Jews From Los Angeles Find Fulfillment, Frustration in Their New Lives in Israel : Emigres: The quality of life in their new country appeals to many, but the prospect of army service can be troubling.

They leave Los Angeles in response to an ancient imperative of Jewish life, a powerful dream that promises them personal fulfillment as part of their people’s redemption. For that dream they leave behind friends, family and the ease of life in America and “make aliyah, “ which in Hebrew literally translates to ascent, but has come to mean immigration to Israel.

And then they must begin to grapple with the difficulties of Israeli life.

No one is certain how many Angelenos now live in Israel. The Los Angeles Jewish Federation Council, whose Jerusalem office tries to keep in touch with them, lists more than 1,000 households, but the actual number is surely higher; many immigrants do not register with the federation or they drop out of contact with it.

The majority of current immigrants are Orthodox Jews impelled by their belief that it is a mitzvah, a spiritual obligation, to live in the Land of Israel. “For a Jew, there is no other place to live,” insisted Yehuda Richter, a Los Angeles native who now makes his home in Elon Moreh on the West Bank.

Some immigrants are driven by a Zionist commitment to build the Jewish state. Others are retirees who want to spend their last years in the Jewish homeland or are simply Jews who want to make a significant change in their lives.

But the fact is, it’s not easy. Los Angeles federation officials say that half of all American immigrants will return to the United States within three years, driven back by the difficulties of earning a living and of integrating comfortably into Israeli society.

There is no typical Los Angeles-to-Israel emigre; they are a diverse lot. Here are snapshots of a few, drawn from interviews conducted during a recent visit to Israel.

David Kurz

In 1970, Kurz, a native of the San Fernando Valley, left graduate school in San Diego, where he had been spending as much time working against the Vietnam War as studying. Out of curiosity, he took a trip to Israel where, as a New Left activist, he expected to find “horrible Israeli imperialists doing horrible things to the Palestinians.”

The truth, he said wryly, was “considerably more mixed,” and to his surprise he felt a sense of having come home. “I experienced this as the place I had the most connection to, of any place on Earth,” he said.

He returned to the United States to complete his graduate degree in social work, got some experience in his field, then emigrated. Since then, says Kurz--a bearded, bearish man now fluent in Hebrew, married, and the father of two young children--he has never thought of coming back.

“Here’s an opportunity to create,” he said, “to build a society.

“Life in L.A. is a lot easier materially,” he acknowledged. “But the quality of life here in Israel is better. I can let my kids go out without fear of violence. We have no pictures on milk cartons here in Israel asking us, ‘Have you seen this child?’ We have no freeway shootings or drive-by shootings or drug wars with automatic weapons.”

As a parent, he worries about his children going into the army--Israeli men serve three years, women two. “We’re not happy about it, of course,” he said, “but that’s a part of life here, too. Part of the choice of helping to build the society is also defending it.”

The only thing he really misses, he said, is his extended family, all of whom remain in the United States.

Galia Kaspi

Kaspi--her name was Gay as she was growing up on the Westside--made aliyah 20 years ago, during the halcyon days following Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War. “I always felt the importance of Israel as a home where Jews could go,” she said.

Just out of college then, she transformed herself into an Israeli moshavnik, a farm girl, through tough physical labor, and she married an Israeli. Now a single parent with two teen-age daughters in Tel Aviv, she must work two teaching jobs to make ends meet. Her daughters also hold down jobs in order to buy some of the things they need.

“Being a single parent is hard anywhere,” Kaspi said. She, too, does not consider returning to America.

Does she worry about the possibility of war in the Persian Gulf? “I worry about it the way people in L.A. worry about the earthquake,” she said. “What I really worry about is my 17-year-old daughter going driving with a friend who just got his driver’s license two weeks ago--that I worry about.”

Mark Feldman

Feldman grew up in Northridge, went to UCLA and emigrated to Israel in 1981. There he started a travel agency, a business he knew nothing about, by hiring two experts and learning from them. Although the agency is now well-established, his income after taxes is $13,000--respectable in Israel but far less than what a successful small businessman would make in the United States. Even so, he said, he is not tempted to return.

“In Los Angeles, I could earn much more money,” he said, “but it wouldn’t matter to the society or to me.” He credits his agency’s emphasis on American-style customer service with having changed the travel business in Jerusalem. “Israel is a place where you can still make a difference,” he said.

But Feldman’s business provides frequent reminders that, for many Americans, the adjustment is a tough one.

“We sell a lot of one-way tickets back to the States,” he said.

Joel and Cindy

Joel and Cindy--they asked that their real names not be used--are a young Orthodox couple whose story is typical of those for whom aliyah fails. Both lawyers, as immigrants they are now reaching the end of their third year, when their special immigrant rights lapse and men become eligible for army duty.

A central problem is finances. With the money from the sale of their home in Los Angeles, Joel and Cindy, who have three small children, bought a beautiful, high-ceilinged apartment in Jerusalem for $280,000. But that choice was based on their annual income in Los Angeles of $120,000.

In Israel, where they are completing their apprenticeship, they both work full time for a combined income of less than $1,000 a month. Admission to the bar would improve the financial picture, but not a lot, they say.

“My baby-sitter makes more than I do,” Cindy said. She and Joel rely on help from their parents to make it through each month.

In addition, their fulfillment as Jews, their core reason for making aliyah , has not materialized. Joel says he is distressed by the relentless secularism of Israeli society on one hand, and by what he calls the “unpleasantness” of the religious Establishment on the other.

Cindy confesses that she often simply doesn’t like Israelis. “In California, you have the sense of people being nice ,” she said. She recalled a recent incident in which shoppers in a Jerusalem store in which smoking was prohibited rudely refused her request that they extinguish their cigarettes.

Some people who know them suggest that Joel and Cindy were betrayed by their own expectations of the spiritual riches and professional opportunities that life in Israel would offer.

“We came with a romantic notion,” Cindy acknowledged.

They are considering returning to America, but they hesitate because, they say, Israel is good for their children--physically safe and emotionally warm, with Judaism and Hebrew a natural part of their lives.

“Yeah, we’re doing it for the children,” Joel said wryly. “So they can be Israelis--and then they’ll grow up and move to Los Angeles.” (At least 50,000 Israelis have emigrated to Los Angeles in the last two decades.)