c. 2006 Religion News Service
NEW YORK _ Ideally, they said, they would have picked another week for the biggest move of their lives.
Still, 220 Jews with one-way tickets to Israel boarded an El Al plane Wednesday (July 19), and those interviewed said the past eight days of hostilities between Lebanon and Israel never made them doubt their years-old decision to move to the Jewish nation.
“Am I nervous? I don’t know if nervous is the word. Maybe cautious,” Ken Sheff of Passaic, N.J., said an hour before the 3:15 p.m. flight from New York’s Kennedy International Airport. He was moving to a town near Jerusalem with his wife and five children. “We’ve known this is something that would be part of living in Israel. We just didn’t know it would be this second.”
More than most Americans, the Jews about to board the plane _ most of whom were Orthodox _ followed this week’s news of rockets falling in Haifa, of captured Israeli soldiers, of Israeli air raids in Beirut, of casualties on both sides and of new threats from Iran.
But while the danger has their American friends and relatives worried for their safety, it did not make the emigrants seriously question their choice to start a new life in Israel, about a dozen of them said in individual interviews.
“This to me does not strip away the reasons for my decision to move,” said Jerrold Rapaport of Teaneck, N.J., who was heading to Israel with his wife and five children. “My decision to move was not because I thought it was going to be a grander or a better life. It was because I thought I could find meaning there and contribute meaningfully.”
Contributing meaningfully does not necessarily mean joining the Israeli army. Many of the Orthodox Jews on the flight consider the move itself as significant. They believe God wants Jews there, and that their move is both a sign of support to other Israelis and a sign of Jewish resolve to those who fight Israel’s existence.
Immigration to Israel, which was founded in 1948, has risen in the last few years. About 24,500 Jews are expected to make permanent moves there in 2006.
Overall, though, it is far below the numbers of the 1990s, when in some years more than 200,000 Jews moved there from the newly broken-up Soviet Union,said Michael Jankelowitz, a spokesman for the Jewish Agency, which coordinates immigration to Israel.
Increases in North American immigration to Israel is widely credited to a 5-year-old organization called Nefesh b’Nefesh, which means “Soul to Soul” in Hebrew and defrays moving costs for qualified North Americans who stay in Israel at least three years.
Wednesday’s flight from Kennedy Airport was coordinated by Nefesh b’Nefesh,which by the end of 2006 will have helped 10,500 Jews make the move. This year,about 3,000 North American Jews are immigrating to Israel through Nefesh b’Nefesh.
Most Jews who move with Nefesh b’Nefesh are not relocating to or near Haifa, where the rockets from the millitant group Hezbollah have been landing. They generally move to more central Israeli cities like Jerusalem, Beit Shemesh, Ranaana and Tel Aviv, said David Starck of Nefesh b’Nefesh.
“Israel is facing really a moment of truth,” said Ari Katz of Hillside, N.J., moving with his wife, Miriam, and 5-year-old twins, a boy and a girl. “We feel it’s more important than ever that we be there. … There are people who literally want to destroy our country. Each time people come to Israel, it only strengthens us against the terrorists.”
“We really want to raise our kids there, it’s just a safer world for them,” Miriam Katz said. “It may sound strange here in America, but I worry much more in America than there. … You had Sept. 11 here.”
Most of the emigrants had visited Israel before. Some went as students, others as travelers or visitors on specific programs. One program, Project Birthright, offers free trips designed to instill a connection in young Jews to the country that is roughly the size of New Jersey and known as the historic Jewish homeland.
A 10-day trip he took to Israel two years ago led Stephen Rubin, 22, of suburban Philadelphia to decide to move there. He is going by himself.
“Something came over me one day on a street corner. … I remember the feeling. Chills came over me and I said, ‘This is where I have to be,”’ he recalled.
A few feet away, his parents, Susan and Joel, and his older sister Mollie, 28, watched him speak with soulful looks in their eyes.
Rubin acknowledged that “it’s not what they would have chosen me to do.”
“People say to us, `How can you let him go?’ It’s almost accusatory,” Susan Rubin said. “He’s 22. This is what we raised our children to be, strong. The world is his. What he’s doing is good. … We wish him good, with great pride. And I cry.”
The tears and long embraces near Gate B-29 were less a result of the newest Mideast hostilities than of the stark reality that the new Israelis won’t be seeing their American families as often as they have.
“I’m not crying about the safety. The only reason I’m crying about is the man and woman here,” Danielle Keats said of her parents, Roger and Fayga.
Keats, 29, is moving from Manhattan with her husband, Boaz Berkowitz. She said her parents “are proud of us, but they would rather we lived upstairs. We’re a close family, and it’s hard when we’re not able to say, ‘We’ll see you in 20 minutes.”’
Wednesday afternoon, as airport announcements summoned passengers to the gate and Rapaport’s 22-month-old daughter, Kerem, gurgled into his ear, Rapaport started walking with the crowd toward the security gate.
“It’s beginning to seem very real,” he said. “I’m getting very excited. I’m realizing the magnitude of what we’re about to do.”
DSB/JL END DIAMANT
(Jeff Diamant writes for The Star Ledger in Newark, N.J.)
Editors: A version of this story is also being transmitted today by Newhouse News Service.
Editors: To obtain photos of American Jews departing for Israel Wednesday (July 18) as part of the Nefesh B’Nefesh program, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.
