Ezra and Devorah Starr, along with their children, arrive in Israel on an El Al flight chartered for new immigrants.

One decided to forgo further study at West Point to serve in the Israel Defense Forces. A second served in the IDF -- including a couple of weeks in Gaza during last year's war -- before making aliyah. A third, the son of an area rabbi, has his eyes set on becoming an Israeli lawmaker.

Finally, there is a young husband and wife, educators, who want to use their teaching skills to help enlighten youngsters in their new homeland.

Those are four of the individuals and families from the Washington, D.C., area who are making aliyah this summer, helped by Nefesh B'Nefesh, a nonprofit that assists North American and British Jews immigrating to Israel.

By the end of July, 98 Washington-area residents had made new lives in the Jewish state this year, and another 160 are expected to make aliyah during the rest of the summer, according to Neil Gillman, who finished his three-year tenure as director of the Jewish Agency for Israel's local Israel Aliyah and Program Center this month.

Tsvi Mark, 20, spent last year as a student at West Point. The Silver Spring resident, a former student at the Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy, says he decided in his senior year to attend either the Army service academy or its Navy equivalent at Annapolis. (His father had been a career U.S. Air Force officer, retiring as a lieutenant colonel.)

However, he decided to spend a year in Israel before entering college and spent 2007-08 in a mechina (religious military preparation) program on Moshav Avne Etan, a cooperative agricultural community in the Golan Heights. While there, he "began to think of the IDF as an option," Mark says.

He talked it over with his parents, he says, and "the first conversation was not great."

They wanted him to attend West Point, where he had been accepted. After much soul searching, Mark decided to give it a try.

Last summer, he completed basic training and then began the first semester in the fall.

"I really liked the place," says Mark, who belonged to the Southeast Hebrew Congregation-Knesset Yehoshua in Silver Spring, "but religiously it was almost impossible."

One of two Orthodox Jewish cadets at West Point at the time, Mark says that finding time to daven "was a challenge" and kosher food was unavailable, leaving him with a diet primarily of tuna, peanut butter, fruit and vegetables.

At the end of the first semester, he decided that he would finish the second semester ("I didn't want to drop out halfway through the year," says Mark, who was on the dean's list both semesters), but would not continue at the academy beyond that.

"During the second semester, I decided that if I was not at West Point, I wanted to be in Israel," says Mark, who took the Aug. 3 NBN flight. Like others interviewed, Mark praised NBN -- which assists new immigrants to Israel from North American and Great Britain with paperwork, offers grants, serves as a liaison with government agencies once they arrive and provides career counseling -- for easing the process.

Mark is slated to spend the next several months on Kibbutz Tiryat Tzvi in the Garin Tsabar program, which helps prepare soldiers without families in Israel for the IDF.

He hopes to be accepted into the Golani Brigade, an elite infantry unit, when he begins his service in November and to be selected for the officer training program.

Afterward, he plans to study business or international relations at an Israeli university.

For most immigrants, it's make aliyah, become a citizen, then serve in the IDF. Jacob Gakner, 21, has set this process on its head.

The Silver Spring resident, scheduled to move to the Jewish state later this summer, had been a student at Yeshivat Sha'alvim near Beit Shemesh for almost two years when he was drafted into the IDF in March 2008. He was in a combat engineering unit, which served in Gaza during the war.

Gakner was subject to the draft because he and his parents had lived in Israel for two years when he was 4 years old, before returning to the U.S. He was considered a citizen and has an Israeli passport.

"I felt that it was my duty to go and fight for the country," he says of his military service, "especially because I have many relatives living in the South in Beersheva."

A graduate of the Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy and a member of the Silver Spring Jewish Center, he says he decided to make his life in Israel during his time at the Israeli yeshiva.

"Personally, I felt a lot more connected to the people [in Israel]," Gakner says. "In the U.S., I was one of many ethnicities, but while there [in Israel], you feel like you are part of one people, one nation that cares for each other.

"It is the only place that the Jewish nation has a future, and I want to be part of that future."

Avraham Bieler, 22, son of Rabbi Jack Bieler of Kemp Mill Synagogue, also may shortly be haunted by the Hebrew cadence of smol, yamin, smol (left, right, left) so familiar to IDF recruits. (A medical problem may keep him out of the army, but he hopes to serve in a media relations or intelligence unit.)

Also a graduate of the Berman Academy, Bieler was a student at Yeshivat Lev Hatorah in 2004-05 when the idea of making aliyah began taking hold.

First, he says, there's the religious factor. "Through studying Tanach [Bible] and Talmud, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that if you can live in Israel, you should live in Israel."

He also says as that year went on, he felt "more and more comfortable there, a comfort that I didn't feel in America."

Bieler also spent a week in Poland. That experience "forced me to think about the possiblity that Jews won't always be comfortable in the U.S."

Finally, he says, he had a lot of conversations with some of his friends who were also thinking about making aliyah. Those conversations "gave me the confidence that my choice wasn't emotional but had been thought out and decided in a rational manner," he says.

Bieler graduated from Brandeis this year with a degree in Islamic and Middle Eastern studies and last summer worked for the Interreligious Coordinating Council, a nonprofit in Jerusalem that seeks to increase understanding between various religions in Israel.

Although he describes his Hebrew as "functional" -- he speaks some Arabic, as well -- his plans include studying in an ulpan at Kibbutz Sde Eliahu. His first stop after landing in Ben-Gurion Airport, however, will be at his yeshiva.

Longer term, Bieler has set his sights on a career in politics in the Jewish state, including a hoped-for run for a Knesset seat.

He describes his parents' feelings about his aliyah as "bittersweet." "They would like me to be closer to home," he says, "but they know it is something I want to do, and it is something they support."

Rabbi Ezra Starr, 32, and his wife, Devorah, 30, of Silver Spring, say they had always wanted to make aliyah.

"We had talked about it when we were dating," he says, "but we both wanted to become teachers and teach in Jewish schools before we did."

Both have a Berman academy connection -- he as a student when a youngster (Ezra also has a bachelor's in history and s'micha from Yeshiva University and a master's in special education from Hunter College in 2004) and as a special education and Judaics teacher and as rav beit sefer (school rabbi) for the lower school; she (bachelor's from Stern College for Women in education and a master's from New York University in educational theater in 2003) as teacher, director of the MJBHA Dramatic Arts Society, student activities coordinator and a counselor helping students find a place in Israel to study for a year.

In Israel, he will be spiritual adviser for Midreshet Moriah, a girls seminary in Jerusalem. She will be teaching at Midreshet Harova in Jerusalem, a women's seminary in Jerusalem, and Machon Maayan, a one-year program for women in Beit Shemesh, where they will live.

The Starrs won't be making aliyah alone -- they will be joined by their three children, Kobi, 6, Gavriel, 3, and Ayala, 2. The children are one of the reasons for going to the Jewish state at this time.

"We had talked about it while dating. but over time were fortunate enough to do worthwhile things, and Israel was put on the back burner," says Devorah Starr, who describes herself as "equal parts excited and anxious."

"But our son is getting older, and he will be in first grade, so that was a major impetus," she explains.

Kobi is happy about going to Israel where he will be able to eat at the (kosher) Pizza Hut, she says, while Gavriel has been carrying around a small Israeli flag for some time.

Aaron Leibel accompanied new immigrants on last week's flight to Israel as a guest of Nefesh B'Nefesh, which assists Jews in the U.S., Canada and Britain moving to the Jewish state.