Volume 5, Issue 10 / Tishrei, 5763 / October 2002
Jewish Agency News
Paving the Way for New Immigrant Physicians
Ruben Ezequiel Benolol arrived in Israel in January 2002 from Buenos Aries. Ruben, 31 and single, qualified as a physician four years ago, specializing in gynecology and obstetrics. He had been weighing the pros and cons of making aliyah for some time, when he learned about the Jewish Agency's Aliyah 2000 Professional Program for Medical Doctors.
"I heard about the program through a colleague in the hospital where I worked in Buenos Aries," Ruben said. He was very impressed with the 18-month program, designed to pave the way for new immigrant physicians to become acclimated in Israel. "It helped to calm my fears and uncertainties about leaving Argentina. I felt that it provided me the ideal framework to establish myself in the country, and to gradually introduce myself into my profession in Israel."
What A Difference A Decade Makes
Philip Galpert participated as a teenager in the first Midreshet Yerushalayim Ramah Yahad summer camp in Ukraine back in 1993. Then a Ukrainian high school student, he immigrated to Israel the following year, and this summer returned as a counselor to the tenth consecutive annual Ramah Yahad camp.
"How things have changed," observed Galpert. "When I was at the camp we knew nothing about Judaism. We could not read or write Hebrew. This summer most of the children at the camp were familiar with Hebrew and some could even speak the language.
She Sought Ways to Help Others
On April 12, 2002, Yelena Konarev, 43, was killed by a woman suicide bomber in Jerusalem. The attack took place at a bus stop near the entrance to the capital's Mahane Yehuda market. Another 104 people were injured in the blast.
Yelena, an economist, immigrated to Israel a year ago from the Caucasus with her father. She wanted live near her daughter, Daria Pochinok, who had immigrated two years earlier. Daria came to Israel as a participant in the Jewish Agency's Selah educational program, a preparatory program for young adults who come to Israel on their own and wish to pursue higher education in the country. Having successfully completed the Selah program, Daria was accepted to study mathematics and statistics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Argentinean Immigrants Celebrate in a Warm Sukka
Cecilia Cohen has rarely had the opportunity to spend Sukkot in a sukka. In her native Patagonia in Southern Argentina she explained that her family had built a sukka several times in her childhood, but with her home city of Comodoro Rivadavia continually buffeted by end of winter high winds, sitting in the booth was a precarious business.
Cohen, 21, was one of 66 Latin American students, mainly from Argentina, who immigrated to Israel at the end of August. Within the framework of the Jewish Agency's TAKA Program for young adult immigrants wishing to continue studying for academic degrees in Israel, the students are housed at the Calanit Absorption Center in Ashkelon.
