Sharon Alkoubey is a woman of faith. She was confident in her decision to leave the life she knows here in Miami for a brand new life in Or Akiva, Israel. The Israel Aliyah Center, a Greater Miami Jewish Federation beneficiary agency, assisted the Alkoubeys with the move.

Even though she left behind two sons, Sharon flew to Israel with her husband, Rabbi Avraham Alkoubey, and Rachel, their 8-year-old daughter. One son, Sammy, 16, stayed behind to attend the JCC Maccabi games. He will leave Miami at the end of August with other students from Or Akiva who participated in the games. The Alkoubeys also left behind their eldest son, Elie, 19, a student at Florida State University. According to Sharon, Elie hasn't decided where his life will take him. "He wants to continue his education," she says. But she has faith that he'll choose to move to Israel, too.

Things have been going pretty smoothly, says Sharon, "We are waiting for our house to be finished in a community called Green Lights being built on the northern edge of Or Akiva. It's a big dream of ours. My husband will be the Rabbi in the new shul." Sixteen hundred new homes are being built in this community, as well as a brand new synagogue.

Or Akiva is the sister city of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, and receives support through Partnership 2000, an innovative program which aims to link Jews in Israel and the Diaspora in an effort to promote Jewish continuity and to develop Israel's priority areas.

According to Bruce Yudewitz, Federation's Director of Community Planning and Allocations, "the partnership with Or Akiva has grown from helping to develop the community to assisting in its economic development. As a result of our involvement it has grown tremendously."

Sharon is excited for Sammy, who is looking forward to moving to Israel. "He'll have the world at his fingertips. I believe we'll be able to open up doors for him everywhere," says Sharon. One of the doors that she would like to be opened is at the Weizmann Institute, where the latest stem cell research is being done on Juvenile Diabetes. Sammy is a diabetic, and his mother is keeping up with the research in the hopes there will one day be a cure.

Sammy says, "I look at it as a big opportunity for me to go to Israel and be in a different culture. But it's going to be hard to leave my friends."

Israel isn't exactly a new experience for Sharon; 23 years ago she met her husband in Israel while she was a student at Tel Aviv University. "I met him three different times in three different parts of Israel," she explained. They finally got together, were engaged in the U.S. and went back and forth to Israel.

Rabbi Alkoubey's parents emigrated to Israel from Morocco, where he was born, so he is Israeli, says Sharon, and his parents and family are here in Or Akiva. But as a young bride and mother, early on, Sharon needed the security of her own parents and her life in Philadelphia, so they moved back to her hometown.

They moved to Miami nine years ago, and Avraham became intensely involved in the Magen David Sephardic Center. For the past three years, he has studied to be a rabbi. "I feel like Rabbi Akiva's wife," says Sharon. "I supported him to get his certification. He was away studying in Israel almost a year."

While he was studying, Sharon worked as a teacher with Kesher, a Federation beneficiary program for kids with learning disabilities, including autism, Down's syndrome and Attention Deficit Disorder.

Elul 5762 - September 2002