Our Pilot Trip: Please Comment On The Communities That We Will Be Visiting

We are making our Pilot Trip in mid-January with the hopes of making Aliyah this summer, God willing.

A lot of work has been put into planning this trip and I am only half way done. So far, I have narrowed down the list of communities that we will be visiting.

I really, really would appreciate comments on this list. Although we are on the left of being charedish in the U.S., we are looking to move to a strong halacha-driven kippa surga community where most of the women cover their hair, where the kids go to seperate schools, and where there are seperate youth groups. We are also looking for a place that has somewhat affordable housing (i.e. half a million dollar housing is too exorbitant for us).

Our status quo, i.e. safe bet is Ramat Shilo. We believe that we could integrate there, be happy with the schools there, find strong Torani families.

However, we have many reservations. It is still pretty big place as one community that is part of the greater Ramat Beit Shemesh. Moreover, we know that our kids would never fully integrate as Israelis there and to fit into Israeli yeshivot with other Israeli children.

For that reason, we are also looking at several yishuvim to see if we could see ourselves making friends there and where we would feel comfrotable that there are at least a core of people with the same level of observance that we are comfortable with.

Here are the yishuvim that we are looking at:

Nof Ayalon
Talmon and Dolev
Kochav Hashachar
Kochav Yaakov
Neve Daniel
Yad Benyamin
Mitzpe Yericho

Again, please, please do comment to tell me about these different places. Thanks.

My next step is to contact people in these communties, set up times to visit them. I also need to find people who work in careers that maybe I could transition to.

2 weeks to pilot trip...the clock is running out. :)