Holy bureaucracy!
Everyone warned me about the Israeli bureaucracy. “It’s terrible” they said. “Imagine the worst bureaucracy you ever encountered and multiply it with ten!” I used to shrug and smile. I grew up in Germany, everyone! I grew up with bureaucracy that is world famous, Germany is the godmother of all bureaucracies. If you really want to laugh at ridiculous rules and complicated obsolete processes, go and make your tax declaration in Berlin or Düsseldorf. Kafka didn’t take his material out of thin air, it was inspired by reality. So I was pretty confident that the Israeli administration would be a walk over. I was wrong.
I submitted all my paperwork (that took me about a year and a half to gather as I needed to deep search German archives for documents from the 1800s): birth certificates, police clearance, marriage certificate, passports. Apostilled, stamped, ready. I was so proud I finally had managed to find it all.
I anticipated that The Jewish Agency would translate everything themselves. Wrong, again! They want everything translated to English or Hebrew, then apostilled, then transmitted.
When I was about to ask why they didn’t tell me before I submitted everything and then had to wait a month for feedback, I remembered what everyone told me beforehand: “when you ask them why they didn’t tell you, they’ll ask you back why you didn’t ask!”.
So now I am back to square one: all the documents have been sent to be translated by authorised translators. Then they need to be apostilled again. And submitted, together with the originals, again.
Then I’ll wait for information what is missing in this round, just to be able to organise it, submit it and find out what’s missing next! If this continues a few more times, I might be making Aliyah by 2027, I guess!
Just kidding! I think it was my fault for not asking explicitly what format the documents should be. Now I know. Back at it, ready for the next round.
In the meantime I booked a ticket for a short trip to Israel with friends in October! Can’t wait!!