KUMMUNIQUE

Shalom! We are proud to present another issue of Kummunique.
This issue is filled with Aliyah and Eretz Yisrael inspiration - so enjoy!

In this issue you will find:

1. "We Came For The Food" by Anonymous
2. "Essay: Brooklyn's not-one-inch crowd" by Hillel Halkin
3. "The Long Journey Home" Karin Kloosterman

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1. "We Came For The Food" by Anonymous

After all the tragedies of the disengagement and all the horror of Amona some friends are asking me why I uprooted my family with six children K"H and moved to Eretz Yisroel. I have also been reading all the brilliant analytical observations of well meaning people on both sides of the ocean debating the pros and cons of Aliya. Frankly I don't understand the question.

Obviously history is being made every moment and even time does not accurately tell the true impact of events whether they be large or small. To grasp at any event occurring in a microcosm of time and base your entire future on that event is in a word silly. If you want to make the most of a moment at least don't use the worst moment to make the most of. Now more than ever reality is changing at a pace unheard of since the beginning of time. We are clearly at a turning point and that point is clearly in a spin.

Just last month everyone was busy dealing with the powerful reality of Sharon's political future. We forgot that in less time then it takes to get from the Negev to Jerusalem an era can end. Eretz Yisroel is not a creation of any government or political process; it is the inheritance of the Jewish people since the beginning of time. It is also nice to have an Israeli Army but an Israeli army isn't always going to be nice. The Land will survive its government and their policies irrespective of its apparent strengths or weaknesses.

Our future as a people and as a nation is dependent upon Divine mercy and not on the whims of politicians or generals genuflecting to the will of their power base. Our leaders, whether they are the on left or the right or in the center are still all controlled from above. So stop worrying about who will be the next political flavor of the month (and stop using that as excuse) and come for the food. We did and we haven't been disappointed.

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2. "Essay: Brooklyn's Not-One-Inch Crowd" by Hillel Halkin
From Jerusalem Post

I don't really mind so much being called naively left-wing by my right-wing critics. My left-wing friends (and for my many sins, most of my friends are on the Left) all think I'm naively right-wing. It more or less balances out. As far as I'm concerned, it puts me in the center, which is where I'd like to think I've always been.

Still, there is one kind of right-wing critic I can't abide. This is the American Jew who sends me e-mails me from Brooklyn to tell me that I'm a craven appeaser. Not only don't I understand that the best Palestinian is a dead Palestinian, or at least, a Palestinian under a Jewish boot, I'm too naive to realize that the Palestinian from whose neck the boot was removed would jump to his feet and stick a knife into me.

In short, I'm an Arab lover.

Well, I'll admit it. I don't particularly hate Arabs, even if I sometimes find myself wishing that they lived in another part of the world. I'll tell you whom I do hate, though. It's the Jews who want me to go on fighting Arabs forever while they cheer me on from their apartments in Brooklyn.

In general, I've made my peace with American Jews. There was a time when I thought it was one of my missions in life to convince them all, or anyway, all of them who took being Jewish seriously, to settle in Israel. I even wrote a book on the subject, which was so successful that it's now out of print. Now and then I run into someone in this country who tells me he's living here because of it. I smile and say, "Another Jew on my conscience," but to tell the truth, I feel proud of it.

Still, I don't go around preaching aliya to American Jews any more. Either they don't know what you're talking about and wish you'd change the subject because it bores them, which accounts for the great majority of them, or else they do know what you're talking about and wish you'd change the subject because you're making them feel guilty. The first kind aren't worth wasting any time on and the second kind only make you feel guilty for making them feel guilty. Good, caring Jews who know they should be living in Israel but aren't for one of a thousand reasons - why rub it in? When it comes to aliya, American Jews have been a disappointment, but you can't go feeling mad at them forever.

EXCEPT, THAT is, for the right-wing super-Jews. The ones who demand of Israel that it make no concessions - who revile any Israeli who is not prepared to stand tall, stand proud, stand tough… while they sit in Brooklyn.

Talk of craven! What's their excuse?

It would be bad enough if it were just a question of morality - which of course it is. I can violently disagree with a fellow Israeli on matters of public policy while respecting his right to his opinion, because I know that, regardless of who is right and who is wrong, we will both have to bear the consequences of whatever this country does. For a Jew to sit on the sidelines and give strident advice, however, when the consequences of taking it have to be borne entirely by other Jews, is vile. What kind of person urges risks on the members of his family while refusing to run any of them himself?

OF COURSE, this is a criticism that can be made of many left-wing Jews in America no less than of right-wing ones. All American Jews who claim the privilege, as Jews, of telling Israel what to do while disclaiming the responsibility, as Jews, to be living here are in the same position, whether they support Peace Now or the settlers.

There is one big difference, though. The left-wing American Jew, in urging Israel to withdraw from all the territories, is counseling it to take a course of action that would alleviate its demographic problem. While he himself is not willing to immigrate here, or to call upon others Jews to do so, he at least is saying to Israelis: "Take my advice and you will not need immigrants, because by withdrawing to the 1967 borders you will have struck a viable population balance between Jews and Arabs and will be able to do without me."

But the right-wing American Jew is doing the opposite. As a territorial maximalist who opposes any withdrawal from the territories, he is counseling Israel to pursue a path that will make its demographic problem frighteningly acute. If his advice were followed, the only thing that could possibly save us from demographic disaster (although the prospects would not be bright then, either) would be the massive immigration of Jews from the Diaspora - which, given the current distribution of Diaspora Jewry, could only mean a massive immigration from the United States.

And yet our right-wing friend does not want to immigrate to Israel - he likes living in Brooklyn! He wants to be there while telling us here to adopt policies that will put an end to Israel as a Jewish state unless millions of Jews move here - millions of Jews for whom he has not the slightest intention of setting an example.

Imagine a country that is at war. Imagine someone who constantly criticizes the way it is fighting that war. Imagine that he mocks it for not fighting aggressively enough, for not fighting ruthlessly enough, for holding its army back. Imagine that he is constantly griping that the army itself is afraid to take casualties, that it is fighting too defensively, that it should be throwing more soldiers into battle. Imagine that he proclaims that it must never retreat and that anything short of total victory is disgraceful surrender. And now imagine that he is… a draft dodger, hiding from that war under his bed.

That's our American super-Jew. And now you'll have to excuse me. I've just gotten another e-mail.

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3. "The Long Journey Home" Karin Kloosterman
From Jerusalem Post

At one point in the parent/child relationship, things will change. For a growing number of families, a child will become the guardian of aging parents. The situation can be especially difficult if an aging parent lives in a different country and continent.

The Jewish Agency says that as the wave of North Americans who immigrated to Israel in the 1970s becomes older, olim are finding complicated challenges in what to do with the parents they left behind in the US and Canada - especially when the parents are no longer able to take care of themselves.

Such was the case with David Klein (not his real name) originally from Toronto, who made aliya 20 years ago with his wife and three children. After years of trying, Klein managed to get his elderly parents to move to Israel earlier this month, and they are now settled into a retirement community in Kfar Shmaryahu.

"It was the most difficult week of my life," says Klein, who lives in Kfar Saba.

"My parents didn't like the first retirement residence we went to look at because it felt too much like a nursing home. The second one would not accept them because the home didn't think my parents were independent enough. On their seventh day in Israel, we drove out to a retirement home that accommodates people at different levels. They have been there for several days now, have made friends with people who have similar Polish backgrounds, and speak Yiddish with the staff. My parents are eating three nutritious meals a day, and there's a doctor and a physiotherapist on the premises," he says.

Klein's parents are settling into life in Israel.

But when he had gone to Toronto in late December, he found his parents, both in their mid-eighties, in a crisis.

"They were living on their own, but my father's health had taken a turn for the worse," says Klein, who describes his parents as stubbornly independent and feisty Holocaust survivors.

Prior to Klein's visit and for the past several years, his parents had resisted any suggestion of moving to a retirement home or accepting live-in help in Toronto or elsewhere.

This year things were different. His father was suffering from Alzheimer's and if action wasn't taken quickly, Klein knew it would only be a matter of time until his father would be hospitalized, possibly against his will.

"My mother and father were refusing the idea of leaving the sanctuary of their home in Toronto that had sheltered them for five decades after arriving on Canadian soil as refugees - penniless, friendless, stateless and without family."

Earlier in their lives, Klein's parents had dreamt of living in Israel but were denied immigration by the British Mandate.

"One of their treasured possessions is a photograph taken of their Hashomer Hatzair Zionist youth group in the 1930s in Poland, in which they both appear - though they were not yet boyfriend and girlfriend," says Klein.

"Whether they grasped it or not, Israel loomed ahead of them as a safe and secure haven."

After intense negotiations with his parents and their eventual agreement, Klein set out to make arrangements with the Israel Aliya Center in Toronto, a procedure he thought would be swift and easy.

"I was wrong," he says.

Many quick decisions had to be made, and Klein felt that the clerk handling his case was unsympathetic to his special circumstances.

Dina Gidron, the regional director of the Israel Aliya Center for Central and Western Canada, explained that making aliya is a stressful process.

"The trauma of making aliya is really hard," says Gidron, who agrees that Jewish Agency emissaries usually have the best grasp of oft-changing Israeli governmental policies. It is not unusual, she says, that people working for the government will contact emissaries to know the latest updates and rights for new immigrants.

Gidron says that the Klein's case was not something she was used to seeing. "Without family support," she notes. "I would not recommend that seniors move to Israel."

Those who do make aliya are entitled to the same benefits as anyone else. Seniors can receive an absorption basket of about NIS 16,000, a free plane ticket, a waiver of customs' fees and taxes, free Hebrew classes and medical insurance for six months.

Wendy Keter, the Midwest regional director of the Jewish Agency's Israel Aliya Center based in Chicago, has become the North American expert on helping ailing and frail seniors make aliya. She has a wealth of professional experience in helping seniors know about rights and services when they make aliya. A trained social worker originally from Philadelphia, Keter has worked for 30 years in geriatric and service development in Israel. Before working for the Jewish Agency, she worked for municipalities in Israel and later became the director of a home healthcare organization.

In 1999, with the backing of her family, Keter decided to move her Philadelphia-based mother, afflicted with Alzheimer's, to Israel. Keter found an apartment close to her home in Rehovot for her mother, who was able to receive supervised 24-hour home care.

"At that time, my mother fulfilled her lifelong dream without fully knowing it," she says.

Although, some of her mother's savings were used to cover expenses, social security and other government resources helped the shekels stretch.

"Money goes much farther in Israel than it could go in the US," attests Keter, who estimates that the quality care her mother received in Israel cost one-third of what it would in the US.

Keter also thinks that Israelis are kinder to the elderly than Americans may be; she doesn't think her mother would have been given the same treatment had she remained in Philadelphia.

"The people in the local grocery store in Israel set aside a chair for my mother on which to rest while her caretaker shopped for groceries. They would give her cookies and flowers for Shabbat."

A year and a half ago, Keter was sent by the Jewish Agency to work in the US. At that time, her mother returned with her to Chicago but passed away four months ago.

In the past years, Keter has helped dozens of families bring their aging parents to Israel.

"I tell them my story and sit and cry with them," she says, adding that her experience gives people the belief that they can do it, too.

THE FIRST steps a family should take, says Keter, involves speaking with experts and engaging in as much preplanning as possible. After liaising with their local Jewish Agency, people should be in contact with local social services in Israel, their local National Insurance office and a healthcare organization.

The Association for the Planning and Development of Services for the Aged in Israel (ESHEL) also can provide a lot of preliminary information.

The National Insurance can provide a nursing grant, a basket of home healthcare services for those who qualify, says Keter. There is a worldwide trend to provide home healthcare services; since 1985, these services have been progressive in Israel.

After initial research, families should look into the services provided by such organizations as Hadassah; the Women's International Zionist Organization (WIZO); and the Association for Americans and Canadians Living in Israel (AACI). Housing options depend on individual needs, preferences and circumstances.

"Some people can move to villages to be close to their children," she says, noting that it is worth looking into special services made available through a local municipality before making any big decisions.

"People usually find out about services only in a time of crisis. At that point, one cannot think logically. Even though your parents might not agree, it is important that they hear from their children that they are being thought about. You never know when there is going to be a switch in the parent-child role," says Keter, who believes in encouraging people to stay in their community for as long as one is able.

Newer organizations like Nefesh B'Nefesh (NBN) are recognizing the need to cater services toward aging olim. The organization works alongside the Jewish Agency to help North Americans realize the dream of aliya through financial assistance and other benefits.

"NBN recognizes that pre-retirees and retirees have specific aliya needs, and we are interested in helping this population," says Doreet Freedman, director of Pre-Aliya.

She adds, "We have noticed an increase in interest from parents of olim who wish to join their children. There are also older individuals who feel that they are finally able to actualize their Zionist dreams but are wary of the bureaucratic red tape, nervous about the healthcare system, unaware of residency options and concerned about financial/taxation implications."

To accommodate the growing interest in aliya by the senior population, NBN is offering pre-aliya informational seminars for the senior populations in New York and New Jersey on March 5. Hiring a retirement facilitator to mitigate some of the anxiety caused by running between various governmental offices could be a wise move, says Freedman.

Despite the growing number of services catering to the aging olim, over the last month in Israel Klein has found the bureaucracy on the Israeli side to be unfathomable. However, he points out, volunteer facilitators such as Susan from the AACI have made the experience bearable.

"When we arrived at Ben-Gurion airport, worn out after the long flight, the last thing we wanted to do was be whisked away to the aliya processing office to do all kinds of paperwork," says Klein.

"The fact that Susan was there to chat with my parents and answer questions is representative of the best that Israel has to offer. She and her colleagues are what good old Eretz Yisrael is all about - Israel's finest face. Because of people like her, it's all worthwhile."

For more information, contact
The Jewish Agency in Chicago:
1-847-674-8861; wendyk@jazo.org.il
AACI: (02) 566-1181
ext 305; jarbel@aaci.org.il
Nefesh B'Nefesh:
(02) 659-5700; doreet@nbn.co.il