Erez Aheret: South Tel Aviv

The journal “Erez Aheret”, in volume 62 (August – September 2011) presented to the Hebrew reader a fascinating description of south Tel Aviv. According to the editorial, “South Tel Aviv is the backyard of the State of Israel. In the area, alongside the veteran residents of the place, there are tens of thousands of people whose fate was unkind to them and who fled to the “first Hebrew city” in order to try their fortune there. At the conclusion of the editorial it is written: “What is done in the neighborhoods of south Tel Aviv is a national challenge for which we must take responsibility. The people already there, live under our sovereignty and that means that they are our direct responsibility. The time has come to deal with them as we would want persecuted Jews or Jews seeking a better salary at the beginning of the twentieth century to be dealt with”. We might add here, on this site, that the responsibility also falls on the Catholic Church because many of those living in these neighborhoods are our brothers and sisters in faith.

The review includes among the fascinating articles:

- Rivka Rosner describes the policy of the State with regard to the migrant workers and asylum seekers in Israel. Rosner writes at the beginning of her article: “The numbers tell the story: In the last two decades about 800 thousand non-Jews entered the State of Israel for long periods, constituting more than 10% of the population of the country. These incomers can be divided into different sub-groups, the main ones being: between 250 and 400 thousand migrant workers (of whom more than half are illegal), more than 320 thousand natives of the former Soviet Union who migrated to Israel under the Law of Return although they are not Jewish, 130 thousand family migrants (most of them Palestinians) and about 40 thousand asylum seekers (most from Sudan and Eritrea).”

- Micha Odenheimer writes an article describing the situation of the Eritrean asylum seekers – today more than 20 thousand in the country.

- Meir Azeri, a Reform rabbi, head of Beit Daniel, describes the religious life of the migrants from Africa. Rabbi Azeri writes: “In this city (Tel Aviv), which has already become a kind of collage, there are many migrant workers and asylum seekers. Many of these people, who live on the margins of the city space, are not only looking for a living and self fulfillment, but also for a community and bit of the atmosphere of their homelands, which they abandoned because of different reasons, and also for the proximity of God. Their desire is met in the prayer halls of the different religions that have appeared in the streets of the city.”

Reading this review encourages us, members of the Hebrew speaking Church in this country, to increase our efforts in the midst of the migrants who live within the Jewish, Hebrew speaking society.

Read a summary of the review on the Erez Aheret site