I made aliyah with my wife and two children in 1985. I didn’t go to Israel because I was looking for a job or in search of a mid-life change. I was the rabbi of a flourishing congregation in the outskirts of Manchester, England. I came, in the words of our national anthem, to be part of “a free people in our land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem”. I was unashamedly a Zionist.

Living in Israel was never easy. There was the Gulf War in 1991 in which we huddled in our bomb shelters wearing gas masks while Saddam Hussein rained Scud missiles on Tel Aviv.

There were the 1st and 2nd Intifadas: the suicide bombings at the Park Hotel in Netanya, Mike’s Place in Tel Aviv, the Dolphinarium, the Dizengoff Centre, the Sbarro Pizzeria in Jerusalem and many others. They are all part of our collective memory.

Many of us have lost loved ones here, including my only son, Jonathan, in the Jewish State’s ongoing struggle to survive in a hostile neighborhood.

However, there was also the privilege of living in Israel. “Next year in Jerusalem” was no longer the yearning for a lost homeland, but had become a realistic option........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)