(Pictures for this post are all by Joshua Fleisher)
Shalom! We are proud to present another issue of Kummunique - full of love
of Israel and Aliyah inspiration!
In this issue you will find:
1. "Vive Israel" by Larry Derfner
2. "Journeys With My Car" by Beth Shapiro
3. "Move To Another Land, Keep A Job" by AP staff
From Rabbi Stewart Weiss:
From the OUIt would seem that the two most important events in history for the Jewish people are the Creation and the Exodus. The Torah begins, of course, at the beginning, with the story of Creation. This is certainly fitting. After all, God is the universal God, and for a great portion of history, there were no "Jews" or "Israelis" or "Hebrews." There were just people, the kind who populated the planet from its inception. To mark this auspicious event, we observe Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur at Bereisheit-time, as a vivid reminder that by doing teshuva, we can "re-create" ourselves and begin anew.
Alongside Creation, there is the Exodus from Egypt. While individuals date their origins to Creation, we as a people mark Pesach and the Exodus as our "national birthday," re-ordering our calendar as such, and linking our national character to the advent of spring. God's active intervention in history conveys to humanity the all-important message that not only is He in eternal control of the fate of the universe, but Jewish destiny can and will defy the laws of nature and be ever resurgent. In a real sense, the Exodus "trumps" Creation, and so we are commanded to remember the Exodus every day and every night, something not required regarding Creation.
There is, however, a third moment in history that is even greater than these two! "Behold, days are coming, says God, when people will no longer take an oath by 'the God who liberated Israel from Egypt,' but rather by 'the God who gathered the dispersed of Israel from the lands..... where they were scattered." (Yirmiyahu 23:7-8). The Gemara (Berakhot 12) explains: "When Israel is free from the domination of foreign powers, even the Exodus will pale in comparison."
Yes, there is indeed a "Road Map" for the Jewish people. It starts at Creation and winds through the Exodus. WHEN it will come to its conclusion may still be uncertain; but WHERE it will end is crystal-clear: nowhere else but in Eretz Israel.----------------------------------------------------------
1. "Vive Israel" by Larry DerfnerFrom Jerusalem PostWhen prime minister Ariel Sharon, reacting to anti-Semitic attacks in France, said in summer 2004 that French aliya is "a must and they have to move immediately," the French Jewish establishment, led by CRIF, was embarrassed.
French officials were scandalized; President Jacques Chirac even suggested that Sharon wasn't welcome in France, a spat that ended after Sharon lauded the French government for its vigilance against anti-Semitism.
But to Orthodox, generally rightward-leaning French Jews, who make up 30% of the community, and who fill most of the pool of potential immigrants to Israel, Sharon's call "was aimed at the right place at the right time," said Avi Zana, director in Israel of the French aliya organization AMI.
Since the intifada broke out six years ago, the number of French Jews making aliya to Israel has tripled - from about 1,000 a year before the violence began to 3,000 a year now, the highest figure since the Six Day War. Another 20,000 or so French Jews have made the final decision to immigrate to Israel, and are expected to arrive here in the coming years, said Zana, citing polls conducted for the organization three years ago. France is home to 600,000 Jews, by far Europe's largest Jewish community.
"You can assume that more people are making the decision [to immigrate to Israel] as time goes on," Zana added.
They've made their presence felt in Ashdod's City and Yud Bet neighborhoods, in Jerusalem's Har Homa neighborhood, in Netanya and Ramat Beit Shemesh. Most are families headed by young professionals and businesspeople, while the older, richer French immigrants buy in Jerusalem's German Colony, Herzliya Pituah and Caesarea, and often divide their time between Israel and France. Some 80% of them are religiously observant, and at least that high a percentage are of North African background.
They are heartfelt Zionists, and typically thought of moving to Israel since their youth. But it was the growth of the Muslim population in France, combined with the rise of Islamic fanaticism among that country's Muslims and the anti-Semitism that intensified with the intifada, that changed aliya from being a radical proposal among French Jews to being a legitimate, even logical one.
Yosef Ben-Zion, 60, who left the largely-Muslim Parisian suburb of Noisy de Sec two years ago and who now lives in Ramat Beit Shemesh with his wife and two children, said, "I started to feel that there was a real problem about 10 years ago. I started hearing the Muslim youth say 'sale Juif' as I was on my way to the synagogue. They used to throw rocks over the wall into the synagogue garden, and the police did nothing about it."
The problems in Noisy de Sec didn't begin a year ago with the riots and car-torchings that engulfed the country; Ben-Zion's wife, Simcha, 50, recalls that in the years before they left the suburb, Muslim firebrands "would start preaching in the street - 'Beware of the modern ways, beware of the influence of the Jews.'"
Yosef, who left Tunisia for France with his family around 1960, as North Africa was emerging from French colonial rule, says the Jews used to get along with the Arabs back in Tunisia, and also after they found themselves living next to each other as immigrants in France.
Said Zana: "The younger Muslims who don't have a history of living with Jews are the problem, their parents got along well with Jews. It's unusual - the first generation of Muslim immigrants to France was integrated better than their children."
IN THE commercial circle surrounding the big fountain in Ashdod's City neighborhood, vet- eran immigrant Sabrina Levy, who opened Elle et Lui Cosmetique with her husband Benny some months ago, says relations between Muslims and Jews have changed completely in the Parisian suburb of Orly where she grew up.
"My closest friend, Farida, was a Muslim, we lived in the same building, we went with boys together, we did everything together," recalls Levy, 46, who came to Israel nine years ago. "Now when I go back to visit my family in Orly, I see her covered up from head to toe in a black chador with only her eyes showing. I tried to talk to her but she wouldn't. When we pass and I say hello, she says hello back but she turns her eyes away."
On a bench in front of the beauty parlor, a reunion of the Attal family - Sabrina Levy's maiden name - is taking place. Her two older sisters in Ashdod - Ninette, who has lived in Israel since childhood, and Aimee, who moved here six months ago - have come to see their cousin, Aviva Sicsic, 59, whom they haven't seen in 30 years. Sicsic arrived that same morning from Marseilles to move into her apartment in the City neighborhood. "Here's the key!" she as much as sang, holding it up triumphantly.
Sabrina worries about her sister living in Orly and wishes she and her family would come to Israel. "She tells me her children don't go around with a kippa anymore, that they come home from school at four in the afternoon and don't go out again. She says the Muslims working in the supermarket speak to each other in Arabic and ignore her because she's Jewish. How do they know we're Jewish? I don't know, but they do.
"I know Jews in France who've taken in their mezuzot and nailed them up on the inside. One time all the windows of my family's cars were broken - just my family's. I grew up with Arabs, but now they're taking our place. If Sarkozy doesn't win," Levy said, referring to hard-line Interior Minister Nikolas Sarkozy, the favorite in next April's presidential election, "the Jews have no hope!"
IN HIS Jerusalem office, Zana explains that because of such communal memories as the Dreyfus Affair and the Vichy government of World War II - in which some 80,000 French Jews, or one-third of the community, were killed - the self-identifying Jews of France feel somewhat insecure, and traditionally have been reluctant to express opinions that might cast doubt on their national loyalty - such as the desire to immigrate to Israel.
"France is not like America," he noted. "To love Israel is okay, but to leave France for Israel is politically incorrect."
But between the rise in the Muslim population - now six million out of 60 million French citizens - the outbreak of Muslim animosity against Jews during the intifada, and the increasing religiosity and "communitarism and ghettoization," as Zana put it, of French Jews of North African background, aliya is no longer a taboo subject. "A growing number of people don't want to take a chance on what France is going to be like in another 20 years," he said.
Still, AMI is not warning of "catastrophe" to France's Jewish community, he stresses. "Muslims do not present an existential threat to French Jews," says Zana, predicting that there will always be a substantial Jewish community in the country.
And the French government is doing "everything it can to ensure the security of the Jewish community, and they've done a lot," he adds. Given the memories of Vichy, the French government does not want to appear as being soft on anti-Semitism, especially the violent variety. Furthermore, the fear of Muslims is widespread in France, so measures against Muslim militancy go down well with the population at large. "This puts pressure on the Arabs. They know that if they act up, they will get their comeuppance from the French," said Zana.
However, with hundreds of violent anti-Semitic incidents a year, and Muslims becoming such a large demographic and therefore political force, there is a "new reality" for France's Jews, he says. The young, rowdy Muslims in the suburbs of Paris and other cities torched some 15,000 cars in the riots of a year ago. Even among liberal French Jews, says Zana, the notion of aliya as a solution to anti-Semitism is no longer derided as paranoiac.
Yet there are no calls being made for mass aliya, for the evacuation of the French Jewish community, as Sharon urged. AMI's slogan, he notes, is, "Aliya: An individual decision, a collective responsibility." In all, the immigrants say they are happy to be away from the threat of anti-Semitism, and that they love Israel - but that they don't mesh so well with Israelis or the Israeli way of life.
"When I used to come here on vacation, I would hear people screaming in the street, and I would wonder: 'Where am I?' Now I just let it slide off my back," said Hanna Levy in Ramat Beit Shemesh. Her husband, Zvi, a chiropodist, complains about the Israeli health care bureaucracy.
"Israel is calm, we're not afraid here. But the Israeli head is like this," says Eliezer Cohen, an electrician and ulpan student in Ashdod's City neighborhood, tapping a stone wall. "You arrange for a workman to come to your apartment at a certain hour, and you pay him half the amount, and he doesn't show up."
"My son was in a public school, but there was fighting and noise, and no respect for the teacher, and my children are not like that. My son loves Torah, so now he is in a haredi school," said Yosef Ben-Zion in Ramat Beit Shemesh.
IN ALBERT IMMOBILIERE (Real Estate Agency) in Ashdod's City neighborhood, owned by new French immigrant Albert Sicsic (no relation to Aviva), Jennifer Ben-David, 24, who came to Israel from Paris at age 12, says, "It's better to live here than in France, but it's easier to make money there. When Jews compete against Jews, it doesn't work."
She credits her IDF service for her acculturation. "Serving in the army is what makes you a real Israeli. If you try to act like a Frenchman in the army, being polite, sitting down for coffee, they'll eat you alive."
Sicsic, who lived in the St. Tropez area where, he says, there is little anti-Semitism, says he came here early last year strictly "because of [Zionist] ideology. Now I have less ideology. But everything in Israel is good. You have problems with Israelis at first, but then you get used to them."
In her office at the ulpan, Zehava Segal, who has been running adult education in Ashdod for the last 28 years, and thus has a basis on which to compare the French immigrants to those from other countries, describes the French as being relatively "spoiled."
"They are immigrants by choice, they had a good life back in France, and they come from a democratic country, so they have high demands," Segal says. "With the Russians you said, 'Go there,' and they went and said, 'Thank you,' but not the French.
"They say, 'How can you send me to an ulpan all the way over there, I want to study near where I live. The bus fare is expensive. We want to start at nine in the morning, not eight. This is not what they told us in France.' Finally you have to tell them that either they study where they're told or they don't study at all," she continued.
At the Home City real estate agency, Ya'acov, an agent, says that compared to other clients, the French who come looking for apartments "want to see a lot of apartments before they decide. They are very demanding." When asked, though, how they are when it's time to negotiate price, Ya'acov replied, "A lot easier than Israelis."
The immigrants' biggest problem is learning Hebrew, which is especially hard in Ashdod because so many of the city's residents are of North African background and thus speak French, so the immigrants can function well here in their mother tongue.
"Ashdod was always known as Little Paris," Segal notes. "When I wanted to learn Hebrew, people would tell me, 'What do you need to study Hebrew for, everybody in town speaks French.'"
Given the generally high standard of living they enjoyed in France, many of the immigrants become disappointed at the job opportunities for them here, says Segal. Many also are put off by the religious polarization in Israel. The immigrants tend overwhelmingly to be "traditionally" religious, and they went to Orthodox Jewish day schools in France. Often they enroll their children in haredi schools in Israel, thinking they will be like the schools they know back home, and are unpleasantly surprised. "They're not happy with the haredi schools or the secular schools," says Segal.
"I'm not haredi, I'm not secular, I'm a Jew" - this is a phrase one hears often from the French immigrants. In Ramat Beit Shemesh, Hanna Levy notes that her children go to Beit Ya'acov haredi schools. "They came home and told me that a secular Jew is a goy, and I said, 'What are you talking about?'"
SINCE AMI got up and going early last year, the organization has helped about 30% of the immigrant families with money (an average of $5,000 per family during the first year in Israel, with lesser amounts going to families who still need assistance after the initial year). Of the several hundred families AMI keeps tabs on, Zana says the organization knows of only three who have gone back to France.
Segal, however, says that among the hundreds of French students at the Ashdod ulpanim, "not a few of them have gone back." And Sabrina Levy, whose clientele at the beauty parlor is about 70% French, is especially well-situated to learn what immigrants, or at least those who sit in her chairs, really think about the new life they've started.
"When they're in my shop they talk about the problems of aliya, how it's hard to find work, how Israelis don't know how to speak politely, they're too temperamental, they're angry all the time," said Levy. "A lot of them have gone back, and a lot are thinking about going back - because they can't find work, or the children here are too wild, or because the teenage boys don't want to do three years in the army." In France there is no military conscription.
Her husband, Benny, adds that many teenage French immigrants have such difficulties with Hebrew, and with adjusting to the relatively anarchic Israeli classroom, that "a lot of them drop out of school at 15 or 16. They get into fights with groups of Israeli boys on the beachfront. It's happened a lot."
Hundreds of immigrants with businesses they cannot run by computer and telephone fly back to France on Sunday or Monday, work during the week, then fly back to Israel on Thursday for the weekend. "Often they'll alternate - one week in France, then one week in Israel," says Zana, noting that this is referred to as "Boeing aliya."
"I know an anaesthesiologist who takes the four-hour flight to Paris, gets off the plane and goes to the hospital, works a double shift and sleeps at the hospital - he doesn't even have a home there," says Zana, explaining that with all the frequent flyer credit these Boeing olim build up, it pays for them to keep their jobs in France rather than start over in Israel - especially when French wages are much higher than the Israeli standard, and more especially when the commuter gets paid in Euros.
Another way French immigrants overcome the language barrier to employment is by taking jobs at French-language call centers and providing services to French customers. These call centers are typically owned by veteran French immigrants who moved their business to Israel, where they can pay lower wages than they did in France.
The number of French haredim moving to Israel has gone down, Zana notes, due to the sharp decreases in welfare, especially child allowances, that have gone into effect here in recent years.
"The French welfare state is very generous, so the men who spend their days in kollel [married men's yeshiva] can get by better there than they can here," he explained.
French immigrants have a reputation for being anti-Arab, especially considering the circumstances in which they came here. Zana says the immigrants are actually less rightwing than those who came in previous decades. "You used to find a lot of French immigrants living in Kiryat Arba, for instance, but now you won't find any Kahanists among them. About the only immigrants who move to the settlements are the haredim, who go to places like Modi'in Elite and Betar Elite," he says.
Yet Hanna Levy says the immigrants' reputation is earned. "Yes, the majority of them hate Arabs, but this is partly a 'davkaresponse' to all the anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian information being spread by the French media," she said. Levy's brother was killed in an Arab terror attack in Antwerp in 1980, she says, but while she hated Arabs afterward, her attitudes have softened with time. "Just like there are good Israelis and bad Israelis, there are good Arabs and bad Arabs."
If not for the increase in France's Muslim population and the spread of Islamic anti-Semitism in that country, there wouldn't have been such a wave of French aliya. And for all their practical difficulties, they say they are most happy to be living in the Jewish state.
Living in the large French immigrant community makes them feel doubly at home. "There are Arabs here too, but this is our country," says Veronique Cohen at the ulpan in Ashdod. Remembering the catcalls of "sale Juif," and her fear of letting her children leave the house, she mused, "A France without Muslims - that would be a dream."
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2. "Journeys With My Car" by Beth ShapiroFrom House of JoyOnce upon a time, I wanted to write a book called "Everything I know about life, I learned from my car." Sounds silly, I know, but as a single woman involved is some rocky relationships, my car offered me great comfort. For many years it was the most dependable thing in my life. After all, we never disagreed, it always took me where I wanted to go and whenever I moved from place to place, it adjusted easily. I once told a Rabbi, with the vehement seriousness of youth, that I could never make Aliyah because I couldn't leave my car.
Over the years, I have had several cars. I began with a hand me down Toyota from my parents which popped its oil cap and burnt out the engine, but my first "real" car was my 1989 light blue Mazda 626. During my junior year of college, I used all of that Bat Mitzvah money that had been sitting in the bank to buy the car for $6, 666.67. I'll never forget the cost because it was the single largest purchase I had ever made in my life and my brother, who was visiting me at the time joked that I had sold my soul to the devil (666) to buy the car. Perhaps the most astonishing thing about the car was that it had a manual transmission (stick shift) something that neither I nor anyone in my family knew how to drive. I bought the car because I had once been at a party where I could have been the designated driver except for the fact that I didn't know how to drive a stick shift car. After that, I figured I had better learn but I knew that I would never do it unless I was forced. I wanted to grow but didn't have the discipline.
The dealer gave me one lesson on the car and I sputtered home, stalling at every traffic light. After three days, I was cursing my decision, certain that I would never be able to master driving the car, but by the end of the week I was getting from here to there with almost no trouble. For many years, whenever I was asked what I was proud of in my life, the first thing I would think of was "teaching myself how to drive a manual transmission car."
The Mazda stayed with me for many years. It lasted through college, through graduate school in Boston, through my years in New York and made it all the way to Ohio. At the end of my first year in Ohio, I decided that I needed to go to Israel to learn some Torah. In order to make this happen, I committed to selling the car. It was a tough decision, because as I said, the car was my most significant relationship, but I was willing to make the sacrifice on my road to spiritual fulfillment. Not two days after I decided to sell the car, I was driving to get a container of milk and pulled into the local convenience store. I heard a noise and the car died. The front axle of the car had simply cracked in half ? a crack which at sixty miles an hour on the highway probably would have resulted in death but at one mile an hour in a convenience store parking lot was a mere inconvenience. I felt as thought the car understood that I didn't want to part with it but our relationship had come to an end and so it quietly died leaving me free of having to watch it spend its life with someone else.
When I came back from that year in Israel, I was married to Simcha and pregnant with Neshama. We went out and bought a new shiny red Mazda 626 prepared to settle into our comfortable life in the US. Less than two years later, when we went to make Aliyah we tried and tried to sell the car. It was a great car. Low mileage, super condition. It had depreciated a lot so it was a great deal. But we couldn't sell it. It wasn't normal. At least once a day, someone would come up to me and say, "I keep thinking about your car. It is a great deal and I need a new car. I really should buy it." And then they would proceed to tell me why they wouldn't buy it. They didn't want a stick, they didn't like red, they suddenly wanted to use the money to take a vacation to Australia, they had had a dream that driving a Mazda was not good for their spiritual wellbeing. The excuses were weird and it became clear to me that not selling the Mazda was my spiritual tikkun for telling my teacher "I couldn't make Aliyah because I couldn't leave my car." When Simcha and I sat and talked about this and decided that our commitment to Aliyah was strong and we would be willing to leave the car and make Aliyah without selling it, the next day someone phoned us and said, "I heard that you are selling a car, I'd like to buy it." Just like that. We were leaving Ohio on a Thursday, Wednesday night we turned over the keys.
So why am I rehashing all of my old car memories today? Well, we are once again going through car changes. When we came on Aliyah we bought this cute little 2004 Toyota Yaris Verso. Coming from a family of Toyota owners, buying a Toyota was a little bit like coming home. Appropriate for an Aliyah car. And our Yaris has been a great car. It is small and peppy, gets great gas mileage and is fun to drive. But, it only seats five and we are Baruch Hashem now a family of six. So after a lot of careful consideration, we decided that the Toyota had to go and we sold it last week to a nice lady in Jerusalem where I think it will have a good home and be well taken care of. I'll miss my Yaris, it was our Aliyah car and I got to know what it was like to really live in this country driving it around. We put 60,000 km on this car driving around Eretz Yisrael ? North to South and East to West. I took Neshama to school for the first time in this car, brought Sophie home from the hospital in it and drove back from signing on the purchase of our home in it.
And now, we are entering a new phase of our life. The age of the Jumpy. Our new car, a 2001 Citroen Jumpy is a big people mover car. It seats nine, it is not luxurious and it has a diesel engine. In Israel there are two types of people who drive Jumpy's. Those who have businesses and need it to schlep around all sorts of equipment and those who have big families and need it to schlep around all sorts of people. It is designed to be durable not comfortable. In my mind the age of the Jumpy is a new milestone for me. We are not cute and peppy anymore. We are now a sort o big family with a lot of different needs that need to be balanced. We are not luxurious, but when we work together as a team, we can get the job done. We are in the functional years and we are learning to be Israeli. I see the new wave of immigrants arriving and purchasing their Honda Streams, their Kia Carnivals and their Mitsubishi Grandis'. The luxury seven seater minivans of Israel. Big clunky people movers, yes, but with comfort and style. They are the Aliyah cars new immigrant families with big dreams of recreating their American lives in Israel. And I realized that we have passed these days. Simcha and I sat down and said, "Hey you know what? We really live here and if we are going to make it work, we've got to make sure that we live within our means." And having lived in Israel for three years, we are beginning to figure out what those means are. We know what we earn, we know the price of gas and we know the price of car insurance.
When we got to Israel, one of the first things I noticed was that everyone looks a little bit dusty. After three years, I look a little bit dusty too. The stars are gone, the honeymoon is ending and I am left with the knowledge that living in Israel is tough but it is so much more fulfilling than anything that I ever had before. Welcome to the age of the Jumpy ? function not comfort ? gets me where I need to go. Comfort - I guess I need to get from spiritual growth, relationship with G-d, and knowledge that I am on the path that is right for myself and my family dust and all.
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3. "Move To Another Land, Keep A Job" by AP staffFrom TaiPei Times The modern era allows certain classes of professional the option of holding on to a job via the Internet, and Israel is one place leading the way
Dr Orit Wimpfheimer rolls out of bed in her home in Israel each morning, walks downstairs and reports to her job -- on the East Coast of the US.
Wimpfheimer, an Ivy League-trained radiologist, analyzes test results from US hospitals over the Internet. She is among a growing number of American Jews who immigrated to Israel because they were able to earn a US paycheck and enjoy a lifestyle few Israelis ever see -- thanks to e-mail, Internet and video-conferencing.
"You get to move to the country of your choice. You get to do what you did before in the comfort of a home office," said Wimpfheimer, who lives in the Jerusalem suburb of Beit Shemesh.
Lack of high-paying jobs has been a major obstacle for potential immigrants to Israel from the US and other wealthy countries. Unemployment in Israel hovers around 9 percent, and Israeli professionals typically earn a fraction of what their counterparts make stateside.
A few thousand Americans immigrate to Israel each year, a tiny percentage of the more than 5 million Jews in the US. But the number has grown in recent years, in part because people can bring well-paying jobs with them, said Daniella Slasky, director of employment at Nefesh B'Nefesh, a nonprofit agency that helps North American Jews move to Israel.
"I wouldn't say this is the reason for increased aliya," said Slasky, using the Hebrew word for Jewish immigration to Israel. "I think this is a tool that helps people move to Israel. It is much easier to make aliya, coming here and knowing you have a job. Also, having the American salary while living here is very significant."
She estimated that 20 percent to 30 percent of the breadwinners among the new arrivals from North America maintain jobs overseas. When Nefesh B'Nefesh began work four years ago, the number was negligible, she said.
Among those keeping US jobs are medical professionals, accountants, lawyers, graphic designers and computer programmers. All do most of their work in Israel, though some periodically commute to offices overseas.
STAYING ON
When Adam Lubov, a database administrator, decided to immigrate in late 2004, the medical software firm where he worked in Savannah, Georgia, asked him to remain on board. Since he already did most of his work from home, the transition was easy.
When Adam Lubov, a database administrator, decided to immigrate in late 2004, the medical software firm where he worked in Savannah, Georgia, asked him to remain on board. Since he already did most of his work from home, the transition was easy.
"I thought this was great. I can continue in my job, then look for something else," he said.
After he saw what he would earn in the local market, however, he decided to stay on.
"Seeing the pay difference, I can't do it," said Lubov, 28, who lives outside Tel Aviv.
Joel Pomerantz, a psychologist at an alternative school for at-risk children in Cleveland, supervises a team of five people from his home in Beit Shemesh. He checks into work about 3pm and works through midnight -- corresponding with the business day in Ohio.
Using the Internet, he can review results of tests administered by colleagues, prepare reports or enter information into a database. He meets regularly with parents and students via video-conference.
Pomerantz said the setup has been a natural fit for his school, called the Virtual Schoolhouse, which uses Internet learning to augment classroom activities. He said his tech-savvy boss suggested the arrangement, and he spent several months preparing before moving with his wife and three children in July.
While the distance has created some obstacles, Pomerantz, 31, said it has also yielded some benefits. Many parents are enthralled with the technology, and he has become more efficient because there are fewer distractions here.
"So far so good. I foresee this going really well," he said.
SACRIFICE
Some of the arrangements require creativity and sacrifice. Shye Wortman, an internist who moved to Beit Shemesh last year, still flies to New York every two weeks to treat patients.
Some of the arrangements require creativity and sacrifice. Shye Wortman, an internist who moved to Beit Shemesh last year, still flies to New York every two weeks to treat patients.
When in Israel, he reviews charts and test results and speaks to patients by phone. Using Internet phone service, he even maintains a New York phone number.
"Some patients don't know I'm in Israel," he said.
Despite the travel, he says he now has more time with his family than he had in the US.
In other cases, the seven-hour time difference with the eastern US can be an asset.
Wimpfheimer, the radiologist, works from 6am to 3pm, teaming with two partners to cover the overnight shift at 18 hospitals in the northeastern US.
She reviews CT scans, MRIs and ultrasounds and exchanges information instantaneously over secure Internet connections.
The arrangement benefits the hospitals, which don't need to hire an overnight crew or force doctors to be on call during the bleary-eyed graveyard shift.
"It works much better," said John Breckenridge, chairman of the radiology department at Abington Memorial Hospital in Abington, Pennsylvania. "They're awake and alert."
And thanks to real-time technology, the distance isn't an issue.
"She could be in the next room. It really doesn't matter," he said.
Wimpfheimer, 36, a mother of six, can spend the afternoons with her children. With her US salary, she can live comfortably in a three-level suburban house with a swimming pool.
"The business is growing. We're having fun doing it," said Wimpfheimer, who immigrated from New York four years ago. "I wouldn't even consider moving back."
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