Posted on 12/09/2004 11:32:01 AM PST by anotherview
Dec. 9, 2004 7:03 | Updated Dec. 9, 2004 17:09
The Boeing aliya
By DELPHINE MATTHIEUSSENT
The intensified immigration from affluent France has given rise to a strange kind of commuter who keeps his family here and his job there
Standing between his mother and his uncle, 17-year-old Alexis Haddad pours wine into a kiddush cup and hesitantly begins to say Kiddush, the prayer that is recited at the beginning of Shabbat and holiday meals, usually by family heads.
Yet for more than a year now, this teenager has been saying Kiddush himself, except for every fourth weekend when his father, Patrick, returns home from France, where he still works, even after having moved his family to Israel. He is part of a broader phenomenon that has emerged here as immigration from France intensified in recent years.
More than 10 people have gathered at the Haddad's brightly lit new apartment in Jerusalem's Har Homa neighborhood for Friday night dinner. "Smile," says William Khalifa jokingly to his nephew. "It's very important to smile." The tall, baby-faced teenager leads the prayers and the songs, often interrupted by Khalifa's teasing.
"If I don't find a decent job here I will also go back to Paris to work, like Patrick. You will be here like two widows," says Khalifa with a laugh, looking at his wife, Carole, and his sister-in-law, Sylvie Haddad.
Patrick Haddad works as a radiologist in France and visits his family only once a month, for four or five days. The Haddads moved to Israel from France with their two kids, Alexis and Lorraine, 20, in August 2003, followed by the Khalifas last August. After a few months of exhausting weekly trips to Israel, arriving Friday morning and leaving Sunday afternoon, Patrick cut back on the visits.
Haddad's is not an isolated case: Many French olim, almost all of them men, keep their jobs in France and commute from Israel, traveling as frequently as once a week. Faced with economic hardship in Israel and barriers to full integration, these olim have made a modern compromise that turns them into yet another group of "global nomads." But because of the often painful emotional toll on their families, they consider this lifestyle a temporary solution.
"They've found a post-modern solution to the rampant economic crisis in Israel brought about by the current war and the hi-tech slump," explains Erik Cohen, a specialist in French Jewry at the Bar-Ilan University School of Education. "It is easier and cheaper today to fly from Paris to Tel Aviv than it was 20 years ago to travel from Paris to Nice."
ACCORDING TO the Jewish Agency and Unifan, the support group for French olim, those immigrants who have kept their jobs in France account for a "non-marginal figure" of all French olim. Arie Azoulay, chairman of the aliya committee of the Jewish Agency, estimates that 10 percent of French olim work in France. Other sources give higher estimates. Sylvie Zouari, who is running an Absorption Ministry program for new French families in Netanya, says that in at least 30% of these families, the husband has kept his job in France.
For Dr. Israel Feldman, a psychoanalyst who provides psychological support for French olim in the same program, as many as 50% of them fit into the category of the "Boeing Aliya" - an expression coined to describe families in which the husband commutes.
"It is a quality aliya: They come from a rich country and it's hard for them to give up the standard of living they were used to," explains Feldman. The husband leaves his family in Israel and keeps working in France until he can find a job in Israel that allows them to live here without sacrificing their former lifestyle.
Haddad says he has a traumatic memory of the exploratory trip he made to Israel with his wife a few months before she and their three children made aliya in August 2003. A fellow French doctor told Haddad that when his son asked him for 100 francs (about 15) in France he didn't think twice, but that since they immigrated to Israel, he has not always been so ready to give him NIS 100.
When they went back to France, he decided to cancel the aliya process he had started with the Jewish Agency. He has not reapplied, even though his wife and their kids are now Israeli citizens.
"I realized that if I decided to make aliya, it would have taken me too long to master the language, get my professional equivalencies and to earn a decent living. I didn't want us to fail our aliya for economic reasons," explains Haddad.
But there is an emotional price in exchange for the well-being of his family: Haddad says that he feels empty except when he is with his family in Israel. "In Paris, I wake up in the morning and I'm alone, I go to bed in the evening and I'm alone. I'm living on stand-by mode - my real life is in Israel."
IN THE case of Jean-Luc Benzimra, 48, who works in France as an on-call doctor two weeks a month, the hardship of being away from home is compounded by his intense work week: He works 12 to 18 hours a day, six days a week, to be with his family the rest of the month. His wife, Daniel, who is also a doctor, adds that it is not always easy for him to live with her parents in Paris.
"A few years ago, there was no way, even in my dreams, that I would have believed that my husband would be living at my parents' house in Paris 15 days a month," says the thin, elegant 42-year-old. "When I think about it, it's a crazy situation. We've accepted things, because otherwise our whole life in Israel would crumble."
THE BENZIMRAS, who live in a plush apartment in Ra'anana, made aliya from Nice in 1997 with their three children. Daniel found a job fairly easily, as a nutritional specialist, but Jean-Luc wanted to switch from medicine to finance. After he tried working in a bank and even set up his own company, he finally decided to work again in France.
Those men who work in France and maintain their family in Israel live "in-between" - between France and Israel, work and family, explains Cohen.
However, he adds, staying faithful is often the main unspoken problem.
They are usually doctors, lawyers, white-collar workers. They often live in big, anonymous cities, alone for weeks at a time. "They can meet whomever they want," says Cohen. "It's easy nowadays. If they're faithful to their wives, they have to find ways to protect themselves from temptation. That's why some of them turn France into a giant office and become workaholics. They are confronted with a huge sociological and psychological challenge."
Daniel remembers that when Jean-Luc started working in France, some of her friends suggested that she should pay more attention to him. Some implied that his reasons for going might have been questionable.
"It is true that it is often a test for the couple. When the relationship is already under pressure, separation adds extra tension," she says.
"But when the couple is strong, it can be strengthened by this challenge. Not being together all the time is the best remedy for routine. In our case it works: When Jean-Luc comes home, it's a big party for the whole family."
DADDY'S ABSENCE is particularly difficult for the kids, as Daniel acknowledges, ones like her five-and-a-half-year-old Lisa. The bubbly, dark-curly-haired girl proudly shows her "Papa-Lisa," a grey T-shirt, belonging to her father that she keeps with her all the time. A few months ago the little girl suffered from psychosomatic illnesses, complaining about headaches when her father was away, says Daniel.
From a psychological point of view, a father's absence can disrupt the whole family, particularly teenage boys who can become very aggressive, says Feldman.
"Fathers often feel very guilty leaving their family alone; children become aggressive and put pressure on their mothers who, in turn, resent their husbands for not being there to help them deal with the children. These psychological disruptions, if not dealt with, can lead to divorce," he says.
Sylvie Haddad says that the happiness she and her two children feel when Patrick is with them in Jerusalem is always a bit sour.
"When he returns, usually on Friday at five in the morning, we wake up for him. And then we try to stay with him as much as we can, but the time goes by very fast. When he arrives we are already thinking about when he is going to leave," explains Sylvie, a delicate, softspoken 42-year-old.
"On Saturday evening we start to feel sad. On Sunday afternoon I drive him to the airport, and drop him off without getting out of the car. It would be too tough [otherwise]. And on the way back I try not to cry too much so that I can still see the road," she says.
Still, many of thosee who run this kind of disjointed life say they made this choice for the sake of their children.
"There is no future for young Jews in France. They are stuck between the Jewish ghetto and public schools," explains Jacques Benhamou, 43, a dental surgeon.
Benhamou's wife and their three kids made aliya in October 2002. He kept his practice in a small town in Normandy and twice a month he spends three to four days with his family in Ra'anana.
Brigitte Guedj explains that she and her husband, Claude, felt that they had no choice but to move to Israel if they wanted to pass on their Jewish heritage to their children.
They were living in Limoges, a medium-size town in the middle of France with a shrinking Jewish community. Brigitte remembers that sometimes there were not enough men for a minyan in the synagogue. She and her children made aliya in August 1998, but, she says, if it had just been her and Claude, they would have stayed in France.
"We were realistic when we left. My husband didn't even look for a job in Israel. How could it be otherwise? He doesn't have academic credentials. He didn't know Hebrew or English. We did it only for our children; but I don't see it as a sacrifice. They will have a chance to find their place in Israel and for us this will be the greatest reward."
However, she says, the prospect of living with her husband again in a couple of years time, when he retires, is what keeps her going from day to day.
LIKE BRIGITTE, many French immigrants see the "Boeing Aliya" as a necessary but temporary step.
"This is not why you start a family, to be away from each other half of the time," says Daniel Benzimra. "If there were not the hope that Jean-Luc might one day successfuly start an Israeli business, we would be back in France already."
Ya'acov Am-Shalem, director of the French Aliya program for the Absorption Ministry, believes that as the economy improves French immigrants will gradually find their place in the Israeli job market. "The economic crisis is behind us. It won't be long before they'll start to do business here. It's just a matter of time," he says.
Sylvie Haddad hopes that this time will arrive sooner rather than later.
"I don't know how long this will continue," she says. "But I do know that we cannot live our whole life like this - apart from each other."
Are they sure he's not on an Airbus?
Based on their last names, I would guess that nearly all of the Jews quoted in this article trace their roots to French North Africa and have only emigrated to France since the 1950s when the newly independent Arab states expelled most Jews.
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