I have to say that I don’t like the word “ibex”. There is something taxonomical and sterile about it. The Hebrew word “Ya’el”, it seems to me, comes much closer in approximating the majesty and beauty of these animals, which can be seen wandering around the community I live in—Midreshet Ben-Gurion (for short, the Midrasha)—the way cats roam in Jerusalem or squirrels in many American cities. Watching the Ye’elim against the backdrop of the stark desert landscape where the Midrasha is located—particularly toward sunset or sunrise—is not, I think, something that grows old.

My family and I moved from Los Angeles to the Midrasha this past summer after eleven and a half years in the US. For my daughters, the oldest of whom is nine, that was their entire lives, although they had spent every summer in Israel, spoke Hebrew (and Italian) at home, and grew up with a father obsessive about communicating the message that we were in the US only temporarily and ultimately on our way back to Israel, and that that is where we in fact belong. My wife (herself originally from Italy) and I knew that we wanted to make our way back to Israel and raise our children there.

We were finally able to make the move happen with my appointment at the Ben-Gurion Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism at Ben-Gurion University in the Negev, and we decided to make our home in Midreshet Ben-Gurion, where the institute is located. (As one might surmise from these names, David Ben-Gurion, whose desert home is just up the road at Kibbutz Sde Boker, and whose burial site is right here, on the edge of the cliff, is a very real presence in the life of this community and in its educational system). But as much as the return had been a desired goal for years, my wife and I spent many evenings in our final weeks in LA wondering what it would be like to suddenly find ourselves living in a small community in the middle of the desert. When we had lived in Israel, it had always been in cities—I grew up in Haifa (myself as a child of American olim), and we had met and lived in Jerusalem before moving to the US. At times, the upcoming move to this small desert community was quite anxiety-producing: Although we expected (and hoped) that it would be positive, we also imagined a scenario in which we would land, look around at the desert, and wonder what to do with ourselves next. As it turns out (and with only minimal risk of hyperbole) the four months since our arrival here have been little short of blissful—for us and for our daughters.

Midreshet Ben-Gurion is a unique community. It has an almost ideal balance between a small and intimate community on the one hand, but just enough size and population on the other, so as not to become stifling. It is big enough to house a café that can compete with coffee shops in Tel Aviv or even in Bologna, as well as a grocery store, a pizza place, and a restaurant. The natural beauty surrounding us is arresting, and the transformation in my family’s life since our move here is striking.

A few weeks ago, the Midrasha was host to “Chag ha-Ma’alot”, the “Festival of Ascent”—an annual celebration of the local youth movement, Bnei ha-Moshavim. The centerpiece of this day each year is the induction of the region’s fourth-graders as the movement’s youngest new members. Coming on the heels of a day-long hike at the end of which they received the movement’s blue shirt, children and teens from communities throughout the Ramat Negev region took their place by the cliff at the edge of the wadi of Nahal Zin, where the counselors and older members of the movement set ablaze symbols and slogans (these are ktovot esh—flame-inscriptions—typical features of special events in Israeli youth movements), and put  on skits and speeches all of which were aimed at transmitting and expressing the movement’s core values of Zionism and social justice.

My oldest daughter was among those fourth graders joining the movement. For years, she had watched her older cousins in Jerusalem with envy and admiration for their activities in the Scouts. While we were still living in Los Angeles, she spoke often of waiting for the time when she too will take part. For me, watching the celebration, and seeing my daughter take part in it, was an experience of relief bordering on a sense of deliverance. As acute a sense as I had in the US of being uprooted and in the wrong place, I now walk the Midrasha (I try to make it to the cliff at least once a day) with a profound sense of having just squeaked by and having been repaired: The freedom with which children live in Israel (certainly in contrast with LA); the direct, visceral relationship with Hebrew language and culture, and the bond with the landscape and history of the land that only living in Israel can provide—these were all central to the ways in which I envisioned my children growing up. And after years of seeking employment and a pathway back to Israel, with my three daughters steadily growing up (I kept telling them to stop, but they didn’t listen), it seemed that we were going to miss out on that. And in addition to these emotional concerns, there was an intellectual aspect: For me, there is little doubt that the center-stage of the drama of modern Jewish history is Israel. Living in the US and teaching about Israel (as I had done for over a decade) meant a great effort at managing cognitive dissonance; I felt I and my family were backstage at best, missing the real production.

The decision not only to move back to Israel, but to make our home in Midreshet Ben-Gurion has turned out to be perhaps the best move we have made as a family. As we suddenly realized in one of our final evenings in LA, during our eleven years in the US, we moved houses ten times. I’m hoping that our move this summer was the last.