What to Pack, Store, or Sell Before Moving to Israel

At some point in the months before your aliyah, you will stand in the middle of your living room, look at everything you own, and have a small existential crisis.

Not about the move itself. About the stuff.

Because the stuff is everywhere. Furniture you’ve accumulated over two decades. Kitchen equipment that seemed indispensable when you bought it. Books you’ve been meaning to reread. A fondue set that has moved with you through three apartments and has been used precisely once.

What comes to Israel? What gets sold? What goes into storage? What gets donated to whoever will take it? These are the questions that will occupy a surprising portion of your mental bandwidth in the months before you leave, and getting them right saves you real money and real headaches.

Here’s the framework you actually need.

Start With the Customs Picture, Because It Changes Everything

Before you decide what to pack and what to sell, you need to understand what Israel actually lets you bring in tax-free, because this benefit is significantly more valuable than most people realize and is also more structured than most people expect.

New olim are entitled to up to three separate duty-free shipments within a three-year window from their aliyah date. That three-year window is important: your goods don’t need to arrive when you do. You can land in Israel, spend a few months figuring out where you’re actually living, and then ship your belongings once you have an actual address and a clearer sense of what you need.

The customs file is opened automatically when you make aliyah and your details are transmitted to the customs authority by the Ministry of Aliyah. What you bring in your suitcases on the plane is not counted as one of your three shipments, provided you received your Teudat Oleh at the airport. So your accompanying luggage is essentially free and separate from the container shipment allowance.

What can you bring duty-free? The list is comprehensive: clothing, linen, kitchenware, books, decorations, sports equipment, furniture in reasonable quantities for your home, and personal effects generally. On the appliance side, you can bring one refrigerator, one washing machine, one dryer, one dishwasher, one microwave, one oven, up to three televisions, up to three computers, up to five mobile phones per family, one stereo system, and air conditioners and fans relative to the number of rooms in your Israeli home. Items must be for personal household use and must appear used rather than in original factory packaging, since a container that looks more like a retail delivery than a household move raises customs flags.

The key financial point: Israel’s import duties on consumer goods are among the highest in the OECD. Electronics, appliances, and many household items cost significantly more in Israel than in the US, Canada, or the UK. Your customs benefit is not a bureaucratic formality. It’s real money, sometimes tens of thousands of shekels worth of savings depending on what you bring. People who understand this ship their good electronics and appliances. People who don’t understand it sell everything and spend the next two years paying Israeli retail prices.

The Voltage Question That Trips Everyone Up

Israel runs on 220V/50Hz electricity. North America runs on 110V/60Hz. This is relevant to every appliance decision you’re making and it’s worth understanding clearly before you make expensive mistakes in either direction.

Large appliances from North America, things like washing machines, dryers, and refrigerators, are generally not compatible with Israeli voltage and aren’t practical to use with transformers. These are items where buying locally makes more sense than bringing what you have.

Small appliances are more nuanced. Many modern electronics including laptops, phone chargers, cameras, and similar devices are dual-voltage and work on both systems with just a plug adapter. Check the label on the device for input voltage range. If it says 100-240V, you’re fine with an adapter. If it says 110V only, it needs a transformer or a replacement.

Kitchen appliances are often the pain point. Your KitchenAid stand mixer, your Vitamix, your Instant Pot, your specific coffee machine that you are genuinely attached to in ways that seem disproportionate until you’ve lived without good coffee for a month: all of these are 110V North American devices. Transformers exist and work but add cost, add heat, and add another thing to manage. High-quality appliances that you use constantly are usually worth shipping with a transformer. Mid-range appliances that you use occasionally are often worth selling and replacing with Israeli or European equivalents.

What to Definitely Bring

Good furniture that you actually like. Furniture in Israel is expensive and the selection in many categories is limited compared to what you might be used to. If you have solid, quality pieces that fit the scale of Israeli apartments (more on scale in a moment), bring them. Flat-pack furniture that you’ve assembled once and would need to disassemble, ship, and reassemble is probably not worth the effort and cost unless it’s genuinely special.

One caveat on scale: Israeli apartments are typically smaller than what many Anglo olim are accustomed to, and room shapes can be quirky. That enormous sectional sofa that covers most of your American living room may cover the entirety of an Israeli one. Think about proportions before committing container space to oversized pieces.

Books. Books are explicitly tax-free and can be shipped as part of your allowance. Shipping books in sea freight is cost-effective. Israeli bookstores carry Hebrew and some English titles but have very limited selection in other languages. If you read primarily in English or any language that isn’t Hebrew, bring your library.

High-value electronics. Laptops, cameras, audio equipment, and screens are significantly cheaper in the US and Canada than in Israel even accounting for shipping costs. Your US-purchased electronics brought over duty-free will almost certainly have cost less than their Israeli equivalents. Bring them.

Children’s things. Specific toys, books in your home language, comfort items, sports equipment, musical instruments. Israeli toy stores are fine but they carry Israeli toy stores’ inventory, which may or may not align with what your children are attached to. Ship the things that matter.

Specialized kitchen equipment and pantry items. Some things are difficult or impossible to find in Israel. Specific cooking equipment, regional specialty foods, certain baking supplies. Ask in Anglo olim Facebook groups before you arrive for the current list of things people wish they’d brought, because it changes as Israeli imports evolve.

Clothing in your preferred styles and sizes. Israeli clothing retail is decent but limited in range, especially for larger sizes and for styles that lean more conservative or business-formal. Bring enough that you’re not immediately dependent on Israeli shopping to build a functional wardrobe. Israeli summers are long and hot and your winter coats are taking up container space that might serve you better with other items.

Professional equipment and tools. If you have portable professional tools, you can import them duty-free up to a value of $1,650 USD. If you’re establishing a business in Israel requiring machinery or equipment, there’s a separate exemption up to $36,000 USD for industrial equipment used within your business premises. These limits are specific and should be discussed with a customs broker who works with olim.

What to Leave Behind, Sell, or Store

Large North American appliances. As discussed above, washing machines, refrigerators, and dryers built for 110V don’t translate easily. These are almost always better sold before you leave and replaced with Israeli or European models when you arrive, or simply not purchased immediately if your Israeli apartment comes with appliances, which some do.

Oversized furniture. That king-sized bed frame that requires a specialized mattress size not available in Israel. The ten-seat dining table. The triple dresser with the eight-foot mirror. Think about whether the piece will physically fit in a typical Israeli apartment, whether it would need to navigate a tiny elevator or narrow stairwell, and whether the shipping cost is proportionate to what you’d pay to replace it. Sometimes the answer is ship it. Often it isn’t.

Massive quantities of anything. Israeli customs is looking for household quantities, not retail quantities. Three televisions is the maximum duty-free. One refrigerator is the limit. The customs form asks for fair market value (how much the item is worth as used, not insurance value), and a manifest that looks disproportionate will attract scrutiny. Bring what a family your size would reasonably own and use.

Garden and outdoor equipment. Most Israeli apartments don’t have gardens. Terraces and balconies exist and are actually quite important to Israeli apartment culture, but the heavy-duty outdoor power equipment that lives in North American garages has limited use cases. Gas grills warrant a separate note: Israel has its own standards for gas equipment, so if this matters to you, research the current requirements with your shipper before including one.

Your car, probably. Vehicles have their own separate customs calculation entirely distinct from household goods. New olim can purchase a “passport car” locally at a significantly reduced tax rate, saving between 30,000 and 80,000 NIS compared to standard Israeli vehicle taxes depending on the car’s value. Alternatively, you can import a vehicle you already own, provided it’s either new or has been owned by you for at least a year. Whether to import your existing car or buy locally is a separate calculation involving age, value, make, and your timeline, and it deserves a dedicated conversation with someone who knows the current numbers.

The Medication Situation

This one doesn’t fit neatly into pack/store/sell but it belongs in this guide because people consistently underestimate it.

You can bring up to six months’ worth of prescription medication on the plane, provided you hold a valid prescription covering the full amount. If you want to mail or ship medications separately, a prescription is also required for the shipped quantity.

The more important issue is that some medications you take routinely in your home country either aren’t available in Israel, aren’t available in the same formulation, or aren’t available under the same brand name. A completely different drug with the same active ingredient at a different dosage is not the same thing to your body, even if it’s technically the same molecule.

Do this before you leave: identify every prescription you take, find out whether it’s available in Israel and under what name and formulation, and speak with both your current doctor and an Israeli doctor or pharmacist about bridging the gap. Discovering a medication unavailability after you’ve arrived is a problem that takes time and stress to solve, neither of which you have in abundance in your first weeks.

The Storage Question

Sometimes the right answer isn’t pack or sell but store, either temporarily until you have a clearer picture of your Israeli life, or for a longer term if you’re genuinely uncertain whether this move is permanent.

Storage in your home country costs money on an ongoing basis and is usually worth it only for items of genuine sentimental or financial value that you’d regret disposing of and that don’t need to come immediately. Family heirlooms, artwork, items belonging to children who might want them later, and specific furniture you’re attached to but aren’t sure about practically can all be valid storage candidates.

What isn’t worth storing long-term: things you’re keeping out of inertia, things you’re storing because deciding is harder than not deciding, and things you tell yourself you’ll definitely want in two years but don’t actually use. Storage has a way of becoming permanent, and paying ongoing fees for a unit full of things you’re never going to deal with is an expensive way to avoid a difficult afternoon of sorting.

The Three Shipment Strategy

Given that you have three duty-free shipments over three years, a phased approach makes more sense than trying to move everything at once.

Shipment one comes when you’ve settled on an address and have a clearer picture of what the apartment needs. This is the time for furniture, major household items, and the things that make a place feel like home.

Shipment two often comes six months to a year later, when you know what you’re missing and what you wish you’d brought. After six months in Israel, you have very specific opinions about what you should have shipped and what you should have left. Use that knowledge.

Shipment three is your safety net. Some people use it deliberately for a final round of belongings. Some people use it when they make a large purchase abroad while visiting and want to bring it back tax-free. The three-year window means you have time to be strategic.

Items you carry on the plane don’t count against your shipments, remember. So your accompanying luggage on aliyah day can include electronics, valuables, and items you need immediately, saving container space for the bigger pieces.

The Honest Summary

Moving to Israel doesn’t require starting from scratch, and it doesn’t require shipping everything you’ve ever owned. It requires thinking clearly about what genuinely serves you in Israeli life, understanding the customs benefits you’re entitled to, and making deliberate decisions rather than default ones.

Sell what you won’t use. Ship what’s expensive to replace. Store what has genuine sentimental value and not much else. And bring the things that will make your Israeli home permanent residence rather than a temporary arrangement you’re still thinking about.

The fondue set? Let it go. Israel has plenty of meals that don’t require it, and you were never going to use it again anyway.

Olim Advisors guides new immigrants through every practical dimension of the move to Israel. Since October 7th, our real estate guidance package is provided to clients at no charge. Reach out, and let us help you navigate the move with less guesswork and more confidence.