The Talmudic sages believed that parents receive a drop of prophecy when naming their child. That certainly seems to have been the case with Unique Niv Kruper.
“I’ve always been different. I’m very tall with red hair, and growing up that was a disaster. I totally stuck out. I have opinions that conflict with other people’s opinions. I was always used to going against the tide,” says Unique.
“So leaving everything I knew to move to Israel before I turned 18 wasn’t as crazy for me as it would have been for the average person.”
One thing she did have in common with many peers in Los Angeles was having an Israeli parent; her father is a sabra.
“There were 300,000 Israelis in our region, and it’s grown to about half a million. Most of the kids I grew up with were Israeli,” says Unique.
Today, the married mother of four is the Safed municipality’s liaison to the English-speaking community of 3,000 to 3,500 residents.
Nothing about her story is standard.
“My great-great-grandmother was Evelyn Nesbit, the original Gibson Girl,” she reveals. This famous model, painted for posterity by artist Charles Dana Gibson, was married to a railroad tycoon convicted of murdering a famous architect in 1906.
Evelyn’s granddaughter, Unique’s maternal grandmother, converted to Judaism before marrying Aryeh Ravid in Los Angeles. Aryeh’s parents and siblings lived in Israel.
“My grandmother fell in love with Israel when she visited his family. After she and my grandfather got divorced, she moved to Israel along with her mother, who was not Jewish, while my grandfather stayed in LA,” Unique relates.
Her grandmother still lives in Tel Aviv. As a young woman, Unique’s mother served in the IDF before going back to California.
“There was something that pulled us all here,” she notes.
With grandparents on both sides residing in Israel, Unique’s family visited every year.
“I loved the culture and the people and that everybody so very much enjoyed life in a way that I didn’t see in LA,” she says. “I saw people in Yellow gas stations buying ice cream and iced coffee and everyone seemed so happy no matter their financial status. I loved the bargaining in the shuk. By comparison, LA was very bland.”
Unique joined Garin Tzabar, which prepares American teens for Israeli army service. In the summer of 2008, after finishing high school, she planned to go camping with a good friend in New York before leaving for Israel. But a week before, she got a call in LA informing her that the friend had suddenly passed away.
“When he died, I rethought my life at age 17. At his funeral, I met another friend of his, Nachman Kruper, who ended up being my husband. My friend had planned, without my knowing, to bring Nachman along on our camping trip. So we sat at the shiva and helped each other cope.”
Unique remembered that her late friend had recommended she go to Safed if she wanted to grow spiritually. So instead of the army, she enrolled in Sharei Bina Seminary in Safed. Here she found her home.
“I felt this magnetic pull, like I’d been here in a past life. Maybe I was part of the tribe that was destined for Safed,” she says.
“The answers I was searching for in LA I found in Safed. My friends in LA thought I’d lost my mind and they’d never see me again. After I got married, we did move back to LA for about a year, but we couldn’t find ourselves there. Our friends were all in Safed, and the fulfillment we felt in Israel was gone. So we made aliyah through Nefesh B’Nefesh.”
Nachman managed a bagel shop and then the couple opened a popular café that they later sold when Nachman decided to become a pastry chef.
“After he became really good, we opened a bakery, Café Bella, with an experienced partner. It is the meeting place for Anglos every Friday to get their wide selection of 100% sourdough loaves and hand-rolled buttery croissants while schmoozing about the week’s local and world events.”
The Krupers became quite high-profile in Safed. In 2018, Unique helped get out the Anglo vote on behalf of successful mayoral candidate Shuki Ohana. Therefore, when the city needed a new bilingual liaison to English-speakers in early 2021, the job was offered to Unique.
“There’s so much that I want to do in this position. I feel that the mayor is very interested in enhancing the Anglo community, making sure it flourishes,” she says.“He sees the importance of the Anglo community as a strong voice, and aliyah to Safed is growing. In the last half year, 10 families have moved here, three of them from LA.”
The Kruper family has grown, too. Unique and Nachman have three boys and a girl, ages 11, 9, 7 and 5. Unique says that when the oldest entered first grade after attending an English-speaking gan, she worried that her ginger-haired, blue-eyed, culturally American child wouldn’t get along with his Moroccan and Ethiopian Israeli classmates.
“Two or three months into first grade, the teacher said, ‘Your kid gets along with everyone; they all love him.’ I didn’t think it was possible for two Americans to come to Israel and have a kid who just blends in with the Israelis,” says Unique.
“Now I think the best combination is Israeli kids of American parents. They have American manners and the sharp wits of Israelis, so they know how to get by in any situation. I think that’s the aliyah dream.”
Speaking of dreams, Unique wants to start a YouTube channel about inspirational Israeli immigrants to encourage others to come.
“I know so many people my age in LA who want to move here but they have families and businesses. It’s hard to leave everything you know and literally jump into the sea. I was fortunate to do it at a young age and now I’m really reaping the benefits and doing something I love.”