Bat Aliyah

I have an Aliyah/Geula Playlist on my iPod. These are the songs that inspire me and I often play these when I'm cooking for Shabbat (w...

For the past few months, I have had what I thought was a recurrent fungal infection on my right foot. It clears and then returns and I can...

We live in serious times. World-wide financial crises, frequent natural disasters which claim tens of thousands of lives, Islamic fun...

In shul on Yom Kippur, we read Sefer Yonah at mincha time. Much of the sefer is about Yonah's attempt to escape from the job that Gd a...

Ha’azinu is third in a series of four weekly Torah readings in which Moshe delivers his final “State of the Union” address. The first 43 v...

The lines have been drawn in the sand and the stakes are getting higher. There are two schools of thought here: #1 True, this is a financial...

Disclaimer: I might be wrong. My husband recently encouraged me to gather a group of women together with whom I could talk about aliyah, mo...

The fact is, I really can't move to Israel just now. If you know me, you probably already know the reason. If you don't know me, i...

When I gave birth (excuse this tangent so early in the post, but I've always loved that expression "giving birth") to my firs...

I consistently trade powerful words of Torah and chizuk with my spiritual sisters in Israel by email. Usually, we send each other inspiring...

I am obsessed with geula. I get like this. I've had many intellectual obsessions before, so I recognize the symptoms. I get an itch, a...

It's hit me. I'm back in galut a full week now, and a couple of days ago, the mourning period began. Once again, I'm grieving....

One way of understanding Jewish life is that the whole system, all the mitzvot, all the Torah, all the Jewish avenues for improving one’s ch...

Hashem put so many challenges in the way of my leaving Israel this time that it makes me wonder if He was purposefully distracting me so I w...

We went to a chad-pa'ami store, which basically sells upscale disposable tableware. The reason I wanted to go to this store was to sto...

Over Shabbat, I heard this story. It seems that, a few years ago, parents in a religious community in North America (not Baltimore, althoug...

Bumping into people we know from America while strolling around Jerusalem is kind of a common event around here, so it's no big surprise...

We just arrived in Israel yesterday morning, after 24-hours of relatively stress-free travel, thank Gd. On the plane, I realized that I was...

Tamar Weissman and Chanina Rosenbaum from Baltimore made this film as a gift to Noah and Risa Lasson, who are making aliyah next week. It...

Last week, I had a lengthy interview in a very, very non-Jewish environment. The position for which I was interviewing is an excellent one,...

The Baltimore Chug Aliyah and the Israel Aliyah center sponsored a talk by Yishai Fleisher in Baltimore last night. It's a shame you w...

This week, we read Numbers 19:1-22:1, known as Parshat Chukat . Torah portions almost always take their names from the first important wor...

For quite a long time now, I have had the great privilege of working for the Jewish community. Officially. With a business card, a name ta...

I know I haven't written in more than a month, but that doesn't mean that I am not thinking Israel thoughts all the time. For now, ...

JTA recently published an article about opposition to the prayer for the State of Israel among certain Jews in the United States. Althoug...

Bibliotherapy. It describes something I have been doing intuitively most of my adult life. In the psychotherapeutic literature, biblioth...

Without a doubt, the opening of Hillel to non-Jews is one of the saddest commentaries on Jewish life in America. Hillel: The Foundation fo...

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...