Making Aliyah in a Time of Crisis

“You do know what’s going on here, right?” ?את יודעת מה קורה פה, נכון

That’s the typical response I receive when I meet other Israelis and tell them I made aliyah just three months ago in early June. And I can understand that my choice to claim my Israeli citizenship now, in the face of a 20 percent drop in the number of olim in the first half of 2023 and a recent poll showing 28 percent of Israelis are considering moving abroad, is certainly an unpopular, if not a downright confusing decision. 

When I initially imagined making aliyah, I pictured a scene from my upbringing at an American conservative Jewish day school: Israeli flags flying everywhere cultivating a palpable sense of tziyonut, everyone dressed in blue and white, perhaps breaking out into a group rendition of Hatikva upon landing. At least, that’s the picturesque scene advertised on the Nefesh B’Nefesh website. The organization touts endless photos of bright and smiling young Jewish Americans like myself waving Israeli flags above their heads, dressed in matching t-shirts as they disembark from the plane. 

But after last November’s election, I realized the context of my aliyah experience was going to be anything but typical. The overt sense of zionist pride inherent to the aliyah process felt conspicuously absent as the whole world kept a close eye on its latest backsliding democracy. Now I don’t want to speak for the six other olim on my flight, but for me, a quieter aliyah felt appropriate. No longer was I finally “making it to the promised land,” or “being spiritually elevated” as the loose translation of the word aliyah indicates. And unlike many of the millions of olim before me, I wasn’t escaping the inexorable jaws of antisemitism or an oppressive regime. 

Instead, I made aliyah hoping to actively resist the world’s latest rendition of racist, power-hungry authoritarianism and lend legitimacy to the seldom discussed concept of progressive Zionism– a term I use to refer to my belief in a truly democratic Jewish state alongside an independent Palestinian state. It’s the notion that you can be Jewish and feel at home in Israel and take an active stance against the occupation, settlement expansion, and just about everything else that the current governing coalition stands for. 

I am in no way claiming that I, a 24-year-old whose favorite pastimes include reading books and going to pilates, have arrived to save Israel (a country known for its miraculous survival capabilities) from itself. That would require a level of arrogance unbeknownst to my relentless imposter syndrome. I just couldn’t continue as a bystander, watching and criticizing from afar as my generation, the first to grow up without ever experiencing the hope of Oslo, gives up on Israel and accepts its fateful descent into a dictatorship. My aliyah was my own form of rebellion against the idea that the occupation is forever and the judicial overhaul is just the latest step in that direction. Because I refuse to live here and not join my fellow Israelis standing in resistance. 

But I want to be clear- my decision to make aliyah was an incredibly difficult choice to make. Saying goodbye to my family, diving headfirst into the unknown, and moving thousands of miles away from a community I loved, to say nothing of leaving behind both Target and Trader Joe’s, just to move to a country that may not even exist in a way I can stomach in just a few years? It was the hardest thing I have ever done, made only possible by my sheer faith, or perhaps naive delusion, in the divine stories of tzedek and tikun olam I was told the Jewish people possessed. 

So to answer the original question– yes, I do know what’s going on here. And I’m also really scared. But I’ve stood among tens of thousands of other Israelis demanding change, I’ve witnessed activists physically lay their bodies on the line in the name of democracy and an end to the occupation that screams to be seen yet continues ignored, and I’ve shown up alongside my colleagues who return each morning to fight another day, knowing the odds are incomprehensibly stacked against them. 

Despite my fears I feel honored to have the opportunity to fight for the Israel I believe in as an Israeli. It is a privilege I do not take for granted and will wear proudly when my time comes to vote as an Israeli citizen for the very first time.