French immigrant to Israel explains why he returned to France
In a Facebook post in French, Alexandre Kassel, a young French Jew who immigrated to Israel from Paris' swanky 19th arrandissemente explains why he returned to France.
I'll be honest, the first few weeks [in Israel] and even the
first few months were a dream. Discovering a new country, especially a
special country like Israel and its new culture is a real opportunity.
But soon I realized that I didn’t come just to sightsee and had to start
building my life [in Israel] as well. That's when the wine turned sour,
the apple revealed its worm, the carriage became a Cinderella pumpkin,
and Israel, as Melissandre (a character in “Game of Thrones”), withdrew
her magic necklace and revealed herself in her ugliest nakedness.
Let's
begin with the weather…10 months out of 12, you can beg it to give us a
bit of the good old Parisian gloom, so we can feel a little of the
melancholy of the poets from our rich French literature, a little gray
depression that blends perfectly with our Ashkenazi genes. Oh no! Day
after day, week after week, the sun insisted to bring our morale up…It's
like living in the world of the Teletubbies and Care Bears. Every
morning when leaving, the black coat purchased from a Paris boutique
gave me an unbearably taunting look.
Outside, as in
Paris, I proudly wore the skullcap on my head. It took me a moment to
realize that something was wrong. I realized that…Oh misery...no one was
giving me acidic looks. I walked in the street, anonymous, as a member
of the whole population, [and] the yarmulke was no longer an object of
attention but naturally blended into the landscape. Do you have an idea
how hard it is to become a Mr-all-the-world once you’ve been used to
being the target of all the bitterness within one kilometer?
But
the Israelis do not stop at that! Not only did they not hate me, but
they all told me that I was their friend, or worse—their brother. You
know that in Israel, no one uses the family name or "Sir." Either they
call you by your first name, or you are jovially called "brother" as if
you did not even have a first name.
Under the blazing
daily sun, how do you not pine for the refreshing coolness of French
politeness? How do you not pine for the natural distance that all
citizens put between them, giving everyone the privilege, perhaps
illusory, of being a stranger in their own country? (I understood that
it's worthwhile to be a stranger in France.)
Those were
the first difficulties, but I did not give up and went forward by
beginning my studies in a secondary school deemed the toughest in
Israel: The Technion in Haifa. Having had a relatively easy schooling, I
needed tougher challenges.
To my amazement, when I saw
how my friends stayed in France to face the walls of intolerance, with
crucial exams falling on a Saturday (Shabbat) or a [Jewish] holiday
without alternatives, the Technion proposed a program that made it
ridiculously easy to avoid taking examinations on those days. The only
difficulty allowed to be imposed on us is the high level of education.
And
besides, it's crazy there at the Technion and in industry. Instead of
respecting the principle of inertia by resting on their laurels and
wallowing in existential immobility, as France knows to do so well, they
(Israelis) have only one word in their mouths:
Innovate….[and] "innovate more" and then continue…
Here
in Israel, we don’t know the beautiful and pleasant feeling of going for
a coffee or to the theater while the country crumbles around us. They
(Israelis) understand nothing of life.
And worse, you
know, when we talk about Israel on television, it’s like living in an
open, actual-size Call of Duty. The truth is that walking down the
street in Israel is rather like child’s play. Certainly there are
attacks, but otherwise it feels even too safe. No one has to spy out of
the corner of one’s eye to find bands of scum and figure out how to pass
by with the least damage. No, we just walk straight like idiots
directly towards our goal.
Heck! There was a school just
next to my home, where the kids are Jews and there's not a single damn
soldier. What kind of life is it where Jewish kids do not need an army
to be left to live?? You tell me.
But you know what? When
a bloody attack does happen, there are headlines in the local
newspapers the next day such as “A TERRORIST committed an attack and
killed lots of Israelis." Yes do not worry, there are also some
journalists justifying the act, but this does not prevent them from
daring to call these poor people terrorists. I felt myself compelled to
take out my wallet and buy the French press, which arrived two days late
but at least stated the facts correctly by writing "a Palestinian
killed in an attack in Jerusalem."
In short, as you have understood, with all this it seemed natural that I needed to return to France.
And yes, it's a satire - satiring French discomfort with the number of French Jews making aliya.
In May, the French newspaper Le Mondedecided
to invert the discussion on French Jews making aliyah by asking
French-Jewish readers who had made aliyah, but later decided to return
to their native country, about their reasons for deciding to move back
to France.
Seeing a kind of “malice” in the request by Le Monde, a writer for the French-Jewish news website rootsisrael.com
asked readers to instead inundate the newspaper with responses by
people who have made aliyah and stayed in Israel. The news website later
published one such letter by Alexandre Kassel, which he originally
posted on Facebook. The letter then went viral and was shared more than
2,000 times. The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth has also featured the letter, which it translated into Hebrew.
Immigration to Israel, or aliyah, from Brazil has more than doubled in
the past four years, from 191 in 2011 to over 400 so far this year. The
average growth in aliyah for all of Latin America in the same period was
just 7 percent. Though it has approximately half the Jewish population
of neighboring Argentina, Brazil has sent more immigrants to Israel for
two years running. An estimated 120,000 Jews live in Brazil.
“They
seek a better future,” said Gladis Berezowsky, 58, who helps run Beit
Brasil, a nongovernmental organization based in Israel established in
2014 to assist Brazilians seeking to move to Israel.
But unlike France, for example, the causes of Brazilian aliya don't seem to relate specifically to anti-Semitism. In other contexts, Brazilian Jews might be referred to as 'economic refugees.'
Brazil, a nation of 200 million, is facing its steepest recession in a
quarter century, with the economy expected to shrink by almost 2 percent
this year – down from more than 7 percent GDP growth in 2010. The
Brazilian real has shrunk 138 percent compared to the American dollar in
the past five years and the inflation rate has edged up to 10 percent.
The country is also one of the bloodiest on earth, with more than 58,000 Brazilians dying a violent death in 2014.
“More
people are killed every year in Brazil through intentional violence
than anywhere else on the planet, including most of the world’s war
zones combined,” said Robert Muggah, a research director of a Rio-based
think tank that studies the intersection between violence and the drug
trade.
“The absurd violence in Rio was postponing our plans to
have children,” said Silvia Brafman, 33, who moved from Brazil’s
second-largest city to Haifa in late October with her husband. “The high
unemployment rate and lack of opportunities were the second reason to
head for Israel. The current stabbing wave here does not scare us at
all. What really frightens me most is the language, which can delay my
entering the job market.”
Whatever is motivating Brazilian Jews to come here, we are happy to have them. Welcome home.
The Satmar Hassidic sect is infamous for its anti-Zionist creed, but according to a weekend exposé by Zvika Klein of Makor Rishon & NRG,
a small group of the hassidim in New York City is secretly planning to
make aliyah and establish a Zionist agricultural community.
The organization is named “Zoreah – Hassidim for Settling the Land of
Israel” and includes mostly Satmar hassidim, as well as some hassidim
from other dynasties. They were all raised to hate Zionism and the state
of Israel, and some of them even attend anti-Israel protests to this
day. But they all decided, after deep study, that making aliyah should
be their main goal in life.
"There is great hatred for Zionism in the community I live in,” one
of them told Klein. “Anything I say that can be understood as support
for Zionism, will haunt me and my family. There is a real mafia out
there that can threaten to throw my children out of the educational
institutes, and since we do not have an alternative at the moment, I and
the rest of my friends cannot expose our identities yet.”
Instead, the hassid said – they are opting for an approach to their
dream that is gradual – “like everything having to do with the
Redemption.”
...
The plans to make aliyah are very real. Members of the group have
already visited Israel in search of a suitable location for their
agricultural community. Aaron visited Givat Ze'ev, became enamored with
the scenic view and the proximity to Jerusalem, and told the other
members – “this is the spot.”
The members' wives and children speak Yiddish and some English.
However, Jerusalem, Bnei Brak, Bet Shemesh and other haredi
concentrations are “irrelevant for us,” Aaron said, because the haredim
in Israel “are not in love with the Land they live on, like we are.”
Finding the right place is not easy, he conceded: “finding a
Yiddish-speaking congregation that is not anti-Zionist is very hard. If
you are a nationalist, you do not speak Yiddish.”
The first group of Zoreah olim will take a few years before it makes
aliyah, according to Aaron, but he does not intend to wait. He plans to
make aliyah this summer, with his family.
One evening this past September, Vice President Joe Biden and his
wife, Jill, hosted a gathering in Washington to celebrate Rosh Hashanah,
the Jewish new year. The guests—political supporters, leaders of Jewish
organizations, members of Congress, Jewish officials of the Obama
administration, and the stray journalist or two—gathered by the pool of
the vice president’s house, on the grounds of the U.S. Naval
Observatory.
Biden was characteristically prolix. He talked about the Shoah, and
about the many contributions Jews have made to American life, and he
mentioned, as he invariably does in such settings, his first encounter
with a legendary Israeli prime minister.
“I had the great pleasure of knowing every prime minister since Golda
Meir, when I was a young man in the Senate, and I’ll never forget
talking to her in her office with her assistant—a guy named Rabin—about
the Six-Day War,” he said. “The end of the meeting, we get up and walk
out, the doors are open, and … the press is taking photos … She looked
straight ahead and said, ‘Senator, don’t look so sad … Don’t worry. We
Jews have a secret weapon.’ ”
He said he asked her what that secret weapon was.
“I thought she was going to tell me something about a nuclear
program,” Biden continued. “She looked straight ahead and she said, ‘We
have no place else to go.’ ” He paused, and repeated: “ ‘We have no
place else to go.’ ”
“Folks,” he continued, “there is no place else to go, and you
understand that in your bones. You understand in your bones that no
matter how hospitable, no matter how consequential, no matter how
engaged, no matter how deeply involved you are in the United States …
there’s only one guarantee. There is really only one absolute guarantee,
and that’s the state of Israel. And so I just want to assure you, for
all the talk, and I know sometimes my guy”—President Obama—“gets beat up
a little bit, but I guarantee you: he shares the exact same commitment
to the security of Israel.”
Rav Chaim Kanievsky: It's a Torah commandment to make aliya now
This is for all of you who sit abroad and say that you don't have to move to Israel because we are not commanded to do so today.
Rav Chaim Kanievsky, possibly the pre-eminent Lithuanian scholar of this generation, says that it's a Torah obligation to make aliya (immigrate to Israel) today.
Let's go to the videotape.
I didn't hear him say anything about parnassa (making a living) either.
Here's a video of Maariv reporter Zvika Klein walking the streets of Paris wearing a yarmulka (skullcap) and tzitzith (fringes) worn by religious Jews.
Introducing the video, Klein writes,
"Welcome to Paris 2015, where soldiers are walking every street that
houses a Jewish institution, and where keffiyeh-wearing men and veiled
women speak Arabic on every street corner."
Klein tells of being yelled at, intimidated, and spat upon. Adults
shouted, "Viva Palestine," and "I'm joking, the dog will not eat you."
Klein recalled a teenage girl saying: "Look at that – it's the first
time I've ever seen such a thing." A child asked his mother, "What is he
doing here Mommy? Doesn’t he know he will be killed?"
Spending the day in Paris with a bodyguard and a photographer with a
hidden camera, Klein walked in the cold through Jewish neighborhoods,
around the Eiffel Tower, and then through mostly Muslim neighborhoods.
While the tourist areas were mostly calm, Klein said in other areas he
experienced "hateful stares," "belligerent remarks," and "hostile body
language."
"Is this what life is like for Paris' Jews?" Klein asked. He then
explains that Jewish leaders in France have told their community to wear
hats or nothing on their heads while walking the streets. Klein said
most Jews prefer staying indoors at night because it is safer at home.
Jews have fled Paris en massage due to growing anti-Semitism and the
recent the massacre of Jews in a kosher food store by Islamic
extremists. The editor of Britain’s Jewish Chroniclesaid that the problem is so bad that “every single French Jew I know has either left or is actively working out how to leave.”
...
Carter also said that the recent attacks in Paris should provide an
opportunity for the West to discover what makes Islam “great.”
“I think this is going to give a lot of people incentive to look into
Islamicism, what is it about this religion that makes it great, that
makes it appeal to really billions of people and to understand that
Islamic leaders condemn this kind of terrorism just like the rest of the
world,” he said.
A quarter of Jews
in Britain have considered leaving the country in the last two years
and well over half feel they have no long term future in Europe,
according to a survey published on Wednesday.
Additionally, anti-Semitic
beliefs are widely prevalent among the wider public with 45 percent of
Britons agreeing with at least one anti-Semitic sentiment, the YouGov
poll for the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) group found.
The
survey comes a week after four French Jews were killed in an attack on a
Kosher supermarket in Paris which led to police stepping up security at
synagogues and other Jewish venues across Britain.
...
According to the CAA's poll of 2,230 British
Jews, 58 percent felt Jews might have no long-term future in Europe, 45
percent felt their family was threatened by Islamist extremism and more
than half had witnessed more anti-Semitism in the last two years than
ever before.
The survey of the
wider public found a quarter of Britons believed "Jews chase money more
than other British people", and one in six agreed that "Jews think they
are better than other people" and "Jews have too much power in the
media".
In all, 45 percent of the 3,411 questioned believed at least one anti-Semitic statement shown to them to be true.
Maybe Carmelli - one of the best (if not the best) Kosher bakeries I have ever been in - would consider relocating to Jerusalem? (See the picture). That would be awesome.
For a lot of French Jews, Friday's terror attack on a Paris Kosher supermarket may have been the last straw.
The question on the lips of many Jews in France is: should we leave? For the first time in Israel’s history, more Jews emigrated from France
than any other country last year. The Jewish Agency of Israel said
almost 7,000 came in 2014 and 10,000 are expected this year, up from
3,400 in 2013. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, told French
Jews that “Israel is also your home” before leaving to attend the march
in Paris on Sunday.
Manuel Valls, French prime minister, responded to Mr Netanyahu’s
overtures by saying “France without its Jews is no longer France,” as he
visited the kosher supermarket attacked last week by a gunman.
But France also leads the pack in a different sorry statistic: it suffered more anti-Semitic incidents in 2013 than any other western country and the number of such acts has risen sevenfold this century, according to the European Jewish Congress.
“There is a real loss of hope, especially among the young generation.
Jews are fed up with always being the target. But if all the Jews go to
Israel the terrorists have won,” says Liza, a young woman who is
half-Jewish and half-Muslim. Like many, she bemoans the conflation of
the Israel-Palestine conflict in France with a clash between Jews and
Muslims.
I'd rather let the terrorists win in France and stay alive. France is not and will never be the Jews' country. And the number of terrorists just seems to be growing.
What enrages Tzipi Livni: French Jews mobbing aliya fair
For those of you who are in Paris today, if you really, really want to anger Tzipi Livni, show up for the aliya fair that's taking place there today. It's mobbed!
In an interview with Army Radio Sunday, Rabbi Moshe Sabag, spiritual
leader of the Great Synagogue of Paris, said that he expected French
aliyah – immigration to Israel – double this year. While 2014 set a
single-year record for French Jewish immigration to Israel, Rabbi Sabag
believes that “14,000 or 15,000 immigrants will come to Israel this year
as a result of what has happened. There is a sense of insecurity and
that these events are just getting worse."
Israel is prepared to absorb them, said Natan Sharansky, Chairman of
the Executive of The Jewish Agency. Sharansky was in Paris, along with
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, to attend
the mass rally against terror being held in Paris Sunday afternoon.
Sharansky popped in on the Fair, telling potential immigrants that “the
Jewish Agency embraces the French Jewish community at this difficult
time and is extending its full support by helping provide for the
physical security of Jewish communities across France, increasing our
assistance to any individual who wishes to immigrate to Israel, and
working to ease immigrants' integration into the Israeli workforce and
Israeli society.”
According to The Jewish Agency's figures, 2014 saw a dramatic
increase in Aliyah from France with the arrival of 7,000 new immigrants,
more than double the 3,400 who arrived in 2013 and triple the 1,900 who
came in 2012. The French Jewish community is the largest in Europe and
the third-largest in the world (after Israel and the United States),
with some 500,000 Jews. More than 1% of the entire community immigrated
to Israel over the course of 2014, which saw the arrival of the largest
number of French immigrants in Israel's history and was the first time
more immigrants came from France than from any other country. Even
before the most recent events, Jewish Agency officials had predicted
that the increase in French Aliyah would continue and that the number of
immigrants from France would reach 10,000 in 2015.
And this bothers former 'justice minister' Tzipi Livni, now a member of the Labor party.
"Israel needs to be a symbol for every Jew in the world as not only a
safe haven, but also of Zionism and moral values," she said.
"Jews should not immigrate because it is a safe haven. I want them to
make aliyah despite the concrete barriers in Jerusalem, despite the
fact that we have to fight terror. I want them to come because of
Zionism."
Livni then went on to criticize the call itself, which she says will
do nothing to enhance the security of Jews living in Europe.
"The events in Paris do not only involve Jews and are not just their
problem. This is a global struggle against extremist Islamic terrorism
and we need to enlist the world to fight against it too," she stated.
"Israel must work smarter - not to worry about whether they [the rest
of the world] understand what we go through, rather how to join
an international coalition for the defense of our shared values."
Reality is that very few Jews make aliya for reasons other than Israel being a safe haven (the exceptions come mostly from English-speaking countries). Livni seems to be determined to make Israel unsafe and unwelcoming. She also fears that French immigrants fleeing Islamic terrorism aren't exactly likely to vote for the Israeli Left. It's long past time to end Livni's political career.
Former ISIS hostages: No, Sotloff didn't convert; Yes, he fasted on Yom Kippur
When Stephen Sotloff HY"D (May God Avenge his blood) was murdered by ISIS, and it was publicized that he was an Israeli citizen and observed Yom Kippur, at least one blogger attacked him for converting to Islam (see the comments to that post).
Former
hostages said that a majority of the Western prisoners had converted
during their difficult captivity. Among them was Mr. Kassig, who adopted
the name Abdul-Rahman, according to his family, who learned of his
conversion in a letter smuggled out of the prison.
Only
a handful of the hostages stayed true to their own faiths, including
Mr. Sotloff, then 30, a practicing Jew. On Yom Kippur, he told his
guards he was not feeling well and refused his food so he could secretly
observe the traditional fast, a witness said.
As he's called a 'terrorist sympathizer,' Stephen Sotloff's mother talks about his connection to Israel
The mother of Stephen Sotloff HY"D (May God Avenge his blood) has spoken to Israel's Yedioth Aharonoth daily about her son's connection to Israel.
"The first time Steven visited Israel he immediately fell in love
with it," Shirley told those coming to comfort the bereaved family,
according to Yedioth Aharonoth.
Sotloff was an Israeli citizen,
having made aliyah (immigration) to the Jewish state in 2005, where he
studied at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya until 2008.
According to his mother, who is herself the daughter of a Holocaust
survivor, Sotloff first traveled to Israel on the Taglit-Birthright
Israel program and was enchanted by what he saw.
On Friday the family is to hold a memorial ceremony for him at the
Beit Am synagogue in Miami, where Sotloff studied as a child and where
his mother taught, and then sit shiva, the traditional seven-day period of intense mourning.
The grieving mother added "our Steven was not a man of war. He always
looked for the human things; he always told us that his goal was to
show the world what really is happening in the daily lives of citizens
in Syria during the war."
Sotloff's family has asked for privacy during their mourning; on Wednesday a family friend Barak Barfi spoke to media representatives on their behalf, saying Sotloff was "pulled by the Arab world” to “tell the stories of those who didn't have anyone else to tell them.”
Yid with Lid reports that a number of people have attacked Sotloff as a 'terrorist sympathizer.' Yid with Lid refutes those claims here.
Sotloff made Aliyah
and studied at the IDC. Little information regarding his time in Israel
is known, and after he was captured in Syria it seems any connection to
Israel was deleted from his online presence in a bid to prevent the
information reaching his captors.
National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden announced the US
intelligence community's assessment of the video in a statement
Wednesday.
Colleagues and acquaintances recalled Sotloff as a generous man
fascinated by journalism and the changes gripping the Middle East, and
determined to tell stories from the perspective of average people, not
army movements on the battlefield.
A friend who was with
Sotloff in captivity told Ynet's sister-print publication Yedioth
Aharonoth that Sotloff was Jewish - a fact he hid from his captors - and
even managed to observe the Yom Kippur fast while in Islamic State
captivity.
"He told them he was sick and doesn’t want to eat, even though we
were served eggs that day," the friend said. "He used to pray secretly
in the direction of Jerusalem. He would see in which direction (his
Muslim captors) were praying and then adjust the angle."
...
Sotloff, a 31-year-old
Miami-area native who freelanced for Time and Foreign Policy magazines,
vanished in Syria in August 2013 and was not seen again until he
appeared in a video released last month that showed Foley's beheading.
...
Just how Sotloff made
his way from Florida to Middle East hotspots is not clear. He published
articles from Syria, Egypt and Libya in a variety of publications.
Several focus on the plight of ordinary people in war-torn places.
One individual familiar with the case said the family's theory
had been that Sotloff was grabbed by a criminal gang, and later
transferred or "sold" to Islamic State. This could not be confirmed by
his family, which declined interview requests.
Preparing for the trip to Syria, Sotloff reportedly asked a
fellow reporter in June 2013: "What type of lawlessness in Aleppo?
Should I keep my eyes open for anything regarding safety?"
"Can you meet with ISI," he asked, using an earlier acronym for
Islamic State. "And the quality of life? Is there still plenty of food
available? Gas?"
In a statement, Foreign Policy magazine called him a "brave and
talented journalist" whose reporting "showed a deep concern for the
civilians caught in the middle of a brutal war."
Time
Editor Nancy Gibbs said Sotloff "gave his life so readers would have
access to information from some of the most dangerous places in the
world."
Given that that Sotloff's Judaism was widely publicized after Foley was beheaded, I find it hard to believe that ISIS did not know Sotloff was Jewish. Therefore, the acronym HY"D (May God Avenge his blood) seems to fit here.
UPDATE 4:04 PM
Much more detail about Sotloff's time in Israel and his contacts with Israeli journalists here.
One could not make up such a story. We are witnessing the fulfillment
of biblical prophecy, and yet Jews who claim to be believers are not
motivated to come. The great sage Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach used to
joke that one day the Messiah would arrive, and American Jewry would
come, take pictures and leave.
Imagine a Star Trek fan who only saw one or two of the movies,
or perhaps none of them; who has watched only an episode or two, but
not even of the original show. He cannot tell the difference between
Kirk and Picard, and not only does he not speak Klingon, he does not
even know what a Klingon is. What makes him a Star Trek fan?
There are Jews who call themselves Zionists and have even less of a
connection to Israel than this so-called Trekkie does to the Star Trek franchise.
Having been born in New York in the ’70s, I know how comfortable it is in the Diaspora.
I can’t say I ever suffered any anti-Semitism. But that is not the
point. Israel isn’t about running away from something, but running
toward it.
The rabbis have cautioned us that the study of Torah is not
informative, but transformative. If that is truly the case, then
imagine the transformation that comes of living a life that is
completely Jewish. Imagine living in a country whose sole reason for
existing is the promotion of the Jewish people’s welfare. We have a
country here that lives, breathes, works, creates and loves according
the rhythm of same calendar as the ancient Israelites who once
populated this land. Talmudic law is part of the law of the land and
plays a decisive role in the decisions of the courts. Here, and only
here, do we decide our fate as Jews. How can one take his or her Judaism
seriously and not actively seek to live one’s life in Israel?
According to RCE's research, over 85% of European Jews assimilate and
intermarry with non-Jews; 80% do not attend synagogues, even on the
central holiday of Yom Kippur; over 75% of Jewish children in Europe do
not receive a Jewish education, and over 90% of European Jewish students
have no connections with the Jewish community.
The sobering figures led Rabbi Shimon Elitov, a member of the Israeli
Chief Rabbinate Council, to say "assimilation in the shocking numbers
that we see is worse that the physical Holocaust that we saw."
In order to provide European rabbis with tools to respond to the
threat, Rabbis Moshe Braverman and Doron Kornbluth ran a workshop at the
conference to give pointers on how to deal with the phenomenon.
It sounds like the situation is well-past workshops. Massive action is needed - and even that may not help.
Deputy Religious Services Minister Eli Ben-Dahan presented a different
counter-measure to the difficulties of Jewish life in Europe, calling on
European Jews to leave and immigrate to Israel or face disappearing. In contrast to the 85% assimilation rate, Ben-Dahan argued that in Israel the rate is a mere thousandth.
Perhaps it's a Heavenly decree that so many French Jews are fleeing to Israel. And given that the cause of that flight is Muslim anti-Semitism -a phenomenon that is rising in many other European countries, perhaps ultimately European Jewry will either flee to Israel or be lost.
Wow! 312% rise in aliya from France in first part of 2014
French Jewry has finally decided enough is enough. They are looking to leave France as soon as possible. The first three months of 2014 show a 312% rise in aliya (immigration) from France over 2013. And those levels were already higher than was the case just a few years ago.
Since January, the Jewish Agency said, 854 immigrants from France
arrived in Israel, compared with just 274 in the same period in 2013.
The Jewish Agency attributed the dramatic 312% rise in immigrants to the
work it has been doing in the country, educating French Jews on the
options available. Officials said that their efforts were aided by a
deterioration of the French economy, and especially by a dramatic increase in anti-Semitism in the country, in which many Jews have been harassed and attacked by local thugs and gangs in recent months.
In addition to families and individuals coming to live in Israel,
there has also been a large increase in the number of students coming to
attend educational programs in Israel. Some 1,000 Jewish high school
students recently participated in The Jewish Agency's Bac Bleu Blanc
("High School Seniors in Blue and White") program, which enables
students at Jewish schools to explore opportunities for life in Israel
following their graduation from high school.
Additionally, 1,000 French Jewish young people are currently
participating in Masa Israel Journey, a partnership between the
Government of Israel and The Jewish Agency that enables young Jews to
experience life in Israel, compared to 500 just two years ago. Some 70%
of French Masa participants make Aliyah upon completing the program.
I don't remember a lot of French from my high school years 40 years ago, but it sounds like I should be brushing up on it.
The Knesset, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to make a holiday to honor the contribution of immigrants to the country. Given that a holiday on which religious Jews can travel is a rarity in this country, we should all be grateful. So why make the holiday four days before Passover?
The 10th of Nisan was selected for the holiday given the historical
importance of the date, on which the Jews crossed the Jordan River into
Israel after the Exodus from Egypt, as recorded in the Book of Joshua.
The bill notes this was the "first mass Aliyah in history."
MK Bar remarked that "the Yom Haaliyah bill is an important national
day in a country that was built on Aliyah, since that it is an
inseparable part of the country's essence."
Yom Haaliyah is planned to be celebrated in various ceremonies,
highlighting the contribution of immigrants who have found their way
home to Israel from all parts of the world.
Initially, the bill was drafted and lobbied for by Jay Shultz, an
immigrant from New York who founded TLV Internationals, a large online
community for young professional immigrants; Schultz was joined in the
bill by Jonathan Javor who immigrated from London, and who also was part
of TLV Internationals before working for the Mayor of Tel Aviv to plan
the absorption of immigrants.
That's fine.... But I'd really rather have Sundays.... The 10th day of Nissan will just be a longer day to clean for Pesach....
Israel’s Immigration and Absorption Ministry presented its findings to
the Knesset this week that more than two thirds of French Jews are
considering leaving the country. The findings were presented in the
context of an Israeli government effort to increase immigration from
France; however they raise serious concerns that a prolonged exposure to
increasingly virulent forms of anti-Semitism are taking their toll on
the sense of security felt by Jewish communities in France and across
Europe.
...
Of the two-thirds considering leaving, half (or one-third overall)
are looking to Israel as their destination. Nearly 60% of French Jews
have close relatives living in Israel.
The past year saw a spike in French
Jewish immigration to Israel, from about 2000 per year during
2008-2012, to over 3,300 in 2013. France is currently home to the third
largest Jewish community in the world, after Israel and the United
States. The majority of immigrants to Israel have been the young – just out of school – and retirees.
In December of last year, the Jewish Agency’s envoy in Paris, Ariel Kandel, observed,
“The French Jews are very Zionist, and that’s not a new thing,” and
that “about 70 percent of them have visited Israel at least once – a
much higher rate than anywhere else.” Kandel also cited the Toulouse
Jewish school shooting, which occurred two years ago this week, as a factor leading to last year’s spike in immigration from France.
Western Europe as a whole saw a 35% increase in aliyah in 2013, driven
by a 46% increase from Belgium and a 57% increase from the Netherlands. A
poll released in November indicated that a full 75% of self-identifying
Jews in Western European countries have considered emigrating because
of anti-Semitism.
I don't know why any Jew would want to live in Europe today.
The summer before I made aliya this disgraceful rendition of the American national anthem was delivered at Jack Murphy stadium in San Diego.
Let's go to the videotape.
She's changed since then according to friends who follow her on Twitter. She used to be virulently anti-Israel. She's not anymore. Now, the national anthem singer, comedienne Roseanne Barr, may be making aliya to Israel.
[O]n Wednesday morning, following a tweeted article by this reporter about the Nefesh B’Nefesh Mega Aliyah fair, Barr tweeted the following:
aliyah 2014
— Roseanne Barr (@TheRealRoseanne) March 12, 2014
...
@TheRealRoseanne Hey Roseanne, are you interested in making Aliyah? We can help!
— Nefesh B'Nefesh (@NefeshBNefesh) March 12, 2014
This is actually a really nice tribute to Ariel Sharon from someone who used to live in Teaneck (hence the photo).
I am writing to tell you that I have and will always have tremendous gratitude and thanks to PM Ariel Sharon for my decision to make Aliya to Israel in January 2002. You will read in a second why I feel that the PM was my personal messenger from G-d, and the final and convincing inspiration to uproot my family from America and move to help build this great country of ours.
Here is my story.
My wife and I are both from the USA and consider ourselves Dati Leumi. We lived in Teaneck, New Jersey after we were married. Life there was great. We had 3 boys and a house a great job and all our friends and family were in the US. We both studied after Yeshiva High School in Israel and although we loved Israel we never thought of ourselves as the ones to make Aliya. It was mostly a hypothetical discussion of something we would do if everything fell into place. At the same time the intifada in Israel was starting up again and every time something happened, we felt guilty that we were living a comfortable life in NJ while our brothers were risking their lives for our collective homeland. But these feeling would then pass and life went on in the wonderful USA.
Around 2001, my job had me traveling to Moscow every other week from NY integrating a company we had purchased there into the parent company. The work was definitely interesting but also taxing on the family with all the travel. I thought about looking into relocating to Israel and commuting from there to Moscow as the travel and jetlag were much easier to deal with and even approached my company in April of that year to do so. Of course, I knew it was a long shot but I felt that after 120 years I would be able to stand in front of G-d and say “I tried”.
As expected, my company turned down my request and I felt a feeling of mostly relief but also some disappointment. A few months had past and at the end of August 2001 my company came back to me and said that as they see this position extending for a long term they have reconsidered and now would like me to move if I was still interested. However, they needed an answer in the next 10 days and that we would have to move quickly thereafter.
Well, my wife and I were a bit taken aback and suddenly were faced with one of the hardest decision of our life. All our friends and the great majority of our family were in the US and we were not sure we were ready to leave it all behind to move to Israel. We were having trouble making a decision. That week I was scheduled to be in Moscow and I told my wife that we will both think this over and decide when I return from my trip.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
