Dear Rachel,
Several columns ago you ran a letter from a woman calling herself Tzittering and Tzutumult on account of her husband insisting they make aliyah. Aside from the big leap and all that such a move entails, this woman dreaded leaving close family and friends behind.
Unfortunately, I am in a position to empathize with this lady. All of our family – except for one daughter – live here. We are heartbroken over the situation that has her living so far away from us, and not by her choice.
When her shidduch was being redt and we were told that the boy had a desire to live in Eretz Yisrael, we immediately informed the shadchan that our daughter was not interested in moving there and the shidduch was therefore not suitable for us.
Some weeks later the shadchan called to tell us that the boy conceded he could learn here just as well as he could learn there, and the shidduch was reactivated. Fast forward, our daughter and this young man got engaged and were married, and all was well until a few months into the marriage, when our son-in-law announced out of the blue that they would be moving to Israel.
My husband and I were aghast. We knew that this was not our daughter’s wish and, moreover, her husband was going back on his word. When they left for Israel I told myself that they would most likely be returning after a couple of years, as many young couples do after the men have learned there for a while. Our mechutanim, however, ensured that this wouldn’t be happening – when they purchased a home for their son and his young family in Israel.
Our daughter is the soft-spoken and submissive type; she defers to her husband’s wishes regardless of her own feelings. She has many times confided to us that she is lonely and homesick for her family but is helpless to do anything about it. This fiasco has furthermore splintered our family, since my husband is so hurt by his son-in-law’s backstabbing that he refuses to talk to him.
We’ve been had
Dear Rachel,
Several years ago, when we were a young couple with one baby, we decided to fulfill our dream of settling in the Holy Land. While our parents shed copious tears over our moving so far away, we were very excited about the prospect of making aliyah. Little did we dream of the headaches we would encounter, particularly in the area of government bureaucracy. (You’d think they would make it easy on new olim, but from what we hear, things haven’t changed much in all these years.)
In any case, after many hassles following our arrival in Eretz Yisrael we finally purchased a decent apartment there and settled in. My husband eventually landed a job in his field, but just when we thought things were going our way he was suddenly laid off. The reason? He wouldn’t work the Shabbos shift! We were left devastated and broke. Jobs weren’t easy to come by and life was hard. We began to feel that maybe we took on more than we could handle.
When my youngest sister was about to be married, my father financed our trip back to New York for the wedding. We packed our bags, made use of the one-way ticket and decided we wouldn’t spring for a return ticket back to Israel. Turned out to be the best thing we could have done since my father-in-law took ill a couple of years later and passed away at a relatively young age. My husband would have never forgiven himself had he not been here to spend those precious few remaining years with his father.