From Bokorotone, Florida. This is Behind the Bima. On this episode, Rabbi Josh Brody returns to Behind the Bima, this time as a guest. After decades helping build the Boca Raton Jewish community, Rabbi Brody made Al-Ira. Rabbi Brody reflects on what surprised them most about Israeli life, discusses the gap between the dream and reality of Aliaa and explains how war, sirens, and uncertainty reshaped daily life.

A conversation about identity, belonging, resilience, and what it means to leave behind a

life you help build while still carrying it with you. All this and more, Behind the Bima.

This season of Behind the Bima is sponsored by Julie Charleston and Darrell Benjamin in honor

of their grandparents, Morton and Malvina Charleston,

and their children, Ruby and Maccabi Benjamin.

Welcome back Behind the Bima, an incredibly special episode we have,

to welcome back, one of our hosts, Rabbi Josh Brody.

Welcome back to Behind the Bima into our studio.

I don't even know which camera to look in right now. I don't even remember this many cameras. Welcome to the studio. We've gone pro. And Behind the Bima is doing fantastic. And a special episode to welcome you back and get an update on your life. There's no, it's not Robert Brody's back to host with us and we're going to bring in a get.

You are the guest, the host. I don't feel like a guest. I feel like I'm back. I feel like a podcast. I miss your dog barking in the background though. I remember that. Every episode. Yeah, that's true. Simone, I'm recording here. I remember my dog. I don't even haven't seen my dog in a couple months.

Simone, keep it down.

Yeah.

It's good to have you back. And we want to thank you for putting on pants for the first time in like eight months. Listen, I lift my sandals in Israel. Sandals, your shorts and your cova tembo. Thank you for getting dressed to us. We appreciate that. It means a lot. So it's good to have you back. It's so great.

And it was a wonderful week here, Boca and BRS. Yeah. Yeah. So tell us, I mean, really the goal,

we've, we continue to get, I just got two emails from the Yal Libute episode. We're still getting

a lot of feedback about our conversations about all the yeah, which even the people who sort of push back or criticize, I take as a compliment, we're trying to stimulate conversation about al-Ia. So the irony, like in criticizing us, we're not for Al-Ia. We're trying to get conversation pushing, promoting. We've got, I think, eight families this summer from BRS going. Big event. All families are big and prominent. So I was going to say that you're not pro-Aliya.

Because in this conversation we were talking about, you know, have there always been two centers of Jewish life? Are there ever reasons it's okay not to make Alia? I mean, there's conversations worth having. But before we get that, just tell us about you, you're Alia. Tell us about your life, about what's going on, what you're doing, how your family is,

what it's been like, what you expected, different than what you've expected. And it's changed over the last few months. We went from a time of peace to a time of war. Remember, after the summer, all of a sudden, all the flights were back on, not just El Al, Right.

American Airlines said they're going to be flying.

Everyone jumped on these cheaper tickets.

And then before Pesach, no one had seats. And everyone's

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