Trip to LA – Aliyah Interview and Notary
We just returned from a trip to LA. We went to attend the Bar Mitzvah of one of our close friends. We also took with us all of our medical diplomas and board certifications in order to have them notarized by an Israeli notary at the Israeli Consulate. (There isn’t one in Phoenix) I was also able to schedule our Aliyah interview with a JAFI (Jewish Agency for Israel) representative, the last remaining item needed to process our Aliyah application. This is done at the Jewish Federation Building in LA (you guessed it – it can’t be done in Phoenix).
So we show up at the address of the Israeli Consulate, on Wilshire Boulevard. There’s no sign or marking of any kind on the building saying its the Consulate. We check in with the lady behind the security desk in the lobby who tells us that we can bring our documents with us but nothing else. No bags, purses, or even cellphones. She tells us we should come back once we’ve rid ourselves of these items. Oh, and by the way, the guy in mini-mart across the lobby will rent you a locker for three dollars. So we rent the locker, deposit our phones, purse, etc, then return to the lady at the desk. She takes our name and waves us to the elevator man in the center of the lobby, who directs us to the elevator, tells us the correct floor and that its right out of the elevator then two lefts to the consulate.
OK, in we go and up we go, all six of us. After a few lefts and a few rights down blank hallways with unmarked doors we arrive at a small room with an airport gate style bank of chairs, a few people waiting patiently, a security camera, and a small speaker next to a closed door at the opposite end of the room. After several minutes, the speaker crackles to life with some Hebrew phrases. A man stands up and answers in Hebrew. A buzzer sounds, causing the man to quickly grab the door and pull it open. He disappears inside, and we go back to waiting patiently, wondering if we’ll be able to understand what the speaker is saying and if we’ll be able to grab the door quickly enough before the buzzing stops when its our turn. The next time the speakers crackles to life, it speaks Hebrew-accented english. A woman stands up, answers, and is successfully buzzed inside. By now we’ve got it figured out. And just in time, because we’re next. We finally get buzzed in to another tiny room with a single person manning the airport style X-ray machine for our document portfolio and the walk thru magnetometer. After all six of us complete the security screen, another door is unlocked and we enter the inner sanctum. A larger waiting area with six counters with bank-style bullet proof glass windows with a small metal cut-out underneath the center of each glass thru which to pass a credit card or small piece of paper, and a phone with which to communicate with the staff person on the other side of the glass. When I show the woman my portfolio of 15 separate documents to notarize, her eyes pop out. She says, “Yesterday I looked at the schedule for today and saw that someone said they had 15 documents, I thought it must be a typo – and here you are!” It turns out she’s from Ra’anana, and says we’ll love it there, and that its the best place to live in all of Israel. After an hour or so, we get all the notarizations done, just in time to be 10 minutes late to the Jewish Federation building, 20 minutes away, also on Wilshire boulevard.
This time, we all enter through security, and are directed to wait in the lobby. a few minutes later, the JAFI woman comes down the elevator and takes us upstairs to her office. There’s no room in her tiny office for our four kids, so they wait outside in a random unused office cubicle. I say “that’s OK, this should only take a few minutes, right?” “About an hour and a half,” she says. Thank God for iPhones and iPads. Anyway, the interview went well. She reviewed all of our documents, mostly the same ones we had already uploaded on the Nefesh/JAFI website, copies them, and certifies that she saw them personally. Then she asks us questions about our growing up, connection to the Jewish community, etc. Then she tells us how the process works from here, and reviews some of the Aliyah benefits that we can expect. She tell us that once we get a visa, which will occur once she submits our application for formal approval, we will have six months to actually get to Israel. Therefore, she is going to hold our application and submit it in December or January. She says she doesn’t foresee any issues, and that we have “an easy file.” We thank her, collect our kids, and then drive an hour and a half to the other side of the valley to where the Bar Mitzvah starts that evening….
I’m pretty sure we have just completed the formal Aliyah application process. And did I mention that this all occurred on Tu-B’Av? Now we just wait until the end of the year to formally submit, then receive the visa, then book our flights.
In the meantime, we will focus on setting up the kids for schools, deciding where to live exactly in Ra’anana and renting an apt, getting jobs, sending in our notarized diplomas to begin the medical licensing process, and finishing remodeling our house so we can either rent or sell it….