Talking to friends
We are still on our five year plan, to move to Israel in five years. We have also decided that we should take a family trip to Israel each summer, so our next trip will be the summer of 2017. In the meantime, we have told absolutely no one about our plan. I may have told my brother Matthew about our idea in an abstract sense, but basically no one knew.
Except for one person I told in the spring of 2017 at a cardiology meeting I attended in Las Vegas. I was with my former co-interventional cardiology fellow at the meeting. He was practicing cardiology in San Francisco and was attending the same meeting. We were very close, having spent three years of general cardiology training together in a class of five fellows, and an additional year of interventional training with just the two of us. He is an extremely intelligent physician, and an amazingly well-rounded, well-read, and level-headed individual. I have always held him in very high esteem. He is not Jewish. One evening at the conference, while we were catching up with how our respective lives were unfolding, how our careers were progressing, and discussing world politics and philosophy, I for some reason let it spill. I just said, “I’m thinking of moving to Israel.” I totally expected him to say something like, “What? Why? Why would you go there? Why would you go anywhere? It sounds like you’ve got a great job there in Phoenix. And why Israel? Isn’t it dangerous and crazy over there?” I honestly don’t even know why I brought it up. I just thought that since it had been in my mind now for the past ten months, that I needed to tell someone whom I respected, to see if they would think I was totally crazy.
He replied, “I think that’s awesome. Its a great idea. It will be so great for your kids – they’ll grow up being able to function in both worlds. They’ll have a much broader world view than most Americans. And they’ll be able to have a career wherever they want – in Israel, in America, or even in Europe.” He continued, “I wish I could do something like that with my family, bring them to another country to have that experience. You’re lucky being Jewish that you have that option.”
Wow. I still remember my surprise at his answer. He wasn’t even Jewish. And yet on a purely secular level, he thought it would be a great idea.