Non, rien de rien, Non, je ne regrette rien. (No, nothing at all, No, I do not regret anything.) —Édith Piaf
There have been many moments in my adult life when I have had to make a decision. Sometimes, I had to choose one option from a list of many. Sometimes, I had only two bad options. And, rarely, I had two good ones. First, I had to choose a profession for the rest of my life after high school graduation. Next, I had to choose a job after college graduation. Next came the choice of marrying or not marrying, then, how many children to have, later, to accept or not an unsolicited, generous new job offer and whether to retire at 66 or wait longer. These were relatively easy choices when you compare them with the dilemma of choosing a country where you will want to live for the rest of your life. I was 40 years old in 1981 when I had to choose a country, a year after I had defected from Hungary. Sometimes, the choice is easy when you can prioritize among the options. Sometimes, it is easy to filter out the bad options. But what if the options are equally good?
On January 15, 2009, Captain Chesley Sullenberger landed a passenger plane on the Hudson River after birds blew out both its engines. He saved 155 lives, and, later, he gave good advice about decision making. The piece of advice he gave that stuck with me is that I must act on my values to help navigate life’s uncertainties.
I wish I’d had Captain Sullenberger’s advice in 1981 when the US Citizenship and Immigration Services rejected my political asylum request in the first round. They decided I did not sufficiently document my claim that I personally was prevented from practicing my Jewish religion freely. My immigration lawyer advised me that there are many levels of the American judicial system we could appeal to, and I had a good case to remain in the United States. He also gave me another option, namely, to apply for citizenship in Israel, where I would automatically qualify because I was born to Jewish parents.
Unconsciously, I acted on my values, as I knew them at that time. I chose to stay and fight. My reasoning was all practical, nothing emotional or spiritual. I was already here. I had already started building a new life. I had a good job. I had made significant progress in English. I had new friends and close relatives here. And last but not least, I had a car—a car I had always dreamed of while I still lived in Hungary. None of these applied to Israel, and my awakening Jewish identity was not enough to overcome all my real and perceived fears that life in Israel would be difficult. I never looked back, and life seemingly proved that I made the right decision. I bought a house, and I made it a home when I got married and became a father of six girls. I had well-paid jobs that gave me all the professional satisfaction one could get by doing what one loves the most. Yes, I also upgraded my little four-seat sedan to a minivan to accommodate my family.
I never looked back—that is until 2006, when I made my first trip to Israel. By that time I had reclaimed my Jewish identity, and I felt at home the moment our plane touched down at the Tel Aviv Ben Gurion airport. I was ready to get on my knees and kiss the tarmac as I had seen done in documentaries and pictures. But fate had it another way: we moved from the plane straight to the arrival building, where kissing the carpeted floor did not seem as dramatic as kissing the tarmac. The next three weeks I volunteered in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which was a physical and spiritual experience that made me question the wisdom of the choice I had made 25 years earlier. I wrote about these life-changing experiences and my heightened longing for living in Israel in an earlier essay (“To Be a Free People in Our Land,” Echoes of Memory, Volume 12.).
Looking back today, 40 years later, I have no regret whatsoever as far as my choice of country is concerned. I have a beautiful and still-growing family. I have good health considering my age. I have a comfortable retired life. I enjoy my meaningful volunteer “job” at the Museum that keeps me busy—even during the COVID-19 pandemic. Not to mention I have the opportunity to swim to my heart’s content three to four times a week. My love for Israel has never ceased, and I live it out in so many ways, even if I am 5,900 miles away. And when nostalgia sets in, I just remind myself what the psalmist wrote:
If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither; let my tongue stick to my palate If I cease to think of you, if I do not keep Jerusalem in memory even at my happiest hour. Psalm 137, Sefaria
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