Nicole Zion stopped by her home synagogue before she and her husband set off to start a new life in Tel Aviv, undeterred by ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

To make aliyah, she needed a North American rabbi to vouch for her proof of Jewish heritage, so she turned to Temple Emanuel’s Rabbi Emeritus Warren Stone, who officiated her bat mitzvah more than two decades ago.

“‘Of course, I remember your parents,’” the Washington, D.C., resident recalled Stone saying. “‘I’ll do the honor.’”

“Then Rabbi Adam [Rosenwasser] asked, when we get closer to the date, if I could come back to deliver a d’var Torah about all of this, about the decision to make aliyah,” Zion said.

That’s how she found herself on the bimah at her childhood synagogue.

Her husband, Dan, was born in Israel. The couple talked about spending time and eventually starting a Jewish family there.

“It was important to him,” Zion said. “And then, as we got more serious, it became important to me to have kids who are rooted and aware and proud of where both of their parents are from.”

Zion has also visited Israel on occasion, though for no longer than a couple weeks at a time.

Working in international public affairs, a long-term assignment sent Zion to the United Arab Emirates, a 2 1/2-hour flight away from Israel.

“While I was out there, I spent a lot of weekends in Israel decompressing from long, intense stretches of this project,” she recalled. “It just kind of felt like home. It’s hard to describe that sense of familiarity.”

There, Zion became acquainted with colleagues, friends and family members who had made the move.

“So, suddenly, [making aliyah], something that was a whole world away from me was a lot closer, and it started occurring to me, maybe I could do this,” she said.

Then, the Oct. 7 attack on Israel happened, delaying their hope of moving there by a few years.

Things began clicking into place more recently, such as Dan starting a high-paying job earlier this year. The couple will move the second week of August.

“After talking about this for years — and really, we had a long conversation about it — ultimately, we asked ourselves, ‘What are we actually looking to get out of our life?’” Zion said. “We want families, we want to have adventures, we want to travel [and] have a robust, healthy life outside of our jobs, all rooted in Jewish life and values … And so aliyah ended up being the answer for us.”

Israel is part of the fabric of Zion’s family, she said. Her parents met and fell in love while attending Tel Aviv University.

“It was always on my radar, but our life was here,” Zion said, referring to the States.

She and Dan will settle into their new place in Tel Aviv, then go back and forth between Israel and the U.S. to visit friends and immediate family.

The couple reckoned with concerns for their safety amid escalating U.S.-Iran strikes and shaky ground between Israel and Hamas. “I’m not going to pretend that we haven’t thought about it,” Zion said.

She added that daily life in Israel — coffee runs, work commutes and dropping kids off at school — differs widely from the Israel that’s seen through news headlines, which she’s gathered from her friends and colleagues in Tel Aviv.

“It’s a difficult time … and I stay in touch on the macro geopolitical global developments for work,” Zion said. “On a personal level, I’m delinking that because [I’ll] be there, living my life, downloading my app so I know if I need to go to [a bomb] shelter. That just all comes with the territory.”

Temple Emanuel played a “big role” in Zion’s decision to make aliyah.

“I got a lot of my formal Jewish education there,” she said. “It’s probably where my Zionism first took root.”

Returning to the Kensington Reform synagogue for the first time since she was in high school felt like a homecoming of sorts.

“It was a blast from the past, but also like no time had passed,” Zion said. “I don’t think the sanctuary has changed at all since 2004 when I had my bat mitzvah.”

She noted the improved sound system in the room.

“I will say it was just really special to be back there with the Jewish community who effectively raised me,” she said.

In Zion’s d’var Torah on July 24, she connected her story to the parshah of the week: Va’etchanan, when Moses, nearing the end of his life, pleads with God to be allowed into the Land of Israel.

“I talked about how Moses has a big choice at that point,” she said. “He can either spend the rest of Deuteronomy mourning and languishing in the ‘poor me’ of it all, but he doesn’t. He actively prepares the next generation that is going to live in the land. He empowers Joshua. He gives us the Shema. The thing that I kind of paused on for a minute was the piece where he urges the Israelites to teach these things to their children.

I then went on to speak about all the ways that we carry forward the covenant. Some people continue and pursue Jewish education … we educate and instill Jewish ethics and values in others. We bring our values into spaces that are not traditionally thought of as Jewish spaces, like our places of work, our schools, our third spaces.”

Zion closed out her speech with the question that she and Dan asked themselves: “When you let go of whatever’s been holding you back from living the life you want to live, not just something that’s easy or comfortable, what could your life look like? And how will living that life allow you to carry the covenant forward?”

zbell@midatlanticmedia.com