Why is this news?

 The YU commentator is featuring a story today and sent out a WhatsApp announcing that "Rabbi Yosef Blau to Make Aliyah After 48 Years at YU."

Why is this news? Is the real news that he is relocating? Is it that he is retiring or semi-retiring? Why is it so important that he is moving to Israel that it becomes the feature story?

You know the answer. It's because in the Modern Orthodox world there's nothing more important than aliyah. It's more important than a bris milah. 

Yet Rabbi Blau's mentor Rav Soloveitchik said that there's no obligation to live in Israel and he generally counseled people not to move there. So why don't we have an article that announces a bris milah, which is a chiyuv?

You know the answer to that too. To the Zionist, living in the medinah (Southern Lebanon which is also Eretz Yisroel wouldn't do) is the new bris, the new covenant. It's not a covenant with G-d of course. It's a covenant with the secular state.

So many times, I heard announcements in Modern Orthodox synagogues and from MO people that so and so is making aliyah. They drill it into your head like a secular Jew would admission into Harvard. It's the most incredible news in the world to them. It's so exciting and wonderful.

This fools many young people into making the move themselves. But they won't be arriving into an apartment that was purchased beforehand, as Rabbi Blau is doing. And they'll have to suffer in the Israel army which the big Zionist Yosef Blau will manage to avoid since he's in his 80s and lived out his life and career in America.