Lately, I’ve been following Hillel Fuld, who says “all Jews belong in Israel. Every single one,” and urges every American Jew to make aliyah, like, yesterday.
He says,
“You don’t need to speak Hebrew fluently to live in Israel. Fact.“
Correct. I belong to a generation of repatriants from the former Soviet Union, many of whom never have and never will speak fluent Hebrew.
I admire the people who made a life for themselves here despite the language barrier, but I will never, ever dismiss the challenge of moving from a country where you’re a fluent speaker to a country where you have to struggle to make yourself understood. It’s a loss so profound you won’t really understand it until you’ve lived it.
“You don’t need to lower your quality of life in Israel. Fact.”
Actually, no, not fact. If you lived in a single-family home on a half-acre lot overseas, but can only afford an apartment in Israel (like the vast majority of people here), I’d say that’s a lower quality of life.
Is the sacrifice worth it to be able to live in Israel? For many people, yes. But please don’t pretend the sacrifice doesn’t exist.
“You don’t need to cut your salary in half. Fact.”
Again, not fact, and saying this is simply disingenuous. How much you can earn in Israel depends on your profession, connections, and a whole lot of luck. If, for example, you’ve built a local business in the U.S. and your livelihood depends on serving a certain clientele, you’ll likely have to start from scratch in Israel.
The vast majority of professionally successful people I know who have come here as adults have done some sort of retraining (besides learning Hebrew). Many highly educated people have had to pick up jobs like cleaning or landscaping, often for years, until they can find their footing again.
Moving to Israel, even if you’re Jewish and coming home to your people, is becoming an immigrant. And being an immigrant is never easy.
Apart from all that, in the hypothetical scenario that all the Jews in the world rush to Israel tomorrow, we’ll be facing serious logistical difficulties.
Of course, Israel has a fantastic track record of accommodating large waves of aliyah. In 1990, before the massive influx of Jews from the USSR, Israel’s population was only about 4 million. The new ex-Soviet Israelis inflated the population by 1 million in a very short time – that’s an insane effort when you consider every new arrival needed housing, infrastructure, and integration.
I’d say Israel has done a great job here, but we’re a tiny speck of land with an abnormally high birthrate for a developed country. We’re practically bursting at the seams already. It makes me feel claustrophobic when I see more and more fields, orchards, open spaces make way for roads, buildings, endless concrete.
“But there’s plenty of space in the Galilee and Negev!”
Yes, thankfully, some areas in Israel are less crowded… and we NEED them to remain this way. Those lovely fields and hills aren’t just “wasted spaces” waiting to fill up with more apartment blocks. Our souls need access to nature, and it’s our duty to preserve the biodiversity of this land, which is our legacy.
“Israel should follow Singapore’s example: maximum efficiency, as many people in as little space as possible.”
Would you like to live in Singapore? Maybe some would. I wouldn’t. Just looking at videos from there feels suffocating.
Maybe a few already-crowded neighborhoods could improve if you take Singapore as a model, but this wouldn’t work for historically and culturally significant places like Jerusalem, Tiberias, Tzefat.
Can I offer solutions? For starters, I think Israel needs to address the elephant in the room: land piracy.
No, I’m not talking about settlements. I’m talking about the Arabs, Bedouins, and yes, even the Druze, who build nonstop and then apply for retroactive permits. In 2023, Israel ceded a portion of a nature reserve near Haifa in favor of the Druze town of Daliyat al-Carmel – part of this move to legalize already existing, illegally constructed homes.
It’s a humiliating move that shows how little authority the country actually has over land, even within the borders of what is internationally recognized as sovereign Israel.
Domestic Felicity 