In 1972, when I was sixteen, I knew an Israeli named Itzik.

More than half a century later, I still remember him.

He was a shaliach, working with Jewish youth organizations and visiting schools. He had recently served in the IDF. We became friends. What I remember most is that he did not talk about Israel like a travel agent. He talked about it like home.

The land. The people. What it felt like to live there. The things that drove Israelis crazy and the things they loved. He was young enough that we could relate to him, but he had already lived a life that seemed very different from ours in Montreal.

Israel was not a brochure when Itzik was in the room.

Fifty-four years later, I think Israel needs Itzik again.

I am preparing to make Aliyah at seventy.

The infrastructure available to someone like me is remarkable compared with what existed when I was sixteen. Healthcare, benefits, shipping, banking, housing, taxes, bringing my dog. I can email people in Israel and North America, attend online meetings and fill out forms without leaving my house. Nefesh B’Nefesh and the Jewish Agency do work that would make this process enormously more difficult without them.

I know, because I am using that system.

But I have also discovered its natural limitation.

Most of the machinery begins working once you have already reached the point of saying, “I think I want to make Aliyah. What do I do next?”

I am interested in everybody who has not reached that sentence yet.

Those are the people I keep meeting. I have written here before about what happens when I ask them the obvious question back. They tell me I am brave. They tell me they have thought about Israel. They tell me they are worried about what is happening around them.

And quite often they go quiet.

That silence is where Israel needs to be.

Not with another advertisement.

Not........

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