To build and rebuild a life in Israel

‘Somehow I ended up where I was supposed to end up,’ Amy Shuter says.

By RIVKAH LAMBERT ADLER
Amy Gottlieb Shuter (photo credit: LAURA BEN-DAVID)
Amy Gottlieb Shuter
(photo credit: LAURA BEN-DAVID)
Given her family background, it’s easy to see that Amy Gottlieb Shuter’s eventual aliya was the fulfillment of her destiny.
But the way it happened is not something anyone, least of all Shuter herself, could have predicted.
It’s not surprising that Shuter always had strong feelings about the Jewish homeland and its importance to world Jewry. A fifth-generation American, raised in an extremely Zionist, Modern Orthodox home, with religiously observant family on both sides, her parents’ frequent recollections of their trip to Israel in 1969 dotted her childhood.
Her first trip to Israel was for her older brother Marc’s bar mitzva in 1984. On that trip, Shuter visited her best childhood friend in an absorption center. At the age of 10, she vividly remembers noticing the difference in the standard of living between her life in the US and the much simpler lives of people in Israel. The Kotel bar mitzva also offered Shuter a chance to meet many of her mother’s 16 first cousins for the first time.
She recalls feeling comfortable in the Jewish state from the very beginning, finding it “different but not foreign. It was both safe and interesting. We did a lot of different things, including exploring historical sites.
I’ve always been a history person and the places we saw brought to life so much of what we talked about at home.”
At 17, Shuter went to Poland on the March of the Living to honor the victims of the Holocaust. She reflects on that experience as having been “extremely formative and influential on the future educational decisions I made. The March of the Living really had a very strong impact on me. [I saw it as going] from darkness to light – what we went through in the Holocaust and what Israel offered to the Jewish people.”
After high school, she spent 18 months at Midreshet Lindenbaum, an institution for advanced Jewish studies for women, located in Jerusalem’s Talpiot neighborhood.
It so happened that during her stay, her brother Marc’s best friend, Barry Shuter, was also in Jerusalem.
Barry was more casual about his Judaism and eight years older than Amy, so it didn’t initially look like a match. For three years, Amy kept trying to set Barry up with her friends; by the time she finished college, the pair finally started dating.
According to Amy, “It was so clear after the first date” that they belonged together. Although they spoke casually about retiring in Israel, the couple had no concrete plans to make aliya. Barry’s parents were elderly and there were the typical concerns about finding suitable work opportunities and mastering Hebrew.
Six years later, the Shuter triplets, Miri, Eliana and Binyamin, were born; Amy’s brother Marc and his wife made aliya in 2006, and the question of the Shuter family making the move started to gain momentum.
“There was a political shift that made us uncomfortable about the future direction of the United States.
In addition, the shaky economy impacted our jobs in the nonprofit sector. My background in Jewish history made the idea of Jewish emigration normal for me.
How could we pass up the chance to go?” But what really clinched it was that in 2009, Barry was diagnosed with lymphoma. Although it was highly treatable, getting a cancer diagnosis at 42 was a major catalyst toward solidifying the plans to move to Israel.
Amy reveals how their conversations about aliya took on a much more serious tone at the time. “I’m not going to look back on my life and say ‘I should have.’ Now is the time to think about what we really want when this medical challenge is over. We didn’t see ourselves fulfilling our dreams in America; it was clear that this was the time.”
By the time Barry’s successful stem-cell treatment was over, the Shuters had made their decision. “We sat with the doctors to ask how realistic it was for us to move to Israel. Barry was cancer-free at the time; we had no expectation for a relapse and got the okay from his doctors to go. His immune system was getting stronger all the time, and he had total medical clearance.
“We intended to make aliya to Modi’in; all the pieces were coming together. We came on a pilot trip, during which Barry caught a cold. At a meeting with Nefesh B’Nefesh, Barry was having trouble breathing, and he fell asleep during the meeting, which was so not in his character. As a result of being immunosuppressed, it turns out he had pneumonia.”
Barry was admitted to Shaare Zedek Medical Center on April 7, 2011. “The doctors at Shaare Zedek were incredible.
He was never fully conscious after the second day of hospitalization, but they wanted to do everything possible to save his life.”
Outside the hospital room, an entirely different drama was unfolding. Friends at Nefesh B’Nefesh were racing to expedite the Shuters’ aliya process. Their official aliya date is April 17, 2011. Reflecting on the most intense, surreal month of her life, Amy says, “Israel is the only country in the world that says, ‘You’re critically ill. Let’s make you a citizen.’” The triplets were being lovingly tended to by the community of Neveh Daniel in Gush Etzion, where Marc and Miriam Gottlieb live. Amy especially credits her sister-in-law Miriam with the superhuman task of taking care of 14 people in the family, including her three children, while Barry was hospitalized over Passover.
“I’m very honest with my kids. They asked to see their father; they were seven years old, but they had to see their father. I was also told by the social worker that I had to let them.” The morning of the visit, the nurse told Amy that Barry was failing. They were all there in the room. “Barry fought so much those last few hours. Barry set it all up, because the family was in Israel. I told him, ‘You set it up: The kids are settled, your parents are accepting.’” Barry Shuter died on May 25, 2011. “He had a teudat zehut [Israeli ID card] that he never saw,” Amy says sadly.
Looking back on that dreadful, unreal time, Amy reflects, “Aliya is a trauma. The unexpectedness of his illness was a trauma. But it’s what our family needed.
Had he died in New York, I don’t know that we’d be here. The feeling of ‘This is where we belong’ is what he gave us in the way that this happened. Once we were olim, and once we buried him here, it wasn’t even a question that we would stay.
“Looking back, I regret that we didn’t make aliya sooner; I wish I would have strengthened my Hebrew a lot before. My parents have since made aliya and are living in Neveh Daniel. The Cederhurst community was unbelievable, but you cannot compare it to what yishuv life gives you.”
Amy and her children are now in the rebuilding phase. Shortly after Barry’s death, they set up a website for people to write in stories and memories of their departed husband and father. They studied Pirkei Avot and also return to Jerusalem’s Biblical Zoo on the anniversary of his passing, because that’s the last place the family was happily together before he got sick.
With their bar and bat mitzvas coming up, the children are raising money for a memorial for their father. Barry Shuter was deeply dedicated to helping his community, so the fact that his children are implementing innovative fund-raising projects in his memory is part of his legacy. Details about their fund-raising efforts can be seen here: www.shuterfamilytrust.
org/zbc/ Their dog Nili came on aliya alone; later, the family adopted Sabra. Barry was an animal lover and having the dogs around adds a therapeutic element to their home. “It’s another part of Barry that we bring into the house.”
“Then there’s me, redefining myself as a single mother, as a dating mother,” says Amy, but adds that her faith in God is helping her accept her new reality.
“Do I like every decision he made for me? No. But I am thankful for all the things He put in place to help us survive.”