When my wife and I traveled to Israel last December/January, the primary purpose was to try to find a community to which we would move to when we make aliyah. As our aliyah is planned for either this upcoming Winter or the Summer afterwards, and we did not know if we would be back before we take our one-way flight, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves that by the time our trip was over, we would have at least one community in mind which we would be comfortable with as a future home.

Our criteria for consideration was:

• Religious community – a place where everyone follows halacha and strives to have Torah as the guiding light in their lives
• Location – close to Yerushalayim. However, at least in theory commutable to Tel Aviv and some of the hi-tech jobs in the coastal area
• Size – Not so large where you only know your immediate neighbors, not so small that it is you and 5 other families on an isolated hilltop. An established community, approximately 150-500 families.
• Population – enough English speakers and olim that we will not feel alone and isolated (although we speak mostly-fluent Hebrew, we realize that there is definitely a need to have some friends and neighbors with whom we will be able to converse comfortably) but not so many that we feel like we are living in Teaneck (or Ramat Bet Shemesh).

Taking this list of criteria, we went to the Internet and to friends to research different communities. We started this research a good three to four months before our trip. In retrospect, this was a bit too early – by our departure date we had already put so much thought into the trip that we were getting kind of stressed out over the whole thing. The best resource that we found for community research is the communities page on the Nefesh b’Nefesh website. On this page there are reviews of many different communities, along with vital statistics and email addresses of community contacts. We corresponded with people living in a number of different communities, and at one time or another we were considering any of the following:

• Neve Daniel
• Kochav haShachar
• Chashmonaim
• Beit El
• Karnei Shomron
• Maaleh Adumim
• Nof Ayalon
• Elazar
• Kochav Yaakov

Some of these communities we ended up visiting (Neve Daniel, Karnei Shomron, Kochav Yaakov), some we just checked out by talking with people and doing other research. In the end, Kochav Yaakov was the community that stood out in our minds as the place to which we are most likely to make our home after making aliyah.

That’s the introduction. Soon I hope to explain how and why we came to this decision and what made Kochav Yaakov stand out in our minds.