Dr. Alona Katlenikova arrives in Israel with daughter as part of the Masa Israel Journey NGO program; says transition intense and productive, but overall she is happy; hundreds more expected to arrive from former USSR and Latin America.
If the Immigration and Integration Ministry would ever need an educated young woman to be an example for a successful Aliyah, they should hire Dr. Alona Katlenikova.
The Jewish doctor from Kazakhstan has been in Israel for eight months, and the only negative thing she can say is that bank officials are a little slow, and they don’t bother to serve customers efficiently.
Other than that, Dr. Katlenikova thinks the Israeli health system is quite good, the weather is fine, and the local culture helps her connect with her Jewish roots.
If all goes well, she will soon pass the final licensing test of the Health Ministry and will become an Israeli doctor, as she tries to fulfill her dream of working in the emergency room at the Soroka Hospital in Be’er Sheva.
Dr. Katlenikova, 31, came to Israel as part of the “doctor’s journey” program of the Masa Israel Journey NGO which was founded by the Jewish Agency and the Israeli government.
As part of the program, some 1,000 Jewish doctors from abroad made Aliyah in the past decade.
This week, the organization announced that in light of the health system’s personnel shortage, it decided to expand the program, so in the next few months, 220 additional Jewish doctors are expected to arrive – under the Israeli Law of Return – from former Soviet Republics and 30 others from Latin America.
The Kazakh doctor first encountered the program four years ago, when Israeli doctors arrived in her hometown of Carengde and gave an emergency medicine course where she worked.
The idea to move to Israel was not far-fetched for Katlenikova, as her father and grandmother made Aliyah in the 1990s and settled in the city of Beit Shemesh.
But she couldn’t begin the process when it became clear that she would not be able to arrive in Israel with her daughter Anastasia, 10, whom she raises as a single parent.
