When Home Means Two Different Places

One spouse wants to spend the years that remain in Israel. The other cannot imagine leaving the life they built together.

At sixty-nine, David has begun to speak about Israel in the future tense. Not as a place to visit next winter, not as somewhere to spend a month, but as the place where he wants to wake up for whatever years remain. His wife, Miriam, hears the same word and feels something entirely different. To him, Aliyah means going home. To her, it means leaving home.

They have been married for forty-four years. Their children live nearby. Their grandchildren know which cupboard holds the cookies. Their doctor has followed them for years. The synagogue is familiar enough that nobody needs to ask where they sit. The small routines of an ordinary Canadian life have accumulated until they have become a kind of architecture around the marriage.

David’s desire is not a whim. He has carried it quietly for decades. Age has not weakened it; age has made delay feel less innocent. He asks himself a question many Jews eventually ask in one form or another: if I believe Israel matters so deeply, how long can I keep saying ‘one day’ before ‘one day’........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)