Every summer, thousands of Jews from around the world arrive in Israel carrying suitcases, hopes, fears and a vision of a new future. But for many olim, the decision to make aliyah is not only about moving countries, it is about moving closer to something deeply personal: identity, purpose and belonging.
This Yom Yerushalayim, that feeling is especially visible in Jerusalem itself.
This Yom Yerushalayim, new data released by Nefesh B’Nefesh, together with the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration, The Jewish Agency for Israel, KKL, and Jewish National Fund-USA, highlights Jerusalem’s continued role as the top city for North American olim, drawn by the city’s unique blend of community, spirituality and belonging.
For Atara and Jeffrey Douglas, Jerusalem represents a dream still unfolding. For 19-year-old Aliya Abergil, it has already become home. Together, their stories capture two sides of the aliyah journey, the anticipation before arrival, and the transformation that can happen afterward.
This July, the Douglas family will board a flight to Israel with their three children, ages 10, 9 and 5, to begin a life as Israeli citizens in Jerusalem’s Baka neighborhood. For the family, aliyah was never a spontaneous decision. It had long existed quietly in the background of their lives.
“Making Aliyah has always been a dream for our family,” Atara Douglas explained. “We always wanted to raise our children in Israel.”
But it was a wedding in Israel last summer that transformed that dream into reality. During a month-long family trip, the couple attended the wedding of close friends. Standing among Israeli families celebrating together, they suddenly saw their own future differently.
“At one point during the wedding, my husband and I looked at each other and just knew: this is how we want to raise our children,” Douglas recalled. “We both got chills.”
Originally, the family planned to spend a trial year in Israel. Instead, they returned home already emotionally committed to aliyah. They came back again in November for what they called a “fact-finding mission,” exploring communities throughout the country. But once they spent time in Jerusalem, the search ended.
“Jerusalem just felt right for our family,” Douglas said. “We loved the sense of community, the diversity within the Jewish people, and the feeling of truly being connected to something bigger than ourselves.”
The family enrolled their children in local schools, began building friendships and started imagining daily life in the city, not as tourists, but as future Israelis. “We want to be in the middle of it,” she said. “We want to be part of the Jewish homeland.”
Less than a year ago, Aliya Abergil stood exactly where the Douglas family stands now, on the edge of a completely new life in Jerusalem.
Born and raised in Brooklyn to an Israeli father from Haifa and an American mother from Baltimore, Abergil always felt connected to Israel. Summers spent visiting family helped shape that connection early on. “Israel always felt like home to me,” she said.
Still, when she arrived in Israel in 2025, aliyah was not part of the plan. “The plan was to come here, study for a year, and then go back to New York,” she explained.
But living in Jerusalem slowly changed her perspective. “As I experienced daily life here, my connection just grew stronger and stronger,” she said.
Ironically, Jerusalem itself had never been the center of that connection. “I actually had very little connection to Jerusalem before coming here,” Abergil admitted. That changed during her year of study in Jerusalem. “I saw a completely different side of the city,” she said. “Jerusalem really does feel holy. Even the air feels holier.”
A defining moment came during Yom HaZikaron and Yom HaAtzmaut ceremonies at Mount Herzl. “Standing at Mount Herzl on Yom HaZikaron and Yom HaAtzmaut changed everything for me,” she recalled. “I realized that so many people sacrificed their lives to build our homeland.”
The experience solidified her decision to stay permanently. “I wanted to be part of the Jewish people and part of what’s happening in Israel,” she said.
Today, Abergil is doing Sherut Leumi (National Volunteer Service) and lives in the Nefesh B’Nefesh Bnot Sherut Bodedot Residence in Jerusalem alongside other young women from around the world doing National Volunteer Service in Israel. Abergil is doing her service at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem’s maternity department, where she helps care for mothers and newborns. “Helping bring more life into the country is something very special,” she said.
During recent wartime escalations, the hospital unit she volunteers in relocated operations into the hospital’s safe area. The experience deepened her sense of responsibility as a National Service Volunteer and new olah. “During the war, I really felt that I was doing an important service for the people of Israel,” she said.
Though they are at very different stages of life, the Douglas family and Abergil speak about Jerusalem in strikingly similar ways. Both describe the city not only as a place, but as something almost impossible to explain, a feeling of coming home to something bigger than themselves.
For the Douglas family, Jerusalem represents the future they want to give their children. For Abergil, it became the place where she discovered who she wanted to become.
Both were drawn to the city’s diversity, warmth and sense of shared purpose. Both speak about wanting to live fully Jewish lives, not from afar, but from within the story itself.
“Jerusalem is a true Kibbutz Galuyot (ingathering of the nations),” Abergil said. “There are Jews here from all over the world and from every background imaginable.”
That reality continues to shape the city each year as new immigrants arrive, adding their own stories to Jerusalem’s evolving identity.
This summer, when the Douglas family will step off the plane and begin their lives in Jerusalem, they will join thousands of others who chose to take the same leap, some still searching for what the city might become for them, and others, like Abergil, who already found the answer.