Life has been a whirlwind since my last update....work, shipping quotes, CV’s, Nefesh’B’Nefesh ...it’s all happening.

I recently visited Israel - just a week. It’s hard for me to feel now like it is just a holiday. It’s always busy seeing people and catching up but I cannot think where else I would rather be right now.
There is no place like Tel Aviv Beach or the City of Jerusalem.  My friend and tour guide on this trip took me to the Kotel. It’s magnetic to me. Just beautiful; and always makes me feel like nowhere else. It’s definitely soul food. We walked through the little streets full of colour and noise and such a variety of ethnic diversity. I look forward one day to having more time to explore but having a ‘native’ walk with me was enlightening, as I saw things I had never noticed before.

I got very lost on the trains that day. Instead of going to Modi’in I ended up nearly in Be’er Sheva but at least I now know it’s the pale green line not the dark one. Good practise and also a great way to see rural parts of Israel. I asked for help and everyone was pleased to give it. I still love and have not got over the novelty that people talk to each other in Israel. On the return journey to where I was supposed to be, I got to hear the life story of a recently returning Israeli and learned a lot from the inspector on the train who took pity on me being in tourist mode and didn’t charge me for a train journey that should have taken twenty minutes and took three hours! Thanks goodness for the bottle of water and my cell phone and that there are loos on the trains. Clean ones at that. British Rail take note!

I’m still in awe of the 18 year old kids in soldier’s uniforms bustling onto the train on a Sunday morning with a heavy backpack, big boots and looking slightly like it’s a shock to be on their way back to base after the weekend. Boys and girls with guns. British youth really does have it easy. I really wonder what the Brits would do if we were being bombarded with rocket fire and I wonder is appeasement of terrorists would still happen if this was an ongoing issue? I do remember the days in the eighties, when I had just started work and there were countless bomb scares in the London department stores I worked in. Those were the days when the Irish terror threat kept us on high alert. I remember as a naive sixteen year old thinking it was horrific to have to worry that we could really be blown up, but this is nothing to where the world is now. And nothing compared to what the people of Sderot have felt for eight years.

I managed a very basic conversation with a taxi driver who spoke no English and was quite proud of myself. If I got any words wrong, he was very forgiving and managed to answer me and was patient while I tried to think of what I wanted to say. Generally when I have said I want to make aliyah, Israelis are very quick to welcome me.

The people I have met online who are like me, lay activists, are also happy to be supportive. So it’s great for me having become part of the pro Israel noise making crowd and met some amazing people. Always a hat tip to all of you.

I, like many Jews here in the UK am reeling that I voted for change, for someone who promised a tougher stand on terror, and yet David Cameron just slated Israel and became another voice of appeasement and demonization of Israel. On a recent walk around what used to be a very Jewish part of London, I see how things are moving here and it is not a comfortable thought.

Aliyah is getting closer. I have decided that there is no choice but to take the plunge and do it. If I procrastinate then it will never be. I can live cheaply and will start to look for work in a couple of months. Somehow I know it’s going to be OK. Not always easy, sometimes maybe a little lonely but my adventure and the beginning of the next stage of life. No kids; daughter on a gap year in Thailand and son back safely in Yeshivah.

I’ve told my landlord I want out early next year. I’m starting to sort and box and throw out my belongings. I will in effect be a gypsy with a few suitcases, some kitchen stuff and the paintings I do not sell or find an alternative home for. These are my paintings and so my babies. People are telling me how hard it is, but I am prepared to have to absorb a lot in those first few months. I am prepared to work and to learn. There are of course some material things I need to take. But I am not a hoarder. I like change and this change will be the best one I have ever made.

Nearly time to go home.