: I had instinctively interpreted “came after” not as “stood behind,” but as “pursued.”

A reflex from a different system. A different reality.

“You probably thought you were still in the Soviet Union,” he said. “I didn’t come after you.”

That moment, trivial on the surface, exposed something deeper: the difference between a place you lived in and a place you belong to—between an environment that shapes your defenses and one that allows you to drop them.

Between birthplace, preference—and Soulmateland.

People from my “prehistoric homeland” sometimes ask why I moved to Israel. They expect practical reasons: career, politics, opportunity.

But the real answer doesn’t fit into those categories.

I moved to my homeland.

Not the place I was born. Not the place I chose.

The place that was waiting for me.

And when pressed further—why this place, why there?—the only honest answer is this:

Not in the sense of being imposed. Not in the sense of obligation.

In the sense of being prepared.

Just as with a destined bond between people, you do not manufacture it. You do not optimize for it. You recognize it when you encounter it—and in that recognition, something aligns that cannot be reduced to argument.

Homeland is not where you were born. And it is not where you chose to live.

It is where your belonging was waiting for you.

That is Soulmateland.

There is also a more precise name for it:

Not chosen. Not assigned.

Sabine Sterk, When You Know Every Stone (The Times of Israel)

“I identify as transgeographical, born in the wrong country.”

When You Know Every Stone

When You Know Every Stone

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