A recurring theme of my conversations here over the past three years has been the options for living somewhere more normal.

When I met my girls’ mother in the summer of 2015, my head—if not my heart—was already in Berlin. And when, very quickly (how could she resist?), we decided to have kids together, the option of my living abroad and coming back to visit them (every month and a half or so) was enshrined in our co-parenting agreement.

While still sufficiently emotionally retarded to be able to make the move, a combination of Jewish guilt but also of doing the right thing by my girls has kicked in, making the one-time fantasy of flat whites on Kastanienalle with svelte Mädchen a permanent one. (I am also now 58, which brings a reality check all of its own.)

Life in Israel has become significantly more difficult since that horrible Simchat Torah morning in October 2023. Though, as I hugged old Stuey in the stairwell of my building in Rechavia as the sirens blared, I had no idea of the hardships ahead of us.

While I will always be a Zionist, I guess I am not the best of them, because—at the worst times over the past three years—I have tried talking to........

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