Lizrael Update: babbling about the expat life since 2004
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To my bat mitzvah (part II): The world is yours
There’s this thing me and your dad have discussed a lot – which is the standard of pigeonholing that occurred when we were growing up – as Jewish kids in diaspora, at least the diaspora we were raised in, you become a doctor or a lawyer to make your parents proud; short of that, it’s…
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Consuming opportunity is this Bat Mitzvah’s lesson
Once we get the basics down, I think our main role as parents is to provide opportunity. Without a doubt it’s what my parents did. And in their case, in my case – there’s something about being a cultural outside or an immigrant that makes the drive to do so even more weighty. All this…
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Poland to Egypt: a 2026 Israeli rescue story
Once upon a time there was a boy in יא with the world ahead of him… but first מסע לפולין. He prepped and packed and hugged his sister goodbye, all under the shadow of a looming war with Iran. No matter; sometimes you must look back to get ahead. So he flew and saw and…
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Iran 2 (is a thing)
First, some facts: Another Saturday morning waking up to blaring sirens; this time, I only sigh. We all know the drill by now. All six of us. Except this time we were just five because my son is in Poland for a מסע לפולין high school trip. So that’s new – one of the kids…
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What you taught me about kindness.
Elise, you were a person who experienced the world as a deep embrace. Your foundational drive was to touch, feel, see, hear, taste everything the world has to offer. Hungry for contact, ready to consume every experience. Maybe the content was different, but it’s something we had in common; our drive to feed our sense…
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Anger
Anger is new for me. Just a couple years old, really. I don’t know how to explain it well. I’m not sure how much more it will take until I can. Meanwhile…
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20 years of thanksgiving, in milestones
My family wasn’t that big on Thanksgiving when I was growing up. We used to go to a family meal when I was really young, we quickly became religious and thus strictly kosher, yadda yadda yadda, it never really took within the nuclear fam. I don’t know if it was the sitcoms, the nostalgia for…
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Eat up, the menu got bigger
I was thinking today, while doing my barbell clean/overhead press reps, <record scratch> Wait, what? Ok so here’s the thing. A lot of people hit there 30s and figure out they should ‘get into’ certain things – healthy eating, mountain biking, pottery, running, you know the types – and people call this a mid-life discovery,…
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Canaries, frogs – get used to the coal pot.
Somewhere along the way we forgot that no one owes us anything. In 2003/4 when I was gearing up to leave NYC and move to Israel, I wrote this ‘manifesto’ of my rationale for making aliyah. (Wish I could find it, but alas, there was a time before digital hoarding was automated to clouds.) I…
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The ‘end’ is a taunt
I could have shared more, perhaps, over the last two years. But sharing would only be a byproduct of expressing things that hurt so much to express. Pain, sadness, depression, anger. Despair. The visual I’ve put together of what it’s been like is… imagine you’re overboard, falling into the ocean; you look upward and you…
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Balancing inside purgatory
“Shana tova guys! I don’t know how much darker everything will get, but I’m happy to be submerged into the darkness by your sides 🫶” Tongue in cheek new years wishes for my friends but the truth is, it’s the boiled down version of my ‘making aliyah manifesto’ from 22 years ago, which, foresightedly enough,…
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Living history
Never have I been so relieved for the timing of a flight home… Back in Israel after another extended work trip, just in time to be woken at 3am with a warning about a potential attack from Iran. Since, after all, Israel had already started delivering blows to nuclear infrastructure, as promised, for… years. Years,…
Questions? Comments? Advice?
