We spent the evening in a beautiful private room reserved just for us. The food was outstanding, and for the occasion I brought a few carefully chosen red wines from my own collection. But the real surprise came later: my family gave me a custom-made magazine created especially for me, with me on the cover for the first time in my life. I had no idea. Anat, my wife, had been secretly working on it for six weeks.
Every page was about me. My children and my wife wrote who I am, with all my strengths and all my weaknesses. My siblings, relatives, army buddies, colleagues, and even readers of our magazine from abroad all contributed. After 60 years I finally understood something: I’m apparently not quite as “bad” as I sometimes thought I was. My wife immediately commented in our family WhatsApp group: “Good thing self-love doesn’t make you fat.” I really am a father who has left footprints, especially inside my own family. That realization moved me more deeply than any other mark one might leave somewhere out in the world that the wind soon blows away.
The family around the table as they present me the “Aviel Edition.”
I was overwhelmed, perhaps precisely because I know from my own professional experience how much work, love, and patience go into producing something like that. I’ve been doing it for years, and now I myself became the center of an entire edition. I also asked myself why I’m even writing about it here. What business is my 60th birthday of yours? Honestly: I don’t feel 60. More like 30 or 40. That the world is still here at all feels almost like a miracle to me. I grew up with voices constantly proclaiming that everything would collapse in the next few days or years. Apocalypse! Boom! The end! Yet here I am, living on this earth for 60 years already.
Aviel surfing. Wind, sea and me.
I love life, and that is exactly what shapes me: how I am, how I feel, how I think, and how I write. A lot has changed inside me. Politically, I’m no longer interested in the usual right-vs-left pigeonholing. For me, the human being is at the center, our people, the reality of our country. Even in my own family we often disagree politically, sometimes we’re miles apart. But we are still family, and that, for me, is what matters most. Our togetherness is stronger than any political line. That is what the nation needs!
Listen: Everything we publish on our website or in our magazine is news. And sometimes the news is not only political analysis, security developments, or international headlines. Sometimes it’s the stories of very personal life. Because life doesn’t consist only of geopolitical drama; it also consists of quiet moments, family milestones, the thoughts that shape us. Perhaps that is the real message: that despite all the storms of the world, we should never stop seeing, appreciating, and sharing our own lives with one another. If we only write about the big crises, we miss the quiet voices of life, the ones that often touch us far more deeply and remind us what really counts.
The verse “not in the storm, not in the fire, but in the still small voice” teaches that God did not reveal Himself to Elijah in spectacular natural forces or in today’s political world crises, but in the fine, quiet, thin voice. The Bible thereby shows that the essential does not happen in the noise, but often in the stillness. God’s presence is revealed not in the dramatic, but in the unspectacular: in a breath, in a thought, in the quiet moment. True guidance, comfort, and truth do not come with thunder, but in the silence the heart can hear.
My life has always been dynamic. There were periods that were really not easy, but Anat and I have learned from every chapter. By the way, through all of it Anat has been the heart of our family, the inner center that carries and holds us together. I can divide our life into chapters, and I am at peace with every single one. Anat and I often talk about it. Do I regret anything? Maybe, but that stays my business. Somewhere in my early forties I understood that our life is not a dress rehearsal. It’s now or never. What we miss today we won’t make up later.
I have the best, most loyal team at Israel Today. They appear in the “Aviel Edition” too. Dov Eilon even composed a song for it.
About 20 years ago at work I deliberately shifted down two gears so I could go full throttle in the family. Because after 18 years our children are no longer children. That realization came quietly, but it hit me hard. So I started not just working for them, but living with them. Investing in them, in our shared present, in conversations, closeness, time. And that is exactly what my children held up to me that evening, in a way that touched me deeply. They mirrored back to me that they saw it. That they felt it. And that it meant something to them.
I know people who are only waiting for the next level, for heaven, and in the meantime miss the Now. That’s not me. I believe we are supposed to enjoy the present, simply because life is fragile and tomorrow everything can already be different. And that is exactly what my children learned from me: to appreciate the Now. That thought has changed a lot in me. I learned it from King David:
“This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!”
Every single day, not the future, not someday, but this day is a gift from heaven. It calls us to notice the present, to value it, and to find joy in it. It is an invitation not to miss the moment, not to take it for granted. That is a form of faith: to live this day consciously. I realized that here on earth we can create our own “limited heaven,” especially in these last two years of war that, despite all the fear and danger, have given us new insights.
I believe life is not written only in the big headlines, but in the small lines in between. In the people who walk with us. In the moments we don’t postpone. In the present we live consciously. The political storms will pass, new headlines will come, challenges will continue to test us. That is part of life, and I write about it with passion at Israel Today. And you know what? I’m not at all sure the war in our region is really over. Sometimes I have the feeling that even heavier things may still lie ahead. But in the midst of all that remains the quiet, thin voice that carries us, that reminds us of what is essential. I have learned that we must not wait for life to become easier in order to live it. We have to live it now. Today. On this day that the Eternal One has made. And if my family showed me one thing that evening, it is that everything we give comes back to us, often in a form we never expected.
That is my thanks. And that is my blessing.
