Jewish Agency under fire as more aliyah hopefuls face ‘insane’ rules

More cases emerged this week of people complaining that their applications for aliyah have been held up by Jewish Agency bureaucracy — one woman claiming she had had a file open for three years without success.

Earlier this month, Jewish News spotlighted several cases in which applicants said they were being asked “ridiculous” questions or obliged to supply “impossible” documentation, sometimes to prove their Jewish status.

One woman said she had been asked to provide the birth certificate of her ex-husband’s grandmother.

In the most recent case, a couple who live an Orthodox Jewish life in Zurich — but who asked not to be named — set out their problems with their aliyah application.

The wife is a Swiss national; her husband was born in the Czech Republic and lived in Germany before moving to live in Switzerland 20 years ago.

The couple have four children and four grandchildren in Switzerland, but were “very strong Zionists” who already had an apartment in Israel, so they decided to apply to emigrate.

The wife said: “Switzerland doesn’t have a Jewish Agency representative, so applications take place either via Paris or Israel. We began the process in December 2019 but were held up by Covid and couldn’t get documents from abroad.” Among the requested documents was proof of the husband’s Jewish status.

He was the son of a Holocaust survivor. The survivor, like many in eastern Europe, had not told her son he was Jewish, meaning  the son did not know about his Jewish identity until he was 19, his wife said. But after rediscovering his Jewish heritage he married his Swiss wife in an Orthodox ceremony, with rabbis in Frankfurt and Zurich vouching for him.

The couple were also required to provide notarised documentation that they did not have criminal records — which, in the husband’s case, meant acquiring such documents from three different countries, the Czech Republic, Germany and Switzerland. Eventually, having as they believed assembled all the requisite documentation, the couple were due to have a “last step” Zoom interview with a Paris-based Jewish Agency official.

But, said the wife: “Just a few days before the interview, we got a phone call saying that the Agency still wanted further proof that my husband is Jewish — a statement from the local rabbi and our Orthodox marriage certificate were not enough.

“We were also told that we had to supply new versions of the documents showing that my husband did not have a criminal record, because such documents must not be older than six months before making aliyah”.

She said that even if her husband’s Jewish status was not accepted by the Agency, he could have gone to Israel as her spouse.

A relative of the now retired couple, who has watched them going through the process, told Jewish News that they were “on the verge of giving up on making aliyah because the repeated requests and requirements have left the realm of sanity”.

The wife, who studied in Israel as a young woman and changed her status then to “temporary resident” rather than “tourist”, has already been warned that if they did become new immigrants, she would not be entitled to any benefits.

She said: “I don’t need anything from the state, but this seems a never-ending story and we have really lost our desire to make aliyah.”

A Jewish Agency official said client confidentiality would not allow comment on individual cases, but added that “tens of thousands” of people successfully made aliyah every year.

Very occasionally, the official admitted, “something falls through the cracks”.

In a previous statement the Agency told Jewish News that the requirements for proving Jewish status were not the same as halacha, or Jewish law, so on occasion the statement of a rabbi or bet din were not sufficient.