The internet brings people closer... but not close enough to hug.   Nefesh B’Nefesh helps families - both in Israel and abroad – bring their elder parents on Aliyah. Whether it’s two generations making Aliyah together or grandparents following in their children’s footsteps, retirees have unique Aliyah questions and concerns, NBN provides the necessary guidance and support throughout the Aliyah process, with rights & benefits, health care, housing options, financial planning and other concerns both for the retirees and for their children. 

For more information about retiring in Israel: www.nbn.org.il/retirees / This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Nefesh B’Nefesh takes great pride in congratulating Rabbi Dov Lipman as the first NBN Oleh to be elected to the Knesset!

Lipman, who made Aliyah with Nefesh B’Nefesh with his family from Silver Spring, Maryland to Beit Shemesh in 2004, has been very involved in local Beit Shemesh politics and has made a name for himself as a caring and outspoken activist. He will now be taking his activism to new heights as a member of Knesset and we wish him much success in this exciting and historic role.

(Photo: Lipman arriving on Aliyah with his family aboard a Nefesh B'Nefesh charter flight)

(The following is a first-hand account by one of the Nefesh B'Nefesh staff)

Sirens ring in the start of Shabbat in Israel– every week in fact. Living in Israel, you find Judaism and Jewish heritage infused into daily life here. Whether it’s the way approaching Jewish holidays find their way onto everything from food packaging to billboards; or how everyone who greets you on a Friday will say ‘Shabbat shalom;’ or how everywhere you go in Israel you find places that have been significant to our people from time immemorial. And if you live near one of the more religious cities you will benefit from an audio reminder that Shabbat is about to start in the form of a special siren. This week was no different until it was. Until there was another siren.

On October 16^th, 67 Olim boarded an Aliyah flight in JFK airport bound for Israel. There were people of all ages, including young, single professionals, couples, families and retirees. They came from all over the United States and have settled in cities all over Israel. 

Nefesh B’Nefesh celebrated its tenth anniversary this summer, marking a decade of helping over 33,000 North American and British Jews realize their Aliyah dreams. The milestone comes as we welcomed over 2,500 Olim arriving on two charter flights, seven group flights and individual flights this summer.

This summer Darren Kaplan, 21, and his younger brother Brett, 19, from Boca Raton, Florida, both made a life-changing move when they made Aliyah together and joined the IDF. The brothers, who arrived on a group Aliyah flight organized by Nefesh B’Nefesh in cooperation with the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, the Jewish Agency for Israel and Tzofim Garin Tzabar, plan to enlist together in the paratroop commandos.

June 25th and 26th saw the very first Nefesh B'Nefesh social–media powered 'tweetups' in New York City and Teaneck, NJ, which drew over 100 people. Entitled “Social Media: The Israel Connection”, the event was geared toward Israel-engaged Jews in the Tri-state area who are active in social media. The schedule included networking and targeted discussions focusing on utilizing social media as a bridge between Israel and the Diaspora, and allowed time for the excited participants to mingle with people they had only spoken to before online.

The highlight of the event was targeted mini-presentations by popular social media personalities, including Vice President for Public Policy and Director of the Washington Office of The Jewish Federations of North America William Daroff; Internet Entrepreneur Jeff Pulver; JTA journalist Adam Soclof; Editor of the popular travel website yeahthatskosher.com Dani Klein; and Co-founder of the Kosher Media Network Jamie Geller. Jamie dropped a bombshell at the event when she surprised the applauding audience by announcing publicly for the first time her plans to make Aliyah this summer.

The hugely successful event was livestreamed and livetweeted using the hashtag #nbntweetup which generated huge buzz, and opened up conversations about Israel among Diaspora Jews. The attendees were all thrilled to be there, happy to be engaged in some way in the Israel conversation, and delighted to have a way to be a part of the wider Nefesh B’Nefesh network even if they aren’t ready to make Aliyah themselves.

For those who still don’t quite understand what tweetup is, this tweet from the event explains:

“@kornbluhblog: What's the difference between Twitter and #NBNtweetup: A Smile..."

Enjoy this new song and music video, called Zion, with Olim Naftali Kalfa and Shlomo Katz. Click on the "cc" to follow the lyrics in English. 

The Cleveland Jewish a cappella group, Nefesh Yehudi, is back with a delightful new music video for Yom HaAtzmaut! 

On February 13^th, 43 people in Newark airport boarded an Aliyah flight bound for Israel. There were new Olim of all ages, including a large number of young, single professionals. They came from all over the United States and have settled in cities all over Israel. One family of six is part of the Nefesh B’Nefesh Go North program and plan to live in Karmiel. A number of grandparents were on board too, moving to Israel to join their children and grandchildren here.

On a cold and rainy Jerusalem night in January, over seventy MASA participants gathered at the NBN Jerusalem office for a seminar entitled “Explore Your Aliyah”.  Most of the participants were from North America, with a handful from European countries and even a few from Chile. All were spending significant time in Israel either studying or interning.  The bulk of the evening reviewed the government benefits of Aliyah, requirements of the IDF, and discussed employment and social networking strategies for a successful Aliyah.

Just in time for Chanukah, 76 new Olim from North America, including the first ever winter Garin Tzabar group, have landed in Israel as new Israeli citizens. The newcomers arrived at Ben Gurion Airport on December 20^th, on a Nefesh B’Nefesh group Aliyah flight organized in conjunction with the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption and the Jewish Agency.

2011 saw Aliyah from North America and the UK continue to remain strong with over 5,000 Olim – including 1,300 singles - arriving on our 2 chartered flights, 13 group flights and individual flights. By the end of this year, Nefesh B’Nefesh will have brought over 30,000 Olim since being founded in 2002.

Recognizing the vital need to help maintain awareness of Israel identity and Jewish peoplehood among the Diaspora communities, a wide array of organizations worked together with Nefesh B’Nefesh to produce and promote ‘Think Israel’ - a special summit to address future trends of Israel and Aliyah. Geared for Jewish students and young professionals, this day of interactive workshops, panels, and presentations took place at the UJA-Federation of New York in Manhattan in November.

Three months later, and we're still smiling.
It's been nearly three months since we first landed on Israeli soil with our three children and ten suitcases. Three months of joyous discovery, rich experiences, and endless wonder. From all the doubts, pain, and confusion of the pre-aliyah process has emerged an exuberant feeling of coming home. It wasn't easy to leave Cleveland. What would life in Israel be like? we wondered. How would our children adjust? Would the cultural differences be too much to bear?

Well, after all the planning and all the hard work we were finally on our way to our very first home in Israel, located in Modiin. For those who don’t know, it is very difficult getting around in Modiin without a car. Nevertheless, we had decided that for the first few weeks we would use cabs to get around and try and somehow manage before having to succumb to the costly option of renting a car.

The Middle East has been growing date palms for centuries. The average tree is about 18-20 feet tall and yields about 38 pounds of dates a year. Israeli date trees are now yielding 400 pounds/year and are short enough to be harvested from the ground or a short ladder. Israel the 100th smallest country, with less than 1/1000th of the world's population, can lay claim to the following:

One evening my husband, Lawrence, and I accompanied our daughter Lexi to a special party for the girls in their 6th grade class and their parents in honor of their Bat Mitzvah year. I had no idea what to expect, but I never expected what we got.

When Hanukkah begins Friday Marc Fischman will be lighting candles in a new home halfway across the world. No longer will he say, as do Jews in America, "Nes gadol haya sham" – A great miracle happened there. Rather, his last Hebrew word will be "po" – here. In Israel.

"We will be visiting the Kotel, the location of the Temple where one remaining wall, the Western Wall, is standing," he said, via e-mail, of his plans for the holiday. "This has specific historical significance for Hanukkah. The Temple was where the Eternal Light was lit (with oil enough for only one day) that lasted eight days. The Temple is the reason why we celebrate Hanukkah in the first place. "It will be very powerful for me to celebrate Hanukkah in such a holy place with so much historical significance."

My weekly phone call with my parents brought some sad news recently. “We’re going to have to move G.M. to a different nursing home,” my mother said to me of my 79-year-old grandmother. “They just don’t have the facilities to take care of someone with her level of dementia.”

I knew my grandmother had not been doing well lately, but this seemed like a serious escalation in her condition. The wonders of modern technology let me hear the sadness in my mother’s voice halfway across the globe, but I can feel the distance between us. My grandmother is fading away, and the only thing I can do is sit on my cell phone and listen as the Jerusalem bus makes its way past the walls of the Old City.

I used to ride the bus to Petach Tikvah to go to ulpan. One day I got to the ulpan and realized that I had left my siddur on the bus. It was my favorite English-Hebrew siddur and I knew it would cost about twice as much to replace it here, and I also didn't live around any stores that sold Judaica in English. I was feeling pretty down. On the way back home I told the driver (different one)about what had happened in the morning and I described the other driver to him. I was hoping that he could contact the driver from the morning to find out if someone had found my siddur, and if so  that I could pick it up at the Dan office at the bus station some other day.

Are they just words in our Passover Seder or do they mean so much more?  For thousands of years Jews longed for one thing the ability to return to Israel. Now this dream celebrates its 62nd year of being a reality.

Israel is our country which we as Jews should be so proud of. My roots were once stuck deeply in the land of America, with a house, car, and a good job.Then something happened that made me realize life is short and if you really want to live in Israel, it is something you will have to be willing to work for to make a reality. The following poem hopefully shows you though my eyes, ears, mouth, and heart what living in Israel is really about.

4 months on, I just want to say.. that living in Israel day to day is what I imagined and more.. I feel so blessed right to my core Everyday is a blessing that I am living my dream.. Its down to the man upstairs and Nefeshbnefesh you make a great team!! My life before was good but it was black and white I feel I have injected colour in my Life and it feels just right! So thanks NBN for all that you do for helping us along and making peoples dreams come true!! Deborah Ohayon Bet Shemesh July 05

This summer, I am getting married and then we are making Aliyah to Israel. Many Americans have thought that I must be crazy or a religious fanatic if I am willing to give up my comfortable life in America and move to a "war zone." They are wrong. I am making aliya for one reason only: Israel is home and, as Dorothy said in the Wizard of Oz, "there is no place like home." The fictional Dorothy is smarter than many American Jews who shrug off, or worse, actively campaign against aliya. We can not think that the idea of aliya is "unrealistic" or leave the task of aliya only to a small group of Orthodox Jews (and then, from the comfort of our homes in New York, Cleveland, Los Angeles, or Washington, complain about how the Jews who are living the Zionist reality of aliya are "not the best Jews capable of assisting Israel.")