Looking Back On Independence Day

There is one day more than any other throughout the year that I miss being in Israel and sharing in the joy that the people of the country has to offer… Yom Ha'atzmaut. Every year I can’t help but think about all the people that we met and others that we got to know through the internet during our Aliyah experiment. Many of those people I am still in contact with to this day, nearly five years after the fact, and I enjoy seeing the lives that they have built for themselves in our homeland.

The images of that time remain vivid in my mind. While it seems but an instant in our lives, the moments are more ingrained in my being that many other that have happened before or since. I can recall the uneven stones along the sidewalk as we walked to old city. The warmth radiating from under our feet as the sun disappeared beyond the ancient hills.

I recall many of the moments of getting lost in the alleys and streets both in the daylight and well past the setting of the sun with only the faintest of sounds echoing between the buildings. However, most enduring are the moments when we were welcomed into the homes of others and into the community around us. While we didn’t fully process the companionship that was shared with us during those moments and meals, it is something that remains with me to this day. Only in Israel can you be welcomed in such a way.

Of course, what has become more poignant now is the memory of my wife and me sitting on a bench along King George Street discussion our return to the states. It was at this moment when we finally realized that we were ready to start a family. More accurately, with all the changes that were happening and things that were beyond our control, we realized that there was never going to be the perfect time and decided that it was time. In the end we were a little delayed but that was the moment when we made the decision to start a family.

However, and most will agree with this sentiment, there are two moments that supersede all others when I think of Israel. Both of these experiences were actually on our first trip to Israel during our honeymoon nearly seven years ago. They happened in relatively quick succession the first occurring when we turned the corner walking along the wall around old city (the Ramparts Walk) and saw the Kotel for the first time. We continued toward the wall wide eyes and when I laid my hand and head against the cool stone, the world disappeared around me. I will never forget that feeling.

So, on this Independence Day I celebrate the people, the land, the history, and the faith that makes Israel not just the Holy Land but our Homeland. And when we return it will be as a family and I hope to find that same bench where we had the discussion that would eventually result in our having a son. And, most importantly, I look forward to experiencing Jerusalem and Israel as a whole as a father and I can’t wait to introduce our son to his homeland. Am Yisrael Chai!

Sunday Search: Digital Digging And Rediscovering

Toward the beginning of the year I was finally able to start sorting through many of the items that I tossed in my desk in an initial effort to get everything put away shortly after we moved into our new home. While there were countless pens that needed to be organized and old power cords and technology that needed to be tossed, there were also a number of digital storage devices that piqued my attention as I rescued them from the grips of the office clutter.

Once I consolidated everything into a couple of plastic sealable bags (one for SD cards and the other for flash drives), I shoved them into a pocket in my work bag with the plan of scanning the contents later in the week. A few days and then a week passed without even a single look. Then, having accidentally pulled one of the bags out by the corner while retrieving my laptop, I unsealed both bags and slid the first of about a dozen SD cards into my computer.

I was actually quite surprised when I found absolutely nothing. However, that was the only empty card as each of the others contained the photos from all of our summer trips from the past several years. Great items to hold on to for the current twigs of the family tree but nothing much more than that. Thankfully when I plugged in the first, and the oldest, flash drive into my computer, there were a multitude of documents that I hadn’t seen in at least a decade (not really a surprise given that I remember this 256kb card being the first I ever used). And as I loaded more and more into my computer, I was able to pull older photos, documents, and the entire digitized genealogy binder that my great aunt put together.

Not satisfied with these rediscoveries I tried to think of all the other means of digital storage that I have utilized over the years… this lead me to pulling out my wife’s old external hard drive as we both used this 1TB monster for many years and it primarily served as our joint computer backup in the past. Well, on this I found even more photos and documents that I had long since forgotten about including the random pieces that I had come across years ago… items that I still don’t know if they are relevant to our family tree.

The digging was almost done as there was still a group of pictures that I had yet to find. Well, actually, I had found them some time ago stored on Shutterfly but only in low resolution. I wanted the originals, I wanted to see the memories from our wedding and honeymoon the way that I remember them… as clear as the moment they happened. A few boxes and CDs later and these too where added to our story, our small leaves in our ever-growing tree. It’s nice to have most of the pieces together for at least one generation.