Former Baltimoreans who moved to Israel say they are not going anywhere, even as sirens scream and missiles streak over their new neighborhoods. Alan and Janet Abramowitz swapped retirement in Baltimore for life in Efrat, where their days now bounce between family time, “grandparenting” and sprinting to safe rooms when the alerts sound. Their story is part of a steady flow of U.S. Jews choosing aliyah in spite of an increasingly volatile region.
Reporter Paula Minsk gathered those accounts from the Abramowitzes, Howard Kaplan, and Rabbi Mitchell Ackerson, among others, as they described the rhythms of daily life under threat. As detailed by the Baltimore Jewish Times, the Abramowitzes moved in July 2022, Kaplan relocated to Zichron Ya'akov in 2017, and Ackerson, a former Sinai Hospital chief chaplain turned tour guide, has seen his business grind to a halt amid the violence. The reporting highlights how routine Israelis have made the drills and dashes to shelters even as the entire country stays on edge.
How the escalation reached ordinary neighborhoods
At the end of February 2026, the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes on Iranian targets, a campaign that triggered Iran to fire rockets, missiles, and drones at populated areas and U.S. bases across the region. International coverage describes waves of alerts, nighttime sirens, and repeated trips to shelters across Israel as air defenses tried to knock down incoming threats, according to reporting by CBS News. Residents in central and northern Israel were ordered to safe rooms again and again, sometimes several times in a single day.
Why some Baltimore families still make aliyah
For many who choose aliyah, the move has less to do with short-term safety calculations and more to do with long-standing ties, family connections, and rising worries about antisemitism abroad. The Anti-Defamation League has reported record-high antisemitic incidents, and The Jerusalem Post has profiled recent olim who say surging hate in their previous communities helped push them toward Israel. Those pressures help explain why some Baltimore families packed up despite knowing the risks on the other side.
Even with the sirens and the scramble to shelters, the former Baltimore residents interviewed for the Baltimore Jewish Times say they stand by their choice. “For these former Baltimoreans, there is no place they would rather be,” the coverage concludes, a line that captures how personal priorities and identity can outweigh an unstable security situation, per the Baltimore Jewish Times.
