Believe it or not, it was almost like the first flight. I get so excited for every flight and I’ve been on most of them. Like I said at JFK before we took off, the only thing really changing is the people, who all have their dreams, aspirations and reasons for making Aliyah. And you never know when they get to Israel – how their lives will impact the Jewish state and what they will accomplish.

I always wanted to move to Israel. My wife and I, when we were dating and I was about to start medical school, had a 10- year aliyah plan. But then I shifted and decided to go into the rabbinate and fell in love with teaching and said goodbye to medical school. I eventually made my way to Boca Raton, where Tony lived, and I served as associate rabbi there for six years.

In the beginning of the Second Intifada, my cousin who had just had his bar mitzvah was killed by a Hamas suicide bomber, and it just made me pause and calibrate my compass. I was about to sign a multi-year contract, and this was really a wake-up call. I said to my wife that we have to get back on our track and bring some light to that tragedy. I started sharing this with other people, and the common refrain I heard from them was: “We also want to make aliyah, but…,” and they listed a bunch of obstacles. I started doing a little research with The Jewish Agency to see why people weren’t moving to Israel.

I saw that maybe there could be a solution to lift these barriers, to at least allow those who wanted to move, to make aliyah. If you want to contribute to the State of Israel, why should you feel that there are challenges that are holding you back? And then I said I need a partner; I can’t do this alone.

I had this incredible congregant in my synagogue who is both very networked within Israel, who is a philanthropist in his own right, and a person I respect. I asked Tony if I could come by and pick his brain.

I remember thinking how brilliant Rabbi Fass is – I saw him in the shul and he was like a magnet. People are attracted to him, the way he spoke, how he dealt with his congregants. I wanted to learn with him. So when I got a knock on my door and saw him, I thought: This is good! What are we going to do? He said, “Let’s go for a walk.” We have a lake near our home, and he explained his idea to me. I went back to my house and spoke to Judy, my wife, and she said, “For sure, do what you can do!”

So I came back to Rabbi Fass and said there were two conditions: that we run it like a business, but with a heart. There actually was a third one – we don’t work 100%, we work 200%. We took off two weeks and flew to Israel.

We said, before we design a plan for moving ahead with North American aliyah, we need to see if there’s receptivity on the side of Israel. We spoke with multiple sources, from the Jewish Agency, to the chief rabbi, the president and former prime ministers – Peres, Sharon, and Netanyahu…

And they were all on board. But from the first moment, we kept on hearing two things: it’s an amazing idea, but you’re crazy; or, it’s a great idea but it’s not going to work – which propelled us to want to do it even more!

I remember sitting in the King David Hotel. It was dark and cold, and a good friend of mine – high up in the military, who contributed a great deal to the State of Israel – looked me in the eyes and said, “This is crazy!” Sharon said the same thing, and so did almost everyone else, and I thought to myself, “Maybe we are crazy, but crazy is good some times.” There’s a very fine line between crazy and smart. But if you succeed, it will be the best thing you’ve ever done in your life.

Think about it: we were saying, ‘let’s take American and Canadian Jews and help them go to Israel. They’re going to live their dream and also bring their culture to the Middle East.’ In the beginning, I can assure you, we received no help from any existing institutions, no one.

The mission statement of the organization has evolved. It used to be very specific: facilitating Aliyah. If we were able to move a family from Cherry Hill, New Jersey, to a thriving life in Israel, we were successful. And then it shifted into national projects: how do we get that family or individual to fulfill a need of the nation, whether that be building the periphery or filling a medical shortage, while tending to their own needs.

Then we shifted recently not only to facilitate but to educate, advocate and celebrate – and they all network with one another to either increase Aliyah or increase the thriving elements of people to stay here and contribute more, but also raising modern-day Zionism to a different platform. Making sure that people are educated about what is really happening here in Israel, and the real relationship between Israel and the Diaspora; celebrate the accomplishments of Israel and the immigration body so that other people can also be enamoured by what’s happening here, and advocate for long-term solutions.

There is a need to create a holistic approach for the future and ask what is immigration going to look like 20 years from now, or what are the issues we’re going to face 10 years from now. There are millions of Jews in the Diaspora. How do we feel and feed the future?

This also involves tackling major issues, like the housing issue here in Israel. Housing is challenging, and we must be able to provide a future residence to the next generation that is affordable and allows them to achieve their goals, you are stunting growth, for those who are living here and for those who want to move to the country. We’re taking 20 years of aggregated data, partnership and know-how, and asking how we address long-term goals.

People laughed at us 20 years ago, but today we’re not scared to tackle major issues that require major funding – and I think we can meet those challenges. One thing we’ve discovered is that things are much more doable than perceived. People want to do good, and if you give them the tools, we can create solutions. But you can’t do it alone, and you have to leverage partners and have the sense of humility to know that you can’t do everything alone. That’s a recipe for success. If we can do that, it will be a blessing to us and to the Jewish people, we hope.