No matter what the government can or can’t do, immigrants need their own game plan
It’s been a huge brachah. Our sons live here. We’ve merited to see two additional generations born here. I sometimes quip that it took 17 years for our net worth to surpass the figure we came with. Yet we’ve never missed a meal, except on fast days, and we have always lived comfortably due to the many offsetting factors that make financial life in Israel easier, despite the lower salaries and paucity of single-family homes in religious neighborhoods.
The first bill for our son’s kindergarten tuition at a Chinuch Atzmai cheder was NIS 300 ($100 at the time) for the entire year, with a 10% discount if we paid by Cheshvan. Health insurance came with the territory via a painless payroll deduction on a job I found after just a couple of months of searching.
I could ramble on, but I’m a newsman. My assignment here is to relate to the projection from Israel’s new immigration minister of 85,000 new olim in the next year — including a tidal wave from America — as more Jews start viewing Israel as a safer haven from pestilence, civil unrest, and anti-Semitism.
The projected inflow of immigrants sounds like a statistic on steroids. Israel is also battling the coronavirus and dealing with its economic fallout, throttled by a government riddled with dissension and backstabbing. Who’s coming here with travel bans in effect? Where will new immigrants live in a country with a chronic housing shortage? How can a pandemic-decimated economy generate new jobs when a million Israelis are still out of work?
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