“I completed medical school in Brazil and then did my specialization in intensive care at UCLA. But I saw how hard it was for my parents to raise us Jewishly in Brazil. I knew that if I wanted to have a Jewish family I must go to Israel.”

Ana Luiza Tapia’s journey to Israel sounds like a riveting novel. She was a successful doctor in her native Brazil, the daughter of a journalist and a museum curator. Both her maternal and paternal grandparents were Holocaust survivors. Ana was connected to her Jewish roots and always thought of going to Israel. More