aliyah- Where to live in israel???

amother

Sun, Sep 14 2014, 4:20 pm

BE"H moving to Israel next year- so many fantastic choices and am so confused. coming with teenage kids whose Hebrew isn't great. do we jump in the deep end and hope for the best or start in area with anglos- please share your thoughts and experiences- every bit of info is helpful!

amother

Sun, Sep 14 2014, 5:53 pm

The kids will be in high school- so I have to check all the schools in different areas- my concern with the more anglo area is that although a soft landing- will they never adjust to living in Israeli society? Gotta learn Hebrew somehow- plus I am one of those people who finds that if you are living in America you should speak English- so I should have the same theory- speak the language of the country you are in. Plus of course Hebrew it is "our" language.

m in Israel

Sun, Sep 14 2014, 10:37 pm

amother wrote:

I agree that this are valid concerns -- and if your kids were younger it might very well be a good idea to just "jump in the deep end". But with kids this old, I agree with the previous posters that a more Anglo area a better choice. The adjustment is hard enough, and whatever you can do to make things a bit easier is probably worth it.

Of course an "Anglo" area doesn't need to be one that is ALL Anglo. There are many mixed neighborhoods with enough English speakers that your kids will have support but enough Israelis that the predominant culture is still Israeli. If you tell us what communities you are considering there are lots of imamothers here who would be happy to give you more detailed information. There are also TONS of old threads discussing different locations -- it might be worth pulling some of them up for more information.

DrMom

Sun, Sep 14 2014, 10:47 pm

Language is a huge issue. Prepare your children as much as possible with intensive written and spoken Hebrew.

Are they good students? If they are used to being good students, it may be very difficult for them to be constantly lost in class. Make sure they understand that their priorities their first year are to make friends and learn the language.

How old are they? What grade are they in? What are their plans for after high school?

sped

Mon, Sep 15 2014, 12:30 am

Though you may want them to become "Israeli", many kids who come as teens don't want to and don't get there. Maybe consider not pushing that. Instead, focus on getting through school years happily and appreciating E"Y. And prepare yourself that they may want to go back when they can. Are they on board and excited about this change?

amother

Mon, Sep 15 2014, 11:46 am

The kids are on board- they actually said to me what took me so long! Have done research on the top 3 anglo dati leumi areas- efrat, beit shemesh and chashmonaim.. also am interested in karnie shomron, also thought of maalot and yerucham, yes 2 opposite ends of Israel, but right now we have a great backyard aka garden and I think those 2 areas may give me the opportunity to have that in Israel at an affordable price, but I have been told we need to be pretty strong in our Hebrew ( our Hebrew is yeshiva style so not great unless we are learning Torah all day!)
Also need a place that is understanding of husbands/spouses traveling back to the states in the beginning.
Someone also just ,mentioned possibly michmash (which I don't see on the NBN website) or mitzpe netofa- but have not done research on them.

Have I missed any areas- I should be looking into???

amother

Tue, Sep 16 2014, 4:36 am

I am in america so I cant answer too many of your questions but I can tell you nbn does have a profile of michmas- look under maale michmas. I have older kids myself and we keep debating your exact question. We've concluded we need to go to an anglo bubble for our kids sake. We're more chareidi so I cant speak to DL communities. Hatzlacha!

laer

Tue, Sep 16 2014, 11:56 pm

Hi,

We moved to Israel a year and a half ago. I moved with teens and one younger daughter.
There are many beautiful places to live here in the "holiest" place on earth.
generally adults are caught up in the idealism, and the spirituality. Kids want to fit in.
I would have loved to live in a moshav up north, however, most important to us was that the
transition for the children be as easy as possible.
Therefore we moved to Ramat Beit Shemesh. This is an anglo community. The schools understand the
challenges of new olim and have a very supportive infrastructure in place.
our children have made wonderful friends that are all english speaking, and very fine .
There are always difficulties but all worth it to make Israel your home.
Children like to feel at home, and in Beit Shemesh they see their american products in the stores
and people understand them. It makes the transition so much easier.
A very big factor to consider: There are schools here that end at three and high schools at four.
In many other cities school ends at one. The children are then on the street and that is a problem.

Happy to help in any way I can,
it is a big move and you must be very special to even entertain the idea.

Laer

FranticFrummie

Sun, Oct 18 2015, 3:51 pm

Your kids may be totally on board and thrilled to pieces, but the reality can be a real shock.

My DD is 12, and we chose a very Israeli community, with just enough English speakers to get by. DD couldn't wait to get here, and even though I warned her that it wouldn't be perfect, and that there would be times when she is frustrated, she still wasn't prepared.

DD is very talented at languages, but they are not teaching her fast enough. She's only getting 6 hours of Hebrew tutoring a week, and she wants to be fluent NOW! She only has two girls in her class who speak very basic English, so she's lonely, too.

We've only been here 2 months, and I know that everything will get better with time, but if your kids are the impatient type, they will be miserable without friends they can immediately connect to.

Another important thing, set up Skype so they can keep up with their friends back in the old country! This is a valuable lifeline for teens. When DD feels like she can't complain to me, she'll complain and vent to her online friends, and get some great "kid to kid" advice on how to cope with the changes.

Of course, every kid, parent, teacher, and community is different, but I just wanted to throw out my experience, since it's still all so fresh for us.

Best of luck, hope to see you here soon!

amother

Natural

Mon, Oct 19 2015, 7:30 am

So funny- just rereading this thread and thought wow- this person should read my questions from last year, cuz it sounds just like my post from last year and then I looked at the date and realized- ha ha this is my post from year!!!

To follow up- I have learned that Hashem works in mysterious ways. We were all set until Feb. Was waiting on one more document. Were going to move to efrat, dd was going to go to YTA. ds was going to take GED in USA and then just learn l'shma for a year. DH was going to have to travel back to USA every 2 weeks or so. but it was going to be worth it becuae we would be HOME. Then I got sick, nothing life threatening B"H, and was in bed for about 2 weeks. As I was getting better I woke up one morning in sheer panic about the move to a point where I could not eat- only wanted to sleep, just managed to get dressed to get kids to school. Cried for hours on end. Without any discussion with DH cancelled the whole thing. A lot of stress, confusion, disappointment more crying was going on in our house for a while. Had some great friends to talk to and slowly have been emotionally healing from whatever hit me. Still have guilty feelings about not being in E"Y, but I see now had we moved and with what is going on now and knowing my children being in E"Y now would have been very bad for them. As I said, hashem works in mysterious ways. So the timing was not right then. But at least I have all of the information needed and ready to go when hashem wants us there. Thanks to all the imamothers out there- who helped with all of their wonderful advice and support!!