Photo Feature: The Aliyah Nerve Center

Nefesh B’Nefesh has revolutionized the logistics of Aliyah-by-choice from North America (and now the United Kingdom) and has its eyes on stoking the Zionist flames of the American Jewish spirit. At the same time, the shocking statistic of yesteryear – the 50 percent rate of Americans returning to the States – has not yet been disproven. This is the challenge that Nefesh B’Nefesh is facing on behalf of the Jews of the Western exile.



The two-story Jerusalem headquarters of the organization is also an overlay of two stories – that of an efficient and effective ideological organization overlaying and representing the historic phenomenon of Western Jews choosing to make Israel home.



The layout is based on the Aliyah (immigration to Israel, literally “ascent”) process. The journey begins on the ground floor, where pre-Aliyah advisers counsel and advise immigrants prior to their immigration to the Holy Land. Ascending a spiral staircase brings new immigrants to offices in which the post-aliyah experts are dealing with the nitty-gritty of Israeli survival with the backdrop of the Jerusalem hills through their windows.



Last Monday, the seasonal non-flight reception took place in which those Western immigrants who arrive on their own rather than at the hallmark NBN mass-arrival ceremonies get a glimpse of an equally impassioned operation as they process their paperwork and begin to take advantage of the resources NBN provides.



A reception desk - not unlike what would be found in a hip Silicon Valley startup - greets visitors after they are buzzed in at NBN’s HQ. The waiting area is built around a perpetual slideshow showcasing the emotion and ecstasy of Jews stepping off planes into their long-lost homeland.

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The new immigrants know the feelings documented on the LCD screen well. The romance of a fulfilled dream augments the exhilaration of stepping from the outskirts of the theater of Jewish existence to the staging grounds of the Jewish project. They - like their nomadic post-Exodus ancestors - have left the Heavenly manna of the American empire for the blood and sweat demanded by the Land of Israel.



“It is a land that devours its inhabitants,” said ten of the Biblical princes sent by Moses to scout out the land . Many an Israeli expatriate the world over says it is still so. The spies, respected G-d fearing Jews, were not lying, our Sages tell us. “The land is very, very good,” retorted Joshua and Caleb, offering the first Aliyah guidance to the nascent Jewish nation: it takes a positive attitude to reap the benefits of living in the Land.



That attitude is what Rabbi Yehoshua Fass is all about. He founded Nefesh b’Nefesh while still a pulpit rabbi in Florida after Arab terrorists murdered a young Israeli relative. The name literally means “soul for soul” and is a later part of the Biblical verse “eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth.” He is a believer in the Jewish future in the Land of Israel, and together with co-founder, businessman Tony Gelbart, he embarked on an active role.



Rabbi Fass’s office is decorated with photos of olim and garnished with temple-era artifacts. Alongside are the offices of the logistical movers and shakers that helped turn the dream into a concrete reality – from a Jewish Agency emissary who was working in the New York City Aliyah Center when the NBN idea was first presented, to a former member of an outside PR firm who joined the NBN team full-time to help spread the mass Aliyah message through the media.



The bustling central area of NBN’s headquarters is the soul of the operation. Operators answer calls placed to toll-free Aliyah hotlines in the United States, Canada and the United Kingom.



Running the operation is Moshe. His pre-Aliyah career as a social worker in New York, and post-Aliyah management of a customer service call center, prepared him to oversee NBN’s most critical interactions with prospective olim (immigrants).



“The difference between my formal social work experience and this,” he explains, “is that here we are speaking with people who are consciously and intentionally taking upon themselves challenges and even crises in order to achieve the goal of Aliyah.”



Callers have questions ranging from general queries about starting the Aliyah process, to specific questions about schools, communities or employment, which are then forwarded to in-house experts. Rarely is Aliyah free of uncertainty, and the availability of up-to-date first-hand information is invaluable – let alone the ability to talk to actual recent and veteran olim toll-free.



New information is constantly being posted on NBN’s web site and integrated into the various offices and divisions of the organization. NBN is a model of efficiency and convenience available to the new immigrant – smoothing the transition into a society still riddled by the bureaucracy and redundancy of its socialist roots.



From the seating on the chartered flights (time is invested in matchmaking single immigrants, via seating positions) to personalized web pages for every oleh to keep them updated on the forms they have and have not handed in, thought is put into all aspects of the Aliyah process.



An entire office is aglow with the light of a dozen computer screens. Oran sits configuring the PC tablets, which now allow immigrants on Nefesh b’Nefesh’s charter flights to fill out all the necessary paperwork in-flight, without any paper. “By the time the plane reaches the middle of the Atlantic – it’s all done,” Oran says excitedly. “When we get to the airport, we pop the memory cards into a printer and that’s it.” The new immigrants receive their permanent ID cards three days later – a big change from the six weeks it used to take.



But bureaucracy alone is not what makes Israel a challenging place to immigrate to. The higher taxes and lower wages make employment a key issue for nearly every oleh, in addition to learning a new language and getting used to some key differences in culture.



The post-Aliyah offices on the second floor of NBN center lie between large photos of smiling olim arriving in Israel – a reminder to those struggling with the difficulties of Aliyah.



A meeting of women whose husbands still commute to the US takes place in the smaller conference room. It is part support-group, part strategy-sharing. Nefesh b’Nefesh is constantly updating its information on everything from commuter spouses to recommended shipping companies to make guidance available on its extensive web site.



The employment offices are staffed by veteran olim with positive attitudes. They seek to remedy the number-one disadvantage of the new immigrant to Israel society: lack of protectzia (as extreme-networking is termed in the Jewish state). With their thick rolodexes, they put immigrants in touch with fellow olim in their field, for networking as well as advisory purposes. Ninety-three percent of the NBN olim seeking work are employed, they report.



Though the figure is high, many immigrants have given up successful and fulfilling careers to work sometimes harder for most-of-the-time less compensation. There are physicians who work at call-centers and Ivy League grads paying the bills as technical writers for high-tech companies in the Promised Land. Others become global commuters or pay for year-round life via a summer’s work in the States.



Finances are not why people leave Israel, though, according to the statistics. It was the lack of social integration that is held responsible for the number of North Americans returning in the past. NBN’s social services offices, decorated with abstract art and littered with toys and trinkets, plan social activities as well as keep tabs on the welfare of each and every new immigrant. In addition to researching schools and communities, they oversee a network of social workers who are in touch with the new immigrants a minimum of once a month for their first year of Aliyah.



Another office deals exclusively with supporting the hundreds of olim currently serving in the IDF.



They organize seminars on themes like “Bringing Your Parents on Aliyah” and “Understanding the Israeli Tax System.” Holiday trips and events for individual demographic groups within the olim community are also organized regularly.



At the edge of the second floor is a command center that combines the experimental feeling of a laboratory with the logistical capabilities of an air traffic control center. This is the future of Nefesh b’Nefesh. The Overseas Division, as it is called, bears on its shoulders the core challenge that NBN faces: fanning the flames of the nascent Aliyah movement among American Jewry to truly create an Aliyah revolution; in other words, keeping the numbers up.



Though immigration from the West has risen since the creation of NBN, even while overall immigration has declined, NBN continues to declare more lofty goals.



Heightened Israel awareness in recent years has certainly been a factor in the increase of Aliyah from the West. The political and historical events of the recent years have started the ball rolling. Add to that the word-of-mouth caused by Birthright Israel, grassroots neo-Zionist groups like Kumah and the elevation of Aliyah by NBN’s high-profile ceremonies. NBN’s Overseas Department, therefore, sees a definite momentum and is aiming for ever-increasing results.



Co-founder Tony Gelbart, at the arrival ceremony for three planeloads of olim from the US, Canada and UK last summer, declared that NBN would bring 10,000 Jews to Israel in the coming year. That figure matches the sum of all those assisted by NBN to date.



Even in its cautiously worded description of its raison d’etre, NBN identifies the goal as the ingathering of the exiles. The Overseas Department has already departed from the Jewish Agency’s model of dispatching Israeli shelichim (emissaries who move outside Israel for a specific amount of time) to advise potential olim. They instead dispatch experts and actual olim from the Jerusalem office across the globe to run seminars, hold lectures and organize events to fan the flames of the Aliyah phenomenon.



But those events attract those already interested in Aliyah. How does one reach the majority of Jews who know of no other home than their current one?



That is the key question NBN needs to tackle. Different methods are clearly being tried. The organization just sponsored a US tour of oleh band Shlock Rock, during which NBN’s inspirational Aliyah video was screened, offering a vision of the possibilities of Aliyah to Jews who came to hear Jewish-themed music. The department is in touch with groups of young couples to look into the possibility of forming core-groups to move to a specific city or area together, providing a ready-made social structure.



Downstairs, the welcome ceremony for the non-flight olim is winding down. The PA system announces “Mazal tov” to one of the employees, a new immigrant, who is marrying a native-born Israeli named Uri; Rabbi Fass offers his blessings of continued spiritual ascent to the new couple. Pinchas, another new immigrant, who went from working at the US Federal Reserve to working with NBN’s technical staff, stands beside his father, who is visiting him from the States.



The numbers on the computer monitoring downloaded Aliyah applications tick higher and hundreds of Jews pack their bags in North America for the next chartered flight, leaving next week.



(Photos: Josh Shamsi, Arutz-7 Photojournalist)