Yocheved Ruttenberg was living in a mostly Christian community in Dallas and feeling largely disconnected from her Jewish identity when she woke one morning in October last year to a friend’s text: “Have you seen what’s happening in Israel?”
Ruttenberg, a 23-year-old who had grown up in an Orthodox Jewish home in Baltimore but drifted from religion as a teenager, felt paralyzed in her bed as she watched videos of Hamas fighters attacking Israeli civilians. Eventually, she shocked her friends by declaring: “I need to go to Israel.”
Within two weeks, Ruttenberg was in Tel Aviv for what was meant to be a two-week trip. Now, more than a year later, she’s still in Israel and in the process of becoming a citizen — one in the surge of Jewish Americans seeking closer ties to the country, despite uncertainty and risk as war engulfs the region.
“I couldn’t imagine not being here,” Ruttenberg said. “It was just this gut feeling — I felt pulled.” Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas fighters streamed out of Gaza to kill an estimated 1,200 Israelis in communities and kibbutzim near the enclave, was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
The Israeli government has responded with a military campaign that has killed more than 43,000 people in Gaza, authorities there say, and has launched attacks in Lebanon aimed at destroying Hezbollah, raising the specter of an all-out regional war.
The election of Donald Trump has injected further uncertainty into the direction of Israel’s multi-front conflict, including its escalating confrontations with Iran.
Since the Hamas attack, more than 11,700 Americans have opened applications for aliyah, the Israeli naturalization process for people with at least one Jewish grandparent.
That’s nearly double the number from the year before, according to Nefesh B’Nefesh, a nonprofit that facilitates aliyah — literally, “ascending” or “going up” — from the United States and Canada. In the past year, new arrivals, known as olim, are up 20 percent.
“Jewish people are drawn to their nation when there are threats to it,” said Yael Katsman, a spokeswoman for Nefesh B’Nefesh. “The interest started right after Oct. 7 — applications were up 100 percent. And even with the challenges and fears and problems with flights, the uptick in the number of olim arriving continues.”
