Making Aliyah To Israel Today and In 1980

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

  

It's good to know that people are making Aliyah despite Corona Virus, Delta and now Omicron. Traveling to a new country must be hard, for the inspiration that comes in pushing them to leave their present homes for Israel means that something, usually anti-Semitic reasons, pushed them into this decision.  Or, it could be the situation that the world is in causing religious inspiration as well.  

To make aliyah is to move to Israel.  It literally means to rise, to go up, spiritually.  When you leave permanently, you are called a Yored, meaning to go down again.  

Israel's population grew by about 160,000 people (1.7%) in 2021, reaching about 9,450,000 including 6.98 million (73.9%) Jews, about two million (21.1%) Arab and 472,000 from other sectors. About 184,000 babies were born in Israel in 2021: 73.8% to Jewish mothers, 23.4% to Muslim mothers and 2.8% to other mothers from other sectors. About 25,000 new immigrants arrived in Israel in 2021, 5,000 more than last year. 30% of them came from Russia, 14.6% from France, 13.9% from the U.S. and 12.4% from Ukraine.

    Haifa, where our absorption center was located.  We'd walk to the beach.  We studied Hebrew for 10 months being we were teachers needing to teach for a living.  Classes were 6 days a week.  At the end we had to take a 3 hour test.  

     Haifa, I loved it;  walked for an hour every day with my German Shepherd female which we brought with us.  Everyone got excited when they saw her.  We weren't supposed to have a dog at the Center, but she was so quiet and good, and the "Mother" pretended she didn't know.  Finally, we had to board her with a young IDF soldier and his wife for a while until she got pregnant, and then we got her back again living with us until we graduated.  

I made Aliyah in September 1980. We flew in El Al.   We were taken to a hostel because a strike was going on and the cab driver couldn't take us to our hotel that we had in our plans.  We couldn't speak Hebrew and the young young man in charge that night couldn't speak English.  We wound up with one cup for some water out of the tap and no food.  The next morning I was taken to the house mother of the hostel and given a cup of tea and a cookie.  Never was anything so good!  

Finally we were taken to the Absorption Center that was to be our home for the next 10 months.  It was HOT OUTSIDE.  So hot!  We came from Oregon and to step into HOT CLIMATE was a shock to the system. We couldn't speak Hebrew and would learn it in classes here as well as live here.   The House mother didn't speak English.  Through hand motions, we were to take the elevator and go up.  We stepped in and the buttons were all in Hebrew.  Danny, who had been bar-mitzvahed, took an educated guess and got us to the right floor and to our room.  No one helped us get there, amazingly.  I collapsed on the bed and passed out.

                                             

 Apartment living in Safed, #213, our new home where I taught jr high students English as a foreign language.  Here's Blintz, our dog and after a year, our new Fiat shipped over from Italy right out of a catalog. 

I'm changing, wearing a head covering and becoming more dottee.  So did my husband.  We had been conservatives.  Dan came from Brooklyn, New York,  and me from Portland, Oregon.   

I hope that the end of 2021 and the New Year of 2022 will find Aliyah continuing when needed.  Israel is an awesome country with awesome people.  

Here's the book I wrote about my Aliyah and living in Israel. I wrote to my mother every week, and she kept my letters.  Then she gave them all back to me as she had kept them in her Gucci bag, and told me to write a book.  I did.  Publishers were 1st Books, April 1, 2003.

                                               

                                                

      When we had first arrived in Israel, we had been given a book to read.  The writer had different experiences, of course.  It was called, Another Beginning--through the Israeli looking glass by Joan Cass, published by DVIR Katzman Publishers INC.. 1979 in Tel Aviv.  It has passports on the cover.  They were a family with children who made Aliyah, more normal than coming with a big dog.                                            

Resource:

IsraelAM

https://archive.jewishagency.org/aliyah/making-aliyah?gclid=CjwKCAiA8bqOBhANEiwA-sIlNwN8TOwGSeTu4x1ROnft_ITYml9t2AG-vO2uSLkD-biMyPSDfxZePRoCoZIQAvD_BwE