New Oleh: 'I want this place to be my home long term'

Before Ezra Kapetansky's successful arrival in the summer of 2023, he’d made three previous attempts to move to the Holy Land.

By ABIGAIL KLEIN LEICHMAN NOVEMBER 25, 2024 11:37

KAPETANSKY FAMILY. (photo credit: Cat McDonald Photography)

Ezra Kapetansky, the product of a Modern Orthodox family in Skokie, Illinois, may deserve a prize for most attempts at aliyah.

Before his successful arrival in the summer of 2023, he’d made three previous plans to move to the Holy Land.“Once after high school, once after college, and then once post-college, probably the most serious one when I was about to get on a plane,” he says. Sign up for our newsletter to learn more >>

Each time, something unexpected thwarted his intentions. But he didn’t give up.“I’m a firm believer that as long as you keep it a top priority in your life, then you’ll make it work. You don’t have to feel bad if things are getting in the way, and you need to prolong it another year or two.”

After a gap year in Israel and then three years at Yeshiva University in New York, Ezra married Ariella Levie from Teaneck, New Jersey, in 2018. He worked for Nefesh B’Nefesh and Yeshiva University before joining an Israeli-American hi-tech company in the hope of transferring to the Start-Up Nation.

Ariella was starting four years of pharmacy school, so they rented an apartment in Teaneck and bided their time until she graduated and got some work experience under her belt. Meanwhile, they had two sons, the youngest of whom was three months old when the family came to Israel.

It isn’t as if everything went smoothly that time, either. Ezra’s carefully laid plan to transfer to the Israel office of a binational company crumbled when he got laid off right before the move. Ariella had left her job as a pharmacy benefits coordinator in the health insurance industry, a job that doesn’t exist in Israel. They had no foreseeable source of income.

But they boarded the flight anyway. “We’re like, yeah, this is God telling us that we need to have a little bit of faith and just go because the strategy wasn’t working for the professional side. We knew we had the skills and the know-how to figure out what to do once we got there,” he says. They’d chosen to live in a high-rise in Carmei Gat, a northern neighborhood of Kiryat Gat established in 2017 on the train line to Tel Aviv. More than 220 English-speaking families live in Carmei Gat, with more arriving.

“It was founded by a couple of Chicagoans, and now there are over 25 Chicago families here – lots of people my age – and my wife has one first cousin and two second cousins that live here,” he says.

“We knew we wanted a community like Modi’in where it’s not completely English-speaking but could be a good soft landing with good infrastructure and resources,” Ezra adds. “From a financial standpoint, we could move to Modi’in and pay more or move to Carmei Gat and pay less. I think it’s the best decision we made; it has everything we want.”Ezra says it’s important to accept that aliyah potentially means giving up “the American dream of having a house with a front yard and a backyard. You might live in an apartment forever or for a long period. We got over that mentally before we moved here. That’s a big piece of advice for people.”

He hastens to add that Carmei Gat was thoughtfully planned with 10 parks, “all different and unique. Israelis treat their public parks as their backyard, essentially. That’s where people meet up, and we like that a lot.”

---

---

Ezra found a job at a start-up soon after their move and recently took a sales position at the fundraising platform CauseMatch. Ariella ran into reams of red tape getting her pharmacy license transferred, but meanwhile she’s working as a medical science liaison at a global pharmaceutical company.

Aside from that one bureaucratic headache, the Kapetanskys have been pleasantly surprised that most of the paperwork involved in transferring their lives was handled fairly smoothly. “The most painful thing was the bank, and we knew the bank was going to be painful so we took a little bit of extra time with that.”

Carmei Gat neighborhood, Kiryat Gat (credit: Ela Meirovitch)

Ezra's general approach to aliyah

Ezra thought they’d imagined every possible scenario to deal with, but then came Oct. 7, 2023, just two months after their move. They’d been away for the holiday and headed back south on October 8, not realizing how dangerous the situation was. “Looking back, we were absolutely insane. We were driving on an empty highway and saw lines and lines of parked cars of soldiers that went down to get on buses. As we got closer to Kiryat Gat, we started seeing tanks driving in the dirt next to the highway, and the booms were getting louder and louder."

Not feeling safe in their apartment just 30 km. from Gaza, they went to stay with Ariella’s aunt in Efrat for a couple of weeks. After Oct. 7, no more missiles fell on Carmei Gat. Ezra has taken an active volunteer role in the community, which he’s found to be extraordinarily friendly and organized.

“I want this place to be my home long term, and whatever we can do to make it better, we’ll do. I love cooking, so I got involved first with the kiddush committee at shul. After I started working at CauseMatch, I became the de facto fundraising manager for the shul’s building campaign – the city gave us land for a building that can fit the growing community. “It’s been a very exciting challenge. We got over half of the membership involved in setting up pages and sending them out to family and friends. We raised the first NIS 2.7 million in 48 hours,” he reports.

Ezra envisions the new synagogue as not only a place to hold services but also as a hub for activities and events. “I want Carmei Gat to be the best place for my kids to grow up. It’s much easier to complain, but complaining is not going to solve anything. If I want a building where everyone could feel like this is an amazing community center, I need to put in the extra effort to make it happen.” That’s his general approach to aliyah.

“The more people who make aliyah with these ideas, the more these ideas get embraced. It’s not going to be immediate, but slowly they do get incorporated into society here. We all know that customer service is better in America, but now there’s definitely a shift in Israel toward good customer service. Let’s bring all of these amazing things from America to start improving life here in Israel,” he says.■

Ezra Kapetansky, 30From Teaneck, New Jersey, to Carmei Gat, 2023 Learn how to buy your home in Israel with confidence >>