Letter from the Editor

Perhaps you are wondering about our unusual image choice for the cover of this magazine. Given that this is our Pesach edition, we can understand your confusion and why you might feel bewildered.

A little background. It started with an innocent kiddush conversation with our rebbetzen, Ora Katz. I inquired about her daughter’s army service, asking how it was going and specifically about her visits home for Shabbat. I mentioned how much I enjoy riding the rails in Israel on Thursday afternoons when our chayalim are all heading home with their duffels of dirty laundry and their M16s. It is one of the things I really love about living in Israel. I told her that I almost always tear up. No country in the world does this. Who sends their entire army home for the sabbath? She agreed and suggested that there might be a theme here. She thought we could easily fill a magazine with stories of moments just like these, stories about our day to day encounters that could only happen here.

So when we began discussions for a theme for this year’s Pesach edition, we talked about the idea that at our seder table, we read from our haggadot and tell the story of the generation that left Egypt. But that generation which experienced the most amazing miracles were not fortunate enough to reach the Promised Land. We, on the other hand, have been immeasurably blessed to have completed their journey several thousand years later! Of course, life today in Israel is nothing like what the children of that generation encountered when they finally arrived. And, more importantly, life in 2020 Israel is unlike any other place in the world!

So we decided to devote this year’s Pesach issue to our own personal stories of life in this place we call home.

Indeed, we have received wonderfully moving, emotionally connecting and laugh-out-loud funny contributions from the members of our community that we are delighted to share with you. We would like to thank all of our contributors for sharing their personal experiences with us. We hope you will enjoy reading them as much as we have.

I would like to personally thank the editorial team—Elizabeth Dorfman, Melissa Dubinsky, Jacques Korolnyk, Monique Korolnyk, Laura Shuck, and Paulette Woolf—for their patience, creativity, integrity, diligence and humor.

Together, we wish the entire kehillah Chag Pesach Kasher V’Sameach, welcome home.