Rabbi Leah Kroll
Rabbi Leah Kroll has been dreaming about living in Israel since she was
a teenager at a Jewish summer camp in California, and now at 55, she
has said goodbye to her mother, three adult children and one
grandchild, boarded an El Al jet and made aliyah.
The Los Angeles native comes from a long line of Zionists, but it was the little emotional tugs that helped make up her mind.
"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 citizen line," she recalled, sitting in her
spacious Sherman Oaks home crammed with cartons and suitcases just
before her departure.
"In Israel, I feel my soul nourished," she said. "I feel nourished when
I go to the supermarket on Thursday and complete strangers greet me
with, 'Shabbat shalom,' and when cab drivers wish me, 'chag sameach.'"
She had a less-elated feeling when she spent time in Israel 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 Jew," she said. "We always talk a big
game; we proclaim that we are one, but now when the chips were down...."
Kroll had a different experience last year.
"I went to Mount Nebo and saw for myself how close Moses had come to
entering the Holy Land," she said. "He never made it, but I could.
There was nothing to stop me from settling down in Israel except my own
fears, and I decided I didn't want get to the end of my life and have
missed the chance."
Kroll was in the first group of women rabbis ordained by the Reform
movement, and, for the past 26 years, she has 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 mid-August, 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 welcome in Israel.
Nefesh B' Nefesh (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 to integration into Israeli society.
During the last six years, NBN has welcomed 15,000 new immigrants,
including 300 from Los Angeles, with 2,000 more expected by the end of
this summer, among them 50 Angelenos.
Kroll settles in Israel with considerable advantages. She speaks Hebrew
fluently, enjoys a reputation as a first-class educator, will teach
pedagogy and design school curricula at the Shalom Hartman Institute in
Jerusalem and is remodeling a newly bought house in the German Colony
quarter of the nation's capital.
She is just about breaking 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 is that the
new house has a backyard, where her two Boston terriers, Samson and
Delilah -- who have not been consulted about making aliyah -- can romp.
Yet even with all the outside help, which includes 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
realizes that her new life won't be all joyous 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 the country still has a lot to learn about customer
service," she said.
But Kroll remained upbeat and resilient.
"I am amazingly resourceful. I have a great sense of humor, and I'm not naïve and starry-eyed," she said.
Like any big move, only more so, the details of making aliyah have been
overwhelming, with numerous details and constant decisions on what to
take and what to leave behind.
The toughest part was breaking her decision to her closely knit family
of a daughter, two sons, grandchild, mother, brother and nephews. After
their initial attempts to change Kroll's mind, the family rallied
around, including her former husband, professor Michael Zeldin.
What else will 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 on the 405 Freeway and suddenly seeing
the San Fernando Valley spread out in front of me," she said.
Then Kroll cheered up,
"Just think," she said, "in two days I'll be at Ben-Gurion Airport, and I'll stand in the line marked 'Israeli citizens.'"
