Future soldiers and families join summer of ‘record’ immigration

The Israel Defense Forces gained 125 new recruits Tuesday as over 300 immigrants from North America landed in Israel, part of a charter flight organized by the Nefesh B’Nefesh organization.

The 125 soldiers-to-be, ranging in ages from 18 to 22, were among 331 new immigrants aboard the flight, the 50th charter journey for Nefesh B’Nefesh since the group was founded 11 years ago.

“If I could I would hug and kiss each and every one of you,” said Yehuda Sharf, the Jewish Agency’s director of Aliyah, or Jewish immigration, speaking to the future soldiers in Hebrew before the flight from New York City.

The 125 future soldiers fell just shy of the 127 new recruits who came aboard one flight exactly one year ago.

Nefesh B’nefesh touted this year’s crop of future soldiers as part of a ”record” number of recruits moving to Israel from North American this summer. The group considers anyone who arrives with the intention of joining the army as a recruit, according to a Nefesh B’Nefesh official.

(Full disclosure: This reporter, along with other members of the press, was flown to New York and back to Israel by Nefesh B’Nefesh, a Times of Israel advertiser. In 2007, he received a grant of several thousand dollars and other help from the group upon immigrating to Israel. Nefesh B’Nefesh made no requests from the Times of Israel regarding coverage of the flight.)

The International Terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport on Monday was a testament to the fact that American Jews, most of them young, are still leaving the US for the Jewish State, with hordes of families surrounding olive-green-T-shirt-clad teens readying to make the journey.

“It was a no-brainer,” said Stephanie Nelson, 19, standing with her mother, father, brother and boyfriend at a ceremony. “I felt this was an obligation for me.”

Nelson, who lived in Closter, New Jersey, before making the trip, said she had been planning to immigrate to Israel since a trip there in the eighth grade, a fact that helped inure her family to the idea in the intervening years.

“We’re very proud of her,” said her mother, Amy Nelson, though she admitted to some trepidation at her daughter leaving the coop to fight abroad. “I’ll miss her. It feels like yesterday she wasn’t allowed to cross the street.”

Nelson, along with most of the other future soldiers, immigrated as part of the Garin Tzabar program, which brings and inducts young immigrants into Israel’s armed forces. The program, an offshoot of the Israeli Scouts youth group, houses participants in groups on kibbutzim before they join the army, giving them specialized Hebrew instruction, pre-army training and additional support.

Many participants in the Garin Tzabar program began meeting with cohorts from their region several months before the flight, part of a series of preparatory group-building seminars to ready the new recruits for military life in their new homes.

While other immigrants were spending the last moments with their stateside families, Noam Harari, 18, and Tevel Aroussi, 18, sat together on the terminal floor. The two, both from Southern California, met at one of the pre-immigration seminars and are now both hoping to get into a combat unit.

“I have no clue what it’s going to be like, but all I’ve heard is that it’s going to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” said Harari, whose father and uncles served in the IDF before him.

The head of the Israeli Scouts, Eli Ben Yosef, said in a statement that 70 percent of graduates of the Garin Tzabar program stay in Israel when their service is done, but an informal survey of the new immigrants found many unsure if they would stay after ending their service.

“I would rather raise my kids here,” Harari said, referring to the US.

A ceremony upon landing at Ben-Gurion airport was attended by over 1,000 well-wishers, singing and dancing as they escorted the new arrivals into the old Terminal 1. Among dignitaries at the event were Absorption Minister Sofa Landver and Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar.

“Today you took the biggest and most important decision you could ever take, to immigrate to Israel and build your home in the home of Jewish people,” Sa’ar said, calling the immigrants the “core of Zionism.”

“You are making the Jewish nation and the State of Israel stronger. You are making the IDF stronger,” he said.

Future soldiers got the bulk of the attention, but the lion’s share of the flight was made up of families and others moving to Israel, including 92 people moving to the north or south of Israel, with the help of Keren Kayemeth Le’Israel, also known as the KKL or the Jewish National Fund, which was a co-organizer of the flight.

Among those staying close to the center of Israel was Todd Nye, 51, who along with his wife Sandra, donned a shirt sporting pictures of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Theodor Herzl, and the name of the city they will now be calling home, Modiin.

While the couple’s two teenage sons gave off an air of cool unaffectedness, the Nyes, originally from Bartlett, Illinois, had a hard time concealing their joy at moving to Israel after years of planning, even though they were fully aware of the country’s economic, social and other woes.

“Hashem has been preparing us for this for years. We’ve always worked hard in our jobs and we are willing to adjust,” Todd Nye said, using a Jewish name for God. “We’re proud to be going to be with our people. We’re proud to be in our land.”