Appreciating Aliyah

The following is an inspirational article about what a woman's aliyah experience after 20 years living in Eretz Yisrael:

Every morning, when the radio alarm wakes me up with the Shema and a chapter of Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers), I know why I made aliyah.

The week before Pesach, as I watch the garbage collectors emptying garbage containers many times to completely clear the area of every bit of chametz – and then distributing special containers in which to burn our chametz, I count my blessings that I live here in the Jewish state.

Baltimore Pilot Trip to Israel Over Thanksgiving

This is a recent post from the aforementioned Chug Aliyah:

The Baltimore Chug Aliyah is currently planning a pilot trip from Baltimore for people who need more information about what making aliyah involves. The tentative dates are Nov 22-27, 2009, which includes Thanksgiving. The tentative price is $750-800 per person plus airfare. This includes the entire land package (hotels, most meals, lectures on different aspects of life in Israel, including mortgages, health care and education plus tours of 12-18 communities under the personal guidance of Ronda Israel and Ilene Bloch-Levy). Airfare will be priced separately after we have a solid group.

We have already identified four couples as potential participants. We need at least 10 people to make this trip happen and, because the timing is tight, we need to move quickly. We are planning an organizing meeting right after Sukkot. It is not necessary to commit to the trip to attend the meeting, but we do need to know if it's something you want to be invited to.

Please let me know if you are a potential Baltimore-based pilot trip participant by emailing me ASAP at rivkah30@gmail.com.

thanks and Shana Tova,
Rivkah Lambert Adler

Email List Serve Supporting Religious Aliyah in Baltimore

To follow-up on my previous post, I stumbled across a list serve for Baltimoreans wanting to make aliyah.

The list-serve's webpage is: Baltimore Chug Aliyah and you can join the group by clicking the link and following the directions. The cool part of it is a great to meet other people interested in making aliyah in Baltimore and you can ask questions to other people in the group by sending an email to everyone.

Here is the group's official description:

Baltimore's Chug Aliyah is a loose association of like-minded people considering aliyah in the long term (sometime before Moshiach comes) or already planning for aliyah from Baltimore. This is the electronic version of the Baltimore Chug Aliyah that meets in person. Any Jew from Baltimore with an interest in aliyah, no matter how tentative, is welcome to attend meetings and participate in this online group.

Please introduce yourself to the group after you've subscribed.

This online group provides a way for members of the Baltimore Chug Aliyah group to talk to each other between meetings, to ask questions of one another, to share articles and websites about topics related to making aliyah and to get chizuk (strength) from one another.

Baltimore Chug Aliyah list is actively moderated. This means posts are screened before they are posted. Please be patient, as messages may not appear for a few hours.

Should We Be Encouraging Mass Aliyah?

Ever since I first started to learn "Eim Habanim Semeicha" by Rav Teichtal, one question started to fester inside me: "Why don't our Rabbis in Chutz L'aretz stand up and demand that we all make aliyah?" If most poskim agree that yishuv l'aretz is a mitzva d'oritta, and seforim extol the great kedusha that is present in Eretz Yisroel, then shouldn't we all be picking up and leaving? Yet even a Young Israel rabbi will at the most only talk about how important it is to support Israel (they might even say a "mi sheberach" for Israeli soldiers) but they don't stand on the bima and yell: "Jews, its time for us ALL to move!"

So when I have a question and the answer actually matters to me, I call Israel and speak to Rabbi Zev Leff, Mora D'asra of Moshav Matisyahu. He is one Rabbi whose opinion I always respect and who I believe will give me a truthful, non-political answer.

Rabbi Leff said that it is appropriate that Rabbis do not encourage mass aliyah and that there can only be such an aliyah after moshiach comes. He stressed that since making aliyah is intrinsically an individualistic decision because ever Jew has different circumstances, different family dynamics, different sensitivities, etc, that it could never be appropriate, until the days of moshiach, for every single Jew to live in Israel.

However, he did encourage me to make aliyah (fyi - Rabbi Leff is the editor of To Dwell in The Palace (Perspectives of Eretz Yisroel, published first in 1991 through Feldheim). He said if I feel a pull to come move to Israel, that is a positive feeling. And in order to keep that feeling going, I should surround myself with friends who share my love of Eretz Yisroel and who might also be considering aliyah so that we can be mizchazek each other. He added though that a desire to live in Israel should be part of a greater yearning to live a life of greater kedusha and a desire to be closer to Hakadosh Baruch Hu.

Madonna In Israel

Um....let me just say that its interesting to me that a pop singer singing in Israel can be such a stir in a small country like Israel. Her presence made front page news on every newspaper and was talked about nonstop on Israeli TV (I was some Israeli TV to practice my Hebrew using the Internet). Here is some of what was mentioned in the media last week about Madonna being in Israel: