JERUSALEM (JTA) — A plane carrying 232 new immigrants from North America landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport.
The El Al charter flight for the aliyah organization Nefesh B’Nefesh and the Jewish Agency, which left New York on Tuesday, landed in Israel early Wednesday morning.
The new immigrants range in age from 5 months to 95 years, and include 26 young people who will enter the army upon their arrival.
Forty of the new immigrants are married and 60 are single, according to Nefesh B’Nefesh.
Nefesh B’Nefesh and the Jewish Agency are scheduled to bring three chartered planes full of new immigrants to Israel this summer, and eight more flights are set to have blocks of seats set aside for new immigrants.
"The series of flights with new immigrants arriving from North America in the coming weeks expresses to my joy the fruitful partnership that exists between the Jewish Agency for Israel and Nefesh B’Nefesh," said Natan Sharansky, chairman of the Jewish Agency. “I have no doubt that this partnership between these two organizations is a blessed and winning combination."
About 5,000 North American and British Jews are expected to make aliyah in 2010, a 20 percent increase over the previous year, according to Nefesh B’Nefesh.
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