Shauli's Speech at the Kiddush

Shabbat Shalom,
We decided to give this Kiddush to give thanks to Hashem for the birth of our daughter, Kayla Rivkah, and to celebrate completing our first year living in Israel.
We named our daughter, who was born in January, Kayla Rivkah. She is named after my grandmother, Rivkah. She was a great בעלת חסד, her house was always open to guests, and our hope is that little Kayla can emulate her מדות . As we were looking for names, we came across the name Kayla, which we really liked. We discovered that the name Kayla has Hebrew origins meaning crowns. Or so we thought.

After I named her in shul, Rav Avner came over and asked me what Kayla is. Shai Urim was there and he answered it’s a very nice American name. So go figure, we have our first child born in Israel and we give her an American name!

However, since then we’ve heard some nice possible meanings for Kayla, such as derived from the name Michaela, which means "who is like G-d", or that it is connected to to the Hebrew word קהילה ,community.

Which brings me to the second reason for this Kiddush. We celebrated our first complete year in Israel this past week,and it has been quite the experince, ברוך השם We, as well as our kids, have adjusted to life here, found friends, and can't imagine living elsewhere. We are filled with gratitude to Hashem and to the Ariel community, who have made us feel at right home.

Thank you very much!