I suppose it started with my name, my Hebrew name, Yisroel Noam, after one of my maternal great-grandfathers, Rabbi Israel Groban, z”l, and a paternal aunt, Elsie Naomi, z”l, who died as a child in a tragic fire. Noam – that was an easy and “pleasant” name to carry, and I used it regularly in Hebrew classes and among certain friends. But ISRAEL? That was a much heavier name to carry, let alone embody, even though some have suggested that One Who Wrestles with God is pretty apt. Recently, I saw that my great-grandfather also went by Sruly, and that might have been cool to grow up with. (As a gay kid, I was called much worse.) Alas, my “American” name, Stuart Nolan, sounds about as British as Sruly is Yiddish! What’s in a name? A lot!

Israel, and certainly the State of Israel, can live without me. But that’s not the question. The question is whether I could live without Israel, the Land of Israel, the people of Israel, and the answer was making Aliyah.

Born a mere 12 years after founding of the modern State, Israel figured prominently, if quietly, in my childhood. One set of great grandparents, from Eastern Europe, did well in Dayton, Ohio, and took a months’ long trip back to Europe and on to Mandatory Palestine, when my mother was a year old, in 1934. Among my treasures from their trip is an olivewood mezuzah I am eager to hang on the doorpost of my new apartment in Tel Aviv. And I hope to bring back with me on a return visit to the US the antique Megillat Esther they bought in Jerusalem, as well as a beautiful seder plate from Carlsbad, among other heirlooms. My great-grandparents also co-funded a JNF forest somewhere in pre-state Israel, which would be an unlikely hoot to see one day. Sadly, no evidence exists to show they purchased property on Sederot Rothschild!

I’m old enough to remember the Six-day War and the changing maps that were hung in our Sunday and Hebrew school classrooms before and after the Yom Kippur War. But my first trip to Israel took place in the summer of 1977, when I was 16, as a member of the Beth Abraham Youth Chorale, from my shul in Dayton. “Choir,” as we still lovingly refer to it decades later, (just as we refer to Cantor Jerome Kopmar as........

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