Our dream vacation turned a family simchah into a sibling drama

Malka: If you flew in for our simchah, why do we feel like an afterthought?

Chani: We’re so happy to be here, but we have families of our own.

Malka

When my daughter Perry got engaged to a born-and-bred Israeli, one of my younger ones said to me, “Ima, right we’re not moving back to America anymore?”

It’s been a family joke for the longest time. We never really planned on living here long term, it was always just one year and then another and another, and somehow, we have eight children growing up as full-fledged Israelis (well, kind of, at least) and we’re actually making a chasunah here.

Wow.

It hit me when we started chasunah planning that we’d been living here for more than two decades, and this was the very first time we’d be making a simchah and actually hosting family from abroad. The first time my siblings would be flying in for my special occasion, after all these years and years of us flying back for theirs.

My parents and my parents-in-law have come over the years, various births and brissim, but our first bar mitzvah took place in the height of Covid — no guests — and though of course my siblings have visited here and there, we’ve never had a significant amount of family coming together for a simchah on our turf.

It was a real milestone moment.

It was easy to set a date for the wedding — summer vacation, of course. That’s when it would work out best for our guests from abroad to fly in, right?

And my siblings — every one of them! — let me know that they would be coming. My parents and in-laws, of course, were coming, too, and most of my siblings-in-law, aside from my husband’s sister who was due in the summer. Truth be told, I kind of expected them all to make the effort. We’d flown in for so many of their simchahs over the years — and let me tell you, the costs added up to a whole lot more than we could really afford. Now was their chance to reciprocate — and spend a dream summer vacation in Eretz Yisrael. Why on earth wouldn’t they come?

Making a wedding, though, was nothing compared to making a wedding with dozens of guests from abroad.

My parents, my in-laws, and each of our siblings with their families all needed places to stay. An apartment for four, an apartment for six, an apartment for nine. Apartments with easy stroller access for my sisters, and not too many stairs for my elderly father-in-law. And since it was the height of the summer, of course, apartments with air conditioning in all the bedrooms and preferably a mirpeset….

Each family had their list and their preferences, near the stores and near us and near a bus stop. And while summertime leaves many apartments available for short-term rent, they were simply too expensive for us. But then again, which of my friends or neighbors would be willing to give their apartment for free, especially knowing that they’d be getting the electricity bills afterward for the air conditioning blasting 24/7?

Here and there, I found people willing to give us their apartments for cost price — we’d just have to pay the electricity and water bills. I wasn’t about to ask my guests to pay for their own accommodations, so that went on our own list of chasunah expenses. Still, that was part of the price of hosting family — and I was so grateful to have all this family coming.