As anyone who’s ever tried to make aliyah would know, the biggest obstacle is bureaucracy.
There’s never-ending paperwork and each time you think you have every document they tell you they need one more form you’ve never heard of.
I’m 19, I live in London, and I’m moving to Israel in the next few weeks – that is, if I ever beat the uphill battle of Israeli bureaucracy.
In many ways I’m exactly who you are picturing. I went to JFS, did well in my GCSEs and A-levels, and got in to my first choice of university. I’ve never made my own dentist appointment. Before this year I’d probably only done my own laundry twice, after I’d ignored my parents’ reminders to give them my PE kit that I needed for school the next day. I’d certainly never needed to deal with this much paperwork on my own.
I’ve spent the last week calling and emailing the Jewish Agency, trying to impress upon a series of very unbothered Israelis the urgency of the situation. On Tuesday I was helpfully told, “Eh? You have two whole weeks? You will be fine.” The British need to prepare and pre-plan is entirely lost on a country that thrives off chaos and uncertainty.
Having spent the last year in Israel on a gap year I understand that with the unpredictability of war, army service, and life in general, it makes sense to think two weeks is plenty of time. As a Brit though? I have to disagree.
This week I learnt the Hebrew word “protektzia”, which to my understanding means having connections inside whatever system you are dealing with who can miraculously help you skip past the bureaucratic mess.
The whole country is built on protektzia, on connections that new immigrants do not have and struggle to get. The system works best if you grew up in Israel or if you have family there. I have neither. Luckily, within my community in London, everyone has a friend of a friend who is an elite soldier, or works for the Jewish Agency, or has dealt with the system before.
There’s a positive side to protektzia, too. A statement I heard a lot during my gap year is that a lone soldier is never truly alone. People who don’t know you will invite you for a Shabbat meal, help you fix a broken washing machine or find you a place to stay. It’s this sense of community that draws people in. That feeling of never truly being alone. Of having a place to stay and the support of someone you passed at a train station or sat next to on a bus.
I’m scared to make aliyah – I’d be foolish not to be. I know it’s not like a holiday, year 11 Israel tour, or a gap year you take before university. I understand that whatever I think I know about life in Israel, this is different. But I also know that it’s the right choice.
Making aliyah isn’t like moving from London to Warwick for university, and right now it feels more akin to taking everything I know and love about my life and turning it on its head. But just because it’s terrifying doesn’t mean it’s not worth it; some of the most valuable decisions are scary.
A year ago, the idea of the 90 miles between my home in London and the university I was planning to attend felt insurmountable. It felt like wading across the Sinai desert for 40 years, or getting lost at sea and trying to return.
Now I’m moving 3,000 miles away, to a place where I barely speak the language, and that two-hour train ride doesn’t seem so bad.
It’s the obvious choice, sticking to what I know, the life I’ve grown up expecting. But in a strange way it’s also the much harder choice. Despite all the stress and struggles that come with this move I know, in my heart, that it is the decision I need to make.
During my year in Israel I felt so much safer than I had done in the UK since 2023. That’s even with missiles raining down and no bomb shelter in my building, even when I woke up to that garish emergency alert that was sent out only in Hebrew to notify us that Israel and the US had launched an attack on Iran, and even when shrapnel landed 100m from my flat, hit a pipe, and flooded the whole street.
I understand it’s not a life everyone wants to pick, but despite everything that makes it impossible to want it, I find it impossible not to.
I chose to stay through the war – I didn’t look for flights out or another city to stay in, and maybe that is stupidity. But just maybe, it’s not choosing a different fear, it’s choosing a place I love.
So, if I ever make it through the bureaucracy, I will stand tall and proud as a citizen of an incredible country, a nation that I’m proud to one day be a part of, a people who love paperwork – the Jewish home.
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