Thank You, Hashem, That I Live in Israel

I hope you just watched that video – and if you didn’t, you must! And share it with everyone you know! 

Really, there isn’t much that I can add to Rabbi Arush’s comments – except that I can testify that everything he talked about, it’s true, I agree 1,000%. 

I came to Israel with a lot of fears. I came with no family here, and no support network. I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t speak Hebrew. Everyone said I was insane! The only thing I had going for me was that I was young and single (recently divorced), and I needed to relocate anyway – so it was somewhat simpler to make Aliyah in that sense. 

However, even in that sense people told me to go to NY, I’ll have a better chance of finding a shidduch (appropriate man to marry) there. I said – “I want emuna, I want spirituality, I want what Rabbi Arush teaches! My guy will want the same thing and he won’t be in NY! He’ll be in Jerusalem too, for the same reasons as me!” And he was. 

I had to go against my friends who thought I was bonkers, my family (I can’t even let myself remember the suffering I went through, and my grandmother even wrote me out of her will. Thankfully, that got fixed eventually) and most of my community.  

But I came with some level of emuna and bitachon that I had gotten from The Garden of Emuna and a lot, a lot of prayers. 

And now like Rabbi Arush said in the video – I thank Hashem every day that I am here. I wrote an article about it – Aliyah – 10 Years Later. 

The only other comment that I would like to make, is that although it is true that moving to Israel now, there are English speaking everything – communities, schools, shuls, everything – in some aspects, you might as well have moved to the desert. Just about everything is different, and you will have to get used to it. Even the Heinz ketchup tastes different… 

I still remembering crying in the mini-market (makolet) because my friend told me that sour cream was “shemenet“, but I couldn’t find it (turned out I was expecting the usual round containers, when in front of me was rows and rows of tall square containers). And asking for “Kibbutzim” at another store. I wanted raisins – which are tzimukim in Hebrew, but I heard tzibukim when my friend tried to tell me what to ask for, and then reversed it into Kibbutzim. The store worker insisted that the Kibbutzim are only up North, and I was stubbornly insisting that no, there should be some in the store… 

Okay all the laughs aside, it’s not easy. You must be prepared for that, with the  recognition that the best things in life are not easy, they are generally the hardest things – but they are WORTH IT.  

If you are coming for increased emuna (after all Eretz Yisrael is the Land of Emuna!), increased spirituality and closeness to Hashem, you will find that here in abundance. And you will find that when everything is weighed out, it’s not just well worth it, it’s “why on earth did we not move sooner?” 

And you know what? I prayed to Hashem to enable me to keep my general standard of living even here, and Hashem helped me, and I did. A much smaller place to be sure (since I chose to live in Jerusalem, which was the appropriate choice for me, and again well worth the space sacrifices) but I trusted that Hashem would never force me to live in a dump, and thank You Hashem, that trust was not misplaced. 

And now I do indeed thank Hashem every single day bli neder for giving me the incredible gift of living here. I say it all the time, looking out on the buildings made of Jerusalem stone: “I won the billion dollar jackpot. The Garden of Emuna, and the Land of Emuna (The Land of Israel).”  

Don’t forget – Jerusalem is the real City of Gold on a hill. This city is literally paved in gold. We can’t see it right now, but the stones will all turn to precious gems, and the Jerusalem stone will turn to gold. Whenever I have to deal with the stones in my Israeli balcony which are rough and uneven and make it difficult to like, put my washing machine next to it – I laugh to myself, one day you won’t complain for the walls of gold… 

Recognize that I am no one! If Hashem did this for me, so He certainly can do it for you too! I don’t care about myself. I only care about helping another Jew and another Jew find emuna and move to Israel, and save themselves, physically and spiritually. Harav doesn’t want to talk about it, he touched on it in this video, and he’s talked about it more at other times, and he is doing everything in his power to stop it – but the fact remains that a very scary decree hovers over the Jews outside the land, and specifically in America, G-d should guard us and save us (read No One Left Behind for more on this topic).  

Rabbi Arush said, “There will come a day that a few will be lucky to get out in their PJs.” And he said tonight that many more will want to come, but will not be able. And he made a terrifying comparison between the warnings of the tzaddikim to come to Israel before the Holocaust, and today. As he said, he doesn’t like to discuss bad news, but you can put two and two together and read between the lines to understand the seriousness of what he doesn’t want to talk about. 

You have to both run for your life, and also recognize that you are running to every good in the world. 

You are coming to follow Hashem into the desert! And just as He didn’t desert us back then, He won’t desert you now! Just the opposite – oh, the blessings you will have! 

That being said, it only gets easier to move to Israel. There ARE lots of us English speakers here, ready to welcome you with open arms, ready to bring food to your door and take out your trash while in quarantine, ready to show you the ropes, and help you get settled. There are wonderful organizations that will help you learn everything you need to know and even walk you through a lot of it, besides the local Gemachim and just good people happy to help with everything you can imagine.  

Find an English speaking community that suits you, and you’ll find that you can manage just fine on Day 1 with English, at the supermarket (in both stories above, some random English speaker came up to me and helped), at shul and everywhere else. 

The key is to come for emuna, and with emuna. Emuna is the real currency here in Eretz Yisrael! Live by the emuna rules, and Hashem will certainly help you, more than you could ever imagine! 

In the meantime, now you know someone here! However I can help, I am here! 

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Rachel Avrahami grew up in Los Angeles, CA, USA in a far-off valley where she was one of only a handful of Jews in a public high school of thousands. She found Hashem in the urban jungle of university. Rachel was privileged to read one of the first copies of The Garden of Emuna in English, and the rest, as they say, is history. She made Aliyah and immediately began working at Breslev Israel.  
 

Rachel is now the Editor of Breslev Israel’s English website. She welcomes questions, comments, articles, and personal stories to her email: rachel.avrahami@breslev.co.il.