‘It’s aliyah in phases’ 28/03/2008 Sue Lachman had prepared her aliyah carefully. Well before moving to Israel from North London with her husband Frank and their three young children, she trained someone to replace her at her job in a London-based charity, where she served as a representative for parents of children with special educational needs. “I hoped that after emigrating I would just be working as a consultant for the charity,” she recalls. But it did not quite work out that way. In July 2006, when the family settled in their new home in Beit Shemesh, a town south-west of Jerusalem, her successor back in London “decided that the job wasn’t for him, and they called me back again”. Lachman found herself working in the job that she had just left. Only now, she squeezes a month’s appointments into one concentrated week and travels a 4,500-mile round trip every month from Israel to meet her clients in person in the UK. Lachman’s husband, an accountant, commutes too. But he knew in advance that a one week in every four spent in London would be a part of his Israeli life. “His business is in London, and he knew that he was going to keep it,” his wife explains. A long-distance commuting routine has become the norm for a growing number of immigrants to Israel. Zeev Bielski, chairman of Jewish Agency, the global organisation responsible for facilitating immigration to Israel, estimates that of the 41,000 olim who have moved to the country in the past couple of years, “hundreds, if not thousands” commute abroad regularly, certainly in the initial stages of their immigration. Bielski calls it “Aliyah in phases”. Israel Pupko, a fellow at the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute in Jerusalem, has written his doctoral dissertation for the Hebrew University on this very trend. He says that his researches reveal that about a quarter of the North American olim who have arrived since 2000 commute back to the USA, while “half of the French olim population list one family member who commutes”. Daniella Slasky, director of employment in Nefesh B’Nefesh, an organisation set up to encourage aliyah from North America and Britain, estimates that of the more than 10,000 of their olim in the past five years, 20 to 25 per cent are commuters. “It’s hard to differentiate,” she says. According to Pupko, these olim are practising “multi-local immigration, in which people split their time between several places”. The phenomenon has been much boosted in recent years by the vast improvements in telecommunications and air travel. Pupko has interviewed hundreds of commuting olim. “For families,” he says, “it’s a strategic decision. People often make an ideological choice to move to Israel, in order to give their kids a Jewish education, for instance. But for livelihood, one or two of the parents are required to keep travelling to their country of origin.” Bielski admits that “due to language barriers, adjustment difficulties and the ways in which things are being conducted in Israel, employment becomes one of the olim’s greatest problems”. The possibility of working abroad and flying back to Israel at weekends, he says, “opens a new channel for aliyah, which hasn’t been taken into consideration previously. An El Al manager in France told me that there’s a commuters’ plane flying every week flying between France and Israel.” Paris-born Daniel Chicheportiche has spent a fair bit of time on that plane. The 48-year-old businessman used to live with his wife and children in Bordeaux, where he owned an advertising agency. “When we got married, I told my wife Miriam that before we got to 40, we’d move to Israel,” he recalls with a smile. In 1996, Chicheportiche sold his share in the agency, and the family left Bordeaux — “where there are no Jewish education facilities, and we didn’t want to make an aliyah to Paris” — to Ashdod, a port city in southern Israel, a 30-minute drive from Tel Aviv. Chicheportiche studied Hebrew in an ulpan and then worked as a furniture salesman to improve his grasp of the language. The plan did not work. “In my profession, my mouth is my shop, and the language barrier was too high,” he says. So Chicheportiche went back to work at the Bordeaux agency, where his brother was also working. For six years, he spent half of every month in France. “Two Shabbats here in Ashdod, three there. There’s no direct flight to Bordeaux, so I had to fly via Paris, Brussels or Zurich, then take another flight or a train — over 3,100 miles in total.” In Bordeaux, he stayed in an apartment hotel “where there’s privacy and it’s easy to keep kosher. And although I have family and friends there, and they’re all are very nice people who made sure I’d never feel lonely, I did not want to burden them with permanent lodging.” On Shabbat, he was hosted by local Jewish families. The work paid well. “But the travelling, and being away from the family — we had a new baby — was hard.” Chicheportiche and his wife managed to maintain their relationship by emailing and talking “all the time” on the phone. “And the monthly fortnight in Ashdod was naturally fully dedicated to the family.” Chicheportiche’s long-distance commute has finally ceased. Faster computer links between Israel and France have allowed him to work mainly from home in Israel. “I’m doing telemarketing to France. My brother then attends the appointments I make, and closes the deals.” He would not recommend this kind of commuting aliyah to all olim. “But we’re a strong couple, and when we think of the children — it was worth every minute. For me, Israel is 100 per cent my home, yet I’ll never be a true Israeli. My children, however, feel much more Israeli, which is what we wanted for them.” Johnny Freedman, who lives in Jerusalem, made aliyah with his wife almost 25 years ago. Fifteen years later, he was still back to London every week as a part of his job as an independent investigator for the official receiver. Two years ago, he founded a financing firm and now travels less often. The out-Sunday, back-Thursday commute, he says, was a huge strain both for him and for the family. “They got used to it, but it wasn’t easy. We were constantly on the phone. I took many vacations and spent the High Holy-days in Israel, but I still missed many of the kids’ daily-life happenings.” But Freedman loved his job. “It was interesting, it paid well and, as a self-employed person, I had control of my time, which meant flexibility with my travelling.” It also helped Freedman to maintain the close relations with his family in London, where he stayed during the week with his father. Maintaining the close ties with their New York family was also a major factor in Shoshanna and Moshe Schilit’s decision to adopt a commuting lifestyle. They immigrated to Israel 21 years ago as a thirtysomething couple with an eight-year-old son; their three younger sons are Israeli-born. The recession in the Israeli high-tech market at the time made it difficult for Moshe Schilit, a computer professional, to find a job. Says Shoshanna: “When he gave his resignation letter to the firm he was working for in New York, the insurance company AIG, they thought he was quitting work for another firm. When he clarified that he was moving to Israel, they offered him the chance to continue working for them in New York for 10 days each month.” The offer was accepted, and what they thought was going to be a temporary arrangement has since become an integral part of their life as Israelis. “We thought that it would be just an interim phase in the aliyah process,” says Shoshanna, “but we saw that we were coping well with the challenges posed by this kind of life.” Indeed, Moshe Schilit now spends only half the month at the family home in Beit Shemesh, the price of his flourishing career in New York. Every Pesach and every summer vacation, Shoshanna travels with the children to New York, where the Schilits have kept their former house. Their lifestyle has not been without its critics, not least among Israel’s immigration officials. “There was a perception that this kind of aliyah is a compromise,” recalls Shoshanna. “When I spoke to potential olim groups, I was asked not to mention it. Today, I’m asked to give lectures on this very issue and explain the options it opens for people who have businesses or good jobs at their countries of origin.” Zeev Bielski confirms that the Jewish Agency “encourages all sorts of multi-phase aliyah”. Israel Pupko reports that his institute initiated a project, led by Hebrew University demographer Professor Sergio Della Pergola, in which a team of experts analysed the phenomenon in order to draw up recommendations for the Israeli authorities on how to form policy that would encourage these new styles of immigration. “It can be a win-win situation,” says Pupko, who points out that the olim who work in their countries of origin bring foreign currency into the Israel economy. Nefesh B’Nefesh has begun a support group for commuters’ wives, meeting every other month in the organisation’s office in Jerusalem. Daniella Slasky says: “We also bring in accountants to talk to people about the tax ramifications of working abroad. And we run seminars in our offices — and elsewhere in Israel — on US-Israeli taxation.” Chanoch Tzamir, senior deputy to the director-general at the Israeli Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, says government has made changes to the benefits system so that long-distance commuters are not penalised. “We’ve changed some of the procedures that had formerly linked an oleh’s entitlements for benefits to their length of stay in Israel, and we’re just about to make more such amendments soon.” But just like Bielski, he does not think that these amendments should involve subsidising the cost of flights for Israeli immigrants still working abroad. For Sue Lachman, the cost of flights — she and her husband spend £1,000 a month on air travel — is certainly a strain. But it is not about to force a change of lifestyle. She is committed to her job, yet she is just as committed to her life in Israel, particularly as her two younger sons have Down’s syndrome and “the special education in Israel is superior”, she says. The commuting, she smiles, “has its good parts and its bad parts. I’m very happy to come back, but I quite like going as well — I see old friends every so often in London, and that’s nice. Hard, but nice. The point is that Israel is home. And I know that it is home — I’m not going back to London because I want to be there all the time; I go back there just to work.”