(Eli Grossman is a senior from Teaneck, New Jersey. He attends the Abraham Joshua Heschel School in Manhattan, a pluralistic Jewish day school. He attends Camp Ramah in the Berkshires during the summers and is an involved USYer. )

Shout out to Gary Rosenblatt, editor and publisher of the Jewish Week, for landing me this gig. My name is Eli Grossman. I live in Teaneck, NJ (the capitol of Diaspora Judaism), and am a senior at the Abraham Joshua Heschel School in Manhattan.

There are a lot of things swimming around in my mind: college, school, sports, friends, the shame of being a Mets, Jets, and Knicks fan, etc. I hope to discuss most, if not all, of these subjects in my bloggings, but in my first blog I want to-well-bloviate about something that stems from my recent summer trip to Israel.

 An issue that has been fermenting in my mind for a while-at least since this summer-has been the possibility of aliyah. I spent the summer in Israel on Ramah Poland-Israel Seminar. I came back with a recharged love for the land, the people, the language, the food, and the culture. All this forced me to consider seriously the possibility of living in Israel one day. I already plan to spend the gap year between high school and college in Israel, but there is a special allure to truly living there. My dad-the raging Zionist-would surely help me pack my bags tomorrow (and would likely stow away in the carriage of the El-Al flight), and my mother-the devoted Diaspora Jew-is less keen about the idea. I like to think that aliyah would be easy, that the transition to life in Israel from life in Teaneck would be seamless.

But I'm marginally realistic; I know that life in Israel, for even the most comfortable, is inherently difficult. So I vacillate almost daily about whether or not I want to live there. Maybe this is all a product of my knowing that college is fast approaching, which means that independent life is fast approaching, as well. Life in Israel is tough. Life in Teaneck is easy.

I am reminded of my favorite verse from Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of our Fathers: "The reward is proportionate to the suffering" (5:22). So I'm left with a tough decision: do I take the tough, but rewarding life in Israel, or the easy, but rewarding in its own merit, life in a place like Teaneck?