Why Your Teenager Is More Scared of Aliyah Than You Are

I’m pretty sure one of the reasons my parents made aliyah is the kidnapping that has been rampant in the US for decades. While parents in the US drive their kids to play dates, sports and dance classes, while worrying about an ongoing list of dangers, Israeli kids roam the earth, more or less freely, from an early age.

Free to walk everywhere, jump on an Egged bus to the beach, Tel Aviv, the Kotel... Not to mention the food that happens to be nutritious without trying, the warmth and the way strangers talk to you like your life is their business too. Even the most anxious child, will eventually be won over by these and numerous other selling points Israel has, especially for kids.

I know this because I was one of those children. I arrived in Israel for the first time on an exploratory trip in middle school. It was my first journey outside of the US. It was interesting, and I had a nice time. But when I caught wind of the purpose of the trip, I did everything in my power to discourage it. Israel is an ok place to visit, but why couldn’t we have travelled to Paris or Rome instead? I made a detailed internal case against the whole enterprise before the plane landed back on US soil.

Grieve, then move on

Everyone knows that transitions are tough, especially for kids. But hey, they’re resilient, right? From someone who’s been there, give them space to grieve. Your child is leaving a lot. More than they might realize. Friends, home, school, family, those are the obvious. But Aliyah calls our identity into question in ways that aren’t often addressed but every oleh and olah understands all too well. 

That is not a small thing. And the instinct of most olim parents is to move past it quickly, and redirect toward the excitement, the meaning, the adventure and "new friends" waiting on the other side. 

Children who are not allowed to grieve what they're leaving tend to carry that grief sideways into the new place. The most important thing you can do before your family moves is create space for the loss to be named. Don't rush to “but you'll make new friends.” You'll get there, too, but first, let them be sad.

Not a new identity, but another identity

This is where I want to slow down, because it's the part that catches families most off guard. For younger children, aliyah is disorienting but ultimately absorbable. They cry, they adjust, they pick up Hebrew faster than anyone expects, starting immediately on day 1. In some ways, the younger the child, the more completely Israel claims them. Which is its own bittersweet thing for a parent to witness: your child becoming someone slightly different from who they were, in a language you're still struggling to follow.

But for teenagers, the calculus is completely different. Adolescence is already an intense identity negotiation. Who am I? Where do I belong? What do people think of me, and most importantly, I am not a younger version of my parents… These questions are the full-time work of being a teenager. They are exhausting but necessary. A good stable enough environment during the teenage years while the parents lead them through it can be a recipe for success during this tumultuous and inevitable time in life. Aliyah removes that stability at exactly the wrong moment.

The teenager who was a strong student, ran the school play, made varsity, had a social position built over years of careful navigation, arrives in Israel and finds that none of that transfers. Everything is different. Many are surprised to discover that college is not the goal of Israeli students. In many ways, junior high is seen as the perfect time to goof off. For a teenager, this change can feel like a complete erasure of who they are.

The result is a particular kind of isolation that causes some parents to consider letting their older children finish school abroad, and absolve them of Israeli school altogether. 

Let Israel do the rest

The picture of Israel in world news, and the lived experience of Israel are not the same! On my first El Al flight, my father leaned over and whispered that there were Mossad agents on board. Armed. Hidden among us. There to protect us if anything happened. I spent the rest of the flight trying to figure out which passenger was carrying a weapon and whether a terrorist could pose as one of the good guys. I arrived in Israel braced for something. Anything can happen, I thought.

What I found instead was a piece of chocolate on a kitchen table. A bar called Rosemarie, left for us in a tiny Jerusalem apartment. The biggest, softest square of chocolate I had ever tasted. It didn't fix anything. But it got me through the beginning.

That's what Israel does. Not all at once, and not the same way for every child.

Younger kids tend to land faster. The language gets in before they notice it happening. They come home one day with slang you don't recognize, friends whose names you can barely pronounce, and an ease in their body that wasn't there before. For them, Israel claims them almost before they consent to it.

Teenagers take longer, and the research backs this up. Adolescents navigating immigration face a specific kind of stress that compounds everything already happening in that stage of life: identity formation interrupted, social capital erased, academic footing lost. Studies on Jewish adolescents immigrating from North America to Israel point consistently to social isolation and acculturative stress as the heaviest burdens, and to family support as the most significant protective factor. Not programs. Not schools. The family.

Which puts parents in a complicated position, because you are also in transition. You are also figuring things out, day by day, while grieving your own losses, and less certain than you've ever been. Your teenager, who used to need you less, may need you more, precisely when you have less to give. That gap, when it's not named, becomes distance.

The families that come through this well are not the ones who had it easiest. They're the ones who kept talking. Who said "I don't know" when they didn't know. Who made room for grief before rushing toward gratitude.

Your children will find their way in. Most of them do, in their own time, on their own terms. The younger ones may get there before you. The older ones may take longer than you hoped. Both are normal. Both are okay.

If you're in the middle of that story right now, the Aliyah Dream Map Kit is a place to start. A guided journaling and dream board experience designed to help your family talk about this move, what you've left behind, and imagine what you're moving toward. The conversation has to start somewhere. 

L’shana haba’a b’Yerushalayim!