‘I really felt we belonged in Israel’
Meet two Bergen County families making aliyah this summer
The bureaucracy involved in bringing Zuma the puppy and Charlie the bunny to Israel this summer has been the biggest hurdle for Fair Lawn residents Joshua and Rena Steinberg to overcome as they count down the days to their Nefesh B’Nefesh aliyah flight.
Zuma, a mixed-breed rescue dog, needs a special license because one of the breeds in his lineage is considered a “bully breed.” An exotic pet license was successfully obtained for Charlie, but El Al Israel Airlines doesn’t want a rabbit on the plane. Rena Steinberg said she’s hoping the aliyah-facilitation folks at NBN will help them get both pets aboard their mid-August flight.
Though planning a transatlantic move for a family of five is no piece of cake, Ms. Steinberg is approaching the move with eager anticipation.
“In Israel, even though you have to worry about what’s falling from the sky, you can give children more freedom,” she said. “There’s more family life and less keeping up with the Joneses. I felt in the last couple of years that our family life has not existed, with everyone going in their own direction. That’s not what I wanted.
“I’m most excited about being in a community, in Modi’in, that values time to be a family.”
The last couple of years have brought the Steinbergs and their three children — Hannah, 17; Naama, 14; and Hillel, 10 — some challenges. First, in July 2024, a fire burned down Zadie’s Kosher Bake Shop in Fair Lawn, the business that Mr. Steinberg’s family had owned. His father had sold it to Zomick’s Kosher Bakery, and Mr. Steinberg was working there on contract. Since the fire, he’s been commuting daily to a Zomick facility on Long Island; he’ll keep doing that until the contract expires on June 30.
“The day the fire happened, Josh and I decided that there was nothing keeping us in Fair Lawn anymore and we should move,” Ms. Steinberg said. They’d lived there since they married, 18 years ago.
“We could have gone anywhere, but after October 7 and just in general, I really felt we belong in Israel,” she said. “My husband looked at me and said, ‘Okay, you need to make it happen.’ It took two years, and I did it.”
In December 2025, Ms. Steinberg’s father died, and Mr. Steinberg’s father died a few months later. “My father always wanted to make aliyah,” Ms. Steinberg said. “He would say, ‘It’s our land, and that’s where we belong.’ Unfortunately, he didn’t make it. But our going is with him in mind.”
Another complication is that Hannah will be staying behind, boarding in Teaneck with her aunt, so that she can finish her final year at Ma’ayanot Yeshiva High School for Girls before joining the rest of her family in Modi’in.
“During yeshiva break in January, we took the kids to five different communities in Israel to find the best fit,” Ms. Steinberg said. “We need to know they’ll be happy.”
They have friends and cousins in Modi’in ready to help them get settled. Naama, who just graduated from Yeshivat Noam, and Hillel, going into fifth grade, will make new friends and adjust to the Israeli school system.
Ms. Steinberg, the administrator at Young Israel of Fort Lee, has an associate’s degree in culinary arts and a bachelor’s in hospitality management, and she hopes to take a course in cooking therapy once she gets to Israel. Mr. Steinberg is thinking of opening a restaurant.
Throughout the summer, Nefesh B’Nefesh is expected to facilitate the arrival of more than 2,300 North American immigrants — “olim,” in Hebrew — on 47 group aliyah flights departing from New York, New Jersey, Miami, Boston, and Los Angeles. The organization’s recent summer aliyah kickoff event in Englewood drew more than 450 attendees.
“The summer aliyah season represents an important moment for both the olim and the state of Israel,” NBN’s cofounder and executive director, Rabbi Yehoshua Fass, said. “It is incredibly meaningful to see hundreds of olim taking this significant step and beginning their aliyah journey together. These events provide an opportunity for families, friends, and their local communities to celebrate that decision and ensure that every oleh feels supported as they prepare for their futures in Israel.”
Elana Goldsmith of Bergenfield attended the kickoff event. “It was great to be there and to see how many people I knew who were moving to Israel this summer,” she said.
She, her husband, Michael, and their children, Joey, 15, and Sophie, 12, will spend seven weeks at Camp Mesorah in Guilford, N.Y., where she works, before boarding their August 19 NBN flight.
Ms. Goldsmith said she and her husband both grew up in very Zionistic families and always wanted to make aliyah. Her parents, Dr. Jack and Shulie Stroh, made the move to Israel from central New Jersey two years ago, joining two other grown children in Israel.
“We settled into Bergenfield 15 years ago, and it’s been an amazing place to live,” Ms. Goldsmith said. “We looked into making aliyah several times, but the stars didn’t align.”
The biggest complication was that in March 2020, Mr. Goldsmith became gravely ill with covid-19. As reported in the Jewish Standard at that time, he was on a ventilator and in a medically induced coma at Hackensack University Medical Center for three weeks. When he finally returned home in May, he was out of danger but by no means back to himself.
“For the past six years, we’ve been working on his recovery from long covid,” Ms. Goldsmith said. “He is now in a good place medically, and our children are getting older, so we felt — especially after October 7 — that the window is kind of closing for our children to grow up in Israel. Now is the right time.”
The Goldsmiths will live in Beit Shemesh. Mr. Goldsmith, who works in IT risk for a bank, will seek new employment. Ms. Goldsmith works at Yavneh Academy in Paramus, teaching first grade, running STEM activities schoolwide, and coaching the robotics team. “I have a passion for Holocaust education, and I would like to work at Yad Vashem eventually, but I plan to spend the next year acclimating my children,” she said.
Joey will leave his classmates at Torah Academy of Bergen County and Sophie will leave hers at Yavneh. “The kids have been to Israel many times and grew up in a Zionist family, but of course they will miss their schools and friends,” Ms. Goldsmith said.
Sophie conducted her Israeli high school interview entirely in Hebrew, her mother proudly reported. “I’m the weakest of our family in Hebrew skills,” Ms. Goldsmith said. “Google Translate will be my friend.”
She credited NBN adviser Adina Bennett with helping them ably through all the steps along the way to their relocation.
“I strongly feel that every family has different needs, and aliyah is the right move when it’s the right time for your family,” she said. “Even when it is the right time, it can be daunting. But we’re very excited, and we know that any feeling of overwhelmingness will be worth it when we land in Israel.”