Published Sunday, March 1, 1998, in the Miami Herald Immigrants to Israel are asked: `Why?' Embracing a dream: the exodus to Israel By ELINOR J. BRECHER Herald Staff Writer JERUSALEM -- When are you moving here? For decades, this was the challenge that Israelis inevitably tossed at American Jews. Aliyah -- ``going up'' to the Jewish homeland -- was every Jew's obligation. Their checks were welcome and necessary, but the fledgling state also needed Americans' muscle, expertise and spirit. That was before the intifada, Yitzhak Rabin's assassination, nasty religious politics and the painful struggle to define a national identity ended Israel's age of innocence. Now, on the eve of Israel's 50th anniversary, the more likely question is: Why are you moving here? Israelis seem incredulous that anyone would voluntarily trade the material comforts and almost airtight national security of the United States for Israel's high cost of living and safety concerns. ``Every day, at least once, twice, an Israeli will say to me, `What are you doing here?' '' said Julie Gershoyg, 26, who used to work for a Miami engineering firm. She's finishing six months at a Jewish Agency absorption center in a Nazareth suburb, being trained to teach English. ``I say I emigrated from the States. They say, `Are you crazy? Life is so horrible in the States?' '' But Americans making aliyah aren't escaping anything. By ``returning,'' they are embracing the Zionist dream: that Jews belong in the Jewish state. `Deep feeling' ``To make aliyah, you have to have a really deep feeling about Israel,'' said Sarah Niskin, 18, who settled in the Golan Heights after graduating from Miami Beach High School last spring. ``I walk around [Miami Beach] and see all my friends who went to college, what their lives are like, and I think I'm really living. I feel complete,'' said Niskin, a nature guide in the national service. Since Israel's birth in May 1948, 2.6 million people have made the move. That includes 100,000 Americans, about 2,000 each year, according to Boaz Herman, director of the Southeast Regional Aliyah Center in Miami. The center has sent 6,000 prospective immigrants from four southeastern states and Puerto Rico since it opened 25 years ago: mostly people under 30, about 100 every year, Herman said. Aliyah peaked in 1991 despite the Gulf War, said Gad Ben-Ari, the New York-based executive vice president of the Jewish Agency's American section. The Jewish Agency, which funds the World Zionist Organization, is the Israeli government's resettlement partner. Even when aliyah ebbs worldwide, ``this office is always very busy,'' said Herman's assistant, Marjory Reibman, who has been working at the Aliyah Center since it opened. Law of return Under the traditional Orthodox law of return, anyone born to a Jewish mother is considered Jewish, automatically entitled to Israeli citizenship and residency. The Ministry of the Interior broadened the law of return to accommodate a flood of 800,000 Russians, many of whom had converted to Christianity. Under the ministry's interpretation, anyone who can establish that at least one grandparent was Jewish qualifies. Yuli Edelstein, Israel's minister of immigration and absorption, says that aliyah today is ``a positive attraction [because] Jews are not running away from oppression. It's not the anti-Semites providing us with olim,'' as those making aliyah are called. For Floridians, the journey usually begins at the Aliyah Center in Miami, which provides reams of practical advice, from a month-by-month timetable of the citizenship process to a list of items that can be brought into the country without being taxed. Boaz Herman, acting as the interior ministry's agent, interviews applicants about their background and plans. Applicants undergo a criminal background check and psychological testing. Herman devises an ``absorption'' strategy based on family structure, needs and resources. Few are rejected, aside from violent criminals, drug offenders, the seriously mentally ill, and the impoverished or elderly who lack resources in Israel. ``For someone who has problems, why send them to a place that's even more difficult, and they don't have the language?'' Reibman asks. Support is available Once they arrive, olim can plug into various support systems, including the English Speaking Residents' Association and the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel, which refer members to services as disparate as ``culture-shock counseling,'' day-care centers and garden clubs. They also get substantial tax breaks and low-cost mortgages. Whether prospective olim are observant Jews doesn't matter, Herman said. ``Maybe the image of Israel is like the Vatican, but you can be secular or Orthodox.'' Sarah Jane Ross believes that ``any religious person has to think about aliyah as an option, if they're serious as Jews.'' Last July, Ross, who works for an investment firm, and husband Teddy Weinberger moved their five children from North Miami Beach to the Jerusalem-area settlement of Givat Ze'ev, behind the ``Green Line'' that defines Israel's pre-1967 border. ``If you're in a synagogue like ours, where the rabbi comes back from Israel and says from the pulpit, `People, this is not the place; Israel is the place,' which in an Orthodox synagogue is fairly common, you listen. We followed directions!'' said Weinberger, a former Florida International University religion professor. `Social concerns' surface If Israelis think American olim are nuts, it's linked to ``a general sense of frustration'' among a people whose longheld dreams of peace remain unfulfilled, said Alan Shulman of Palm Beach, who chairs the Jewish Agency's Immigration and Absorption Committee. Economically, ``the country has been very successful,'' Shulman noted, ``but that hasn't solved the social concerns of living in a volatile environment where families are still concerned about their children going into the army and maybe having to fight.'' Indeed, tension between factions supporting and opposing the peace process has caused many to question whether Israel will see its centennial. But those who make aliyah are still buoyed by hope. ``I'm not disillusioned at all,'' said Elliot Skiddell, 47. The former spiritual leader of Plantation's Ramat Shalom congregation, he's now associate director of a seminar center in the town of Karkom, on the Sea of Galilee. Wife Julie, 39, teaches English. Daughter Sarit, 14, is Israel's national karate champion in the 12-16 age division. A positive view Elliot Skiddell called the tensions ``healthy.'' ``If you get the arguments out, eventually the middle comes to some kind of understanding,'' he said. Edelstein, the immigration minister, says that, to some degree, Israelis have always expressed ambivalence about Americans who make aliyah. ``It's very normal to ask an American: `To hell with the fact that you come to identify; when are you making aliyah?' On the other hand, there is the terrible perception that successful American Jews stay in the United States and only the losers make aliyah.'' Families at odds The decision to make aliyah from the United States is never simple, and often sparks family disputes. Many parents want their children ``to go to Israel -- they support Israel -- but they don't want them to live there,'' Margery Reibman said. Julie Gershoyg, whose family left Latvia when she was 8, said her move ``was very difficult for my family,'' in Colorado. ``My mother went with me to Boaz with all these concerns about safety and security. My father didn't talk to me for two weeks. He's supporting me now, but my mother spends her time crying.'' Sheldon Frank, 19, concedes that some of his relatives think he has ``lost it.'' The 1996 Miami Beach High graduate plans to start Israeli army boot camp in August. A ``very Reform'' Jew before attending the two-month High School in Israel program, he now considers himself religious. He attends the Ateret Kohanim yeshiva near Tel Aviv, run by Rabbi Daniel Moskowitz, son of the controversial Miami Beach millionaire Irving Moskowitz, who has bankrolled Jewish settlements on the West Bank. Dispute on army service Frank left another yeshiva where he was urged to forgo the army in favor of study. This issue has caused bitter conflict between ultra-Orthodox factions that don't serve and Israelis who fulfill their military obligation. ``For me, it's simple,'' said Frank, whose family owns Curry's Restaurant in Miami Beach: ``Go to the army or get out. It's extremely important to be in yeshiva, but that doesn't override the importance of fighting for your lives.'' It's a fight that some must shoulder irrespective of military service. Sarah Niskin often travels for six hours by bus to spend weekends with her ``adopted'' family in the West Bank city of Hebron, a place she acknowledges can be dangerous. ``I've had stones hit me walking to the Cave of the Patriarchs on Saturday,'' said Niskin, who went to Israel with her mother's full and fervent blessing. ``There are soldiers within eyesight of where you are, but it's scary to not know what window you could be shot from. I hear bombs and I'm used to it.'' A gradual transition To ease the transition, the Jewish Agency advocates ``aliyah in stages.'' ``You go on a teen tour and you come back transformed,'' said the Jewish Agency's Gad Ben-Ari. ``Some will come back and work on the kibbutz or go to university. . . . Gradually they are building relations with the country. They have friends. If they decide to move, it's familiar.'' It's the route that David Zurawin chose. Zurawin, 31, had been a case manager at Douglas Gardens Jewish Home and Hospital in Miami. He had studied and traveled in Israel, and last summer decided ``there was no better time than now'' to move. He, too, has been at the Nazareth-area absorption center, getting free intensive language training in Hebrew, after which he'll be placed in a teaching job. But Yuli Edelstein, 29 when he left the Soviet Union in 1987, says that no amount of preparation can guarantee olim success. ``Aliyah is always a very painful process,'' he said. ``Everyone has to be prepared for some difficult years. . . . But I do believe that in the end, they will gain.'' Some go back home Still, Boaz Herman estimates that 10 to 15 percent of olim eventually return to America. ``Sure, they have safe streets and a Jewish environment, but when the times start to be tough -- maybe they can't find a job or there is a security issue -- they come back.'' David and Li-Or Goldman acknowledge that ``the jury is still out'' on their relocation. Though they're living in the tony Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Sharon where Li-Or grew up, they and their 2-year-old daughter, Hailley, have been guests of Li-Or's mother since they left Plantation last July. While she finds it ``easier to be Jewish here -- you don't have to take a vacation day off for the holidays'' -- Li-Or says nobody warned her that her professional credentials in addiction counseling wouldn't be recognized in Israel. David, 40, gave up a full-time job at Forest Glen Middle School in Coral Springs and is struggling to become fluent in Hebrew while he teaches English part-time. ``There are those days when I say, `What the hell did we do?' '' said Li-Or, 41. ``. . . Part of me wants to go back because life was a lot easier there.'' A sense of purpose Then something happens to remind her why they're here. ``When I see Hailley playing with her little cousins and playing with my mom, her only grandparent, that's what we came for. She was singing little Shabbat songs the other day, and it touched me.'' But even if olim don't make it, ``it's not the end of the world,'' Herman said. ``We have a significant percentage who move to Israel a second time. They do not give up the dream.'' That's what happened to Roz and Gerry Soltz. They made aliyah from 1971 to 1975 with their four children, then again in 1996. ``Financially, we couldn't make it,'' said Roz, 70, part owner of Wylly's Professional Travel in Coral Gables. She helps run it from her apartment in Jerusalem's French Hill neighborhood. ``Giving up the dream was sad, but we had to be realistic.'' They moved back to Kendall, where Roz said she ``couldn't readjust'' to all the talk of face lifts and redecorating. After their children grew up and Gerry retired, they made a second aliyah. They spend their days at concerts and lectures. Gerry attends a program for Parkinson's Syndrome patients. One of their daughters and four grandchildren live down the block. Roz remains active in Hadassah. ``I felt there was one more dimension to my life, and I want to die here,'' she said. ``This is a way of life for us that we find very fulfilling.'' Copyright © 1998 The Miami Herald