All about "normal" life in Israel

Last week, our family marked our thirty-year “aliyaversary,” three decades since we moved from California to Jerusalem in 1994.

It won’t be a spoiler to state that there have been some stark ups and downs. Still, if life in Israel were just an unending litany of horror and remorse, I doubt we would have stayed. But the positives continue to outweigh the downsides. 

Here are 30 reasons we moved to Israel – and why you should consider doing so, too…even now. Some of these may be familiar; others, I hope, will be surprising, even personal.

1. No longer an astronaut. In California, we would walk on Shabbat from one Jewish bubble – our home – to another – the synagogue. For everything in between, we were wearing “spacesuits,” hiding our identities from the outside world. Not so in Israel. 
2. A collective Shabbat. Saul Singer and Dan Senor describe the importance of the day in their new book, The Genius of Israel: It’s like having “Thanksgiving every week.”
3. The food. When we first made aliyah, it was all about the cucumbers and tomatoes. These days, I’m digging the fusion of Asian, Arabic and Ashkenazi cuisines. And a shout out to falafel, shawarma and shakshuka, of course.
4. Healthcare. I’ve received outstanding care throughout my cancer journey thanks to a cadre of attentive doctors and a national healthcare system that puts where we came from to shame. No more stressing about $15,000 deductibles.
5. The weather. Those living along the coast will likely complain about Israel’s hot and humid summers. For Jerusalemites, the nights are delightfully cool. And Tel Aviv winters remain mild albeit wet.
6. The Mediterranean. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I was never a beachgoer – the Pacific Ocean was just too cold. But the warm bathwater of the Mediterranean in August suits me just fine. Just keep the jellyfish at bay.
7. “Datlashim.” When we lived in the U.S., I adopted a religious lifestyle. In Israel, I gradually became less stringent as I learned you can be proudly Jewish without following all the mitzvot. The Hebrew acronym for someone who is formerly religious is “datlash.” I doubt I would have gotten to this point if we’d stayed in the U.S. (I first wrote about datlashim in 2015.)
8. Chutzpah. It’s frustrating when someone pushes their way in line at the supermarket. But Israelis’ ability to be blunt is a much-needed attitude in a mealy-mouthed world where everyone is afraid of saying the wrong thing. 
9. Grandparenting. If we lived in the U.S., we’d probably still be grandparents, but it’s less likely that our children and grandkids would live within walking distance. 
10. Antisemitism. Living in Israel – despite all that’s happened in the last year – still feels safer than not knowing if the person you’re talking to is an ally or enemy. That’s in large part because we can defend ourselves. Indeed, on October 7, we learned exactly what would happen to the Jewish people if there was no army to protect us. The military has, thankfully, since got its mojo back.
11. A miracle happened “here” not “there.” The letters on the Hanukah dreidel in Israel spell out that the miracle of the holiday happened right “here” not somewhere over “there” as on Diaspora dreidels.
12. Startup Nation. The last two years have battered Israel’s high-tech ecosystem, but with our innovation, entrepreneurship, and can-do attitude, we will bounce back. 
13. Birth rate. When I was growing up, the world’s population was predicted to become unsustainable. Instead, the opposite is happening. In every Western country, the birth rate has dipped below the replacement rate. Not so in Israel, where we don’t have to run ads on TV, as in Denmark, to encourage young couples to have more sex.
14. Public transportation. My kids say taking the bus in this country sucks. But in the suburb where I grew up, there was zero public transportation. So, if the bus comes every 20 minutes, not every five, I see that as a blessing, not a curse.
15. Hiking. We were not outdoorsy types in the U.S. But we became hikers after moving to Israel. Is it as beautiful as Bali or as nice as Norway? Nope. But it’s ours, it’s accessible, and trekking is a shared national pastime. 
16. Hebrew. Just because I don’t speak the language well doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the wonderful creativity that is generated every day by this revitalized tongue or my descendants, who are entirely bilingual. 
17. Independent children. When our kids were young, we took them to a big park in Ra’anana. Israel is not a society of helicopter parents and we lost track of them briefly. We needn’t have panicked. A kindly mother brought them back to us.
18. Israeli music. Egged bus drivers used to blast out music on their radios. That’s how I fell in love with Israeli rock, an affair that has continued to this day with indie bands like Lola Marsh.
19. Bamba. While American parents were having a multi-decade freakout over peanut allergies, Israeli children were happily munching these peanut-flavored snacks. It turns out it was banning peanuts that was increasing the allergies. 
20. Golden Burger. In the 1990s, fast food in Israel meant pizza or falafel. Now it’s all about the burgers. And the ones at Jerusalem’s Golden Burger are among the best I’ve had anywhere. Kosher, too.
21. Cheaper Jewish education. Would our children have received a better education at a Jewish day school in the States? With a price tag of up to $60,000 a year, it wasn’t even a consideration. Ditto for college. The tuition for a year at Hebrew University: just $4,000. 
22. The parliamentary system. Too many politicians in Israel’s government are corrupt, to be sure, but our multi-party coalition system gives everyone a voice, unlike with just two-parties where, if you don’t like the candidates, you’re stuck. 
23. Happiness. Israel ranked fifth on the latest World Happiness Ratings – despite the wars with Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. A sense of shared purpose and feeling like you’re a part of something greater than yourself makes all the difference. 
24. Connection. Forget six degrees of separation. There’s no one in the country who didn’t know someone killed or captured on Oct. 7. That same sense of connection is what fueled civil society to step up when the government went AWOL.
25. Alternative Jewish communities. Kehilat Zion in Jerusalem calls itself an “Eretzisraeli” congregation. With musical instruments for Kabbalat Shabbat, a Sephardi nusach, and women-led davening, it’s far from mainstream Orthodox.
26. Israeli TV. First it was Fauda, Shtisel and Srugim. That’s now expanded to include shows like The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, A Body That Works, Tehran and more that have made their way to Netflix and the international streamers.
27. Life expectancy. Israeli citizens can hope to live to 82.3 years of age, higher than the U.S., UK, Canada and Germany. Maybe it’s all that falafel.
28. Hatikva is a catchier national anthem…than the Star-Spangled Banner, at least, which no one can properly sing. HaTikva is melodic and brief, with lyrics relevant to our shared experience.
29. To be normal as a Jew. This one was suggested by a fellow immigrant, from France, who added, “Perhaps to be normal, you have to live in an abnormal country.”
30. Resilience. Visitors to Israel are routinely perplexed by the packed cafes and beaches that fill up so soon after a missile attack. Our unbreakable spirit may be the best reason to make aliyah. 

I first posted this list at The Jerusalem Post.

Five years ago, I wrote about “25 reasons to live in Israel.” There’s some overlap but I tried to keep the lists unique. Read the previous column here.

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