Our dream vacation turned a family simchah into a sibling drama
When my daughter Perry got engaged to a born-and-bred Israeli, one of my younger ones said to me, “Ima, right we’re not moving back to America anymore?”
It’s been a family joke for the longest time. We never really planned on living here long term, it was always just one year and then another and another, and somehow, we have eight children growing up as full-fledged Israelis (well, kind of, at least) and we’re actually making a chasunah here.
Wow.
It hit me when we started chasunah planning that we’d been living here for more than two decades, and this was the very first time we’d be making a simchah and actually hosting family from abroad. The first time my siblings would be flying in for my special occasion, after all these years and years of us flying back for theirs.
My parents and my parents-in-law have come over the years, various births and brissim, but our first bar mitzvah took place in the height of Covid — no guests — and though of course my siblings have visited here and there, we’ve never had a significant amount of family coming together for a simchah on our turf.
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