 Hi there. Welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Roestel here, bringing you this video from Jerusalem. I want to take a look today at three books that have been written on the subject of Aliyah moving to Israel. Now, the Aliyah genre is not that big. There haven't been that many books written on the subject. And I think that's a great pity because so many olim from so many different countries have so many different perspectives to bring on Aliyah. And I think that every one of these books and every book that's been written about Aliyah has made some sort of a contribution to discussing that. And of course, there's tons of literature from Nefesh Benefesh and the Jewish Agency and organizations like this. But personally, I connect a lot more with stories that are written by real people or individual people, let's say. So I want to take a look today at three of these books. This is not an exhaustive selection of books about Aliyah, but these three are on my bookshelf. I'm going to talk about them one by one. The first book is Becoming Israeli by Akiva Gersh. This is a really, really nice book. It's a more like a collection of anecdotes. A lot of the material, I'm not sure if it's all the material or just a portion of it has been taken from Times of Israel blogs. So The Times of Israel obviously has a very big blogger community and a lot of people share stories there. So these were edited and collected by Akiva Gersh and there's a forward in this by Yossi Klein-Halevi. Just to kind of what I like about this book, it's the kind of thing you can pick up and put down because it's comprised of so many short chapters and it's not like kind of a linear narrative. So I think this is a nice book if you're just looking to get different perspectives about what Israel means to people. And that's kind of the narrative or the theme that runs through this collection. It's kind of exploring the significance of Aliyah and Israel to the people featured in the book. So these are all available on Amazon. I'm going to put links in the description. And as I said, I just want to emphasize that this is not all the books about Aliyah that have been written. It's just a selection of them. Second book, Aliyah, Home Hope Reality. So this book was written by somebody who lives quite close to me here in Jerusalem, Ariella Bernstein. She co-wrote this book with her husband, Avi Losage. I'm probably getting Avi's name wrong. I did proofread this book for Ariella for some feedback on a draft. So I was sort of tangentially involved in the production process. I mentioned that just for the purpose of transparency. Now, this book is also fulfills an important gap. And the gap fulfilled here is really exploring what Aliyah means in the context of Olim's relationship with their parents. Now, I'm a young Ole of 32 years old. And when people my age and younger move to Israel, it's not always the case that we move with our family. Sometimes we're the only person in our family here. That's my case. No one else in my immediate or close family has made Aliyah. And what I really liked about this book from Ariella and Avi, two things really. Firstly, I thought it was a very compassionate exploration of Aliyah, something I don't like. And I've been sort of very transparent about this in my writing and my blogging. I don't like the idea that we can't talk about what's wrong with life in Israel because there are some facets of living in Israel that are problematic. The cost of living is crazy. There was an amazing, amazing article in The Times of Israel last week talking about the cost of property and that your average down payment required for an apartment in Israel now exceeds $250,000. That is crazy. That means that in order to buy an apartment in Israel, just to qualify for a mortgage, you need to be on your way to becoming a paper millionaire. So I don't think there's any point in shying away from these dynamics because if we do, we're never going to have that discussion where we can sort of make fluid ideas and put those open for discussion. So I really liked the fact that Aliyah, Home Hope Reality, it wasn't necessarily a pro-Israel book. I mean, it's very pro-Israel and the fact that it's talking about moving here and how to manage that family dynamic well. But I actually really appreciated the fact that it did not feel even slightly judgmental. It was just basically these are the conversations you can have with your parents. This is how now it's intended mostly for parents. So it's talking to the parents about how to manage the process with their with their children. But it's also got a lot of good info here. Some very pragmatic information going as far as talking about how to navigate the health fund. And it does say on the back here, I don't know if these follow-up books have come out. It does mention coming soon, Aliyah retiring home and Aliyah unsung hero. So I haven't spoken to Ariela in a while. I don't know exactly where those projects stand. She's she also did a research for this book, which is very cool. Small sample size. One of the surveys was 113 people. But the government is not doing, in my opinion, enough to look at Aliyah retention. It's like it brings people to Israel, then once they're there, that whole discussion of how can we keep people in Israel falls off the agenda and it's left to unofficial organizations to kind of try to plug that gap. And I think that the fact that Ariela and Abby undertook their own research to find some dynamics that such as that, you know, how many people know somebody who's left Israel, I think that's tremendous. So final book, just get on that plane, Aliyah and why you need to make it right now. I have to be honest, because there is a review on Amazon saying the book was written by a ghost writer called Daniel Russell, who is me. I was involved deeply in this production process. I can't comment on that exact that exact issue of whether I and the ACO Greenspan are one and the same. Nevertheless, nevertheless, I will talk about this book. So this is a. Almost lightly comedic book that basically is full of judgment. So whereas Abby and Ariela's book has no judgment, this book is extremely judgmental and saying that if you live in the diaspora, you are wasting your time. Now, it's not it's not just about that. It's more about why it's articulating the ideological belief that really every Jew should move to Israel, that that's the right place for Jews to be. And that's very much actually what I believe it's also in pretty strident terms and it's not a very diplomatically put argument. But this book does make the argument explores various. It's like the kind of book you could buy for your relative who is not interested in moving to Israel and you're trying to sort of like wait them up and say, hey, here's the agenda. You might not like what this guy has to say or you might like it. But it's not a very long book. It's about one hundred and fifty pages. And these are all available from Amazon.com. So we had Aliahom Hope Reality, which was a nice book for parents really exploring in good depth that dynamic of what happens when your children decide to make Aliah, whether you also come with them or you don't come with them, etc. There's Becoming Israeli, which is really just a nice series of vignettes, I would say about people in Israel and their various perspectives on what Zionism and living in Israel means to them. I think a great book to have on your coffee table to dip in and dip out of. And finally, there was Just Get On That Plane, which is a much more sort of aggressively argued book for Aliah, which basically gives the traditional sort of perspective, the right wing nationalistic perspective on why you need to move to Israel, why it's the right place, etc. So three very, very different books, fulfilling three different needs. All are available on Amazon. Thank you very much for watching this video. If you'd like to get more videos from me about Israel, Linux, marketing and many other random topics, please feel free to subscribe to this YouTube channel.