An article about how to increase Aliyah by Rabbi Ari Cutler was posted on Israel National News this week. It begins:
“A recent piece written by Rabbi Efrem Goldberg, Senior Rabbi of the Boca Raton Synagogue, touched a nerve in Jewish communities around the world. His subject: the ‘aliyah snob,’ the person so convinced of the righteousness of their choice to move to Israel that they have stopped being inviting. Telling others that they are traitors or the reason Mashiach hasn't come yet is anything but inspiring. It is completely alienating, and it doesn't work. So if guilt and condescension don’t work, what does? Rabbi Goldberg recommends sharing the richness and joy of life in Israel and offering people a vision of what their lives could become. While I agree that these are necessary things to share, it’s not enough. I believe there is a secondary failure, quieter than the aliyah snob's arrogance, but just as consequential. And it belongs to those of us who are already here in Israel. We haven’t built what we need to build."
The article goes on to describe what needs to be done to make new olim from America feel more welcome - things like providing special olim communities for them with affordable housing costs, providing them with job opportunities, and greeting them with warm open arms.
I completely agree with these recommendations. I myself have written a dozen articles about this need, and the Emergency Aliyah Conference we organized three years ago discussed these very issues and passed them along to the various government agencies dealing with klita.
As perhaps the first “Aliyah Snob" on the Internet, and perhaps the biggest “Aliyah Bully" of them all, I will say a few words in defense of myself and my "snobby friends" (who are, as Rabbi Cutler would agree, wonderful caring people).
Firstly, Jews who are making six-figure salaries in America, which are admittedly hard to give up, should not call other people snobs, even in jest.
Secondly, I started out my Internet career describing the wonderful life in Israel and I still do. However, I also wrote several books with Rabbi David Samson, based on the teachings of Rabbi Kook and his son, HaRav Tzvi Yehuda, which explored the deeper Torah aspects of living in Eretz Yisrael. Each year we hear how the books have influenced people positively in their decision to make Aliyah. But the numbers are small compared to the millions of Jews in America, so I set down my pen of inspiration and picked up a sledgehammer hoping to shatter the wall of a complacent form of "snobbery" which characterizes well-to-do religious Jews in American.
By the way - my wife’s parents, survivors of the Holocaust, were given absolutely nothing when they stepped foot in Israel with one suitcase in hand. The Jews who trekked here from Yemen weren’t given tax incentives and generous klita packages when they arrived. The Jews from Morocco had to live in tents. The Jews from Ethiopia were thrilled to be here without complaints. David Ben Gurion and Menachem Begin weren’t greeted with a bouquet of flowers when they came, nor with the possibility of renting or buying a completely finished villa.
None of these olim demanded a rose garden or left the country when they didn’t receive one. And as Rabbi Cutler mentions, there is a large community of America Jews who already live in Israel. If we made it here with some government help but without all the amenities he lists in his article, why can’t the well-to-do Jews clinging to America make it here as well? -
-Are the Jews who prefer to live in America akin to the Spies in the Wilderness? Leading Torah Scholars in Israel maintain that they are.
-Are the Jews who are waiting for Mashiach before they make Aliyah holding up his arrival in their insistence on adding million-dollar extensions to their shuls in the USA and building new multi-million-dollar Jewish centers in Australia, LA, and the Ukraine, with the illusion that the exile will last forever?
-Are these Jew aligning their lives with the mission of Am Yisrael as set forth in the Torah and by the Prophets of Israel?
It seems that Hashem hasn’t waited for Mashiach in His transforming the State of Israel into a world superpower in every field.
What others call “guilt and condescension," I call the truth. Should we sweep the truth under thick living-room carpets and pretend that it is perfectly OK to live in foreign gentile lands? It isn’t OK.
If that makes us Aliya urgers "bullies and snobs", then let us wear the epithets proudly. We want to see our Diaspora brothers here, not only because of the antisemitism aimed at them despite their elegant homes and communities, but because this is where they belong. And we are proud to tell them so.
Tzvi Fishman was awarded the Israel Ministry of Education Prize for Jewish Culture and Creativity. Before making Aliyah to Israel in 1984, he was a successful Hollywood screenwriter. He has co-authored 4 books with Rabbi David Samson, based on the teachings of Rabbis A. Y. Kook and T. Y. Kook, most recently The Torat Eretz Yisrael Anthology and with Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, the book Like Father, Like Son about Rav Avraham HaCohen Kook and his son Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook. His other books include: "The Kuzari For Young Readers" and "Tuvia in the Promised Land". His books are available on Amazon. He directed the movie, "Stories of Rebbe Nachman."
