Latino Life in Israel

En español | Clara Bluer sports the narrow glasses she wore in her native Argentina before immigrating to Israel four years ago to be near her children. Now, the 76-year-old retiree lives in a well-kept apartment in Kfar Sava, a suburb north of Tel Aviv. She spends time with her two children, four grandchildren and other Spanish-speaking Jews in the middle-income suburb. But with only a weekly Spanish-language newspaper and just one Spanish-language television channel originating from Spain, she says it’s hard keeping up with the news. “I speak a little Hebrew, but I need to learn a lot more,” she says in Spanish. “It’s very hard at this age.”

While longtime residents from South America retire comfortably on Israel’s general retirement system, Bluer’s life typifies that of many retired Latino recent immigrants—and the problems they face, says Ile Kermel Schiffman, director of a local senior center. Unlike previous generations of South American Jewish immigrants, she says, many are having a hard time learning Hebrew and integrating into Israeli life. As a small minority in Israel’s polyglot society, they tend to be offered few special services.

Older South American Jews  “try to be independent, but they are very dependent on family because they need help with everything,” says Kermel Schiffman, who wrote her master’s thesis on South American seniors in Israel. Bills arrive in Hebrew, as do important government notices. Israel has a universal health care system, but few doctors or emergency personnel speak Spanish. “That can be life threatening,” Kermel Schiffman says.
 
Kermel Schiffman, a gerontologist, and a handful of Spanish-speaking Israeli social workers  have recently started innovative programs to provide medical and other emergency translations and check up on seniors at home once a week. “We visit them at home to make sure the electricity works and their houses are clean,” says Daniela Shomron, director of the Supportive Community Center in Kfar Sava. “They have the confidence to ask for whatever they need.”

A New Home in Israel
South American Jews started arriving in Israel even before the country’s founding in 1948. Dr. Efraim Zadoff, a historian and expert on South American Jewish history and immigration, says Zionists came to build a homeland for the Jewish people and to live there. Others headed to Israel to flee political persecution or to seek economic betterment.

From the 1950s through the 1980s, South Americans emigrated to Israel mainly from Argentina but also Uruguay, Chile and Brazil. Most were Ashkenazi Jews whose parents had fled Europe earlier in the century. From 1976 to 1983, says Zadoff, Argentines escaped the country’s military dictatorships. Some people “fled without any connection to Israel or Jewish culture,” he says. “Israel was the only place to find haven.” Famous dissidents such as Argentine journalist Jacobo Timerman, for example, found refuge in Israel, but later left. “When the dictatorship fell, most went back,” Zadoff explains. A similar pattern emerged for Argentines and Uruguayans fleeing their country’s 2000–01 economic crisis.

But for those South American Jews who stayed and integrated into Israeli society, many say their senior years are better than what they would have faced back home. About 100,000 Israelis and their children are of Latin American origin, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics. Of those, 22,000 are over age 55.

A Better Retirement
Sixty-year-old Nora Bendersky walks through the Old City of Jerusalem, retracing the steps she took as a teenager on her first visit to Israel in 1967. She still loves the smells and sounds of the Muslim Quarter, where shops sell Middle Eastern delicacies and intricately crafted gold jewelry.