French immigration soars but absorption is not so easy
[Jerusalem] Livnatt Affriat stands behind a glass counter displaying decorated cakes, authentic croissants and colorful, creamy éclairs. Boxes of finely wrapped French macaroons adorn the shelves. Conversations in French, with a Parisian accent, fill the little café, The Gourmandises, which Affriat co-owns with her husband on a quaint corner in the heart of Jerusalem.
“I always wanted to come to Israel,” Affriat told The Media Line, but she didn’t until two years ago because her parents would not consent to allowing their daughter leave France alone. Instead, Affriat became an optician, married, had three children and opened a small chain of optical shops. Years later, her husband, also an optician, decided to change the direction of his life and become a pastry chef. The Affriats moved from eyewear into baking and continued their business interests in Paris, until a colleague who tasted their pastries suggested they open a café in Jerusalem. Two months later they flew to Israel.
Although the majority of Affriat’s customers are well-travelled Israelis who desire a taste of European cuisine, a large part of her customer base is French speaking. In recent years, Affriat noted, this community has changed.
In the first six months of 2015, some 3,916 French Jews immigrated to Israel — an increase of 8% over the same period one year ago, according to statistics from Israel’s Ministry of Immigration and Absorption. The only country to come close to matching France’s statistics for people “making Aliyah” – a term used to refer to a Jewish person’s “going up” (immigration) to Israel – is Ukraine, a country currently suffering through a civil war.
But some of the newest arrivals to Israel are finding assimilation into society to be challenging. “They want to be Parisian in Israel, but it’s not possible,” Affriat observed. Many French Jews are used to receiving large salaries and are disgruntled at their earnings in Israel, the café owner said. She admonished that people need to understand that there are tradeoffs and benefits to be had from life in the Jewish state, like free religious education that in France would cost a lot of money. But such considerations are not stemming the numbers of French ex-pats arriving at Ben Gurion airport.
There are a combination of push-and-pull factors bringing French Jews in such high numbers to Israel, Avi Meyer, international media spokesperson for the Jewish Agency, told The Media Line. He explains that while a general perception among French Jews that they are not safe in France following a string of anti-Semitic attacks is in part acting as the push but also an important factor is the economy. Increasingly, French Jews are looking abroad to find job security and a higher standard of living due to internal economic issues in France, he suggested. Although Jewish communities in other parts of Europe might also be feeling pressure from rising anti-Semitism, this combination of push-factors, security concerns and economic uncertainty, is “unique to French Jews,” according to Meyer.
At the same time, he sees Israel as a pull towards those thinking of immigrating. There are other popular immigration destinations for French Jews – London, Montreal, New York – but Israel is the number one choice in part due to deliberate policies pursued by the Jewish Agency and by the Israeli government, Meyer said. He credits programs designed to create a sense of connection between French Jews and their cultural identity (read state of Israel) with making Israel not feel like a foreign country. Due to the fact that the French Jewish community is the largest in Europe and third world-wide behind only Israel and the United States, this means that a significant proportion of those making Aliyah originate in France.
Previously, young people and retirees made up the bulk of new immigrants, but this is no longer the case as the number of arriving families means French immigrants now represents a cross-section of French Jewry, Meyer said. He also explained that Jews coming from France tend to be more religious than the average European Jew — a legacy of the fact that 80% of French Jews who immigrated during the 1950s and 1960s came from North African countries and identify with the more traditional Sephardic (Oriental) Jewish community.
Leah Stora, a student who moved to Israel seven years ago, told The Media Line that there is a difference in the character of French Jews coming to Israel in the last year or two. At the age of 17, having just completed high school, Stora immigrated to Israel leaving her parents behind in France. Partly it was the excitement and adventure that brought her to Israel, Stora said, joking that if it weren’t for being Jewish she might have simply volunteered on a gap year program somewhere in Africa. But once in Israel, integration became key. “I came to Israel because I wanted to be Israeli… since the beginning I tried to talk Hebrew, to have Israeli friends.” This was common among French Jews who made Aliyah in the past, but in Stora’s observation, as the number of arriving French speakers increased they tended to stay more to themselves.
She suggested that while previous waves of French immigrants joined the army, married native Israelis and chose to live mixed among the general population, the more recent immigrants are less likely to do the same and are often more religious, Stora observed. As the numbers coming increased, people integrated less because they arrived in groups and with families rather than as individuals. Many of the new generation had been accustomed to living in close-knitted Jewish communities while living in France and so naturally clustered into groups of French speakers now that they lived in Israel, according to Stora.
“It’s not a rich Aliya (immigration); people who already have money already bought [homes in Israel] years ago,” explained Daniele Tzoukerman Melzer, head of specialty groups for Daat Educational Tours, told The Media Line. “This Aliya is very difficult. The majority coming are religious, many are having a hard time acclimating.” According to Melzer, who moved from France thirty-three years ago, immigrants have difficulty finding jobs because they don’t speak Hebrew. “Many work in call centers,” she said. “But fathers are flying for two weeks at a time back to France for work leaving a mother of four or five who is hardly coping.”
Melzer predicts “There are grave social problems emerging because the government has not put a big effort into assisting the French community.”
The government could do more to help with linguistic problems faced by French immigrants and the barrier to absorption that results, Livnatt Affriat argued. After moving to Israel with her husband and three children Affriat was disappointed to discover that the government would not pay for her 16-year old daughter’s Hebrew studies – considered an important part of assimilation and therefore free to new Jewish immigrants to Israel – because she had chosen to study in a French speaking school.
But this does not make Affriat regret the move. At first after immigrating she used to return to France several times a year to oversee her remaining business interest. Now, Affriat has sold the last of her optical shops and has no intention of returning to France for some time, she said.