I have discovered something important about making aliyah.

Wanting to go to Israel is not the same as Israel saying, “Come on over.”

For several happy weeks I floated around the aliyah universe. I emailed people. People emailed me back — promptly, warmly, like actual human beings. We had conversations. I was planning Karmiel, pricing flights, researching how one transports a Spanish greyhound across the Atlantic, and generally behaving like a man whose largest remaining problem was where to put the bookshelf.

Then a friend asked, “You know you still have to be approved?”

Apparently this is not, in itself, documentary evidence.

The warm and helpful people are not the people who decide. They help; they do not authorize. Eligibility under the Law of Return is determined by the Jewish Agency. The visa comes afterwards, and only if the answer is yes.

So somewhere in an office I will never see sits a person I will never meet, holding a file, deciding whether I am Jewish.

I have managed seventy years without a second opinion. Apparently the file requires one.

I had mentally arrived at Step Six while administratively standing at Step One, holding a hat.

Then I looked at the document list.

Passport. Birth certificate. Apostille. Proof of Judaism. Civil-status documents where applicable. Criminal background check. Forms. An interview. Originals to be produced later, in person, presumably while maintaining eye contact.

The birth certificate must show my parents’ names. Proof of Judaism ordinarily means a recent letter, on official synagogue letterhead, from a recognized rabbi, explaining how he knows me and confirming that I am Jewish and born of a Jewish mother.

The rabbi’s signature must be in ink.

I am not making aliyah. I am applying for membership in a very old club with an unusually thorough admissions committee and firm views on the ballpoint pen.

I understand this. I genuinely do. The Law of Return is a law. Eligibility matters. Governments require evidence. Israel cannot operate an immigration system on the basis of a man arriving at Ben Gurion, gesturing broadly at himself, and saying, “Look.”

But if I may be permitted one small kvetch: seriously?

I went to Talmud Torah.

I had a bris. I did not consent to it, I have not entirely forgiven everyone involved, but it happened, and there were witnesses.

Shabbat candles were the furniture of my........

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