"Many Young Jews Moving to Israel" By Cara Fitzpatrick

From Naplesnews:

In elementary school, a boy on the playground told Scott Dubin that Jews believed in pots and pans, not Jesus. He ran home crying, convinced he had to become a Christian to fit in.

It was only when the Atlanta native visited Israel as a teenager that he felt at home. He resolved to move there as soon as he was old enough.

Now 23, Dubin will soon board a plane at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport and leave the United States - and his American
citizenship - behind.

"April 24 will be the realization of a dream I've had since I was 15," Dubin said.

Dubin is one of a growing number of Jews in their 20's and 30's who are leaving family and friends in the United States to become Israeli citizens. Some feel a spiritual connection to what they consider the historic homeland of the Jewish people, while others want to live in a country where their culture is not in the minority.

They must face financial challenges, learn a new language, adapt to life in another country and confront the dangers of terrorism.

Although American Jews often are among the smallest immigrant groups - sometimes totaling just a few hundred a year - their numbers have increased in recent years, to about 3,000 in 2005 from 1,450 in 2001.

The trend has been dominated by young college-educated Jews: more than 66 percent are younger than 34, and 55 percent have at least a bachelor's degree, according to the Jewish Agency for Israel.

"It's definitely up," said Michael Landsberg, the North American director of the immigration department of the Jewish Agency. "When you see a jump from 1,450 to nearly 3,000 there is something happening here."

Landsberg attributes at least some of the increase to a sense that life in the United States has grown more dangerous.

"Since Sept. 11, there's been a feeling, 'If that can happen here then we might as well face life in Israel because nowhere is safe,'" he said.

Dubin, who graduated from New York University two years ago, said he was often asked why he would move to Israel, a country that is often in the news because of terrorist attacks from suicide bombers.

"I'm living in New York - the only city in the country that has been hit by a major terrorist attack," he said, describing his usual response to such questions. "People are still moving here. They move here because it's New York. My decision to move to Israel is not based on the frequency of terrorist attacks. I'm moving there because it is Israel. It's home."

Jewish immigrants have flocked to Israel, often fleeing religious persecution in their native lands, since before it became a country in 1948. In 1950, Israel passed a law guaranteeing that Jews, and even their non-Jewish spouses and children, can receive Israeli citizenship.

Since then, Jewish immigrants making "aliyah," a Hebrew word for Jewish immigration that literally means "to ascend" or "rise up," have come from all over the world, with large numbers arriving from Russia, Eastern Europe and African nations like Ethiopia and Morocco. Often, immigrants arrived with little more than a suitcase and the clothes they were wearing.

But a number of perks offered to new immigrants by various Jewish organizations and the Israeli government are drawing an increasing number of young Americans, Landsberg said. The Jewish Agency offers each immigrant a free plane ticket, a year of health insurance, grants for as much as $7,300, a taxi ride from the airport to anywhere in the country, language training and even a free place to stay for the first five months. Israel also gives immigrants in their 20's and 30's a free college education and a variety of tax breaks.

"There are really so many benefits today," Landsberg said.

Zack Katowitz, a 19-year-old freshman at George Washington University,plans to move to Israel in September. Katowitz has worked with a "shaliach," a sort of travel agent and mentor, to plan his trip and fill out the necessary paperwork, like health forms and a letter from his rabbi to verify his Jewish heritage.

"There's just a lot of paperwork," he said.

Yael Kaynan, 30, who moved to Tel Aviv from New York about eight months ago, spent a year preparing for the move. She saved about $28,000 because she expected to spend at least six months looking for a job. Instead, she was hired as a research associate at a university about three months before she left the United States.

"It was a bit of a windfall for me," she wrote in an e-mail message. "But a person in their 20's who is willing to do the roommate thing could easily make aliyah with a savings of no more than $3,000 and live comfortably if they got a job."

Life in Israel is even better than she expected, Kaynan wrote. Her neighbors compete to have her as a guest for dinner each Friday. Shop owners wave as she walks by and often come out to chat if they have time.

Although she took a huge cut in pay - from about $75,000 a year in New York to about $13,000 a year in Israel - she said the standard of living makes it possible for her to go out to dinner more often than she could in Manhattan.

Kaynan, who studied Hebrew before moving to Israel, has also had a few humorous moments adjusting to using a second language on a daily basis.

"I once arrived late to a meeting and apologized for being so ugly rather than so late," she wrote. "This caused my colleagues to roll around on the floor practically with laughter."

For Dubin, who leaves for Israel in April and plans to live in Tel Aviv, life in Israel is both the realization of a childhood dream and a way to prevent his children from experiencing what he felt as a child on an Atlanta playground.

"It's a nice feeling to know that my kids will grow up without having to wonder if their beliefs are strange," he said. "It would make me very happy if every Jew in America got on a plane and moved to Israel."