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| Purchase by Judy Lash Balint. |
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Judy Lash Balint is a freelance writer based in Jerusalem. Her articles have appeared in numerous international publications. Balint is the author of published by Gefen.
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By Judy Lash Balint
July 16, 2004
They stepped off the plane into the heat and humidity of the hottest day of the year in Tel Aviv, carrying stuffed animals, live animals, and an assortment of other remnants of their former lives.
The 400 new immigrants from the U.S. and Canada who arrived on a charter flight from New York Wednesday are part of the new American aliya movement that's bringing hundreds of North American Jews home. This summer, more than 1,500 North American Jews will make aliya in four separate chartered flights.
Elana Balkin, 27, of West Bloomfield, MI, called her arrival in Israel "the most incredible day of my life." For Balkin, the move completes a circle of Jewish history. She described her great-grandparents who were planning to escape Nazi Germany and flee to Palestine. They never made it. "Everyone was supposed to meet here," Balkin said with emotion. "But I'm the one who has the zchut (merit) to be here."
Like many of the young, single olim, Balkin is planning on attending an intensive residential ulpan before setting out to find work in her field.
This year's group of olim includes a large group of singles. Some 273 single men and women will arrive on the Nefesh B'Nefesh planes this summer, joining 273 families.
In an effort that is largely privately funded, the Nefesh B'Nefesh organization partnered with the Jewish Agency has succeeded where official Israeli efforts to encourage Western aliya had previously failed.
The key element encouraging this new wave of immigrants is financial assistance and personal support. Grants of anywhere between $7-18,000 per family are available from Nefesh B'Nefesh if the family stays in Israel for at least three years. After they get here, an aggressive employment counseling service is at the disposal of the olim, as well as match-ups with veteran immigrants and assistance dealing with immigration bureaucracy.
"The financial support certainly helped me to decide to come that much quicker," notes Balkin.
Ron Karama, 22, from Seattle, a recent graduate and pro-Israel campus activist, hopes to serve in the IDF after his adjustment period. He was welcomed home by an uncle and cousin in uniform.
A crowd of several hundred Israeli-Americans was on hand in the El Al hangar at Ben Gurion airport this morning to greet the newcomers. For many, it was a chance to relive their own aliya experience. "We didn't get this kind of hoopla when we arrived," said Shalom Abramowitz who arrived in 1994, "but it's just great to see people coming in greater numbers today," he added, as his eyes scanned the disembarking passengers for his cousin from Long Island.
The plane pulled up directly to the hangar with the normally tedious passport control and other immigration processing having taken place with Interior Ministry officials during the flight.
Flag-waving Air Force cadets lined the walkway leading into the hangar, and a swarm of media descended on the new Israelis. There were some great shots - a middle-aged woman hugging her long haired white dog tight to her chest, her eyes filled with tears; a young mother who stopped to breastfeed her new-born baby before hugging all her waiting relatives; the elderly mother of an American oleh welcomed by a gaggle of grandchildren as she embarks on her new life close to her family.
The super-secular, hip Israeli film crews recording the event couldn't have looked more different than the largely observant immigrants they were filming.
But as the new olim took their seats in the hangar, they were indistinguishable from the hundreds of more veteran immigrants who had come to greet them. Slightly younger, perhaps, but the same kind of people.
Around half of the olim are children, small children. There are few families with teenage kids in the group - a testament to the notoriously difficult absorption of teenagers into Israeli high school society.
On hand to greet the new olim were Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu; Absorption Minister Tzippi Livni; Jewish Agency director Sallai Meridor; and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who told the olim: "Our two thousand years of wandering have come to an end."
Tony Gelbart one of the co-founders of Nefesh B'Nefesh, urged the government to continue to make aliya a priority: "Israel needs to know it can be a magnet for U.S. Jews," he declared. Strong aliya sends a message to our enemies too, he continued, and could go a long way in dealing with Israel's demographic challenges.
The Furman family of Toronto was called up to receive their first official documents as Israeli citizens. The father of four spoke one sentence: "Thank you for making our aliya dream come true."
The singing of Hatikva closed the ceremony. Flags waved and tears flowed, cameras rolled and the olim took a deep breath before dispersing to their new homes.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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