Aliyah Commandos: Fighting to save North American Jews

Despite being warned in yeshiva high school that Israel should not be his focus, Josh Wander, an oleh from Pittsburgh now living on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives with his wife and six children, was destined to become an aliyah advocate.

“I came from a very Zionist family, even though it was an ultra-Orthodox family,” he said. “My grandmother’s present to every grandchild for their bar or bat mitzvah was a ticket to Israel. In those days, that was a big deal, to get a ticket to come to Israel.”

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Wander remembered being in a haredi yeshiva high school and “having heated discussions with the rabbis there as to why we were in [America] and not in Israel.” Wander explained that he was taught that “Israel is not our issue now. [Our issue is] learning Torah; therefore, we shouldn’t be concerned about Israel – our place is here.

“I recall all of my life having a desire and a passion for moving to Israel.” He has been in Israel on and off since 1987, officially making aliyah in 1991 and returning with his family in 2013.

Wander reported that his aliyah advocacy began in earnest upon his return in 2013. Noticing that while existing aliyah agencies, such as Nefesh B’Nefesh and the Jewish Agency, were well poised “to walk you through the bureaucracy” of making aliyah, there was “a gap when it came to organizations dealing with why one should make aliyah.”

His goal became “to answer the why question” for Jews in North America, specifically for Orthodox Jews. Wander explained that, while there are certainly Zionist Orthodox communities in the US, such as Teaneck, New Jersey, and Sharon, Massachusetts, there are also many other Orthodox communities where the aliyah question is simply not addressed. 

Feeling particularly qualified to solicit and promote videos of rabbis and other Torah educators explaining the centrality of Eretz Yisrael in a Torah life, Wander launched BringThemHome.org.il, a website that offers multiple Torah perspectives on aliyah. He was quick to explain that his website preceded Oct. 7 and the slogan associated with the remaining hostages by many years.

The web addresses IsraelTorah.org, AliyahNow.org, ItsTimeToLeave.com and GetOutNow.org all point to the same website. Wander has published, among other resources, brief videos by well-known Torah personalities such as Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twersky, Rabbi Dr. Shalom Gold, Rabbi Nachman Kahana, Rabbi Pinchas Winston, Rebbetzin Tziporah Heller-Gottlieb, and Sivan Rahav Meir. True to the website’s tagline, each video presents a Torah perspective on the importance of Jews living in the Land of Israel in our day.

Headed by Wander, the Bring Them Home organization has a roster of volunteers and donors working on the project. In addition to creating the website, Wander produced “The Aliyah Song” with Rabbi Benzion Klatzko. The video, which includes the lyrics “It’s clear the time is now to come back to your Land,” garnered more than 35,000 views on YouTube.

The Bring Them Home project also ran a series of what Wander termed “shock ads” in American magazines and newspapers. Regarding one ad from 2020, Wander said: “We took the tagline from the global campaign for corona awareness ‘Stay Home. Stay Safe.’ and turned it into an ad for aliyah with the tagline ‘Come Home. Stay Safe.’” 

His organization also co-sponsored, and he served as MC for, two Emergency Aliyah Conferences held in partnership with Tzvi Fishman, another well-known aliyah advocate. The goal of these conferences is to bring aliyah advocates together in Jerusalem “to try to brainstorm why we have failed so miserably. With millions of Jews in America, the [aliyah] numbers are a drop in the bucket,” Wander expressed with frustration.

According to their announcement, the third Emergency Aliyah Conference, scheduled for June 25 at the Hibba Center in Jerusalem, will focus on “what needs to be done to prepare for the great wave of new olim from the West who may soon be seeking refuge in the Jewish homeland.”

“We try to think outside the box,” said Wander. “For over 76 years, Israel has failed miserably in bringing Jews home. The majority [of olim] have come because they are running away from something. We try, as best as we can, to give a positive spin [on aliyah].”

At the same time, he freely asserted, “We believe it is dangerous to be in galut [exile] anymore.”

That belief drives much of what Wander and his team do. Along with his seemingly fearless and idiosyncratic personality, it helps explain why the Bring Them Home approach is dramatically different from that of other, more well-established aliyah organizations. 

“I believe there are different messages that resonate with different people. I’m pretty in your face, outspoken, not politically correct when it comes to my promoting aliyah. Most organizations, especially if they are funded, have to be incredibly careful of their messaging so as not to offend anyone. 

“Certain messages are too strong for mainstream organizations to use. Some people get offended by people being so openly pro-aliyah. Everyone has a role to play with different messages that resonate with different people,” he stated.

As an example of Wander’s intrepid approach, the Bring Them Home website includes this plainspoken advice in bold red letters: “Israel aliyah officials warn: Make sure you have your birth certificate and a letter from an Orthodox rabbi certifying that you are Jewish. If you are forced to come to Israel before your aliyah process is completed, you can complete it once you arrive home.”

Addressing the aliyah void

Wander explained that the first Emergency Aliyah Conference “was theoretical and not practical.” The second conference, held last month, “was much more practical. One thing that came up from the second conference is that we need to get the message to communities who are not getting the message. The vast majority of mainstream Orthodoxy are in an aliyah vacuum/void.”

In the wake of last month’s conference,  and with the fierce support of fellow aliyah champion Tzvi Fishman, the Aliyah Commandos were born.

The idea is to send aliyah advocates, in teams of two, to bring an urgent message of the necessity to make aliyah to Jewish communities in North America, particularly to communities that do not routinely hear these messages and whose members may not have ever considered aliyah as a viable option.

In a parallel effort, Rabbi Leo Dee, the bereaved husband and father whose wife and two of his daughters were murdered in a terrorist attack during Passover last year, recently returned from a Mizrachi-sponsored trip to the US. There, Dee spoke about aliyah to more than two dozen groups, including a group of 200 American rabbis at the Rabbinical Council of America conference in Stamford, Connecticut. 

On his speaking tour, Dee presented a novel idea to his Jewish audiences in America, urging them to make a contingency aliyah plan. His remarks, repeated in each community where he spoke, compared aliyah to health insurance. 

“Americans normally spend a fortune on health insurance. Clearly, the insurance market makes a profit because the cost of your premiums is greater than the expected cost of all the treatment you will need until you are 120. But you purchase medical coverage because there is a one-in-a-thousand chance that, God forbid, you’ll have an illness that will cost $1 million plus to cure. So you cover yourself.

“If you think that there’s a one-in-a-thousand chance of America not being a place for Jews to live in the next few years, or even for your children or grandchildren, wouldn’t it be worth taking an insurance policy about coming to Israel? 

“Shouldn’t everyone in this community have an aliyah plan ready for action if things do get worse? Isn’t it worth getting your close family around the kitchen table in the next month to discuss what aliyah might look like, if you haven’t done this already? What kind of housing would we need? Where? How do we care for Grandma and Grandpa? For the children in high school and college?”

Dee also wove his family’s tragedy and current events into his aliyah exhortation. 

“It may seem strange coming from me, after what happened to my family and what happened on the seventh of October to be advocating Israel as a safe space. But remember, before the modern state of Israel, six million Jews were killed in six years, one million per year. And countless millions over the previous centuries in Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Spain, Rome, Greece, and Egypt. The only thing that stands between us and total annihilation is Eretz Yisrael. We are all safer, and the world is safer because of Israel.

“And Hashem [God] is calling us all home. The open antisemitism that we are witnessing now in America is a blessing. Hashem is giving us a warning to act now while property prices [in North America] are at an all-time high....

“In late October, I was in London, Trafalgar Square – the 100,000 strong Jewish crowd were chanting ‘Bring them home’ for the hostages. But also for you. Hashem had us put posters up around the streets of every Jewish town in the world [reading] ‘Bring them home!’ Hashem is shouting out to every Jewish man, woman, and child in the Diaspora. ‘Bring them home!’”

Following Dee’s visit, Wander and Hila Oz, a young woman who made aliyah shortly after graduating from UCLA, did a pilot run of the Aliyah Commandos concept. They returned to Israel last week, after visiting two major Jewish events in the New York/New Jersey area. 

Their first event was Kosherpalooza, a massive kosher food festival held at the Meadowlands Expo Center in Secaucus, New Jersey, on May 30. Wander and Oz set up a booth and prepared themselves to speak with as many of the 4,000 Jews, primarily from the hassidic and yeshiva worlds, as possible. 

Wander said that it quickly became “clear that this was a message they were not used to hearing. Some were offended. Some were surprised. Just speaking to the people, it was obvious that [aliyah] is not on their radar.”

He further stated, “I’ve gotten a lot of pushback [over the years]. I don’t shy away from controversy. I don’t have a problem being in your face. Over the past year or two, I’ve gotten almost no pushback. They sense something is going on. The ground is shaking. Antisemitism, the economy, they all feel it, they just don’t know how to channel it. 

“Israel to them is another vacation spot. It’s not their fault. They grew up in environments that didn’t speak of [aliyah]. 

“The [Jewish] educational system in America has gone from being neutral on Israel to being negative. They choose to educate their kids without speaking about Israel. They managed to create an entire worldview that doesn’t include Israel. This is my target audience.”

Wander aims to address what he characterized as “total ignorance. They were never taught [the importance of aliyah as a viable option]. They weren’t taught Hebrew. Some [even] try to mention the arguments brought by anti-Zionists.

“If nothing else, I planted seeds so people will think about it,” he added optimistically. 

The second event Wander and Oz attended was the Celebrate Israel Parade on June 2, where tens of thousands of pro-Israel Jews gathered on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. With the goal of reaching as many Jews as possible, Oz entered the parade grounds, and Wander remained outside the gates.

“At the parade, I stood near the entrance with my big sign, speaking to people waiting in line.” Wander went to the US with an intentionally shocking sign that read, “Jews Go Home to Israel Now!”

The two spent Shabbat in Sharon, outside of Boston. They attempted to speak to rabbis who haven’t communicated a clear aliyah message to their congregations. They also met with Rabbi Hershel Schachter, an influential American Orthodox rabbi and rosh yeshiva at Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, the rabbinic program of Yeshiva University.

Schachter, who is known for being pro-aliyah, made a video encouraging rabbis to speak to their congregants about aliyah. Wander said that, in response to the frequently voiced challenge, “How can you say it’s safer for Jews in Israel?” Rabbi Schachter gave a Torah perspective. “My gauge for where it’s safest is where you can be openly Jewish in the street.”  

In that context, Wander spoke about his shock at seeing a plastic box, now being sold in the US, for Jews who are nervous about openly displaying a mezuzah on their front doors. Marketed as the Camozuzah, it’s specifically designed to look like an innocuous cover of some kind of electronic panel, complete with a simulated LED light. 

When relevant, Wander offered a deeper, spiritual perspective to those who questioned making aliyah to a country at war. “There has to be a balance that causes people to apply free will. If everything was perfect in Israel, [aliyah] would be a no-brainer,” he remarked.

In addition to Oz, whom Wander described as “a social media influencer” whose specialty is speaking to college-age students, there are 30 potential Aliyah Commandos – aliyah activists ready to be sent to the US to speak about aliyah and plant seeds. 

They include Avi Abelow, CEO of the 12Tribe Films Foundation, whose projects include isrealunwired, which distributes online videos about Israel and the Jewish people. Abelow is a frequent host on another 12Tribe Films project called the Pulse of Israel. His Instagram tagline is “Inspiring people about Israel with the truth every way I can.” 

Rabbi Ari Abramowitz, media personality, co-founder of the Arugot Farm, located at the edge of Judea, and partner in the many pro-Israel projects of the LandofIsrael.com, is also among the passionate aliyah advocates ready to serve as an Aliyah Commando.

Reflecting on the pilot venture with Oz, Wander reported, “In one week, we spoke to 2,500 Jews minimum. We covered a lot of ground and spoke to a lot of people. We hope to continue these waves. With proper funding,” he said “we have the potential to speak to hundreds of thousands of Jews.”

At this stage, Aliyah Commandos are targeting Orthodox Jewish communities in North America.

“I have a common language with Orthodox Jews,” Wander said. “I find it much harder to give proof [about the necessity to make aliyah] to someone who is secular. However, I have what to say to every [Orthodox Jew] from the Modern Orthodox to the anti-Zionist haredim.

“We would go where we can get the most impact, by scheduling [Aliyah Commandos trips] around large events.”

Aware that speaking in American synagogues requires an invitation, Wander finds it effective “just being on the streets and speaking to people.”

As more evidence of his in-your-face style, Wander said, “In a kosher pizza place, we went from table to table, asking people when they are coming home. Whether people agreed or not, whether they are packing their bags or not, we at least got a message out.”

Donors are needed to send teams of Aliyah Commandos to Jewish communities and to print materials.

“We’re hoping to get the message to as many Jews as we can,” he concluded. 

For more information and to register for the Emergency Aliyah Conference, June 25, at the Hibba Center in Jerusalem, contact aliyahnow.org@gmail.com

The writer is a freelance journalist and expert on the non-Jewish awakening to Torah happening in our day. She is the editor of Ten From The Nations and Lighting Up The Nations.

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