A Lifetime in Twenty Feet: What to Leave and What to Bring

Twenty feet sounds like a lot until it has to hold a lifetime. 

In just a few days, the movers will come to pack our belongings into a twenty-foot container that will carry them across the ocean. Furniture, clothing, sefarim, family memories, and the accumulated evidence of years lived in one place. Somehow, all of it has to be measured, sorted, chosen, and packed. We are not only deciding what to ship. We are deciding which parts of our lives we want to carry forward.

For most of Jewish history, when Jews moved, they did not have months to plan, lists to organize, or containers to ship across an ocean. They often had hours. Sometimes less. What they could carry fit into a wagon, or more likely into a small bundle over their shoulders. They carried whatever they could, and they carried what they had to. So I feel grateful beyond words for the luxury of this kind of decision. It is overwhelming, but it is also a gift.

As the boxes fill, I find myself thinking less about furniture and more about identity. Less about possessions and more about values. Less about what will fit into a container and more about what belongs in the life I am trying to build.

The Gemara in Pesachim (87b) teaches that one of the purposes of galus was to gather converts, souls drawn to the Jewish people through our presence among the nations. Later thinkers expanded this idea further, understanding galus as an opportunity to gather ניצוצות הקדושה, sparks of holiness, from the many places we passed through. That means galus was never only displacement. It was also a mission.  So, aliyah, at least for me in this moment, does not feel simply like leaving. It feels like returning with what has been gathered.  And that means I have to ask myself honestly what parts of galus I am ready to leave behind, and which sparks I hope to bring home.

The first thing I hope to leave behind is a survivor mentality.  Indeed, survival is sacred, and we should never speak lightly of it. For much of our history, survival itself was a form of avodas Hashem. To endure, to remain faithful, to raise Jewish children, to hold onto Torah under conditions of pressure and uncertainty, these were not small things. They preserved us.

But survival, for all its dignity, was never meant to be the final goal of Jewish life. We were not created only to live another day. We were created to build, to plant, to create, and to take responsibility for the future.  I am grateful to be moving toward a life that feels less like holding on and more like planting. Less like preserving a fragile presence and more like helping build something meant to last, a בנין של קיימא.  

The second thing I hope to leave behind is the feeling of being a stranger.  I say this with deep gratitude. I am proud to be an American. As this country approaches its 250th anniversary, I believe the United States has been an extraordinary blessing to the Jewish people. For generations, it offered safety, opportunity, freedom, and dignity. That gratitude is real and should never be minimized.

And yet, even with all of that, I have carried a feeling, sometimes subtle and sometimes less so, that I am still a guest. Avraham Avinu described himself as both a ger and a toshav, a stranger and a resident. That has often felt to me like the paradox of Jewish life in exile. We build homes, institutions, friendships, and communities. We contribute to the broader society with loyalty and appreciation. And still, some part of us may know that our deepest story is elsewhere.

I am looking forward to living more fully as a toshav. Not because life in Eretz Yisrael is simple, and not because it erases every tension, but because Jewish identity there is not an accommodation. It is the language of the street, the rhythm of the calendar, and the fabric of the culture. I am looking forward to a life in which our story is not peripheral, but central.

The third thing I am grateful to leave behind is the question itself.  For many years, I lived with the question of aliyah. Anyone who has considered it honestly knows that the decision touches nearly every part of life. It is not romantic. It is not simple. It is not made only in the language of ideals. It is made through conversations, anxieties, hopes, practical details, and many long pauses.

Over the past number of months, people have said to me, “It is amazing what you have done.” My response has consistently been that I have, in fact, not done anything. I am still here. (The boxes are not even gone.)  But in truth, something has happened. A decision has been made. That does not mean I have certainty. It does not mean I know what will unfold. But there is a quiet gift in having crossed from wondering into commitment.

So, those are some of the things I hope to leave behind: the instinct to survive instead of build, the feeling of being a stranger, and the long uncertainty of the decision itself.  But aliyah is not only about leaving. It is also about carrying. And there are gifts from chutz la’aretz that I very much hope to bring with me.

The first gift I hope to bring is the accumulation of what galus has taught me, what Rav Shlomo Wolbe z”l, in the sefer עלי שור, calls התלמדות, the practice of allowing oneself to be shaped by experience. It is not the same as studying a subject or mastering a skill. It is something quieter, the readiness to be changed by what life places in front of you, to treat every encounter, every success, and every setback as something that has come to teach. Not every experience announces its lesson. Some lessons come gently. Some we understand only years later. But a person who moves through life with that willingness does not leave empty-handed, even from the hardest stretches.

So when I think about what I am packing, I am not thinking only of pictures or possessions. I am thinking about a congregant who taught me more about emunah during her illness than I ever taught her. About a mentor who corrected me in a way that stung for a week and shaped me for years. About hundreds of Shabbos tables, thousands of difficult conversations, and countless interactions, that I can still feel. These are not items in a container, but they are very much coming with me.

The second is a community mindset.  There is something remarkable about American Orthodoxy. We have built strong shuls, schools, institutions, chesed networks, and communities of real responsibility. I think many of us take this for granted. We assume that Jewish life naturally organizes itself around a shul that is more than a place to daven, a school that is more than a place of instruction, and a community that is more than a collection of households. But none of that is automatic.

I have watched families sit together in a shul lobby after a loss and felt the room hold them. I have seen communities mobilize overnight because someone needed help. A tzibbur is not just ten people gathered in the same room. A kehilla, at its best, becomes a place where people carry one another in joy, in sorrow, in growth, and in responsibility.  That is something I hope to bring with me. The conviction that Jewish life flourishes when it is rooted in relationship, that Torah and tefillah need the warmth of human connection. A kehilla can become a home.

The third gift I hope to bring is the spirit of being metzapeh l’yeshuah, continuing to yearn for redemption.  One of the gifts of galus is that it keeps us aware that history is not yet complete. We know, almost instinctively, that we have not arrived. So much of Shemoneh Esrei is a plea for national restoration, for Yerushalayim, for Malchus Beis David, and for the rebuilding of what remains broken.  Aliyah is, on a personal level, a step closer. A movement toward home. But it is not the completion of the story. Even in Eretz Yisrael, we still daven for geulah. We still say, “כי לישועתך קיוינו כל היום.” We still live with longing.

I do not want to lose that. I do not want arrival to dull the ache for what remains unfinished. Being metzapeh l’yeshuah is not only about waiting. It is to live with the awareness that the world is not yet what it is meant to be, and that our own small acts of building, planting, learning, and returning are part of something much larger than ourselves.

And so, as I prepare for this move, I have learned something simple and profound. Not everything fits.  That is true of containers, and it is true of life. Every major transition forces us to decide what belongs in the future and what belongs in the past. Marriage, parenthood, career change, loss, renewal, and aliyah each ask their own version of the same question. What am I carrying that still belongs with me? What am I holding that should finally be left behind?   

As I stand just days before this next chapter, I hope to leave behind whatever narrows the soul and carry forward whatever has deepened it. I hope to leave behind the habits that no longer serve the future and bring home the holiness that galus, in its complicated way, allowed us to gather.

In Israel, storage space is significantly limited, and quite simply, not everything fits. And maybe that is the way it is supposed to be. When packing an entire life into a twenty-foot container, one is forced to ask: what must be packed, what should be released, and what sparks are we meant to carry home.