By Jennifer Lang
Six years ago this summer, I upended my life and moved halfway across the world from New York to Israel after my French husband announced he couldn’t spend one more year in America. Our son, eighteen, had enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces, and neither one of us could imagine sending him off alone, to a country where parents revere and pamper their teenaged soldiers. We never consulted our girls, twelve and fourteen, who cried and complained and came because they had no choice.
My yes included a ten-year clause: from the start of first child’s army service to the end of last child’s service, from my mid-forties to my mid-fifties. Philippe, desperate to return to the country where we’d met and married, accepted my conditions.
After we settled into our house in Raanana in the center of the country, I told anyone who asked that I didn’t intend to stay in Israel if even one of my children left, especially for my birthplace. If I couldn’t carve out a professional niche for myself. If I felt scared of the never-ending cycle of violence. If I couldn’t handle the distance between my aging parents and me. If I reached a stage when the “ifs” keep me up at night. Continue Reading…