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LOVE. LIFE. HERE. ™
anet Tauro and Varda Ka-
hanovich made a deal up-
on which their lives depend.

Tauro, a foreign worker from
Mumbai, provides Kahanovich,
a 90-year-old Israeli woman liv-
ing on Kibbutz Maagan Michael,
warm and devoted care. In re-
turn, Kahanovich hopes to live
a long and happy life, well be-
yond her current age, with Tau-
ro as caregiver.

Morbid as it may be to con-
template an old woman’s pass-
ing, for Tauro and the 60,000
other foreign workers current-
ly employed as caregivers in Is-
raeli households, the stakes are
high. Work visas are patient-de-
pendent and are granted for four
years and three months, with no
extensions or opportunities for
reassignment in the event of the
elder person’s death.

Following the patient’s
death, a caretaker must return
to his or her country of origin,
terminating a source of income
that has provided countless op-
portunities for their families.

The lots of the elderly and the
caretaker are intertwined.

The situation of Tauro and
Kahanovich is a familiar one in
the Jewish state.

“Today the foreign caregiv-
er that lives with the patient —
this is the most common way to
grow old in Israel,” said Yaron
Bengera, vice president of Yad
Beyad, a Tel Aviv-based agen-
cy that recruits foreign workers.

“In the past, patients would
be taken care of by their family,
but this is changing fast. With
more capitalism and more de-
manding lives, it gets harder.”
There is a consensus among
Israelis that caring for the elder-
ly is demanding work. Many se-
nior citizens require constant
supervision and assistance. De-
spite their best efforts, working
adults — balancing careers and
young families — buckle under
the pressures of modern life in
Israel and are unable to provide
adequate care for their aging
parents without hiring help.

THE GOOD LIFE
Varda Kahanovich (left) bonds with her caretaker, Janet Tauro.

Yad Beyad helps Israeli fam-
ilies find the right caregiver to
suit their specific needs. The
agency also supports foreign
workers, providing information
about their rights and cultural
resources, and counseling them
to ensure their success as care-
takers. In the case of Tauro and
Kahanovich, a perfect match
was made.

“I was astonished to see
such a beautiful girl. She is my
friend,” said Edna Oren, re-
counting the day that Tauro
first arrived at Maagan Michael
to take care of her twin sister.

In this case, the culture
shock was minimal since Tauro
had previous experience work-
ing in another Israeli home and
she had even learned Hebrew.

“We are so lucky,” said Oren.

“There are not many people like
Janet. She has two brains, not
one, and she has four hands. She
even learned to sing ‘Hatikvah,’
” the Israeli national anthem.

Tauro said she works as a
caretaker but also works “from
my heart.” In her first job as a
caretaker, she looked up Israeli
songs on YouTube, singing and
dancing with the woman she
served. She even learned her pa-
tient’s style of cooking.

“My motive is to make her
feel like she is living in her own
house and can make her own de-
cisions,” Tauro said of Kahanov-
ich. The system is not without
faults. Many foreign workers
suffer emotional distress, hav-
ing been separated from their
children and families abroad.

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