Moving Up: An Aliyah Journal

Product Description

When she packed up her bags, her family, and her life, to depart the United States for a permanent move to Israel, Laura Ben-David never knew that Aliyah would be the most emotional, frustrating, moving, and hilarious experience of her life. “Moving Up: An Aliyah Journal” beautifully captures Laura Ben-David’s family’s highs and lows as they navigate Israeli bureaucracy, a new culture, a host of remarkable characters, and a 2,000-year-old dream, all with wit, energy, and passion. Compulsory reading for anyone considering Aliyah or already living in Israel, but all will enjoy this book – over and over again.

Review

For centuries, Jews throughout the world have yearned, prayed, sung, and studied about returning to Israel, and throughout our tumultuous Diaspora experience, that very dream of returning home has sustained our people. Close to sixty years ago, with the creation of the State of Israel, a dream that seemed so elusive became a reality. What most Jews throughout history were deprived of in their lifetime, could now be a precious reality for a new generation. While North American Jewry did not pick up en masse and immigrate to Israel, a significant number of Americans did more than 150,000 made the journey home. Whether it is for national, ideological, or spiritual reasons, Americans are continuing to choose to make Aliyah because of their deep bond and connection to the land and the Jewish people. Although one man or woman s move is a fulfillment of a personal journey, its impact is felt and embraced by an entire country. In this small country of Israel, every person counts. Israelis eagerly anticipate the talent, the entrepreneurship, the contributions, the Zionistic ideological passion, and the Western education and professionalism that are embodied in all Olim that arrive on Aliyah from North America. It is with each and every new Oleh that Israel is enhanced and continues to prosper. The doctor, the teacher, the actor, the physical therapist, the musician, is all, in his own way, building Israel, one person at a time. Therefore, when any book, memoir, or publication is published, it is received with excitement and encouragement for it helps stress the viability of living one s dream in Israel and the fulfillment of our national destiny. We applaud Laura Ben-David for her honest, inspiring, and humorous Aliyah memoirs. The reader will follow her on her emotional roller coaster as she experiences the trials and the triumphs of establishing her family in her new home in Israel. Many will discover a modern Israel that they were unaware of and some might even follow in her footsteps… –Rabbi Yehoshua Fass, Founder & Executive Director of Nefesh B’Nefesh

Laura Ben-David, a gifted communicator, captures on paper the clarity and purpose that lead a family to uproot themselves from a very comfortable life in Boca Raton, Florida to move to a settlement town in Gush Etzion. Ben-David s book, called Moving Up An Aliyah Journal is a chronological collection of the emails that she sent to friends and family leading up to the move and throughout the first year. These dispatches were forwarded onward to thousands of readers many of whom were captivated enough by her family s journey to begin considering their own Aliyah. Moving Up is not a story about me, Ben-David writes in the very first words of the volume. It is a chronicle about Aliyah as seen through my eyes and written with my pen. Ben-David s book will put smiles on the faces of fellow olim (immigrants), as will her frank observations about Israeli life and descriptions of the moments that bring her back to the original decision to implement the dream. She describes shopping for the first time at Jerusalem s Malcha Shopping Mall. Because this mall is in Jerusalem, there happens to be a large percentage of obviously observant Jews. It s really a hard thing for me to explain, it was almost like being at a synagogue, or a special rally for a Jewish