'I feel like I'm home, I finally came home'

Today, Noa Hirsch plans to keep a six-year promise to return to the Western Wall a small stone she spontaneously grabbed from it while visiting Israel six years ago.

"I said then, 'The rock comes home when I come home.'" Yesterday the stone was in her bag when the 22-year-old redhead from Pittsburgh landed at Ben-Gurion Airport on a chartered El Al plane along with close to 400 other North American immigrants as part of a new program, Nefesh b'Nefesh, which hopes to jump-start North American immigration.

Hirsch said she was so excited to be in Israel she would have kissed the ground but couldn't because there was such a large crowd of people, politicians, and television cameras.

Even before she left home, Hirsch knew this was a celebrity event. She, along with many other immigrants, had been interviewed by the US and Israeli media. A dozen US and Israeli reporters traveled with them on the plane to record their story. By now, the whole world knows the details of her immigration, Hirsch said. Israeli television crews will be following her when she goes to the Wall today.

The decision to come developed over a six-year span, with numerous incidents pushing her forward, Hirsch said.

After September 11, she began asking herself a lot of questions, such as "Who am I? And what community am I serving?" she said.

On her law school campus, where Hirsch just finished her first year, friends asked her, "Do you feel guilty because your people are committing genocide?" "The more I defended Israel, the more I wanted to be in Israel," she remembered.

Then six months ago, on a birthright Israel trip, she decided that now was the moment. "I'm always the best I can be here," she thought. She went home and typed in the word "aliya" in the computer. "I was like, let's go, baby," Hirsch said.

When she first announced to her parents that she was immigrating to Israel, they thought she was crazy. "My mother didn't talk to me for three days," she recalled. But before she left, her mother handed her a letter which she read on the plane telling her how proud she was of her decision to go.

Leaving was sad, Hirsch said. Her father, sister, and two friends came to the airport to say good-bye. "My Dad was crying at the gate," Hirsch said.

But she was excited to meet people on the plane where everyone was sharing stories, Hirsch added. "We all knew where we were going and why," Hirsch noted, recalling it had been a crazy ride because there were 150 children running around the plane.

Hirsch, who plans to continue her law studies here, said she felt like she was part of something historic. "I know that 30 years from now, I will tell my kids I was on that really cool flight," she said.

Sitting waiting to meet an immigration officer at the airport, Oranit Fine of Toronto said she has never felt better. On Thursday and Friday, when shippers came for her family's belongings and emptied out her home, she should have been sad, but she wasn't. "I never felt better. It was so uplifting to pack and go," she recalled.

The whole time getting ready to go she felt calm. She made lists and simply went step by step. It was only once she got on the plane that she felt overwhelmed, Fine said.

Her husband Asher, who hopes to find a job in sales and marketing, said, "We've desired for so long to explain to Israelis how passionate we are about Israel."

"How could I not be excited," Asher added. "It's our dream. It's the most incredible experience of my life. When you have a dream and you work so hard toward it for so long, the more time passes the further you get away from it and then it comes together in a profound way."

For months they have been asking their small daughter, "Do you know where we are going?" And then they helped her answer, "Israel." Yesterday for the first time they were asking her, "Do you know where you are? You are in Israel."

With a teary face, Audrey Hadad of Miami said, "I feel like I'm home. I finally came home." She, her husband Nuriel, daughter Ariel, 5, mother Shirley and cat Callie are moving to Pardes Hannah.

"We're three generations," said Shirley, explaining that they all desired to come to Israel. Mother and daughter inspired each other, Shirley Hadad said.

Descending from the plane with her four children, Tamar Rudy of Baltimore said, "It's a dream come true." The reaction among friends and family was mixed, Rudy said. "But this is where we belong, where else should we be?"

Holding a baby's car seat in one hand and one of his small children in the other, Mutti Frankel of New Jersey, who also came with his four small children, said the crowd that greeted them was way beyond their expectations. "I hope we can live up to what everyone is expecting of us," he said.