40 Great Neckers trade little Persia for big Zion

Forty members of seven Mashadi families left Great Neck on Monday enroute to Ra’anana, embarking on new lives as olim.

Exchanging a tight-knit Persian community on Long Island’s North Shore for new lives in Israel, the group traveled together on an El Al flight and will reside near one another in the Promised Land.

An eighth family that hoped to join Monday’s aliyah journey plans to follow soon.

Adam Aziz, making aliyah with his wife Jennifer and their five children — ages 4, 6, 9, 11 and 13 — described how the large group resolved to take the journey together.

“It’s the passion of our life to live strong Jewish lives filled with Torah values,” Aziz said. “That passion drove us to say we want to be where we belong, we want to raise our kids where they belong and where our descendants, G-d willing, should belong.”

He described the Mashadi community, one of a number of Iranian groups in Great Neck, as “a very special close-knit community. We’re all literally cousins. There are thousands of people we’re so close with.”

That’s why making aliyah one family at a time didn’t seem quite right, and how the idea of making aliyah as a community took hold, he said.

Aziz said he was grateful to both Nefesh B’Nefesh and Golan Vach of Israela for helping the families work through the complicated aliyah process. Nefesh B’Nefesh arranged the El Al seats and its representatives were at JFK on Monday to cheer them on.

Nefesh B’Nefesh Associate Director Avichai Ivgui said that while having such a large group making aliyah together has happened a few times before, “it hasn’t been all that often [and it’s] incredibly exciting to see them form when it happens.”

While the 40 olim were checcking their luggage and making their way to airport security, the mother, grandmother and aunt of some of the olim were keeping three of the children occupied.

Esther Livi said she herself was not making aliyah just yet but that she expects to do so eventually.

Her children described her as the biggest cheerleader for their move.

“I was so supportive from the beginning. I said, go, go. The future of your children is there. This galut is not for us anymore. Enough is enough.”

Livi said she fled Iran as a 14-year-old, with her family, six months after the revolution in 1979. “We were there through the whole revolution and got out in the nick of time.”

Her father sent their synagoue’s money to a charity in Israel, so his name was on the black list, she said. They left just before the airport was closed.

“My father was handicapped, so he couldn’t have escaped through the mountains,” she said. “He couldn’t have done it. But on the plane, we came.

“And thank G-d, because later, people told me they were looking for him. You know how many Jews they killed!”

What does she say to people who think making aliyah is difficult?

“You know what? We dropped everything, left everything, we came here — new country, no language … we were so disoriented, and we made it,” she said.

“Now you are going to a beautiful, Jewish, kosher land — our own land. Don’t complain. You’ll be fine.”

She said she keeps telling them to compare it to her experience, “and thank G-d, we made it.

“Thank G-d we thrived as a strong Jewish community.”

Now, she said, “Our future is in Israel. We are all aiming for Israel, all of us.”

See also: New Rochelle girl is 100,000th Nefesh B’Nefesh oleh