Tuesday, March 31, 2015

German Jewish family recounts ordeal of living in Israel...

In January 2012, in our town in Hamburg, a meeting took place that was initiated by the Jewish Agency with the aim of persuading the German Jewish people to emigrate to Israel, under a programme called Naale. The meeting was chaired by Sergey Cherniac.

It was always my dream to give my children a better education, and they had already attended a Yeshiva Orthodox [Jewish] school in Berlin.

The Jewish Agency tried to persuade us to emigrate to Israel. It claimed that my children had no future in Germany, that their only future was in Israel, and that if the kids studied in a Yeshiva they would not have to join the Israeli army. Our family would have a great opportunity to learn a new profession. It also promised that our family – a big one – would get an apartment from Amidar, which is an Israeli company responsible for government and subsidised housing. Our children would go to kindergarten, and we were told the educational standard in Israel was much higher than in Germany and that education would be free.

In addition, the Jewish Agency claimed that the Israeli healthcare system was the best in the world and that our family would be given discounts and benefits. It said that it would provide funds for electrical appliances and that, after we finished our study in the Ulpan [where Jewish immigrants to Israel learn the basic language skills of conversation, writing and comprehension] we would be given a cheque for 3,000 shekels [about USD 756]. Medicine and medical care would be free as in Germany and our children would be much happier in a new environment in their new homeland – Eretz Israel. Full story...

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