Bat Aliyah

Months, years even, of thousands of rockets fired into Sderot. I visit to see what it’s like to live with that strain on a regular basis. ...

When we were in Israel this past visit, we went to visit Beit El , a religious settlement north of Jerusalem. Beit El also happens to be t...

My new pet project: promoting English language books that teach about the relationship between aliyah and bringing geula. I...

While shopping for food for Shabbat at the mall in Ma’ale Adumim last week, I saw an unmistakable cross-shaped tattoo on the forehead of an ...

DATELINE: Ma’ale Adumim When Yosef was languishing in prison in Egypt, he began to interpret dreams. In the process of interpreting a d...

One of my favorite things to do in Israel is to listen to tales of people’s Jewish journeys. So many people with amazing Jewish stories en...

About five years ago, I stumbled upon a new avenue of Jewish information that blew me away. It’s called Facilitated Communication and, at...

Here’s how it feels to be me. There’s an underlying disquiet that never really leaves me. I am, at all times, waiting for the other ...

In my last post, I inadvertently left out an important aspect of the process. There is a back door to avoiding, or at least diminishing, the...

Is the decision of whether to live in Jersey or Jerusalem, Baltimore or Beit Shemesh, Monsey or Modi’in one of personal choice? After all,...

I'm a little behind in my reading of The International Jerusalem Post . So it's an interesting confluence that today, after I just ...

Motzei Shabbos, we were driving around running errands while I talked to my endlessly patient husband about how, as observant American Jews,...

This past Friday night, we had wonderful Shabbos guests – smart, committed, articulate Jewish friends who appear to welcome engaging in disc...

I know it sounds like I'm ranting sometimes. My new rabbinic hero, Rabbi Eliyahu Kitov, says, "I am well aware that he who touches...

First published in 1957, nearly a decade after the creation of the modern State of Israel , Ish U’Beiso , officially translated as The Jew a...

Last night, I went to a Tehillim rally much like the one held here in August of 2006. This time, the rally was billed as a Community Wide ...

Last night, I stayed up until 5:00 AM learning a commentary on the teachings of HaRav Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook . Okay, some of it w...

There are lots of people, I suppose, who are living one way in their heads while their bodies are in another place altogether. Those with ...

So now we’ve been back from Israel for two weeks. Everyone asks, “How was it?” or “Did you have a nice time?” I haven’t a clue how ...

Every time I refer to Jewish observance in America as ersatz, someone takes issue with it. So let me explain further. I don’t mean to...

Many years ago, fresh out of graduate school, I was offered a job at an historically black university . Working at an historically black i...

Yesterday, I had an experience that made me feel like I am actually living in Israel. Our daughter and her friend traveled with us from ...

We are 12 days into a three-week visit to the Holy Land. Each time we come, I tend to notice a theme in the messages that make their way i...

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...