Julia Brandsdorfer, who made aliyah last August, says she feels safer living in Israel than she did in the United States.

Growing up in Montgomery County, she said she faced a lot of antisemitism.

One example she cited was during her freshman year of high school. Brandsdorfer played junior varsity softball but said she felt she was only on the team to “meet a certain quota for diversity.”

One of two Jewish players, “all the other girls were blond Christian girls with [cross necklaces],” she recalled, adding despite being the better pitcher on the team, she was consistently benched.

“Every game where I pitched the whole game, we won,” she said. “[The other pitcher] walked everyone and they continued to bench me.”

Brandsdorfer said she was cut from the team in her second year of high school — officially because she could only do one type of pitch, “even though I had three.” Unofficially, however, she said she was told it was because games were on Saturdays during Shabbat and because she was the only observant Jew, they didn’t want her on the team.

Brandsdorfer attended a public school with her younger sister who also played softball and said the antisemitism worsened after graduating.

Her sister faced “passive-aggressive” antisemitic comments while on the softball team, Brandsdorfer said, despite making varsity.

After graduating from high school, Brandsdorfer took a gap year in Israel with the idea that someday she would move there and make aliyah — a sentiment that was reinforced while she studied for her undergraduate degree.

“Freshman year, I would wear my Star of David necklace out,” she recalled. “Starting my sophomore year, I would start tucking it in.”

Brandsdorfer said nothing specific happened, but “something in the air changed” in spring 2021.

After Oct. 7, despite Israel being at war, Brandsdorfer said she felt more than ever like she wanted to be in Israel.

“I started looking at different master’s programs in the U.S. and that was around the time that … all of the protests on campuses … at Columbia and Harvard and UCLA was going on,” she said. “I [didn’t] know if I want to go to school in the U.S … I [didn’t] want to feel any of the negativity … and then my cousin, Ariel, who’s my age, who made aliyah when she was 12, she came to visit, and she was like, ‘you know, you can do your master’s degree in Israel in English.’”

After looking into master’s programs, Brandsdorfer said, “I felt like the direction that the Jewish community was moving in general was closer and closer towards aliyah.”

In 2024, Brandsdorfer decided moved to Israel to pursue her master’s degree from Reichman University, but during her second year of study, she said she was ready to commit to living in Israel and made aliyah.

Despite feeling more comfortable wearing her Star of David and practicing Judaism, she said, “I was very nervous for my first siren.”

In September 2024, Brandsdorfer was living in the dorms at Reichman and got an alert that there were going to be missiles launched later that day and to expect retaliation. Nervous, Brandsdorfer decided to spend the night with her cousins, anticipating the attack.

While there, she experienced her first siren in Israel.

“I was freaking out, and my cousins were like, ‘It’s fine … nothing’s going to happen,’” she recalled. “And then we had sushi for dinner.”

“It happens,” she added. “Then everything goes back to normal very quickly. It bounces back. It’s the mentality here. People very much live in the moment here, more than in America … people, in a lot of ways, are more down to earth.”

Brandsdorfer said when she is in Israel, she feels safer despite being in a country at war because she feels safer in a different way. “There’s the micro level and there’s the macro level,” she explained.

“Your day-to-day, just walking around in a city … I can walk around at night as a woman alone and feel perfectly fine. I don’t feel like there’s any threat to me … I feel that in America. But in America, I’m not worried that a bomb’s going to hit me.”

Brandsdorfer added that with public shelters everywhere in Israel, and feeling able to practice her Judaism more openly, her decision to make aliyah during a time of war goes beyond safety.

“I think it is because of the wars, but people in Israel live in the moment a lot more, and then because everyone here is family … people are warmer,” she said. “People are more real here … if you’ve made aliyah … People find out [and say] ‘Welcome home. I can’t believe someone moved here in the middle of a war … it’s so amazing you’re here. You’re so brave. You’re crazy, but you’re brave.”’

mresnicow@midatlanticmedia.com