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What's a new oleh to do?
BEHIND THE HEADLINES
By Chanan Tigay
ASHKELON,
Israel, July 14 (JTA) -- It was 8:45 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, when
Henry Fuerte, a systems analyst at a large U.S. insurance broker,
stepped into an elevator on the 78th floor of the World Trade
Center's north tower.
The Brooklyn native was late for work
and had caught the express to 78, where a local elevator would
shuttle him and other stragglers to the 95th-floor offices of Marsh
Inc.
He never got there.
Just as Fuerte entered the
elevator, American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the building,
between the 93rd and 98th floors, tearing a gaping hole in the giant
skyscraper -- killing everyone onboard, along with 355 of Fuerte's
colleagues at Marsh, among the thousands who died that day.
Seventeen floors beneath them, Fuerte recalls, the force of
the impact blew up the elevator he was standing in. Shrapnel
lacerated his eye and he injured his back and knees -- but he
survived. That, says Fuerte, a 33-year-old in a yarmulke, was thanks
not to luck but to God.
Three years, 10 months and a day
later -- on July 12, 2005 -- Fuerte joined some 500 other Jews from
the United States and Canada who immigrated to Israel in the biggest
single-day aliyah from North America in the history of the Jewish
state.
Sept. 11 ``was an impetus to me for aliyah, because I
didn't want to die in New York," said Fuerte, sitting toward the
front of an El Al 747 packed with about 300 new olim, or immigrants,
on their way to the Jewish state. ``Terrorism is all over the world.
That being the case, I'd rather be in a place I can call home."
The notion of Israel as home was echoed frequently aboard
the flight. Despite the material comforts of America and the
potential dangers in the Middle East, many said that they never felt
more at home than when in Israel. The flight was sponsored by Nefesh
B'Nefesh, an organization that helps North American Jews make
aliyah,
and the Jewish Agency for Israel.
The Jewish
Agency has been the primary facilitator of aliyah for many years. In
2002, Nefesh B'Nefesh was founded specifically to encourage
immigration from North America.
Both organizations say they
expect 3,200 immigrants to arrive in Israel from North America this
year, the first time since 1983 that the figure has topped 3,000.
The groups' initial goal has been to identify people whom
Nefesh B'Nefesh's Charlie Levine calls the ``low-hanging fruit" --
Jews who want to make aliyah but for some reason thus far have found
the move untenable.
By year's end the group will have brought
more than 6,700 North American immigrants.
The aim is to
smooth the process so that aliyah becomes a more realistic option.
In this vein, Nefesh B'Nefesh provides immigrants with financial
assistance, employment resources, social services and guidance
through the governmental absorption process.
Several
representatives of Israel's Interior Ministry aboard the aliyah
flight went from seat to seat finalizing immigration papers. The
process, which could have taken months in Israel, was done by the
time the plane landed.
When Rabbi Joshua Fass, who
co-founded Nefesh B'Nefesh along with Tony Gelbart, picked up the
plane's loudspeaker, he told those onboard, ``Welcome home."
Indeed, generations of Jews have looked upon Israel as a
spiritual -- and sometimes physical -- homeland. Many of those on
the flight had been planning to make aliyah for years. Their arrival
in Israel was the culmination of years of saving, working and
dreaming.
But what now? What do olim do once they finally
arrive in Israel?
As Rabbi Mark Smilowitz, 35, who was
immigrating with his wife, Michelle, 29, and their three young
children, asked: ``What am I going to do tomorrow morning?"
Answers varied among those in the latest wave of North
American aliyah. Smilowitz, a former yeshiva teacher from Seattle,
was heading to the home of relatives in Beit Shemesh.
There
he and his family will wait six weeks for their personal belongings
to arrive from the United States. Once their packages arrive,
they'll move into a house they bought two years ago.
``When
you're coming from America, you want to bring that comfort with
you," Michelle Smilowitz said, holding her three-month-old baby in
her arms. ``Making aliyah is hard enough. You need to do everything
you can to make it easier."
But as for tomorrow and the next
day and next week?
``Getting a driver's license is a big
priority," she said. ``You have to get around."
In addition,
she said, they'll enroll their 5-year-old son in a Hebrew-language
program for youngsters. But as far as the first year in the country
is concerned, the Smilowitzes said they'll take the time to slowly
get acclimated.
Dan Brotman, an 18-year-old from Boston, had
another plan: to join the Israel Defense Forces and possibly a
combat unit, as part of the Tzofim Garin Tzabar program, in which
young people from North America move to kibbutzim and serve in the
military.
``It's a bit nerve-racking," he said, sitting with
two young female friends who were also preparing to enlist. ``I
won't be able to go back to the U.S. for a visit for a year and a
half because of the army. But I think we're going to be fine. We're
going to integrate."
After the flight landed, a Canadian,
Ryan Paddock, 19, was the first of the new immigrants to be
presented with an aliyah certificate in a large ceremony in a hangar
just off the Ben-Gurion Airport tarmac.
``Seeing all of you
here today is like a dream for me,'' said the former Winnipeg
resident, who also plans to join the army soon.
At the
ceremony, the olim, along with family and friends, heard from
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon -- with whom Fuerte shook hands
-- Foreign Minster Silvan Shalom, Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres
and the new Jewish Agency chairman, Zeev Bielski.
Each
immigrant was then given an aliyah certificate, an envelope of cash
and a taxi voucher to get to his or her new home.
For Aharon
Horowitz, that new home would be in the Bakka neighborhood of
Jerusalem. In late March, Horowitz stood before the Columbia
University gates and addressed media and students on the morning
that a faculty committee investigating charges that university
professors bullied pro-Israel students issued its findings.
The report was a whitewash, Horowitz and his friends
insisted, and many students had not been given a legitimate hearing.
The next day, a large photo of Horowitz appeared on JTA's Web site
and in The New York Times.
Horowitz -- who studied political
science and Arabic -- moved to Israel with his wife. The couple
rented their Jerusalem apartment based on a series of blurry,
wide-angle photos taken by a friend and were planning to head
straight there from the airport.
As for what he planned to do
the day after arriving, Horowitz didn't have much choice: He had
arranged a job at the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem-based think tank,
working on a new project to launch student journals on Jewish
thought on five American college campuses, and the center wanted him
to start right away.
As for Fuerte, he caught a shared taxi
to Jerusalem and unloaded four or five heavy suitcases at Ulpan
Etzion, where he planned to spend the next five months living and
studying Hebrew, along with immigrants from 27
countries.
Once his time at the Ulpan Absorption Center is
up, Fuerte hopes to find a job in the high-tech industry. In the
meantime, there are more pressing needs: A shower, a quick nap and
then he's off to an Israeli television studio to tell his story yet
again -- from Sept. 11 through his aliyah -- on a current-affairs
program.
Fuerte has been in the country about three and a
half hours, and already he has met the prime minister and scored a
prime-time slot on TV. It's not a bad start to his new life as an
Israeli.
Posted: 7/15/2005 | |
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