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Why don't you leave then

That's the standard comment of aliyah pushers when hearing a critique of their little country. And it's a typically moronic comment uttered by people who tend to make moronic comments. 

Is it so simple? You came with a lift after securing an apartment. Maybe you own your apartment now if you happen to have had $800,000 in cash sitting around or could fork over the 40% down payment after finding a decent job even though you don't speak Hebrew. You are exhausted from the move to SSOI and from your ordeal here. Do you have the strength to head back, do you have the money to rent something in America, to hire another lift? Or will you leave everything behind? What will you leave behind? What about your grandfather's dresser? What about your library? Can you children deal with that? Can they deal with another change? You just moved them across the ocean? Now you'll move them back again?  Do they have the strength to deal with it?

These are some of the factors involved. And there are many more. If you understand the complexity of life, you'll be unsure what to do. If you are an aliyah pushing moron who projects your own ego and ambitions onto life then it will all seem so simple, just as the question of the state violating the Three Oaths is simple, and the conflict with the Arabs is simple (we are the good guys, they are the bad guys at all times), and whether Charedim should be in the army is simple. Everything is simple to the simpleton. Let me rephrase, everything is simple to the egomaniac which is what most aliyah pushers are. 

It's a fundamental principle of Torah that you don't push on people more than they can handle. Not even just that, you help a person to recover from his losses. A posuk in Devarim commands us to be charitable to an ani “But you shall surely open your hand to him, and shall surely lend him sufficient for his deficiency in that which is deficient for him.”  The Gemara explains that the first reference to deficiency refers to basic needs, but the second one “which is deficient for him” may refer to helping a pauper who used to be wealthy to obtain some of the experience of what he lost. The latter can include providing “even a horse upon which to ride and a servant to run in front of him,” it not having that will feel like poverty to him.

They said about Hillel the Elder that he obtained for a poor person of noble descent a horse upon which to ride and a servant to run in front of him. One time he did not find a servant to run in front of him, and Hillel himself ran in front of him for three mil, to fulfill the dictate “which is deficient for him.” [Kesubos 67b]

We are human beings. You can't just slam people into this or that because it suits your petty ideologies. You can ruin lives this way. We are not machines. Today in particular people are frail. You have to handle with care. Don't be a dunce. 

Why don't I go back? It's not so simple, just as coming here wasn't so simple. Unfortunately, I didn't grasp the complexity of the decision when I made it. 







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