Cabbies and Millionaires

Of the 400,000 Israelis who have immigrated to the U.S., about 250,000 have settled in New York City. The chief of the urban design group in the administration of Mayor Ed Koch is Raquel Ramati, an Israeli who is also a U.S. citizen. Elias Yeheskel, 30, a dual citizen, is an adviser to the New York State office for motion picture and TV development. At New York University, when an Israeli professor and his ten graduate students, all Israelis, decided to conduct classes in Hebrew, a dean asked, "Is this Tel Aviv University or is it N. Y.U&#quot; When a senior Israeli politician sought a cab at Kennedy Airport recently, he encountered a score of Israeli drivers. Annoyed at seeing all those Emigres, he went down the line and found a Lebanese. Israelis have no trouble finding jobs. They usually speak at least some English and often come with money to invest, accumulated from the sale of their homes, cars and other possessions back in Israel. The most recent arrivals are men in their 20s or early 30s, many of them professionals or skilled workers. Besides driving taxis, they are engaged in a host of businesses, most visibly clothing boutiques. Many are Israeli trained doctors, scientists, engineers and teachers. The Israelis have their own weekly newspaper, Our Israel, published in New York (circ. 30,000 per week). They also have their own Sunday morning television show in the New York area, Isravision, and a three-hour daily radio program.

Energies thwarted in Israel often come bursting forth in the U.S. Yigal Mizrahi, 27, a former cabaret owner in Tel Aviv who went to New York in 1975, has opened an Israeli nightclub in New York called Peacock's Piano Bar. Customers dance the hora on its oversize dance floor, "I miss Israel," Mizrahi says. "That's why I started this club. I wanted to give Israelis in America some of the spirit of home." Another successful immigrant is Chaim Zitman, 34, who left Israel 13 years ago as a student, and has become a millionaire selling electronic equipment. Zitman is now a U.S. citizen, but like many emigrants he has also kept his Israeli passport. There are many more opportunities in America, he says. "But to give up my Israeli passport would be a psychological disaster, like pulling the roots out of my soul. I'm going back to Israel some day, but I don't know when."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.