Dear President Herzog – It isn’t Enough to Say “We Hear You, We Care for You” to American Jewry. Words are important but this is a time for action.
Immediately we must send 100 “Aliyah Commandos” to 50 colleges and Jewish communities throughout America to alert Jewish youth of the new opportunities to receive college degrees in a variety of disciplines IN ENGLISH in universities in Israel.
The “commandos” will also shout out the message to American Jewry that it is time to come home! They will urge Rabbis and the Jewish leadership in America to face the writing on the wall that there is no future for Jewish youth in America. Assimilation is already a cancer which is devastating American Jewry at an ever-increasing pace. Now the spreading anti-Semitism is a malevolent genie which has escaped from the bottle and which no amount of TV and billboard advertising can ever contain.
Caring about the worsening situation in America won’t help the beleaguered Jews there. We have to act!
At last week’s Emergency Aliyah Conference in Jerusalem, some 20 grassroots Aliyah activists, including Jonathan Pollard and Rabbi Leo Dee, spoke passionately to a large gathering about the imperative to act now in order to help our brothers and sisters in America. New concepts in outreach and new strategies sounded from every corner of the hall. Grassroots Aliyah activists who have worked independently for decades to further the cause of Aliyah, activists whose websites and outreach in the social media cover several million Jews, are ready to fly to the United States to rally American Jewry around the flag of the one-and-only Jewish State.
An initial group of “Aliyah Commandos” will fly to New York this week to hand out pamphlets at the Israel Day Parade about new college opportunities in Israel and about the imperative of Aliyah. A recruitment drive for young activists willing to travel throughout North America during the summer to college campuses and Jewish communities to promote a deeper connection to Israel and to the eternal mission of Am Yisrael will soon, b’ezrat Hashem, get underway.
To our great chagrin, the Government of Israel has not met the challenge of providing an escape route for Jews still lingering throughout the Diaspora. Perhaps their absence at the conference, excluding the presence of Nefesh B’Nefesh, explains the sorry state of Aliyah to Israel and the pathetically small numbers of new Jewish immigrants. It seems that when it comes to Aliyah, we are a ship without any gasoline.
Indeed, Jonathan Pollard, who recently returned from Aliyah-related activism in France, expressed the apparently widespread opinion of French Jewry that the Government of Israel doesn’t care about their desire to make aliyah.
Even worse, other activists at the conference claimed that when it comes to a mass movement of Jewish immigrants from the West, the Governments of Israel for the past several decades doesn’t want them here. I pray that these accusations aren’t true. The fight for world Jewry is as vital as our victory over the enemies which surround us and those who dwell in our borders.
The war with Hamas fell on us like a meteor from out of the sky.
Today, the State of Israel is at a crucial crossroads.
When it comes to Aliyah we must not be caught unprepared like we were on October 7th. Plans must be formulated to evacuate the Jews from the Diaspora if such a need arises. Housing for the great numbers must be prepared in Israel. The urgency of the hours demands that we all act together, government agencies and grassroots soldiers. Together, with the help of G-d, we will prevail!
