#nefeshbnefesh

Identity is a fascinating thing. The most basic elements prove to shape you the most - your name, gender, skin color and nationality have a massive influence on who you are. 

A friend of mine has a relatively common story for Israelis: He was born to Israeli parents but lived in America for 8 years in his early childhood. We have a running joke that he is 30% American. This conversation comes up frequently enough that there has been talk of creating a pie chart diagraming exactly how Israeli vs. how American he is. 

Shortly after graduating University in Canada in December 2001, I went on a Birthright program.  Truth is, growing up in downtown Toronto, I never really considered travelling to Israel but got convinced by a few friends at a Hillel lunch, that in addition to free trip, Birthright would be a great adventure. 

For the next three years I took every chance I could to come back to visit Israel. On my third post-Taglit trip, I decided to make the move to Israel at the age of 27.

When making aliyah, I never really thought too long term, but eight years later I'm still happily living in Israel, been working at a great company for almost seven years, married a wonderful Israeli woman last year and have a number of close friends that I met in the early days after making Aliyah.  

In fact, my best friend to this day is the one that Nefesh B'Nefesh seated next to me on the Aliyah flight from New York. We were recently reminiscing about when we were standing alone, waiting for the flight in JFK, wondering what the hell we had gotten ourselves into. As one of only a handful of single 'young' people on that particular flight, we had introduced ourselves to each other in line, only to realize we were sitting next to each other on the flight.

Now we just celebrated eight years in Israel.