Aliya is not a career move
David Bernstein is right: Aliya (immigration to Israel) is not a career move. We can go back an forth on how to measure standard of living all day, but here’s a rather simple metric, which is hardly surprising given the GDP numbers: I know many Israelis who’ve emigrated to the U.S., and a smaller number of Americans who’ve moved to Israel. If you ask members of the former group why they’ve moved here, they will almost always respond that “a higher standard of living” or something similar was at least a significant factor, as, often is getting away from mandatory military and reserve service, a not insignificant drag on quality of life. The Americans who’ve moved to Israel, by contrast, almost never cite standard of living as a factor, but rather as a sacrifice they decided to make to pursue their dream of living in Israel. This is true even of Modern Orthodox families with three or four kids who get free religious public school education for those kids in Israel, as opposed to paying three or four day school tuitions in the U.S.When I made aliya in 1991, I went from being a 7th year associate at a prestigious Manhattan law firm to being an apprentice at a boutique Tel Aviv securities practice whose name partner took most of the money home for himself. I took a 91% paycut. Yes, you read correctly.
Today, Nefesh b'Nefesh ameliorates that kind of paycut by helping you out financially in the first year or two, but that doesn't change the fact that the standard of living here is much lower than it is in the States. Much lower. Bernstein was answering someone (Leftist Glenn Greenwald) who thinks otherwise. Maybe Greenwald should come live here for a while and see for himself.
Labels: aliya, David Bernstein, GDP, Glenn Greenwald, Nefesh b'Nefesh
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:16 PM
4 Comments:
People don't come for the money to Israel. They come out of idealism and a desire to live in the Jewish homeland.
What can be done to make Israel a lot more attractive to olim is cut oppressively high taxes and red tape and just get out of their way.
Its amazing Israel has gone as far as it has with its bureaucracy. It would go further and faster if weren't so omnipresent in people's lives.
Carl,
I think you made too sweeping a statement. It really depends on your field.
In your field, and some other fields there are big gaps in income level.
In the high tech field and other fields I don't find this to be true.
I work in the high tech field and we did not lower our standard of living at all when we made aliya. I also know that the cost for the company per Engineer in the US is about the same today as it is here.
By the way, my neighbor who is a doctor, who made aliyah around the same time you and I did, also made a tremendous sacrifice, like you, in his standard of living. However, he says that today, with the expenses doctors in the US have today, there is not such a big difference anymore.
While your point is well taken (my pay cut was only 80%), today the unemployment rate in the US is ~27% real unemployment and major underemployment. It may be today that having a job and being able to educate your children in weak but Jewish schools is better than being out of work and having to put your kids in public school. Even as a pure numbers calculation.
Nefesh B'Nefesh doesn't provide any financial support if you have any money at all. As for the Modern Orthodox Jews making Aliyah with 3 or 4 kids, that must be a typo. It's more like 7-9 children. I've never seen a religious family with only 3 children.
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