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Pandemic Complicates Making Aliyah
L OCA L
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
ALEEZA BEN SHALOM
understands that this is going
to sound a little bit out there.

But there’s simply no way
around it: The pandemic, in
spite of all its horrors, helped
bring “a gift from God” to her
family. “If there was no pandemic,”
said Ben Shalom, “we wouldn’t
be making aliyah.”
Ben Shalom, 43, has felt
pulled toward the Holy Land
since she visited as a teenager.

In spite of some detours and
missed turns, she’ll finally arrive
in Pardes Hanna for good in
early February, where she and
her husband, along with three of
their children and their puppy,
will reunite with their two oldest,
sent as a sort of advance party.

Making aliyah during the
pandemic has some cosmetic
differences from the typical
journey. There’s no cheering
section to greet you when you
arrive at Ben-Gurion Airport,
and your first two weeks, if not
more, will be spent holed up in
your new home. But the end
result is the same.

For Ben Shalom, the United
States has become a sort of
desert — she no longer believes
it’s the right place for Jews. As
much as she’ll miss her family
and friends, she’s looking
forward to the end of her
wandering. “I want to go, and I want
to be there and I want our
children to be there, and I want
our grandchildren to be there,”
Ben Shalom said.

Nefesh B’Nefesh,
an organization that facilitates
immigration to Israel by North
Americans in conjunction with
The Jewish Agency for Israel,
Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael and
JNF-USA, said that Israel
could expect 90,000 olim by the
end of 2021, compared to just
35,463 in 2019, JTA reported in
June. Nefesh B’Nefesh received
more than 900 applications in
the first half of June alone.

Candice Nemoff is doing
remote, part-time
sales marketing in Netanya; she’d
worked at Congregation Rodeph
Shalom for the six years prior,
a locale with decidedly less
beach-front property. Nemoff,
29, had harbored dreams of
aliyah for a long time, and a
Jewish Federation of Greater
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8 NOVEMBER 26, 2020
Philadelphia partnership trip last
July finally convinced her that it
was where she wanted to be.

Though the
process remained “fairly straight-
forward,” Nemoff said, there
were complications to an
immigration journey that
began in February. It’s not
easy to coordinate registration
for language classes when the
country you’re attempting to
immigrate to is on lockdown.

When she finally did arrive
in September, subsequently
quarantining for two weeks,
Nemoff had one of her first
only-in-Israel experiences as a
resident: Her ability to obtain,
fill out and return some key
forms was hampered by office
closures for Rosh Hashanah.

“So basically, for the first
month, I couldn’t do anything,”
Nemoff said. When the clouds
of the pandemic finally break,
she’s looking forward to diving
headfirst into Netanya’s arts
community. Making aliyah was Deenah
Wasserman’s guiding light
through medical school and
residency, and through her
time as a doctor working at a
Camden, New Jersey, hospital.

Through thick and thin,
Wasserman, 29, kept her future
home in mind. She had August
set as her time to pack up and
go for years and, even when
March made it appear as if
August was going to be impos-
sible, she went “full speed
ahead” anyway, as she put it.

“I honestly didn’t really have
a backup plan,” she said with
a laugh. Wasserman arrived in
Israel on her own, dragging all
of her luggage around by herself,
but when she finally made it
to Ashdod, she was joining the
country that her brother’s family
had moved to last year.

As Wasserman under-
stands it, the difficulty of her
aliyah experience was simply
a metaphor for the purpose of
aliyah. The entire process, she
said, much like Israel, is not a
JEWISH EXPONENT
Candice Nemoff arrives at Ben-Gurion Airport.
Photo by Candice Nemoff
Aleeza Ben Shalom and Gershon Ben Shalom with their children, Dovid
Lev and Miriam. The children moved to Israel in advance of the rest of their
family. Photo by Aleeza Ben Shalom
fairytale, and she didn’t expect
it to be.

“But I think that if you’re
coming for the right reasons,” said
Wasserman, “and this is what you
want to do, that’s the way you
kind of get through all the annoy-
ances of everything else.”
Ben Shalom still has a lot
of loose ends to tie up before
she and her family make their
move in the spring. She’s a
matchmaker, and she’ll bring
that venture to their new home,
but her husband, Gershon Ben
Shalom, will sell his blinds and
draperies business. She’s also
got a home in Bala Cynwyd
to sell. But the plan she made
with her husband back when
they were dating — that they
would make aliyah one day —
is finally, truly happening.

“We have a new adventure
waiting for us,” she said. l
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
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