HADERA, Israel — For Lidija Ajar, life as a new immigrant is a mixed blessing.
On the one hand, she is grateful to be in Israel, far from the bombs pounding Belgrade. On the other, she is farther away than ever from her draft-age husband, who cannot leave Yugoslavia.
Tears streaming down her cheeks, she recalls a recent and particularly agonizing cross-continental telephone conversation. “My husband asked me to teach the kids Serbo-Croatian so he can understand them when he sees them again.”
She does not know when that will be. “The children ask me every day when father will come to see where they live.”
In her worst nightmares, there is no reunion.
Ajar arrived in Israel April 15 with her young children and sister-in-law Melita. Now staying at an absorption center run by the Jewish Agency for Israel, she embodies the paradox faced by many Balkan refugees: While the Jewish state has welcomed them with open arms, the prospect of starting over is more than daunting.
“When I explain how I am feeling, I must cry,” Ajar says. “What will I do after six months?” the period during which Israel provides free apartments, food, clothing, education and Hebrew training to newcomers.
“We provide a soft landing for immigrants getting off the plane,” says Mike Rosenberg, director general of the Jewish Agency’s immigration and absorption department. “This is where money to [the agency] goes.”
The Israeli effort to shelter Yugoslavian Jews began in mid-April. Then, the Jewish Agency invited 80 young Yugoslavians staying in Budapest to visit Israel on a pilot trip exposing them to life in the Jewish state.
The guests met with educational advisers and employment counselors, visited colleges and universities, and toured the country. Two of the young adults have already become new immigrants; another 22 are in the process of changing their status from tourist to immigrant.
Many more are assessing Israel, trying it on for size.
“Everything is like a perfect picture wherever I look,” says Vladislav Ban, a 17-year-old from Subodica, Yugoslavia, who has been in Israel a month. “Everything is new — the roads, the houses, stores, cities.”
Still, Israel is not his homeland.
“I feel an emotional connection to Israel but it’s much stronger to Yugoslavia because everything I learned, I learned there,” says the teen, who is staying at Hadassah Neurim Youth Aliyah Village.
There, the young Yugoslavians live alongside Russian and Ethiopian youth while trying to make sense of all that has happened in recent months.
“They are happy to be rescued, but they are angry,” says Eli Amir, director general of the Jewish Agency’s youth aliyah institutions.
But for some immigrants, a sense of relief overrides feelings of anger and longing.
Shortly after the first group of young Yugoslavians arrived, another group comprised of 48 mothers and children touched down at Ben-Gurion Airport.
In that group was Ivan Percic, who managed to escape Yugoslavia via Croatia and travel to the Middle East with his wife and two children. For now, the family resides at an absorption center in Ra’anana.
The Percics, unlike some other refugees in their situation, are 100 percent certain they want to forge a life in Israel.
“I recognize it somehow as my homeland,” Ivan Percic says. “If there’s anywhere I belong, it is here.”