Demographics, sort of:
As of August, 2010, there were 52,000 residents in Karmiel, comprising about 15,000 homes. The average age in Karmiel is 39, which points to a relatively young population.
From the beginning of 1990 Karmiel has absorbed about 20,000 immigrants, most of them from the Soviet Republic. In addition during this time an equal number of families from other parts of Israel have moved to Karmiel in order to improve the quality of life.
Many of Karmiel's residents are from the "founding families", a fact which attests to roots and a love of the city.
About 60% of the residents are native Israelis and veteran immigrants.
About 40% of the residents are immigrants from 75 countries around the world.
Some Karmiel related websites:
BTW, "K"armiel is spelled with a K, not a "C" to differentiate it from Carmel (Haifa
Check out the website, http://www.karmiel.muni.il/openningeng.asp.
I made aliyah in 1985 and came directly to Karmiel where I lived in the mercaz haklitah for 8 months. When I came here, Karmiel had less that 20,000 people. Since I moved from a small town in PA (also about 20, 000 souls), I felt very much at home, even with the cultural and language differences. I can remember when we hit the 25,000 mark. It was a big deal, because we were now a 'city,' rather than a town, and entitled to our first traffic light! People from large metropolitan areas may feel out of place here. This is a typical small town where everyone knows everyone's business.
Today there are about 52,000 residents, about 1/3 of whom are from the former Soviet Union , so the 'second' language in Karmiel is Russian. If you speak Yiddish, it is possible to communicate with the older Russians, many of whom have never learned Hebrew. The town is relatively young, however, with a median age of 39 and 670-680 births in 2009. Karmiel is super kid-friendly. About 700 Arab families live in Karmiel.
The economy is similar to that of any American small town, i.e., retail shops, some service businesses. There are a few factories in the industrial area, but they are generally outsourced manufacturing arms of corporate offices found in the center of the country. In other words, CEOs and CFO's don't live here, but hourly workers do.
Karmiel is a primarily secular city. Because of our proximity to the Arab villages (This is the Galil, after all, where Jews are not the demographic majority), many business owners, security personnel, professionals and hourly workers are Arab. Pubs, restaurants and many stores are open 7 days a week, including 2 fairly large (Russian staffed) supermarkets which sell pork and pork products as well as a number of smaller neighborhood minimarkets which do the same, but may be closed on Saturdays. The municipal cultural center presents concerts, etc. on Friday nites and occasional children’s shows on Saturday during the day. The local parks are all open 7 days. The local bus service ends around 4 p.m. on Fridays and starts again around 4 p.m. on Saturdays, but taxis run 7 days.
As our mayor stated recently, it would be a disaster to us if the local Arabs were to withdraw from participating in our economy. Many of the Arab residents in the area are practicing Christians as are some of the immigrants from the FSO, and there has been talk of building a church in the industrial area to serve their needs. As our mayor has said, Karmiel is an open city in a democratic nation. NEWS FLASH!!! A deputy mayor of Karmiel was fired this week (Nov. 2010) for speaking out against the 'Arabization' of the Galilee and against renting/selling apartments to our Arab neighbors.
There are relatively few English speakers in Karmiel. I would guess it is representative of the country as a whole which has, I believe, less than 5% overall native English speaking residents. (I could be wrong about this percentage).
accessed 27.7.09 with note: "This is a list of countries of the world sorted by the total English-speaking population in that country. This includes both native speakers and second language speakers of English. Statistics on second language speakers are usually imprecise, in part because there is no widely agreed definition of second language speakers, and some numbers have been calculated by Wikipedia editors from data in other sources, so these figures should be treated with caution."
The 100,000 figure may be low considering that English is de facto the second language of speakers of both Hebrew and Arabic. It is the main language for external commerce and tourism, and a required language for all Jewish and Arab schools, and for the universities (which teach in Hebrew).[14][15]"
Like the other immigrant groups, many of these are elderly olim who have either been here a long time, like me, or who retired here from English speaking countries. Karmiel is a great place to retire to or raise kids...relatively low drug and alcohol use and crime rate, generally young population, lots of child-centered activities, much lower cost of living than the center of the country, and pretty decent public services.
Karmiel is also the home of the ORT Braude College which started as a 2-year community college, but which is now an accredited 4 year academic institution, providing B.Sc. degrees as well as certification in Practical Engineering.
The town is lovely and regularly wins the annual national competition for beauty & cleanliness. We have lovely gardens and parks--as I said, it's a bedroom community for young families.
It's possible to manage in Karmiel without a car. The town was laid out for walking when it was originally planned. I used to be able to walk anywhere in the city within 20 minutes. All that has changed since we have more than doubled in size since I arrived, but, if you know where to find them, there are flights of steps from everywhere to everywhere and lots of buses and taxis.
Parking is a problem. When the city was conceived, the planners figured on one car per every four families. NO ONE in his wildest imagination foresaw an Israeli economy that included 2/3 car families!!
In short, if you like the idea of living in a small town atmosphere (my friend went to the bank to take out a cash advance on her foreign credit card and was informed that Sholom X did this all the time too!--small town lack of privacy), where kids can go out and play safely without constant supervision and where teenagers routinely stay out safely until the wee hrs of the morning during the summer, just chatting on benches or hanging out, if you are willing to commute to work or find some way to work from home or have the language, patience, financial resources and sheer nerve it takes to open a business in this country, if you can get over being a stimulation-junkie from big city living (the nearest movie theatre is 1/2 hr-3/4 hr away), and if you don't mind an influx of literally THOUSANDS of people once a year for the International Dance Festival, Y'all come!!!
Personal observations:
- No one invited me to make aliyah to
- "Cacha ze" --roughly, "that's the way it is." was one of the first phrases of Hebrew I learned. Trying to turn
- Any sentence that begins with "Well, in the
- Correspondingly, any sentence that contains the phrase "it makes sense that" is doomed.
- Leave your 'chip' at the airport.
Keep your sunny side up!
