What should you bring on aliyah? What should you leave behind?

Should you bring Ziploc baggies?  What about furniture and appliances?  One question every single oleh is going to have to face before moving to Israel is – what should I bring with me?

So I thought I’d turn to the real experts – olim who are already here. I asked the following question on two major aliyah groups on Facebook:

What ONE item did you (or should you) have brought with you when you made aliyah? Bonus: what ONE item did you bring that turned out to be utterly useless? (ours was snowsuits!!!)

I’ve divided up the responses into categories to make it easier for you to read. But essentially, there's no one answer that works for everybody. Some people bring several lifts' worth of items, others come with just a backpack.

The advice here is also sometimes contradictory. I’ve met people who say, “Don’t bother bringing anything major, you can get everything here.” And then there are others who tell you to bring everything you possibly can. It really depends on who you are and regardless of what other people’s experiences have been, what you choose to bring is up to you.

That said, hopefully we can all learn something from what people chose to bring (or what they regret bringing...).  Spoiler alert – not one person mentioned ziploc baggies.  Or toilet paper, tuna, chocolate chips, or any one of a huge range of items that they would have been begging for 10, 20, or 30 years ago.  You can get zipper bags of various kinds (though they’re still not very good, in my opinion!), the tuna is excellent, and they even have Godiva chocolate for sale here now.

(Mmm… I saw these in a store the exact DAY my husband surprised me by showing up with one as a Rosh Hashanah present!)

Here are the major categories of people’s MUST-BRING items as well as their aliyah REGRETS.

The very biggest regret, hands-down, is a category

Should you plug it in? Adapters vs Transformers and what to use where.

Before you plug anything in in Israel, stop and check.  Is it safe, or will it send your house up in smoke?  Do you need an adapter, a transformer, or can you just plug it in as-is?  The wrong answer is one you’ll deeply regret. 

Before you plug in any appliance, you’ll need to understand the basics of Israeli outlets.

Disclaimer:  I’m not an electrician.  In fact, whatever the furthest thing is from an electrician, that's me. That said, I do know a thing or two, both from wikipedia and from harsh personal experience.

Here’s the least you need to know: 

Israeli outlets have more electricity in them than the ones in North America.

Here’s what a standard 3-prong (grounded) outlet looks like here:

If you peer at the holes very closely, you’ll see that they accommodate both “slot” plugs and “round” plugs.  The round ones are European and the slots are distinctly Israeli.

Standard outlets here have 220V running through them instead of 120V.  If that sounds like a lot of juice, it’s because it is (I think it’s the same amount that powers those jumbo dryer outlets in North America).

So it goes without saying – you can’t just plug stuff in willy-nilly.  Unless you want it all to catch fire.  And yes, I mean this literally.  I literally saw a beloved telephone we’d shlepped across the ocean go up in smoke.