Mar­lin and Bet­ty Levin made the jour­ney from Har­ris­burg, Penn­syl­va­nia in 1947 to help build the mod­ern Jew­ish State. We expe­ri­ence their amaz­ing con­tri­bu­tions, hard­ships, faith and cama­raderie while learn­ing about life in Jerusalem and about the Palestine/​Jerusalem Post. 

Next is Mike Gins­berg, born in 1950 Brook­lyn when the borough’s Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion was one mil­lion. After fam­i­ly mis­for­tune, Mike’s moth­er tem­porar­i­ly relo­cates to Israel and thus begins Mike’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion as an Israeli. He makes aliya as a teen, becomes an Israeli sol­dier and mem­ber of Kib­butz Mis­gav Am, in the most remote, north­east­ern cor­ner of the Upper Galilee, bor­der­ing Lebanon. The kib­butz mis­sion is to cul­ti­vate the land and defend the bor­der. We see Mike’s chal­lenges in trans­form­ing him­self into an Israeli and learn much about Amer­i­can and Israeli life in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. 

Last­ly, the Kalk­er fam­i­ly is fea­tured. They long for some­thing inex­plic­a­bly miss­ing from their con­tent­ed lives in Queens that can be found only in Israel. They relo­cate in 2001, a time when ter­ror­ism strikes often. I iden­ti­fy with the Kalk­ers’ back­ground and yearn­ing. I have watched neigh­bors make aliya and have mourned the mur­der of a friend on the Tun­nel Road as described by Liel Lei­bovitz. Why aliya? The answer is heart­felt as Dan­ny Kalk­er explains that Israel as a state and idea is the past and future of the Jew­ish peo­ple, but for him it is also the present. 

Despite my famil­iar­i­ty with the idea of aliya, I found the book Aliya to be thor­ough­ly engag­ing, enlight­en­ing, inspir­ing. I only wish a map of Israel had been included.