By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Years ago, B’nai Akiva youth found their Israeli roots on kibbutzim. Now they are looking at cities and scouting for job possibilities before making aliyah.
Eighteen B’nai Akiva members from Britain are in Israel for a week-long pilot trip organized by their emissary, Rabbi Elan Goldman of Netanya, whose grandfather was a rabbi in Britain.
The trip is the first time in eight years that B’nai Akiva’s British group has come on a pilot trip. Instead of moving to kibbutzim, an experience whish has almost become history, they are searching cities as well as smaller communities in Judea and Samaria.
One from “garin” seed group from Britain has established itself in the city of Modi’in, a fast growing and relatively new city located between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Rabbi Goldman told Arutz Sheva his group will meet with the Modi’in families on Thursday.
“I have had the idea to make this kind of pilot of trip for several years, but I put it into the attic until I saw this was an opportune time. The trip is partially subsidized by the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish National Fund."
One of the factors in their prospective aliyah is employment, and they will be searching for future job opportunities. Unlike the former groups that moved to kibbutzim en masse, the new trend is for each one to come to a common destination when he or she can make arrangements and preparations for the move, with all of theme eventually settling in the same place, including the possibility of a kibbutz.
Besides Modi’in, the group is touring Jerusalem, Netanya, Givat Shmuel, located across from B'nai Brak and the home of Bar-Ilan University, the Galilee community of Mitzpeh Netufa, Beit El, located in the Binyamin region of Samaria, and Kibbutz Lavi in the Galilee
Rabbi Goldman says that despite a growing Muslim population and occasional headlines to the contrary, Jews in Britain meet little anti-Semitism.
“They live comfortably in Britain and don't see what will be five or 10 years from now. They move to Israel out of faith and ideology and not economic reasons,” he adds. He relates that he does not know what the situation will be for Jews in Britain in another decade, but “it will not be great.”
