Recent aliyah events sponsored by Nefesh B’Nefesh (NBN) and the Jewish Agency have spurred over 1,500 people from the tri-state, NY-NJ-Connecticut region to express a serious interest in making aliyah to Israel during the next year.
“We have also noticed a peak in aliyah interest from monitoring our website activity, a rise in aliyah applications and attendance at our events and meetings across North America. We believe this is partially due to the success of Birthright-Taglit trips and Masa (college-oriented) programs over the past 10 years, as well as the flourishing Israeli economy,” revealed Marc Rosenberg, director of the pre-aliyah department for Nefesh B’Nefesh to The Jewish Link newspaper chain. “It is wonderful to see that despite diverse backgrounds of religious affiliation and previous Israel activity, there are strong pockets of aliyah interest in communities throughout North America compelling us to design targeted programs to support and engage these audiences.”
During the past decade, new olim, whether singles, young married couples and families with children, from the metro region have been filling El Al’s 777 and 747 jetliners. Statistics provided exclusively to The Jewish Link by NBN reveal that a majority of the new immigrants are moving to Israel on a regular basis from Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Monsey, Teaneck, Passaic, Lakewood and W. Hempstead (LI).
Last month, Teaneck’s Rena Levin, 25, kissed her parents good-bye and boarded a flight to Israel. “Many people in Teaneck jokingly call it ‘Ir Hakodesh,’ but the real Ir Hakodesh is Jerusalem, in Israel, where I now live and work,” Levin told The Jewish Link. A graduate of Queen’s College, Rena, who works for the Ma’ayanot program that is affiliated with Birthright-Taglit, knew she was going to make the move years ago. “I spent my teen years in Bnei Akiva camps where many staff members were Israelis, then spent time at Midreshet Harova seminary in Jerusalem’s Old City after high school, where I had an amazing experience,” she added. “But I was still conflicted about making the move to Israel until I got a job as a madricha at another midrasha in Israel, which I enjoyed tremendously. I came back to Teaneck and decided it was time to make the move. Even though I’m single, there is a vibrant social life in Jerusalem and I have a lot of friends in my community, which is very welcoming and was a key factor in making aliyah.”
Hillela and Noah Geduld who made aliyah from Jamaica Estates in Queens to Jerusalem two years ago are quite comfortable with their surroundings in the Holy Land, but both miss family and friends back home. “I’m one of six children in the family and the only one who made aliyah, so there are times when I’m indeed homesick, but at the same time I’ve been extremely surprised by our easy transition into Israeli society,” Hillela told The Jewish Link. “I’ve always been imbued with Zionist values and Israel. My aliyah-defining moment was when I learned about ‘Shivat Tzion’ in seminary and how only small numbers of Jews actually returned to Israel from the Diaspora during the Second Temple era.”
Hillela actually met her future husband, who grew up in Cleveland, at a wedding in Israel. Noah recently completed his army service, where he served in the IDF Spokesperson’s Office. “Almost everyone in the Cleveland community where my husband grew up has either made or is planning to make aliyah,” added Hillela, who works as a community manager for Hometalk (a New York start-up with offices in Jerusalem), an online platform that enables people to improve their living spaces through DIY (do it yourself). “It’s less intimidating these days to make aliyah because the community reaches out to new olim and embraces them. The fact that my husband was already living here, after studying in yeshiva, also made the transition easier. Of course, finding a good job is also important to make things work.”
According to statistics provided by NBN, these are the most popular cities where new olim from America and the metro region are flocking to:
Their impact on these cities hasn’t gone unnoticed. In a growing number of cases, the absorption departments within some of the aforementioned cities play an active role in recruiting new immigrants at aliyah events in New York and New Jersey.
Modiin Mayor Haim Bibas is an activist in this area.
“Today, there are nearly 40 schools in Modiin, including a diverse range of religious schools. Many schools offer majors in communication, art and dance, technology, sciences including bio-technology, physics and biology, as well as electronics, engineering sciences and architecture. The municipality’s investment in advanced technologies and building smart classrooms in schools is evident in all educational indicators and surveys. Modi’in is near the top of national educational indexes, with more than 80 percent of students passing the matriculation exams,” Mayor Bibas told this reporter. “The Anglo population is also attracted to the quality of the city’s residents. Modi’in boasts a Grade 8 socio-economic index status (out of 10). Sixty-five percent of city residents possess an academic degree. Our youngsters are the city’s source of greatest pride. They are leaders in the field of volunteerism. As with anything positive, especially among the English-speaking immigrants, referral or word-of-mouth has been a large factor resulting in the growth of the community.”
Mayor Bibas also recognizes how the local economy has been impacted by English-speaking olim. He claimed, “Many olim are bringing their own business ventures from overseas and running them out of Modi’in, thus offering new olim places of employment. The influx of Anglos into the city has also led to increased real estate values across of Modi’in. Israeli and Anglo entrepreneurs are looking to make Modi’in their home and to run their businesses from here for two key reasons: because of the city’s location and its high quality of life.”
There’s also a direct correlation between the growing numbers of olim making the move from the metro region to Herzliya, where the local hi-tech zone boasts many Israeli start-ups and branches of American companies, and Haifa, where a bustling hi-tech zone, as well as the Technion and Rambam Medical Center, are luring both engineers, entrepreneurs and doctors to the city by the bay.
However, there are many oleh families who’ve made the move yet still retain their homes and businesses in the metro region. It is not unusual for many of them, almost all of them men, to congregate and schmooze among each other at Ben-Gurion Airport on Sunday morning as they await flights back to JFK or Newark. Most either are doctors who maintain their practices on both sides of the ocean, hi-tech entrepreneurs who are part of the start-up nation bridge between the two countries, as well as international banking and real estate executives.
“It’s not easy from a physical point of view to be on a plane every few weeks, but from a fiscal perspective it’s still better to earn a higher-dollar salary in the USA and invest that in Israel. There are jobs in Israel, but the salaries are one-third of what I make in America,” a physician from New Jersey who lives in metro Modi’in admitted.
By Steve K. Walz
