Making Zionism More than Rhetoric

A key mandate of Zionism is to do whatever possible to help Jews around the world settle in Israel. But is the Jewish community, here and in Israel, doing all it should to promote and support aliyah at a time when Jewish numbers in Israel are as much a security issue as an ideological one?

I fear not, and offer two current examples - one dealing with emigration from North America, the other from Ethiopia - as cases in point.

At best, aliyah has always been a sore point among American Jews. Indeed, so few emigrate to Israel - an average of 1,300 people a year out of about 6 million - that for many of us, it is not a point at all - an issue neither discussed, contemplated or encouraged in a serious way.

So it's not surprising that when some 330 North American Jews arrived in Israel on a charter flight a few weeks ago, in a kind of aliyah en masse, the media was filled with praise for the sponsoring organization, Nefesh B'Nefesh (Jewish Soul United), which was formed in 2001 to promote North American aliyah by providing subsidies to new immigrants, help in securing jobs and efforts to cut some of the red tape of absorption.

The group is to be commended for identifying and addressing a vital need, but ironically, its primary funding until now has come not from the Jewish community here or in Israel but from Evangelical Christians in the U.S.

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, who heads the International Fellowship for Christians and Jews, says that Benjamin Netanyahu, now Israel's finance minister, approached him last year to help pay for Nefesh B'Nefesh's initial charter of 519 American Jews making aliyah in July 2002. Rabbi Eckstein proposed that his organization pay for half of the $2 million in grants to the newcomers to ease their transition into Israel, and that the American Jewish community pay the other half. Netanyahu agreed. But shortly before the flight, Netanyahu came back to Rabbi Eckstein, saying no additional funds had been raised. So the Fellowship agreed to pay the additional million dollars required.

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