2006 “Shana Tova Letter”

Dearest Family and Friends,

 

This year we feel so blessed to be celebrating the Jewish holidays in Israel.  We are finally home.  We miss all of you and hope that you will come visit us.  We also wanted to share with you a family update on our aliyah and klitah ("immigration and absorption").

 

The kids really enjoyed attending an "American style" camp, or, more accurately, a Jewish camp where all staff are completely bilingual, and which attracts children from the English-speaking population (also referred to here as "Anglos").  The kids had the opportunity in camp to meet some of their friends in the neighborhood, which helped for the social transition into school.  Our stuff finally arrived, after a very awkward ending to the war with Lebanon, and we were overwhelmed with some 280 boxes just at the beginning of the 2-week period when camp had ended and school had not yet started! That was fun! Once we finally unpacked and set up our little home entertainment center, we were able to occupy them while we unpacked, and unpacked, and unpacked...and we are still finishing that process!

 

The advantage to not receiving our stuff when we had expected it to arrive was that we were able to complete a majority of the paperwork for our immigration.  Joel passed the road-test and now has an Israeli driver's license.  Debby completed her driving "lessons" and is now waiting to take the road test.   We have a beautiful new Mazda minivan, which we will share as the family car.  Adjusting to life without a second car isn't nearly as challenging as losing our Sundays.  The kids have shorter school days (8:00am to 1:15pm), but they go to school 6 days a week, and in Israel, Sunday is a regular business day.  Since Joel technically works US hours, he can use Sunday as a "play day," but he usually uses Sunday mornings to catch up on work that he could not finish on the previous Friday before Shabbat.  Mornings generally are great for Joel to catch up on work since the house is quiet.  We are still using every spare moment to unpack and set up our lives here, so we are still juggling a lot.  The days pass very quickly here, with our long lists of mini-projects to accomplish for each day.  So between all of the dish-washing, tushie-wiping, laundry-folding, unpacking, pickups and drop-offs, and general life-organizing, we continue to experience moments of  "pinching ourselves," when we recognize how miraculous it is to be living in the Jewish homeland.

 

The kids are transitioning into school very well.  We've invested a significant amount of money for Noam to have a private teacher work with him at his school, during school hours, for 1 hour each day.  His teachers and the principal continue to report that he is understanding his assignments and completing them with a sense of pride.  He is performing better than some of his Israeli classmates, particularly in Math and penmanship.  Needless to say, his parents are spending a lot of time with him for homework, but that's okay for all of us.  The newest skill Noam is beginning to develop is keeping a daily "diary" of homework assignments, which he copies from the board, in Hebrew, along with any schedule changes.  A number of friends he made over the summer attend his school and the school in the building next to his.  He also participates in a couple of extra-curricular activities, Origami and Chess, and has started a 5-hour per week ulpan (Hebrew language immersion) program.  We are so proud of Noam for trying to communicate in Hebrew, and for making the effort to have Israeli friends, in addition to his English-speaking friends.

 

Meirav is also doing beautifully in her new kindergarten class.  She is in a class of about 20 children, 5 of whom are English-speaking.  She is speaking lots of Hebrew, and is also making the effort to have Israeli friends.  While we anticipated that her transition would be difficult, much to our surprise she is once again, one of the most popular kids in her class.  She loves her teachers, and is always talking about the various "play corners" in her classroom, including a doctor's corner, a supermarket corner, an art corner, a reading corner, a dress-up corner, and other areas that we are probably forgetting.  She can write her own name in Hebrew, and she is trying to learn the alef bet.  She takes a dance class once a week, which she loves.  Debby attended the first class with Meirav, at which point she said, "Eema, I know I won't understand anything that the teacher says, but I'm just going to do everything that she does."  Meirav is taking her "absorption" experience in stride.

 

Little Liron-chic is now over 6 months and has decided that cruising along the furniture and boxes is the most fun activity.  She is a very strong little baby, and loves being entertained by her older siblings.  She loves crawling over to the stairs, which she is now capable of climbing, so we are constantly chasing after her.  She likes Cheerios and home-cooked squash (from the chicken soup pot, of course!), along with other forms of baby food.  She weighed in at 6.8 kilos (yes, now we have to convert to metric measurements and weights!!!) and is very healthy, thank G-d.  She is very noisy, babbling all kinds of cute sounds, and happy.  What a yummy munchkin she is!!!

 

Keshet is also getting to know the doggies in the neighborhood.  She is a spirited, spunky old lady (10 in dog years)!!! She enjoys barking at the baby kittens in our backyard, and hanging out with the Chihuahua, "Shoko" ( = "chocolate"), next door.  Another buddy is "Dino," a galoomphy white Labrador, who likes to run along the other side of the fence with her. 

 

The next big family project on the horizon is to investigate real estate so that we can purchase a home.  We really love the Modi'in area, since it is new and developing, and it is in a central location for commuting to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.  We are looking at neighborhoods in Modi'in, in addition to some nearby communities.  The real estate options are overwhelming, ranging from second-hand residences, to newly built projects (cottages, townhouses), to personal and customized homes.  There is a matrix of issues that will determine our final decision, including schools, shuls, little league access, mixture of Anglos and native Israelis, biggest "bang" for the "buck," etc.  We will keep you updated on this decision. (We haven't figured out which ranks higher, schools or little league...)

 

We pray for a year of security and peace in Israel and all over the world.  We wish you a year filled with the blessings of health, personal growth, and dreams fulfilled.

Shana Tova u'Metuka.  Recent pictures are attached.

 

Love,

 

Joel, Deb, Noam, Meirav, Liron and Keshet