Posted on 08/04/2004 5:02:48 AM PDT by A. Pole
As the Iron Curtain began to fall, Igor Dzhadan left the Soviet Union with his family, bound for Israel and a longforbidden opportunity.
Dzhadan was luckier than most of the 11,000 Soviet doctors who rushed to Israel around the same time, 1990, under Israel's Law of Return. He was able to continue practice and research. Still, he returned to Russia in 2001 to become an editor at Moscow's Jewish News Agency.
"It was interesting for me to live in a Jewish state, but I feel more comfortable in Russia," Dzhadan said. "I knew from the experience of others that I could find work here and my life prospects wouldn't be worse than in Israel."
Dzhadan is part of a tide of emigrants who have returned to Russia from Israel over a litany of concerns: the second intifada, Israel's worsening economy, an inability to adapt to cultural and social realities. According to a study released this March, at least 50,000 emigrants returned from Israel from 2001 to 2003.
The exodus has stirred up a discussion in Israel, said Boruch Gorin, head of the public relations department at the Russian Federation of Jewish Communities, which commissioned the study. On the one hand, millions of Jews already live outside Israel. On the other hand, "living in Israel is an ideology, and tthat the people who sought a shelter in the country have been leaving is a blow to the ideology," he said.
Israel had two waves of Russian immigration that altogether boosted its population from 5 million to 6 million, according to Gorin. In the first wave, 200,000 Jews left the Soviet Union in the 1970s. The second wave, which coincided with perestroika in 1986, brought 800,000 more Soviet Jews.
Under the Law of Return, anyone having at least one Jewish grandparent may seek citizenship.
Recently, however, Israel has seen its population growth subside, with citizens leaving not only for Russia, but also Europe and the United States. Only 20,000 to 30,000 immigrants entered Israel from 2001 to 2003, which was for the first time less than the outflow, Gorin said, citing the study.
According to the Israeli Embassy in Moscow, up to 100,000 Jews left Russia annually in the 1990s; last year the number was down to 10,000.
At first, emigrants, mostly businessmen, began venturing back to Russia in 1995 in small numbers, Gorin said. Russia beckoned them then with greater economic potential and relative political and economic stability, Gorin said.
One such businessman was Anton Nossik, who came back in 1997 because, he said, his ambitions had outgrown the Israeli market. He left Russia in 1990 after graduating from college as a surgeon. He could not land a job in medicine and began working as a journalist.
His big success came in 1996, when he started a web design company and won orders to create web sites for the Museum and the Central Bank of Israel and the Eastern European department of the Foreign Ministry.
"In principle, everything was great and successful," Nossik said. "I won as many tenders as were available. But confining your business to a small and remote country is like hobbling a horse."
Nossik, 38, has created many high-profile Internet news sites in Russia, where, he said, the number of Internet users is 14.6 million, compared to just 2.2 million in Israel. His most successful news portals are Lenta.ru, Gazeta.ru and Newsru.com.
The second tide of returns began in 2000, as the Russian economy developed sufficiently for returnees to find jobs with greater ease, sometimes within companies created by Jewish businessmen who returned in the late '90s.
At the same time, the start of the second intifada, in 2000, damaged security in Israel and, along with it, the investment and employment climate.
Although Dzhadan, 40, did not lose his job, he had to face military service. He was twice called to serve in heavy fighting areas, in Bethlehem and Hebron.
"I had to wait during operations to see whether there would be any wounded that I would have to treat," he said. "I saw dead bodies."
The 23-day conscriptions caused Dzhadan to lose his salary at work, and state compensation was hard to receive, he said, due to a tangled bureaucracy.
Another reason for returning was what Dzhadan called the "sectarian" structure of the society. In order to rent an apartment or find a job, a person has to operate through members of his party or immigrants from the same country or area.
"I didn't like it," he said. "I'm used to operating in an open society where people don't ask you to what community you belong."
Gorin named several other reasons that prompt Soviet and Russian Jews to come back. One of them is that most highly educated immigrants have to take blue-collar jobs in Israel. "Doctors, physicians and mathematicians were cleaning the streets," Gorin said.
Also, immigrants from Russia largely lacked a Jewish identity, while at the same time they longed for the Russian culture they left behind. They fled the Soviet Union because of its state policy of discrimination against Jews and felt they could then return once that policy had seen its end.
The Jews that have come back find many signs that they can feel more at home in Russia than before, one of them being the appointment of Mikhail Fradkov, whose father is Jewish, to the post of prime minister.
According to Gorin, the Jewish Community Center in Moscow, with a wide range of sports facilities, an Internet cafe and a library, is one of the best in Europe. Moscow is also home to four Jewish universities, 10 schools, three newspapers and one online news agency, Gorin said.
Anti-Semitism remains a problem, certainly, but it "isn't the main form of xenophobia in the country" and looks less frightening than elsewhere in Europe, according to a 2003 Moscow Human Rights Bureau report. "Russia has been spared the surge in anti-Semitism that has disturbed the whole Western world in the past three years," the report said.
Nossik said he feels fairly safe as a Jew, and is more scared by random street crime. He said he walks around in traditional Jewish headwear, a kippah, but the only time he was attacked in the street was when Russia lost to Japan during the 2002 soccer World Cup. He happened to be in the way of an infuriated drunken crowd of fans.
"I don't see anti-Semitism," he said. "I don't see a position that a Jew can't occupy, especially after Fradkov's latest appointment." Russia's capitalist economy "allows you to exist regardless of your religious beliefs."
Most Jews -- including Nossik and Dzhadan -- that come back to live and work in Russia retain Israeli citizenship and travel to Israel on a steady basis, Gorin said. Dzhadan said he plans to visit friends in Israel, but would never return there for good because he belongs to Russian "civilization."
Nossik did not rule out living in Israel in the future. "When I drop out of business for age or health reasons, I could go to Israel to enjoy the cuisine and the nature," Nossik said. "It's a very beautiful and pleasant country."
My grandmother was from Breslitovsk, in what is now Belarus. It was Poland at the time. We have no family there now. Anyone who stayed was killed.
My father's maternal grandfather came from Russia, I am not exactly sure where. He ended up settling in Mukachevo (Munkach in Hungarian) in what was then Austria-Hungary, later Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, and now Ukraine. Most of my family on my father's side is from that area. They began leaving for British Palestine (now Israel) in 1926.
My uncle is a jew from Ukraine, he move to Israel with family...he was engineer in SU...now (when little work is available) he works as factory worker. Since he does not speak English, he is not allowed technical work. They live poor now.
Oh and one last thing, we poor unwanted Christians, particulary Orthodox Christians live in Israel for 2 thousand years now. Israel is not a Jewish only state.
"To begin with, Jews not herded into Pale."
The truth:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/pale.html
"Oh and one last thing, we poor unwanted Christians, particulary Orthodox Christians live in Israel for 2 thousand years now. Israel is not a Jewish only state."
Israel is the Jewish State. Are you surprised if you are unwelcome given your history? Israel is meant to be a safe-haven - it cannot be that while it lets in the very people from whom Jews have been fleeing.
Not only weren't Jews allowed to move to major cities, they were expelled en masse from Kiev. Yes, that's in Ukraine today, but it was under the Czar then.
No matter how you slice it the Russians do not have clean hands. A. Pole and Russian Conservative, rather than trying to rewrite history why not worry about building a tolerant society today? Denying a history of anti-Semitism, which is there, does not make you look good. Quite the contrary.
No nation in Europe with the sole exception of Ireland has failed to persecute their Jewish populations. None.
You got it upside down. Jews were not "hearded" into the Pale. The Pale which was acquired by Russia from Poland.
Russia like Scandinavian countries, United Kingdom and numerous other countries did not allow Jewish emmigration. Only in the XIX century Jews from conquered Polish territory were allowed to immigrate to Russia proper (which was much more attractive). But this immigration was limited until Bolshevik Revolution.
Ukraninian peasants and their descendants have long memory of their serfdom and until now there is a lot of resentment against "Polish pany and their overseers".
Just for your information - Poles (followed later by Serbs and Greeks) were the three nations which FIRST challenged Hitler militarily. But Poland alone was too weak to defeat Nazi Germany and you should not blame Poles that they lost!
Poland was the main nation in Europe which allowed mass immigration of Jews and gave them freedom to prosper and develop their culture. Even after Poland weakened, became poorer and less attractive place she should command grattitude.
Christians in Israel account for less than 1/2 of 1% of the population. Orthodox Christians account for a small percentage of that number. By contrast, Israel is 81% Jewish and 18% Muslim.
Israel is a Jewish state and the homeland of the Jewish people. Any attempt to deny that will come off as anti-Zionist and quite possibly anti-Semitic. Add a denial of Jewish history vis a vis Russian anti-Semitism and you really come off looking like something I don't think you want to look like.
Oh, and regarding forced conscription: only Jews were kidnapped from the age of 12 up and forced to serve a minimum of 25 years, with a forced indoctrination into Christianity. That is different from "all ethnic groups".
2. Russian medical doctors would have to be janitors in the U.S. as well because their training is not up to Israeli or American standards.
So in otherwords, Israel is or is not racist and aparthied? According to you it is...jews only rest get out. Which is it? A democracy or aparthied?
My folks were from a village a short distance from Lomza. It was good that the Tsar was such a hateful @%$^%#!, as nearly everyone left. Good thing they did.
Never try to rewrite history or cover up, rewriting history is what West does to East (and reality) every day, usually just trying to keep the western propaganda from stinking to much.
Fact of the mater, no one have clean hands, not jews nor christians nor nationalities of russians, english, jews or whom ever.
Russia, I think is a better place today, than it was in those days. Me? I'm an American forever.
Forced long term conscription for was introduced by Peter the Great LONG BEFORE Russia acquired significant number of Jewish subjects with former Polish territory (Pale). This oppressive draft system started to be reformed after Crimean war.
But I will grant you that very likely there was little accomodation to the religious background of the draftees. I do not know exact details.
As a point of fact, no ethnic group allowed (except Russians/Ukrainians) free immigration right within Russia. Only Germans...Volga Germans allowed immigrate in, and that was because they come and build factories. This was done for socio and economic reason.
REally? Funny, much of Western Europe with money fly daily to Moscow to pay for surgeries that they must then wait at in EU forever.
Actually immigrants to Israel with advanced degrees after are reduced to menial jobs. Why - it is because there are too many doctors over there.
There is a saying I heard from my Jewish friends: "When you are going to Munich - do not take beer with you, when you are going to Israel do not take your head".
Or there is a joke: in 1930's a new group of immigrants from Germany to Palestine was building a house for themselves in a Jewish settlement.
A curious onlooker noticed some constant murmur and whispering as they were passing bricks one to another in the line.
He came closer and heard - "Danke Herr Doctor, Bitte Herr Doctor, Danke Herr Doctor, Bitte Herr Doctor, ..."
As for percentages of population...the point of the question, that you are not answering from previous other poster is whether Christians allowed in? Heidi there state Israel is for Jews...as in other religions need not to apply....that is racist, period.
Oh and if one is to throw percentages around, Russian jews were 1% of Russian population, but Russia allows others to immigrate in, regardless of religion/ethnicity.
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