This morning I stood on the tarmac at Ben Gurion Airport as 225 Jews stepped off a plane from New York and onto Israeli soil.
From a nine-month-old baby to a seventy-two-year-old pioneer, they came not as tourists, not as refugees, not as strangers. They came as children returning to their Father’s house.
I made aliyah myself 13 years ago, but not on a charter flight.
I thought I knew what to expect. I was wrong.
Nothing can prepare you for the sight of hundreds of Jews streaming down airplane stairs, flags waving, music playing, tears falling, children running, parents clutching strollers, even a family who brought their four dogs with them. This was beyond logistics. It was a fulfillment of prophecy.
The energy was not ordinary. Usually, passengers stumble out of a plane half-asleep, exhausted from a transatlantic flight. Not here. Not today. These Jews carried themselves with the strength of a people who had not just landed, but who had come home.
And that word — home — was on everyone’s lips. I spoke with young and old, parents and singles, people who had left behind jobs, communities, comfort. Again and again, they used that word: home. Not “a new start,” not “a better life,” not “opportunity.” Bayit. Home. The very word, the very dream, that for two thousand years sustained us in exile, in galut.
To stand there and greet them was more than a photo-op, it was an honor. It was holy. Because it was not only my voice saying welcome home. It was the voice of every generation of Jews who prayed and wept and died with Yerushalayim on their lips. The martyrs of the Inquisition. The dreamers of the ghettos. The whisperers in the gas chambers. The pioneers, the chalutzim who drained the swamps. They were all present on that tarmac this morning.
This was not immigration. This was covenant.
This was the Jewish story, the same one that began when Hashem said to Avraham, “Lech-Lecha… to the land that I will show you.” The same story that Moshe carried but did not complete. The same story Ezra and Nechemiah rekindled from the ashes of Bavel. The same story Jews recited at every Seder, in every exile, at the end of every tefillah: L’shana haba’ah b’Yerushalayim.
Today, I saw those words fulfilled.
I saw Tehillim 126 before my eyes: “When Hashem returned the captives of Tzion, we were like dreamers.” I saw the promise of Yechezkel: “I will gather you from the nations and bring you back into your own land.” I saw the vision of Yeshayahu: “And your children shall be carried home..”.
Make no mistake: this was not just a plane landing. This was eternity landing.
Every suitcase was defiance against Pharaoh. Every child running across the pavement was victory over Haman. Every step on this soil was triumph over Hitler, over Hamas, over every tyrant who swore we would vanish.
And so, to each of the new olim I had the privilege of meeting, and to those I didn’t meet yet, know this: you are not just beginning a new life. You are the living answer to every tyrant and every hater. You are prophecy fulfilled. You are proof that God keeps His promises, that Am Yisrael lives, and that our story is still being written.
Welcome home.
Am Yisrael Chai. 🇮🇱✈️