Imagine the impression it would make on young teens to see their Orthodox Jewish community redirect the $1 million it raised to build its first synagogue. Instead of using it to upgrade its prayer space from a social hall to a sanctuary, the community donated the entire sum to Israel immediately after the Six Day War in 1967.
That’s what Steven and Rosanne Teplitsky witnessed 58 years ago in the Montreal Jewish community where they grew up.
Friends since childhood, the two started dating when they were 15 and 16, respectively. After decades of married life, they sometimes finish each other’s sentences.
In their late teens, they were traveling through Europe with a group of friends, en route to Israel. “We were sitting in the Rome airport and picked up an International Herald Tribune with a headline about the Lod massacre in 1972. That was our first trip to Israel. We cut our trip to Europe short because we felt we had to be in Israel,” Steven recounted.
Aliyah on the radar
Three years after they got married, aliyah was already on their radar. “In 1977, we came to Israel to see if we could make aliyah,” Rosanne explained.
Steven elaborated, “We took our wedding money [that we had saved] and expected to be living in Israel for a year. In 1977, the inflation rate in Israel was 200%, and we ran out of a year’s supply of money in six months.” They were still students, so they returned to Canada.
“We went home, started a family, and raised our children in Bnei Akiva-type [Zionist] schools,” their words combined to form a single sentence. “We were very involved in Bnei Akiva. That was [our children’s life], that was our lives,” Rosanne said.
Steven served as the chairman of Bnei Akiva’s Camp Moshava in Canada for nine years, and their four children all served in leadership positions in Bnei Akiva. Steven described their Canadian home as “Bnei Akiva Central.”
After the four were grown, their second-born child, Aliza, was the first in the family to make aliyah. She made aliyah at 24 “because,” Rosanne laughingly explained, “Bnei Akiva believes you must make aliyah by the time you’re 24.” Aliza married Rabbi Leo Dee earlier this year.
The Teplitskys’ other two daughters, Rachel and Nomi, followed the path Aliza forged, so that by 2018 three of their four children were living in Israel.
At the airport, leaving Israel after a visit with their children and grandchildren, the couple turned to each other and said, “It doesn’t make sense for us to be in Canada anymore.” A year later, they were the newest olim in the family.
The pair originally planned to settle in Jerusalem, but after facing the reality of urban life, such as schlepping groceries uphill, they chose Modi’in for the softer landing it provided.
Despite decades of preparation, their actual entry into Israel was quite rocky. They left Canada in March 2020, just as COVID was ramping up. An hour after their aliyah flight landed, Rosanne received an urgent message from her brother, letting her know that her father had unexpectedly died while they had been in transit.
They were informed that Ben-Gurion Airport was on the verge of shutting down due to COVID restrictions, but Rosanne flew back to Canada on a nearly empty Air Canada flight the next day.
“Canada didn’t realize the seriousness of it [COVID],” Steven said, so there was a full funeral and shiva for Rosanne’s father in Montreal. A few days into shiva, Steven called Rosanne and said, “You have to leave Canada now. Israel is shutting its doors. You won’t be able to get back in.”
“So I left my siblings in Canada and I flew back to Israel,” Rosanne said.
Required to quarantine upon her return to Israel, she sat the rest of shiva for her father in complete isolation, in a room of a borrowed apartment in Jerusalem. “It was a very strange shiva,” she expressed.
To complicate matters, a rail strike in Canada delayed the arrival of their lift [of possessions].
“Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong,” Rosanne confessed, including the Passover Seder of 2020, when they were entirely alone.
Despite all these obstacles, Steven commented, “We never said we weren’t home,” to which Rosanne added, “from the moment we arrived.”
In fact, Steven related a positive outcome of making aliyah during the height of COVID. Whenever they had to visit a government office, as all new olim do, they made an appointment, met with the one person working there, and handled their business with maximum efficiency. “No lines!” he exclaimed.
Six weeks later, they moved to their apartment in Modi’in, and life settled into a more normal rhythm, albeit with exclusively outdoor prayer services and distanced visits with their children and grandchildren. Eventually, the Teplitskys and their Modi’in children and grandchildren formed a COVID bubble and spent every Shabbat together for a year.
Steven and Rosanne moved to the relatively new Nofim neighborhood of Modi’in to be close to their kids, and, during that time, new families were moving in nearly every week.
“Kabbalat Shabbat in the park in Israel?! It doesn’t get better than this! Six years later, we still wake up in the morning and say, ‘Are we really here?’ Is this a vacation, or what?” Steven enthused.
Despite their rocky start, the Teplitskys are so certain that aliyah was the right move that Rosanne said that if they had still been in Canada when the [current] war started, they would have made aliyah then.
“It took us 40 years [to get here]. We were in the desert all that time. In retrospect, we should have come earlier. Life here is so full of ta’am [flavor]. When you go back [to Canada] to visit, it doesn’t have the same ta’am that it does here,” Steven confessed.
“We love the community here. We couldn’t ask for better,” Rosanne declared.
“Unlike what’s going on in America and Europe and everywhere else, we didn’t escape. We’re not fleeing. We’re not refugees from antisemitism. It took us a long time to get here, but it was a choice we made willingly, very willingly,” Steven acknowledged.
HAVING SETTLED in happily, Rosanne smiled and said, “We had one free year between COVID and the war.”
Oct. 7 brought the Teplitskys yet another new chapter. Their two sons-in-law served extensive reserve duty, so they stepped in to help their daughters with childcare.
With long-standing connections to the Canadian Jewish community, Rosanne reached out to friends and relatives in Canada. She raised funds for a variety of projects to support local families directly affected by the conflict and spent the two years of war taking care of her family and helping with local charitable projects.
To Jews in their stage of life who aren’t here yet, Rosanne offered encouragement. “Don’t think too hard about it. Just do it. It’s well worth it!”
Steven advised, “Buy a property here in Israel on paper. Let it be built in five years. [The investment] doesn’t go anywhere but up.”
“Our life is richer because we have our children around us,” Rosanne said.
Steven told this story. “My birthday is around Passover time. The year before we made aliyah, we were all together for Passover, and my son said, ‘What wishes do you have for your birthday?’ and I said, ‘If I could live another 20 or 25 years, I will get to see my grandchildren 20 or 25 more times.’
“The following year, after we made aliyah, it’s Passover time, my birthday. My son, who initiated that question the year before, said to me, ‘So, Dad, how many times did you see your grandchildren this week?’ And that’s what it’s all about!” ■
STEVEN AND ROSANNE TEPLITSKY FROM TORONTO TO MODI’IN, 2020