{"id":212439,"date":"2026-07-18T16:54:30","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T16:54:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/212439\/"},"modified":"2026-07-18T16:54:30","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T16:54:30","slug":"australian-immigrant-on-aliyah-idf-service-and-israeli-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/212439\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian immigrant on aliyah, IDF service, and Israeli journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chani Kaplan was born and bred in Sydney, Australia<\/a>, where she attended Chabad schools with students \u201cfrom a broad spectrum of backgrounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Periodic visits by Chabadnik girls from the US and Canada<\/a> who organized activities during lunch breaks livened up the scene.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, there was a specter of unease in the background. She remembers occasional shooter or lockdown drills in high school to protect them from an armed intruder.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to lock ourselves in the classroom, remain quiet, turn off the lights, and crouch beneath our desks,\u201d she relates.<\/p>\n

Though the recent Bondi Beach<\/a> attack was profoundly shocking, it was not a total surprise to her. Nine or 10 years before this hate crime, Chani\u2019s Hebrew teacher and her husband were attacked while walking on the street. The latter was badly hurt and hospitalized for some time.<\/p>\n

\"PeoplePeople stand near flowers laid as a tribute at Bondi Beach to honour the victims of a mass shooting that targeted a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on Sunday, in Sydney, Australia, December 16, 2025. (credit: REUTERS\/Flavio Brancaleone)<\/p>\n

While she and her family visited Israel a lot, for a while Chani had visions of moving to the US or London<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just never felt at home in Australia,\u201d she admits. \u201cMy grandparents were Holocaust survivors who had survived undercover in France with false papers and talked freely about that period in our presence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chani joins her siblings<\/p>\n

She even remembers her great-grandmother from Poland who left her a book she wrote about her wartime experiences in Europe.<\/p>\n

However, when her gap year came around at age 18, Chani, the youngest of four children, joined a brother and sister who had already moved to Israel.<\/p>\n

This time, Israel made a stronger impression on her than in the past. Actually, she realized immediately that she was destined to stay and announced that first week, \u201cI want to make aliyah.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her parents realized that time was running out for them, too, and arrived a year later.<\/p>\n

“I spent my gap year on a Bnei Akiva seminary program for Australian and South African youth called MTA [Midreshet Torah V\u2019Avodah],\u201d Chani explains. \u201cI studied in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City [of Jerusalem].\u201d<\/p>\n

Like TVA, its counterpart for American, Canadian and British youth, MTA was strongly Modern Orthodox and Zionistic and exposed its students to different environments within Israel. None of these really disturbed their comfort zones, however.<\/p>\n

Not so the trip to Poland with MTA. The students visited death camps and mass Jewish graves in forested areas, most notably the Lopuchowo forest in northeastern Poland.<\/p>\n

There the group experienced the traumatic execution site of almost all Jewish residents of the nearby town of Tykocin (whose Jewish community was founded in 1522). The Nazis and their collaborators massacred these 1,400 Jewish men, women, and children on August 25 and 26, 1941, burying many alive, a grim instance of the \u201cHolocaust by bullets\u201d they perpetrated in Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis tragedy solidified my desire to move to Israel: I cried a lot,\u201d she confides.<\/p>\n

Many seminary students stay on in Israel at year\u2019s end. Nonetheless, Chani\u2019s decision to join the army rather than opt for Sherut Leumi (National Service) was not mainstream.<\/p>\n

When she drafted that same year, she needed to improve her Hebrew.<\/p>\n

After the military ulpan she attended during basic training, \u201cI got the basics but had no confidence to speak,\u201d she recounts. \u201cHowever, in my first army unit, I was the only English-speaker there. I had no choice!\u201d<\/p>\n

This involuntary immersion worked wonders. \u201cI now speak Hebrew the way I speak English,\u201d she says. \u201cI live my life half in Hebrew. A lot of my friends are Israeli because of the army.\u201d<\/p>\n

The army changed her in other respects, too. \u201cI learned a lot about my strengths and my weaknesses,\u201d she explains. \u201cAt times I was pushed further than the limit both physically and mentally. Though Australians don\u2019t like to make waves, I learned that you really have to speak up and fight for things.\u201d<\/p>\n

‘Small but mighty’<\/p>\n

Just 1.55 meters tall, Chani describes herself humorously as \u201csmall but mighty.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the army, when she went to Reichman University in Herzliya and studied communications from 2022 to 2025, she encountered a sympathetic atmosphere. It was a relief to study in English and have Friday night services and Shabbat meals on campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a great university for networking,\u201d she enthuses.<\/p>\n

In her final year at the university, she opted to do one course in journalism as a challenge, though originally she thought of taking filmmaking. This course subsequently led to a job opportunity at The Jerusalem Report.<\/p>\n

Chani played on the Israel Women\u2019s National Flag Football team for two years around that time, beginning just before the traumatic events of October 7, 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cI completely fell into this adventure by accident,\u201d she discloses. \u201cAt first I was a 23-year-old, training with teenagers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Actually, British soccer was Chani\u2019s \u201cone true love\u201d as a child, a Sunday hobby that had captivated her from age nine.<\/p>\n

Though she invested lots of time and effort in learning US flag football here, training three times a week in Wingate and Jerusalem, \u201cI didn\u2019t really love the sport,\u201d she confesses. But the teamwork was a draw for her.<\/p>\n

She also had to cope with frequent bouts of reserve duty and the demands of her studies. Other drawbacks included physical injuries sustained on the football field. \u201cI was constantly bruised, on crutches or bandaged up, having been kneed, elbowed in the face, and incurring bad ankle sprains.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chani loves her job and Jerusalem, has friends all over the country, and is happy that most of her family is here.<\/p>\n

\u201cI currently work at The Jerusalem Report as staff writer, editorial assistant, and social media manager,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Running social media entails updating accounts across various platforms and publishing articles in a shortened format to appeal to young people.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the way they\u2019re going to get their news,\u201d she tells me, now that skimming screens has replaced print reading for this demographic.<\/p>\n

She enjoys working with colleagues in the office and sometimes going out to interview people.<\/p>\n

As for settling down in Israel, she advises equanimity and going with the flow.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes time. I\u2019ve been here seven years and been open to so many different experiences. Everything happens when it\u2019s meant to happen. When I look at the trajectory of my last few years, everything makes sense. You have to be patient because it is a difficult country. That is the adventure though.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chani Kaplan
From Sydney, Australia to Jerusalem, 2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chani Kaplan was born and bred in Sydney, Australia, where she attended Chabad schools with students \u201cfrom a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[5859,1648,61794,3132,37,503],"class_list":["post-212439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-aliyah","tag-australia","tag-bondi-beach-mass-shooting","tag-chabad","tag-israel","tag-magazine"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116942029799091961","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}