From Monsey To Ramat Beit Shemesh
Mollie Holtzberg grew up in Monsey, raised her family there, and now lives in Ramat Beit Shemesh with her family. I had the pleasure of meeting Mollie and I’m excited to share with you her incredible aliyah journey.
Tell us a bit about yourself, your family, and your background.
I was born and bred in Monsey. That’s where I grew up, where I lived after getting married, and where I raised my family. I never went seminary in Eretz Yisrael, never visited – not even for a vacation with my husband. In fact, I never stepped foot into Eretz Yisrael until we started the aliyah process.
My husband is a speech therapist, and I worked as a manager in a clothing store. We have six children, and it wasn’t until my daughter went to seminary in Eretz Yisrael that I really experienced Eretz Yisrael for the first time. For me, it was never on the radar. My husband, though, always dreamed of living here. It was something deeply rooted in him – but I just wasn’t interested.
Where did the idea to move to Eretz Yisrael come from, if it wasn’t something you initially connected to? What inspired you to uproot your settled life in Monsey and bring your family to Eretz Yisrael?
My husband learned in Yeshiva here and felt an intense connection to the land. It was deep in the core of his being to be here in Eretz Yisrael, and I never had the same feeling.
A big shift happened during Covid. We were suddenly isolated from our family and friends and there was nowhere to go. We started noticing how many people wanted so badly to come to Eretz Yisrael but couldn’t. For my husband, that was the big impetus. For me, it was this deep feeling that Mashiach was coming – and I wanted to be in Eretz Yisrael when Mashiach arrived.
From there, the actual move took a while – we made aliyah one year ago. Our kids were in school – my eldest was in high school, we wanted her to graduate early but the school did not want her to skip twelfth grade. My husband wanted to make aliyah the year she was in seminary, but we decided to wait. Then, the week she came back from seminary, I had a baby – we rushed his passport, thinking we’d make aliyah that summer. But due to paperwork and bureaucracy, it didn’t happen then either.
Despite the setbacks, we were so sure we were going that summer that both my husband and I quit our jobs. Baruch Hashem, we had daas Torah guiding us. Our Rav advised us not to sell our house just yet and Chasdei Hashem, we still had somewhere to live when our plans got delayed. A year later, we asked again and the Rav told us to sell the house. That year, we made aliyah.
When we made aliyah, our oldest was 20 and our youngest was 1. Chasdei Hashem, exactly one year after we arrived, we made a wedding for our oldest daughter.
What was the reaction from your community – your family, friends, your kids’ schools – when you decided to make aliyah? What were people saying?
Everyone thought we were crazy. I had lived in Monsey my entire life. My kids went to the same schools I went to. I shopped in the same grocery stores since I was a child. Everyone knew my family, and we were settled and happy. And I had never stepped foot in Eretz Yisrael. No one believed us that we were about to uproot our entire lives and move to Eretz Yisrael. My parents were very excited about it, but some of my family members and closest friends had a hard time because we are so close and now we would be living far away from them.
I was coming from zero connection with Eretz Yisrael. People would ask me, “Why are you going? You don’t know what the matzav is there.” Especially after the war, when we were mid-process, people questioned us – they said “You see, you would’ve been there.” But what they didn’t understand is that it just made us want to go even more. I wished I was there.
I have so much bitachon in Hashem – and in my husband. If he felt this is what was right for our family of teenage boys, little girls, and everyone in between, I knew this is what we should do. I truly believe in daas Torah and I think it is of utmost importance to ask our questions to our rabbanim. We asked our rabbanim in Monsey about making aliyah. Every single one said we should go. There was not one Rav in America that told us not to go. Even with kids at such different ages and stages, they said – it’s not even a question, of course you should go.
What was the transition like? Coming from Monsey where you were so rooted and moving to Ramat Beit Shemesh, what was it like for you? For your kids?
Our kids are in heaven. Every single one of our children is thriving here. Even my son – who was the most resistant – told me a few months after making aliyah that he would never go back. The school systems here are amazing. My girls go to Israeli schools and my kids love it. The support here for them educationally – ulpan, tutoring programs – has been incredible. People often only hear the negative, but chasdei Hashem, I’ve only seen good.
Of course, there were adjustments. Grocery shopping was overwhelming at first and moving from an acre of land in Monsey to a much smaller space in Ramat Beit Shemesh took getting used to. But overall, the transition was smooth. Making new friends and bussing and adjusting to kids having more freedom, was a little bit of a mind shift, but life here is amazing.
I’m not working right now, since my kids get home early and I’m still handling a lot of paperwork and logistics. My husband is working as a speech therapist here. He speaks Hebrew, Yiddish, and English (having learned Hebrew in the few years before we made Aliyah) and he practices as a speech therapist in Ramat Beit Shemesh and in Beitar. The year we visited my daughter in seminary, my husband took the licensing exam in Israel so now he has a career set up here.
I often tell friends not to let fear about parnassah hold them back. Yes, we came with a career, but there were a good few months that my husband was not working. My bitachon is that Hashem will take care of us – and He did. Don’t panic that you need a job and that your parnassah is in America and they don’t have jobs like yours in Eretz Yisrael – I wholeheartedly believe that Hashem will take care of us.
We didn’t even have an apartment when we made aliyah. Before we left, people asked us where we were moving and we had no idea. A week and a half before we made aliyah, we took a temporary apartment. And a week before we needed to leave the temporary apartment, we found our permanent apartment.
People told us: When klal yisrael came to Eretz Yisrael, the first thing they did was kill Melech Cheshbon. And that’s what we have to do. We have to kill all of our cheshbonos; Hashem will take care of us in Eretz Yisrael.
Once you got here, how would you say that your life changed? How is it different than it was?
It’s not that life completely changed – it’s just a whole different perspective. Every day in Monsey felt the same – it was the regular daily grind. Here, I’m open to new things; every day feels new. There’s an energy in Eretz Yisrael that you just feel. I feel so much bracha here.
In RBS, everyone around is olim and everyone has the same mindset; we all feel privileged to live here in Eretz Yisrael. We’re all in the same boat; everyone is so warm and caring here. It’s a family, a community. It’s welcoming, it’s warm, it’s home.
For the first time since we made aliyah, I had to go back to America due to a family health issue and I was absolutely dreading it. I didn’t want to leave Eretz Yisrael. That says everything. I went from never having been here… to never wanting to leave.
What advice do you have for those in America? Those who are thinking about aliyah, or who are intimidated by the thought, or who maybe never even thought about it.
My advice? Just do it. That’s my personality, that’s my bitachon. I wish people wouldn’t be scared to come. Advice I have for those in America is to come to Eretz Yisrael, look at the neighborhoods, see how welcoming it is, and speak to people who came with children the same age as yours. When I was making aliyah, I connected with people here who helped me and guided me on where to send my kids to school, what areas to look for, and overall the path to go on. Speak and connect to someone in Eretz Yisrael who can guide you. That made a huge difference for me.
One more practical piece of advice – if you plan to make aliyah with kids, come at the beginning of the summer. Set your kids up in a camp with kids that they’ll be in school with so they come into school with friends already; give them time to learn the neighborhood, and it helps them acclimate a little before the school year begins. Additionally, ulpan is very important. I took ulpan the whole year that I’ve been here and I learned Hebrew. But even more than that, I really made
a family in ulpan. I was new, I didn’t know anyone, and I went to ulpan with other people who also just made aliyah. And there, I made a family. At my daughters wedding, twenty friends and their spouses from ulpan came – it was a room full of people who truly became family.
Even though I had no yearning for Eretz Yisrael before, I now know I belong here. There is so much beauty here, and I feel blessed to live here every single day.
Mollie is happy to speak with anyone who would like to reach out. Her email is [email protected].
