Hundreds of American Jews begin new lives in Israel

BEN GURION AIRPORT, Israel -- In the face of Mideast violence, nearly 400 Americans moved to Israel Tuesday to build new lives in the Jewish state -- the largest single group to arrive in years.

"We could have lived a cushy life, but that's not important," said, Tamar Rudy, a 27-year-old mother of four who left a legal assistant's job in Baltimore. "Raising our kids here is important."

More than 21 months of fighting and a worsening economy have kept many immigrants away. There were 45,000 newcomers to Israel last year, compared with 60,000 in 2000, according to the Jewish Agency, a quasi-government group that brings immigrants to Israel.

Some of the immigrants who arrived Tuesday said they were tired of waiting for the fighting to end. Others said a desire to be closer to the biblical homeland and to strengthen the Jewish state outweighed their fears.

Essential for others were grants of $5,000 each donated by American Evangelical Christians, who want to encourage Jews to live in the Holy Land -- which they see as foretold by the Bible.

Bishop Huey Harris of the First Pentecostal Tabernacle Church in Elkton, Md., raised $2,500 from his congregation.

Scriptures fulfilled

"What I'm seeing is the Scriptures being fulfilled right before our very eyes," he said from Maryland. "What's next? I'm looking for the church to be raptured, Jesus returning for the church ... and the Jews would receive him as their Messiah."

Some immigrants said they felt awkward about accepting the money but were grateful for it. Many Israelis have mixed feelings about the support of the Evangelicals, since their ultimate goal is to convert Jews to Christianity.

Israel, a country built on immigration, drew nearly 1 million newcomers from the former Soviet Union over the last decade, but bringing Western Jews, with their successful businesses and comfortable lives at home, has been a bigger challenge.

"The U.S. has the biggest Jewish community in the world -- 5.5 million people. That's more than Israel," Jewish Agency spokesman Efraim Lapid said.

The El Al charter flight from New York brought the first group of Jewish immigrants to arrive en masse in recent years. Half are to live in Beit Shemesh, a city just outside Jerusalem. Three families are moving to Gush Etzion, a bloc of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and several hundred other Israelis, many of them American immigrants, greeted the 371 newcomers with hugs in the shade of an airport hangar.