December 23, 2009

Rabbi Leah Kroll had been dreaming about living in Israel since she was a teenager at a Jewish summer camp in California, and when she turned 55 she said goodbye to her mother, three adult children and one grandchild, boarded an El Al plane and made aliyah.

The Los Angeles native comes from a long line of Zionists, but it was the little emotional tugs that spurred her decision.

“Every time I visited Israel and landed at Ben-Gurion Airport, I would stand in the Foreign Visitors line and look with envy at the people standing in the Israeli Citizens line,” she recalled 15 months ago, sitting in her spacious Sherman Oaks home, crammed with cartons and suitcases for the big move.

“In Israel, I felt my soul nourished,” she told an interviewer. “I felt nourished when I went to the supermarket on Thursday and complete strangers greeted me with ‘Shabbat Shalom,’ and when cab drivers wished me ‘Chag Sameach.’”

She had a less elated emotion when she was in Israel in 2006, at the outbreak of the second Lebanon War, and saw American tourists scurrying to the airport to get out of the country.

“I was embarrassed as an American,” she said. “We always talk a big game; we proclaim that we are one, but when the chips were down….”

Then, Kroll again had a more uplifting experience, two years ago. “I went to Mount Nebo and saw for myself how close Moses had come to entering the Holy Land. He never did it, but I could. There was nothing to stop me from settling in Israel except my own fears, and I decided I didn’t want to get to the end of my life and have missed the chance.”

Kroll was among the first group of women rabbis ordained by the Reform movement, and for 26 years she served as pulpit rabbi, rabbinical director of the middle school at Milken Community High School and supervisor of social action and community service programs at Stephen S. Wise Temple.

In August 2008, she joined 240 other North American olim, or new immigrants, on an El Al flight chartered by Nefesh B’ Nefesh (Soul to Soul), arriving to an emotional welcoming ceremony in Israel.

NBN was founded in 2002 specifically to revitalize aliyah from the United States, Canada and Great Britain by easing financial, professional, social and logistical obstacles to immigration and integration into Israeli society.

Over the last seven years, NBN processed 23,000 new immigrants, including 180 households, totaling some 900 adults and children from the Los Angeles area. NBN claims that a remarkably high 98 percent of the newcomers settle down and stay in Israel.

Kroll came to settle in Israel with considerable advantages. She spoke Hebrew fluently, enjoyed a reputation as a first-class educator and had a position lined up teaching at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. She planned to remodel a newly bought house in the nation’s capital.

She figured she would break about even selling her 2,500-square-foot, five-bedroom house in the San Fernando Valley and buying a 1,000-square-foot house in Jerusalem. The big attraction was that the new house had a backyard, where her two Boston terriers, Samson and Delilah — who had not been consulted about making aliyah — could romp freely.

Yet with all of NBN’s help, which included two months of free Internet access and two months of free use of her current American landline for calls back to Los Angeles, plus her own skills, Kroll was realistic enough to know that her new life wouldn’t be all hugs and spiritual highs.

“Things have changed a lot in Israel over the last few decades. There is much less pushiness and rudeness, but the bureaucracy can still be infuriating, and business still has a lot to learn about customer service,” she said.

But Kroll was upbeat, resilient and, above all, self-confident. “I am amazingly resourceful. I have a great sense of humor, and I’m not naive and starry-eyed,” she said.

Like any big move, only more so, the mechanics of making aliyah are at times overwhelming, with hundreds of details and constant decisions on what to take and what to leave behind.

The toughest part for Kroll was breaking the news of her move to her close-knit family of two sons, a daughter, a grandchild, mother, brother and nephews. After initial attempts to change Kroll’s mind, the family rallied around, including her former husband, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion professor Michael Zeldin.

What else would she miss most?

“My house, where I raised my family, celebrated Sukkot and had hundreds of Shabbatons with my students,” Kroll said, choking up.

“I’ll miss coming over the rise of the 405 Freeway and suddenly seeing the San Fernando Valley spread out in front of me,” she said.

But enough of nostalgia. “Just think,” she said, “in two days I’ll be at Ben-Gurion Airport and I’ll stand in the line marked Israeli Citizens.”

A few weeks ago, in early December, I phoned Kroll in Jerusalem to check on her aliyah experience 16 months after she left Los Angeles.

Kroll had visited Israel dozens of times over the preceding 40 years, but she learned quickly that there was no comparison at all between coming as a tourist and living as a permanent resident.

As a new citizen, she shares in the emotional bond binding Israelis and the sense of living in a completely Jewish environment, realizations found frequently in small, mundane happenings.

“I was watching television, and it suddenly struck me that all the commercials for buying cars or clothes were tied in to Rosh Hashanah or Chanukah, with nary a mention of Thanksgiving or Christmas,” she said. “When that sunk in, I realized that I was crying.”

She was affected even more profoundly last September, when Asaf Ramon crashed and died in the Israeli Air Force jet he was piloting. Asaf was the son of Israel’s first astronaut, Ilan Ramon, who was killed six years earlier when the space shuttle Columbia exploded.

“For days, people talked about nothing else,” Kroll remembered. “It was as if every family had lost a son.”

Kroll finds satisfaction in her job leading four graduate courses at the Hartman Institute. Her students are Americans and Canadians who have committed themselves to teach for at least two years in Jewish day schools in their home countries.

She is elated at studying Hebrew literature two days a week.

Kroll has enthusiastic praise for the Nefesh B’Nefesh program, which not only assisted in all the preparatory steps for aliyah, but also has continued to work with her in settling in.

“The NBN people are the best in the world,” she said. “I have a social worker, who previously made aliyah, assigned to me, who has been a life saver, and there are social events and seminars on health care, taxes and so forth.”

As an unexpected bonus, she has shed 60 pounds in the last year, which she credits to a simple change in lifestyle. “In Los Angeles, I used to drive everywhere. Here I walk all the time, I shlep my groceries from the market, I walk to work and synagogue and to visit friends,” she said.

Such a slimming program could be a great selling point in America for making aliyah, Kroll observed jokingly.

Yet, with all such positives, Kroll’s adjustment has been far from easy.

“Basically, I don’t know the culture, the ins and outs, the way things are done,” she said. “To use the haggadah allegory of the four sons, I have been transformed from the wise, competent son in the States to the simple, blundering son in Israel.”

Take a simple problem like a clogged kitchen sink. “In Los Angeles, I would know exactly what to do or whom to call, but here I wouldn’t know where to start.”

There are other daily adjustments and annoyances in grasping the Israeli way of life. “People will say that they’ll call back, but they don’t; business hours at banks and post offices are erratic, and the bureaucracy is still maddening,” she said.

“Life in Israel has never been easy, not even for the native-born, but much more so if you come from a place where the life was relatively easy.”

Kroll also has been surprised at how hard it is to make new friends, especially for a single, 56-year-old woman. “Most Israelis my age have their own established networks, and it’s hard for a newcomer to break in,” she said.

According to NBN, 63 percent of its olim are between 18-35 years old, 15 percent between 35-45, 17 percent between 45-65, and 6 percent over 65.

She acknowledges that making new friends is much less of a problem for young immigrants and that moving from one society to another will always present difficulties.

Another unpleasant surprise has been the extent of corruption in the government and violence in society. “I guess David Ben-Gurion has gotten his wish that Israel might become a ‘normal’ state, like any other country,” she said.

Kroll is buoyed by keeping in close, constant touch with her extended family by e-mail, Skype, frequent visits to Los Angeles and by retaining her old Sherman Oaks phone number for quick calls at all hours.

“After all,” she observed, “you’re a mother no matter where you are.”

On balance, and after giving the matter some thought, Kroll said, she now feels that her home is both in 230-year-old Los Angeles and Jerusalem with its 3,000-year history.

And, she added, “I am very proud to be an Israeli citizen.”