5730

Greeting and Blessing:

I duly received your letter, in which you write about your first impressions, as well as your present views, of your new surroundings.

In view of the fact that, relatively speaking, you have spent a considerable period of time in Eretz Yisrael, you should be in a position to make an informed decision. And if you have now decided that it would be good for you to settle there, and your wife shares your feeling about this, may G-d grant that it should be with hatzlacha.

Needless to say, one of the most important considerations in this matter is that the children - at any rate, the younger ones - should settle there too, and better still, that all your family should be settled there in due course. If it is necessary to use persuasion, it is usually easier to do so through friends. Perhaps they can be induced to come first, ostensibly for a visit, without an actual commitment to remain. However, once they are there, they may more easily be induced to remain, either permanently or for a time, in order to study, etc. Once they are there, it is to be hoped that the gravitational force of the land itself will take its course.

I need hardly emphasize the special pleasure it gave me to read the end of your letter, where you write that you are observing the mitzva of tefillin and prayer, and that you are trying to improve yourself even further. If this is a fundamental factor at all times, benefiting the individual himself by enabling him to live a well-balanced and harmonious life, how much more important is this in the land which even non-Jews call the “Holy Land” and of which the Torah says that it is “a land over which G-d watches from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.”

May G-d grant that you should have good news to report, especially as we have now entered the auspicious month of Kislev.

With blessing,