Bat Aliyah

There’s a certain corner in Jerusalem that startles me every time we drive by. At that corner, there are always Arab women, walking with t...

When we first started researching the possibility of buying an apartment in Israel years before we could make aliyah and actually live there...

My mother lives five states away, but I know she thinks about me every time she reads her local Jewish newspaper. Every now and then, she ...

All my life, I have been a quintessentially non-political person. I don’t subscribe to newspapers and I don’t watch TV news. Since the I...

I really can’t understand world opinion. Here’s an example. A little-known Islamist group abducts Alan Johnston, the BBC's Gaza corr...

It was only when Israel started looking to me like a legitimate option that I began to notice the myriad may ways I have to compromise to li...

I just got off the phone with my brother, who has the great merit of living in Israel. He recently moved to an apartment from the porch of...

Thanks to Andrea F. for helping me find the exact Gordis quote: "For after all, if there's a place in this world that can ...

In his most recent dispatch, Daniel Gordis writes about the lack of flags in his Jerusalem neighborhood, relative to previous year’s celebr...

Pesach in America in 5767: Two sederim, two days of Yom Tov, one regular day of Chol haMoed, erev Shabbos, Shabbos, erev Yom Tov and two mor...

Many years ago, disheartened at the overwhelmingly masculine face of the Haggadah, I went on a search for commentaries that would reveal som...

Two weeks ago, a friend showed me a magazine article she thought, correctly so, that I might appreciate. The first mentioned a new spin on t...

When I was growing up, I called religious people “bible-thumpers”. Of course, I was always referring to Christians, because I didn’t know a...

Sometime in the summer of 2005, I got a brainstorm. I decided that I wanted a two-faced watch so I could always know what time it is in Isra...

On its website right now, the Orthodox Union has the results of a recent poll. The question was, “Have you thought seriously about making al...

A few nights ago, my husband and I went to hear Gail Rosen , a local storyteller, tell the story of Hilda Stern Cohen , a Holocaust survivor...

Gd forbid that I leave the impression that I despise America or am ungrateful for its many kindnesses to my family. America has been a have...

The real test of the impact of my time in Israel is how I feel several weeks later, when I have re-embedded myself into the rest of my life....

I consistently get weepy on the last few days of any trip to Israel. Here are the things that made me cry this time: The day before we left,...

In Baltimore, where my family lives most of the year when we’re not in Israel, there is a main road named Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. N...

I saw a man kiss a mezuzah today. Okay, he was a Jew, albeit without a kippa , tzitzis or any outward sign of religious devotion. The mezu...

Last week, a friend asked me an intriguing question. Given that there are so may things I love about Israel, would I be as interested in mak...

Some years ago, my husband and I spent a Shabbat in Elazar with a Tehilla Pilot Trip . Since we were nearby in one of the Gush Etzion yeshuv...

In my dream, there are six or eight men who have all trained people to float in the air. Many observers are skeptical, even when they see t...

" It's 1938 and Iran is Germany." - Benjamin Netanyahu It seems that everywhere I turn lately, Jewish writers and thinkers who...

I am addicted to Israel. A blessing that is also a curse. I can’t stop obsessing about the place. I am constantly reading an endless strea...

Musing about this film , in that liminal state between being fully asleep and fully awake, it occurred to me that Borat's name is a conj...

In August, 2005, the Israeli government destroyed 21 Jewish communities in the Gaza region and in the Northern Shomron and expelled 1800 fam...

It’s been raining in Baltimore for the past week or so. On Thursday, I came home from work and gathered up all the bags and cups from my car...

In the robust Jewish community where I live, there have been two Tehillim rallies and one Rally for Israel since the start of this war. The...

Erev Shabbat, we received a number of phone calls and emails from friends and family in America. And they all asked us a version of the same...

It’s a couple of hours before Shabbat and I’m more upset than ever. Daniel Gordis just posted one of his famous dispatches where he argues ...

We’re scheduled to leave Israel in a few days. Except for the fact that our children are in America, I’d much prefer to stay here while our...

I want to relate two divergent incidents that happened to us in Jerusalem in the last 24 hours, during this war that has no name. My husband...

For the past few weeks, I’ve been collecting my thoughts in order to write about why Israel is such a magical place. I was trying to captur...

This week, during a visit to Israel, my husband and I drove to the section of Jerusalem called Talpiot, where there are a lot of furniture s...

I always cry when I leave Israel. I left Israel today, unspeakably sad, sobbing in the apartment and then in the monit halfway to the airpo...

Our family is back in the Holy Land, touring and visiting friends. What really struck me today was an off-hand comment by our dati tour gui...

On January 16, 2006, we had the very great honor of hosting Anita and Stuart Tucker at Moses Montefiore-Anshe Emunah . The following account...

We could have bought an apartment anywhere in Israel . Literally. We are still living in America most of the year and wanted to buy a small ...