Family matters

Having family in Israel makes the move far easier, as the Howarth and Schwartz families have realized. But both families still chose to take the Bayit Rishon route for their Aliyah – and they too chose kibbutzim deep in the Arava, far away from “civilization”.

Chaya (25), Brett (28) and Raine (1½) Howarth made Aliyah in from Manchester England in October 2010. Both had been to Israel before and had fallen in love with the country. After they met and fell in love with each other, they realized they both felt the same way about Israel and wanted to raise their children here. After they got married and had Raine, they decided the time was right.

Both have family in Israel – aunts, uncles, cousins - some living nearby, some in Be’er Sheva and some in other places. “We see them a lot,” says Brett, a computer technician. “And Chaya’s brother is also planning to make Aliyah soon.”

Some of Brett’s family lived on kibbutzim and he knew what it was like from having visited them, from hearing them talk about kibbutz life and from having lived on a kibbutz himself for a while. “We wanted a very non-materialistic lifestyle for Raine,” he says. “Here, it’s very much about what you’ve got compared to what you haven’t got, and we wanted that type of upbringing for her.

“It’s great for Raine. She goes to kindergarten happily and when we pick her up from school, we can go to the playground and let her play – we don’t even have to watch her. And that’s when I realized that this is a good life for her. There are children all around, even where we live. The door is always open and she comes and goes freely. She can’t walk yet, but I’d turn around and she’s crawled next door trying to get into a friend’s house. The kids play outside, the dogs are wandering around. Something you can’t get in England, or, in fact, in most places in Israel. There is more freedom.”

“We don’t have an official host family on the kibbutz,” says Chaya, a hairdresser, “but we’re really close to a lot of people already so we don’t need one. We also have good friends from home who came on the program at the same time as we did so we have a strong circle of friends already. And we also have Libby Tobias who has sort of taken over as our kibbutz mother. And she loves Raine. She’ll pop in one minute and the next she’s disappeared with Raine and we won’t see either of them for a while. If that happened in England, you’d freak out, but here, it’s wonderful.”

Chaya works on kibbutz in the guest house. Once Brett’s business is going and he’s settled, then I’ll start advertising my hairdressing services. I do cut people’s hair already… I go to their houses to do it. Like a mobile hairdresser.

Brett and another immigrant are in the process of setting up a computer business for the area. “The only point where we’d have to move off this kibbutz is if the business doesn’t work and there are no jobs nearby,” he says.” That would be the only reason we’d move. So hopefully, with this business, we’ll be ok. (The business was launched officially at the end of January, after this interview took place.)

Brett is very in favor of the Bayit Rishon program. “I say to people who complain about the program: ‘You’ve obviously never lived in Israel before; go and make Aliyah to Tel Aviv or to Haifa or wherever and see how far you get. In Tel Aviv, you can spend an hour on the bus just going to the Ministry of Absorption and then you have one person handling 200 people. Here in Eilat, it’s so much easier. You have Alex Shtendel from you VIP attention, and there’s always someone available to help you take care of things’. Being on the Bayit Rishon program is so much easier.”

 Yoni (37) and Sharon (35) Schwartz from New York feel the same way. They moved to Kibbutz Yahel at the end of August 2010 with their daughters, Mayan (6) and Lia (3½). Their son, Ben (now 2 months) was born in Israel.

Sharon, who has a Masters in Social Work from the US, was born in Israel to an American father. In 1999, at 23, she went to visit the States for a few months and ended up staying for 12 years. Her family still lives in Jerusalem.

Yoni, who worked in the music industry and hosted a radio show in New York, among other things, heard about Bayit Rishon on YouTube when he was looking for different Aliyah programs for families.

“I loved that it was so radically different from the life we were living in Brooklyn,” he says. “We were living in the city, so the kibbutz looked pretty cool to me. We hadn’t even thought about the Arava before. I had just assumed we’d move to Jerusalem to be close to Sharon’s family, but Sharon wasn’t so keen to move back to Jerusalem. We’d been doing the hustle and bustle of the city for a while, and we thought that with all the stress and challenges that making Aliyah could have, on top of all that, living in the city would be hard.

“Right off the bat, I’d have to be thinking about my next professional move – which I’m still doing – but I’d have to be getting the kids ready for school, and parking, and buses, and the stress of real life – not that this is not real life…

“Sharon has been away from Jerusalem for 12 years and it has changed so much. And she would’ve had to jump right back into living in Jerusalem. And so when we saw the video, we thought – half jokingly – let’s call Elena (Kovarsky) and see what she says. Once we had spoken to her, it all just seemed perfect. And then we found out that the schools in the area were excellent, which helped a lot – great school, great gan (kindergarten) – and so far, it has been better than expected.”

There are many young families on Kibbutz Yahel in the same age group as Yoni, Sharon and the children. “In New York, the majority of the people we socialized with were people we had met through our kids and that didn’t change when we came here. This has made it a very successful integration. Our kids have settled really well and are now real ‘kibbutznikids’.

“We have a host family – sort of – but it’s different for me because my wife’s Israeli, so right away, she had already found a few good girlfriends,” says Yoni. “If we were both American, it would probably be more of a challenge. I feel like I’m cheating a little bit because I brought ‘Proteksia’ with me. This also helps with the Hebrew. I try to use the language as much as possible, but if I don’t understand something, I just ask Mayan and she translates for me. Or usually Sharon is there, so it’s easier for me as a result. I came with a native! I don’t know if she gets more points for getting me to make Aliyah or if I get more for getting her to come back,” he laughs.

“I still have some clients I’m working with in the States, but I’m trying not to work too much so I can focus on my Hebrew. It’s four days a week and I’m really trying hard to study.”

“Sharon hasn’t worked full-time since she had Mayan, and she’s just had Ben, so she’s not working at the moment. But they really need social workers in the Arava and they have many incentives to encourage social workers to come here, and with the amazing experience she has from the States and her Masters, she won’t have a problem finding a job here.

“But who knows. We’re happy here for now and I can see us staying for at least a year. We enjoy it here, but more importantly, the kids love it here. They love the freedom. They’ve made great friends on the kibbutz and Mayan has many friends from other kibbutzim through school. Mayan started in Kitah Aleph this year, which is why we came now. We wanted her to start her schooling here. We felt that if we were going to come, we would let her start in first grade, when all the other kids are new too. So it’s really all about them. If the kids are happy, then I’m happy,” says Yoni.

The Schwartz’s feel there are many great things about being in the Arava and on the Bayit Rishon program, especially considering how much support there is, on and off the kibbutz. “I can only speak from my experience of making Aliyah to the Arava,” he says, “but what’s really amazing is how many people are willing to help, from Elena (Kovarsky) and Lori (Stark, Yahel’s coordinator) to Alex Shtendel.

“And when you have to deal with all that bureaucratic stuff, doing it in Eilat is so much easier than having to do it in Jerusalem – especially when you have someone like Alex to help. He’s a busy guy, but there aren’t 50 other families making Aliyah to Eilat – at least I don’t think there are – so he spent a day with us. It was like VIP service. He went with us to the Ministry of the Interior, he took us to the bank and other places we needed to go; he went above and beyond the call of duty. Most of what he did would never have happened in Jerusalem.”

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