With America conquered, Nefesh B'Nefesh sets sights on U.K.

Having taken over the process to bring Jewish immigrants from North America to Israel, Nefesh B'Nefesh is now pressing the Jewish Agency for Israel to cede to the private immigration assistance group its aliyah operations in Great Britain.

"We want the same agreement that is in place for aliyah from the United States to be applied to Britain as well," NBN's vice president, Erez Halfon, told Anglo File this week. "We discussed this issue in meetings with [JAFI's outgoing director-general] Moshe Vigdor and [the director-general of its aliyah department] Eli Cohen, starting some two, three months ago. We are now waiting for an answer."

A Jewish Agency spokesman, however, said there are "currently no official negotiations between NBN and the Jewish Agency about implementing an agreement similar to that for North America vis-a-vis the U.K."

In the summer of 2008, JAFI and NBN announced a groundbreaking so-called collaborative venture, which gave NBN primary operational responsibility for aliyah in North America, while JAFI retained its right to determine potential immigrants' eligibility. At present, NBN in the U.K. strictly offers additional grants and assistance with bureaucratic hurdles to immigrants.

At an interview in his Jerusalem office in December, Halfon had flatly denied that his organization sought to take over British immigration. Yet several Anglo immigration professionals said they weren't surprised to hear about NBN's intentions to expand its role in the U.K. "We realized this would eventually happen," said Natie Shevel, the Israel director for the United Jewish Israel Appeal, which assists British immigrants. "What's important to us is that whatever organization deals with aliyah...continues to improve the services to the olim."

Some observers understood Halfon's comments as the overture to a hostile takeover attempt: NBN "wants to create a buzz, so that people start talking about it and ask the Jewish Agency why it doesn't cede its U.K. operations to NBN," one immigration official said.

However, a senior official familiar with the issue suggested JAFI might actually be in favor of NBN taking over aliyah from Britain, thus allowing the agency to cut back on its U.K. operations. "If you can save money in one place, you have more money for other projects," the source said, referring to JAFI's recently formulated shift away from its traditional focus on immigration.

As reported by Anglo File, JAFI chairman Natan Sharansky recently started placing the preservation of Jewish identity above the promotion of aliyah. "Especially in times of financial constraints it makes sense to prioritize one's resources and focus on one goal at the expense of another, especially if there is an organization with money following in your footsteps," the official said.

Sharansky is "the key person" in a supposed deal between the two bodies, the source added. His strategic change in JAFI's main mission, his close friendship with NBN co-founder Tony Gelbart and the 2008 agreement indicate that JAFI might agree to cede its U.K. aliyah operation to NBN, the official said.

NBN recently updated its Web site to include sections in French and Spanish, but denied rumors the move signaled intentions to expand to non-English speaking countries. "We have more than enough to do at the moment," Halfon said.

The site's French section aims primarily at potential immigrants from Quebec, says Danny Oberman, NBN's vice president for Israel operations. The decision to offer Spanish - and soon other languages - was made after his organization analyzed the traffic on its Web site. "We saw that Jewish communities for example in South America were searching [on our site] for information about aliyah using Google Translate, so we figured why should they use that service when we can translate that directly," he said.