Making Aliyah – Details, episodes & analysis

In this episode, Rabbi Cohen interviews Ambassador Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the United States, about his aliyah journey.

Michael B. Oren served as Israel's ambassador to the United States from 2009 to 2013.

As Ambassador, he was instrumental in securing U.S. support for Israel’s defense and upholding Israel’s right to security and peace. The Forward named Ambassador Oren one of the five most influential Jews in America and the Jerusalem Post listed him as one of the ten most influential Jews worldwide.

Born in the United States and educated at Princeton and Columbia, Dr. Oren has been a visiting professor at Harvard, Yale, and Georgetown, and was a Distinguished Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. He has received fellowships from the British and Canadian governments as well as a Moshe Dayan Fellowship from Tel Aviv University and the Lady Davis Fellowship at the Hebrew University. His last two books, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East from 1776 to the Present and Six Days of War, were both New York Times bestsellers. He has won the Los Angeles Times History Book of the Year Award and the National Jewish Book Award. 

In Israel, Ambassador Oren served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces, in the paratroopers in the Lebanon War, a liaison with the U.S. Sixth Fleet during the Gulf War, and an IDF spokesman during the Second Lebanon War and the Gaza operation in January 2009. He acted as an emissary to Jewish refuseniks in the Soviet Union, as an advisor to Israel's delegation to the United Nations, and as the government's director of Inter-Religious Affairs. He was a gold medal-winning athlete in the Maccabiah Games.

Ambassador Oren and his wife, Sally, have three children.

Rabbi Cohen chats with Rabbi Stuart Geller about his decision to make aliyah.

Rabbi Stuart Geller is a retired rabbi who has held pulpits in Lynbrook, NY, and Cleveland, OH. 

In this episode, Rabbi Cohen talks with Michael Marmur about his aliyah decision.

In this episode, Rabbi Cohen chats with Danielle Lightman about her decision to make aliyah.

Rabbi Cohen chats with Bekah Galinsky about her personal decision to make aliyah.

In this episode, Rabbi Phil Cohen chats with Joshua Karsh about his decision to make aliyah.

In this episode, Rabbi Phil Cohen chats with journalist and author Yossi Klein Halevi. 

Halevi is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. Together with Imam Abdullah Antepli of Duke University, he co-directs the Institute's Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI), which teaches emerging young Muslim American leaders about Judaism, Jewish identity and Israel.

Halevi’s 2013 book, Like Dreamers, won the Jewish Book Council's Everett Book of the Year Award. His latest book, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor, is a New York Times bestseller. He writes for leading op-ed pages in the US, including the Times and the Wall Street Journal, and is a former contributing editor to the New Republic.

His 2001 book, "At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew’s Search for God with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land," will be reissued in 2019 by HarperCollins.

His first book, "Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist," tells the story of his teenage years as a follower of the militant rightwing rabbi Meir Kahane, and his subsequent disillusionment with Jewish radicalism. The New York Times called it “a book of burning importance.”

In 2013 he was a visiting professor of Israel Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and served as a writer in residence at the University of Illinois. He was a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem from 2004 until 2010. Born in Brooklyn, he moved to Israel in 1982, and lives in Jerusalem with wife, Sarah, who helps run a center for Jewish meditation. They have three children.

In the premiere episode of The Making Aliyah Podcast, Rabbi Phil Cohen interviews Andi Shapiro, a recent immigrant to Israel from South Africa. Andi discusses the challenges and thrills of becoming a new resident of Israel.