Needed Immigrants : For Israel, a Special Gift of Americans

The 132 passengers of El Al Flight 36, described as the largest group of American Jewish immigrants to arrive here all at once in two years, were greeted with red roses, soft drinks and a cold buffet. Two Cabinet ministers were on hand.

“You come to Israel at a very, very special moment,” Jaime Aron, an officer of the Jewish Agency, told them. At that moment, he noted, the latest Israeli victim of a terrorist attack was being buried about 50 miles to the north, in the town of Afula.

“When you come to Israel, you are the best answer to everyone who is against us,” he said. “You are the Zionist answer to terror.”

Some of his colleagues would say later that they thought Aron’s remarks about terrorism were inappropriate, but no one disputed that, for a number of reasons, this was a truly special occasion.

Economic Reasons

For Israeli officials like Yaacov Tzur, the minister of immigrant absorption, it was special because the number of Jews coming to live in Israel has slowed to a trickle in comparison to what it once was. By some estimates, the number of Israelis emigrating this year will be twice the arriving immigrants.

The reasons for their departure will be mostly economic. But whatever the reasons, this is a traumatic prospect for a nation whose very reason for being is an in-gathering of world Jewry.

“I’m sure that you are the best gift that Israel has received in a year,” Tzur told the newcomers, “because you are the hope for the future.”

For the Americans, the moment was a special blend of fatigue, excitement, fulfillment and fear. They had been traveling for the better part of 24 hours, from New York via Amsterdam. Tired toddlers screamed, the sounds grating on their parents’ nerves.

Tears and Singing

Several of the newcomers had tears in their eyes as they stood in a special reception room at Ben-Gurion International Airport and sang the Israeli national anthem, “Hatikvah” (Hope).

They talked candidly about the problems of making a new life in a country that always seems to be in some sort of crisis. Economic concerns ranked high. And in the back of some of their minds was the knowledge that, if they are like the thousands who have come before them, nearly half will have reconsidered within two years and gone back to the United States.

The issue of immigration has long been at the heart of the tension--considerable if unspoken--between Israeli and American Jews. Many of the people here regard returning to the biblical homeland as an almost solemn duty. The Hebrew word for immigration is aliyah-- literally, “ascending.” And the word for emigration is yerida --”descending.”

About 6 million Jews, roughly half of the world’s total, live in the United States--twice as many as in Israel. Thus as Israel looks for sources of new citizens, it looks to the United States.

Jews in many countries are happy to come to Israel, for economic as well as religious or nationalistic reasons. But for American Jews, moving to Israel usually means a sharp drop in living standards, and this is a sacrifice that only about 60,000 American Jews have been willing to make.

Israel relies on and is grateful for Americans’ economic and political support, but there is also a strong undercurrent of resentment toward American Jews, who are seen here as leaving to others the danger and hard work of building a Jewish state while they enjoy the relative comfort of life in the United States.

Lure of U.S.

To compound the problem, the perceived advantages of life in the United States have lured away as many as 300,000 Israelis, many of them professionals. Israel has begun an aggressive campaign to persuade as many of these people as possible to return to help build the high-technology industries that it sees as the answer to its long-term economic plight.

According to Olga Rachmilevich, director of absorption services for the Assn. of Americans and Canadians in Israel, the peak immigration years from North America, including Canada, were 1968-1970, amid the nationalistic euphoria that followed Israel’s swift and decisive victory in the Six-Day War of 1967. An average of 9,000 immigrants a year arrived during those three years, compared to only about 2,500 in 1984. Roughly 10% of the North American immigrants are Canadian.

Rachmilevich said that so far this year, North American immigration is off 30% compared to 1984, although the government has said that in the first six months of 1985, there was an increase of 8% in “immigrants and potential immigrants” from the United States and Canada.

The difference underlines the imprecision of immigration and emigration statistics here. For one thing, most immigrants are registered at first as “temporary residents,” but not all temporary residents are immigrants. And most American immigrants retain dual citizenship.

On the other hand, Israelis leaving the country almost never announce that they are leaving for good. The Bureau of Statistics, for lack of any better measure, arbitrarily considers an Israeli who has been out of the country for four years or more an emigre.

Just ‘Not Coming’

No matter what figures on North American immigration are used, they are a disappointment to everyone concerned in Israel. “The cold facts are that they’re not coming,” Rachmilevich said, and of those who do, 40% to 50% leave again, according to her association’s figures.

“They come from a very efficient, well-run society, and they have problems dealing with this other society,” Rachmilevich said, and the problems are compounded by the fact that “Israel is going through a very difficult period . . . economically and in terms of security.”

The profile of the people who immigrate has also changed, she said. In the heyday of American immigration, most were “socialistic, humanistic, secular,” she said.

But now, as many as 75% of North American immigrants have come to Israel primarily for religious or nationalistic reasons. Many of those have very large families. Also, she said, there has been an increase in the number of single parents and of divorced men and women.

The 132 who arrived on Flight 36 were a broad cross section. As a group, they were a little older and slightly less religious than the norm for American Jewish immigrants. An unusually large number were schoolteachers.

They ranged in age from infants in their mothers’ arms to a 79-year-old. There were 25 married couples with 64 children among them and 18 single people. At least two were native-born Israelis who had been out of the country for several years and were bringing families back with them.

Joseph Altman, 55, a retired schoolteacher from Stony Brook, N.Y., said a number of factors influenced his thinking about coming to Israel.

“I was reaching the point of retirement,” he said. “I guess we were looking for a change. And as for myself, I guess as I got older, I started being more aware of my heritage.”

What finally tipped the scales?

“We don’t know,” he conceded.

The hardest part, said his wife, Judith, was leaving their three older children behind--two in the United States and one studying in France.

“We feel kind of numb,” she said. “We’ve had a month of saying good-bys.”

The Altmans’ fourth child, Adam, 17, accompanied them to Israel. Asked how he felt about the move, he shrugged and said nothing.

“He has a lot of concerns, as we all do,” his father said. “He’s never been here before.”

Trouble Settling In

The experience of others suggests that Adam Altman will have difficulty finding a niche here, according to Joseph Romanelli, who oversees American immigration for the Jewish Agency, a quasi-official organization for development and resettlement. Israelis in his age group established their friendships long ago, Romanelli said, and a teen-age immigrant just learning Hebrew may find himself left out.

The Altmans intend to spend their first six months or so studying Hebrew. And then?

“I really don’t know,” Joseph Altman said. “I’m pretty flexible.”

Joseph Rosenfeld, 28, a returning Israeli citizen, has many advantages over a newcomer like Altman. He speaks the language, has relatives here and has already lined up a job with an affiliate of the computer firm he worked for in the United States. Still, he is concerned.

Rosenfeld said it had been his intention to return ever since he went to the United States after finishing military service here six years ago. In the meantime, he has acquired an education, a wife and a baby daughter.

“I might face a great disappointment,” he said. “I never lived in Israel as a husband and a father. I remember Israel as I left it when I was 21, young, single, energetic.

“Being away from this country for six years and establishing a full life in America--it’s not easy to come back. We give up a lot, especially the way of living. It’s very easy to get used to comfortable things.”

Rosenfeld said he feels that “it was good for the state of Israel to do what I did--to get a U.S. perspective, to absorb it and come back to Israel to contribute what I can.” He said that if the 300,000 or so other Israelis in America would do the same thing, “it would be a great help for Israel.”

Mixed Feelings

Rosenfeld’s wife, Nancy, said she “had a lot of mixed emotions” about coming to Israel. “America has always been my home.” she said.

Among other things, she is concerned about coming “to a place where you have to struggle.” Then she added philosophically: “You have to weigh the logical versus the irrational. Joey felt a strong need and desire to come back to Israel. And that’s something I knew about from the start of our relationship.”

Another Israeli coming back was Moshe Gelber, 35, who stayed 14 years in the United States.

“I wanted to come before they get too old,” he said, nodding toward his three U.S.-born children, ages 3, 5 and 7. “Later it would be very hard.”

Also, he felt while he was away that he was being punished, Gelber said, and added: “It’s the promised land that God gave us. Here we have it, and we run away from it.”

Chaim Pollack, 27, and his wife, Tovah, 21, were both brought up in Orthodox religious families--he in New York, she in Detroit--and both originally planned to come to Israel for a year. They wound up studying in seminaries where the need for immigration is stressed, and “we decided gradually to become permanent,” Pollack said. They met in Israel, and “one of the reasons we married was that we had this (desire to immigrate) in common.”

Trial Visits

Most American Jews make several trips here before deciding to immigrate.

“Making aliyah is not a one-step decision,” Tzur, the immigration minister, noted. “It’s a process.”

Martin Goldman said he took a year’s leave of absence from his management job at the U.S. Department of the Interior in Washington to try life in Israel. He and his wife came on their honeymoon in 1971, then returned a decade later for their anniversary, he said.

“I think if I was 22 I wouldn’t have any hesitation” about immigrating now, Goldman said. While here, he will “be looking at how it is to live in Israel,” he said, adding: “We’ll go back after a year, work a few more years and then come back permanently, depending on what we see.”

The Israeli government does what it can to encourage immigrants. Before leaving the airport, each head of family or single adult was given a certificate entitling the person or persons named on it to all the privileges of an oleh hadash, a new immigrant. These include the waiving of customs duty on most personal goods, cut-rate home mortgages, tax concessions and bank accounts on preferred terms.

The immigrants can live for almost nothing at “absorption centers” run by the Jewish Agency while they learn Hebrew and the ways of Israeli bureaucracy, which can be intricate.

Nonetheless, Romanelli noted, the immigrants are going to have to make some agonizing personal adjustments as they go through the inevitable culture shock. They will have extraordinary emotional experiences ranging from near-euphoria to deep depression.

“It goes that way for a couple of years,” said Romanelli, a former U.S. State Department officer who emigrated to Israel more than a decade ago. “After that, you’ve developed a new self. You’ve shed old habits and adopted new ones. But before that, you’re really in a nether land. You’re not quite American, and you’re not quite Israeli.”

“People think we’re crazy” for coming to Israel--particularly now, said Altman, the retired teacher. But Judith, his wife, remarked: “Israel has never had a real good time.”