The Jewish Agency, in conjunction with The Ministry of Interior, are working together in order to help you change your status from within Israel through a personal and swift service.

 

This service includes:

* Assistance with organizing forms and documentation.

* Validating Preparation of Aliyah forms for Eligibility

* Exclusive meetings with an interior ministry representative.

* Customized absorption plan. 

* Receipt of your Israeli ID card in a special ceremony

* Personal guidance by an absorption specialist 

We welcome you to contact us toll free!  

 

22 hours per day (Except Shabbat)

 

 

 

The Employment Referral Center for Olim, in conjunction with the Employment division of the Ministry of Immigrant absorption has been established in order to help Olim find suitable employment.

* New immigrant in Israel for up to 10 years
*Admissible level of Hebrew (after ulpan aleph)

*Applicants who have not received any assistance in the past from a similar service

The center provides various employment services, including:

* Basic computer courses in Hebrew

* Hebrew improvement, especially related to employment

*Help in writing CV and preparing for job interview

To make an appointment or to get more information please call:

Tel Aviv      03 561 4546

Jerusalem    02 537 1186

HaSharon   09 748 2324

Loans can be for up to 5 years and for up to NIS300,000.  They can be used for either starting a new business or expanding an existing one.

 

The process begins with an applicant turning to an AACI counselor to review basic eligibility, and make the referral to KIEDF.  KIEDF will provide business consulting services including review, advice, guidance, and the preparation of a business plan for the applicant.  If it is decided to go forward with the loan, the applicant will be introduced to a bank used by KIEDF.

Assuming the bank approves the loan, AACI and KIEDF funds are used to provide bank guarantees and an interest rate subsidy for the loan.  For further details, contact your AACI counselor.

 

A growing budget crisis that threatened to upend many crucial programs for absorbing new immigrants has been reversed with the addition of some NIS 172m. to the Absorption Ministry's coffers for fiscal year 2009.

 

In particular, several thousand new immigrants who failed to receive promised government vouchers for job training courses valued at up to NIS 8,000 each will be receiving the money within two months, the Absorption Ministry promised on Monday.

 

"Because of drastic budget cuts [throughout the government], and the fact that the government went for six months in 2009 without an approved budget, we simply couldn't pay the vouchers until now," Absorption Ministry Director General Dmitry Apartsev told The Jerusalem Post Monday.

"We have been deeply uncomfortable and unhappy about being unable to fulfill promises made to immigrants," he said.

 

But now, some 4,500 immigrants who filed requests for the vouchers between December 2008 and September 2009 will begin to receive the promised funds.

 

"Starting this morning [Monday], the order has gone out to try to contact all those immigrants who asked the Absorption Ministry for vouchers in 2009. And if an immigrant started a job-training course in 2009 and paid money for it without waiting for government assistance, then as long as it's a course in a recognized institution, they should submit the paperwork so we can begin to give them their money, too," Apartsev said.

 

He promised that any funds that are not delivered within fiscal year 2009 will be paid out by the end of January 2010.

 

A ministry official told the Post several weeks ago that the vouchers program was missing over NIS 36m. in funding. But it wasn't only the vouchers that were at risk from the ministry's budget shortage.

In all, negotiations with the Finance Ministry and Prime Minister's Office in recent weeks have yielded an NIS 172m. boost to this year's absorption budget, funds likely to save several crucial programs from drastic cutbacks or even cancellation.

 

Among these are the Student Authority, a body that finances the tuitions of some 3,000 immigrant university students, which was facing a budget crunch of NIS 12m. that threatened the continued funding of tuition for hundreds of students.

 

Severe cuts to the budget of the Jewish Agency in recent years - driven by the global financial crisis and a corresponding drop in philanthropy - has meant that the government has had to step in to become the primary funding source for the Student Authority, Apartsev explained. This translated into a shortfall of NIS 19m.

 

Similarly, the KAMEA program, which funds the academic positions of several hundred immigrant scientists, faced complete closure.  "We were on the verge of firing a large number of scientists" from Israeli universities and research institutes, according to Apartsev. "This is a very dangerous position. Most of these scientists are from the former Soviet Union, and Russia has already declared its desire to get back émigrés who left the country and who possess certain professional skills.

 

"Zionism is all well and good," he continued, "but you have to get the simple things right to keep these people here. You can't announce your intentions to fight the 'brain drain,' and then turn around and take away funding for programs that pay the salaries of immigrant scientists."

 

Apartsev, himself an immigrant from Lithuania, urged his fellow immigrants to turn to the government-funded guidance centers (merkazei hechven), where they could find occupational psychologists to advise them on their employment preferences, an entrepreneurship department to help them start their own business and government programs and financial aid to help them integrate better into the Israeli workforce.

 

The budget crisis is already behind the ministry, Apartsev believes, "so we can focus on the real work of absorption. There is nothing more important than good absorption, because ultimately that's what brings more aliya."

 

December. 9, 2009
Yaakov Katz , THE JERUSALEM POST

 

"The concept of 'one for all and all for one' can get pretty absurd," the late Jerusalem Post staffer and columnist Sam Orbaum wrote about his identical triplet daughters 14 years ago.

Orbaum, who passed away in 2002 at the age of 46, went on in the column, entitled "The threeness of it all," to describe life as a father of identical triplets.

 

Not only did he sometimes mix them up, Orbaum wrote in his well-known wry, comic style, but he was also constantly impressed by their tight bond - when for example they stood up for one another in fights in the school sandbox.

 

The three blond 19-year-old sisters are still sticking up for one another, although this time not on the playground but in the IAF, in which they all enlisted a few months ago, making history.

 

While all three are in khaki-colored air force uniforms, they don't serve together. Odelia, the oldest (born a minute before her two sisters), serves as a control officer in the IAF's underground command-and-control center in the Kirya in Tel Aviv; Nomi is an air traffic control officer at the IAF's Palmahim Base; and Donna is currently in training for a different IAF position near Herzliya.

 

"Even though we are, in a sense, still together since we are all in the IAF, it was still difficult to split up to different positions and offices," said Odelia.

 

The sisters say that they think of themselves as one person, which might not make sense - until one sees how they complete one another's sentences or give the same answers during the interview.

 

Since elementary school the three have been together, going on to the same high school in Jerusalem's Ramot neighborhood and then to the same premilitary academy in the Jordan Valley.

 

It was there that the triplets decided to enlist in the IDF and not do national service like most of their female classmates.

 

"As religious girls we were confused about what to do," said Nomi. "But [we] decided to enlist into the IDF since national service, like working in an old age home, is something we can always do after our military service, but military service is right now. [It's] the only time we can do it and is what characterizes the state."

 

Once they made their decision, all they had left was to find fulfilling jobs in the IDF. Donna said she thought about trying out for the pilot's course; Nomi thought at one point about joining the Ground Forces Command and becoming an infantry instructor.

 

In the end, they all made their way to the air force, albeit on different bases.

"We didn't all decide to joint the IAF," explained Odelia. "That is just how it worked out."

Nomi, the self-declared "controlling" sister, said that becoming an air traffic controller fit in very well with her personality.  I usually make the decisions so becoming an air traffic controller was natural," she said.