The Aliyah Survival Blog

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Chutzpah and High Heels:
The Search for Love and Identity in the Holy Land

With shrapnel-filled explosive belts, instead of Gucci black leather belts, this is not your typical chick lit book.

When I arrive in Israel, at twenty-two years old, I was a wide-eyed immigrant hoping to survive on idealism, ideology, and optimism. Having grown up in calm, dreary, and cold Minnesota, I decide to give up the comforts of American life in the Midwest and move to a land in the Middle East that is full of idiosyncrasies, terrorists, and beautiful, olive-skinned men.

Instead of working the land on a Kibbutz or being swept off her feet by a strong, yet sensitive Israeli soldier, I am faced with a barrage of ridiculous obstacles – fighting a bureaucracy worse than FEMA’s, embarrassing myself daily with kindergarten-level Hebrew, serving as a soldier in an army in which I can have babysat my commanders, working under bosses who made Ahmadinejad seem like a peacemaker, and dating Israeli men who made Hamas terrorists seem like potential husband material.

With a self-deprecating wit, I’ll take you on a personal journey through these challenges, one of which will shake the core of my identity and threaten the very ideology that brought me to Israel. This universal story – about a young woman losing and searching for identity, overcoming heartbreak, and finding her place in the world – gives a seldom-before-seen snapshot of Israeli culture.

Want to read more? Check out the first few pages . . .