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."
That is what happen to my uncle, for 10 years he can only work as factory worker...part time too. In SU he was mechanical engineer. Israel government pay for half his apartment, only way he could get one.
That is true, but least one forget the 6 million Poles who die in Concentration camps, 22 million Russian civilians, 1 million yugoslavs, 1 million Greeks, 1 million Italians (after it switch sides), 2-4 million French and few million Germans who less then agree with Hitler.
Fine, do not let in the communists...or is it Russians, Poles, others you blame directly as whole peoples...in which case that is blatent racist. Considering that Christianity also grow from Israel, Christians have all rights to visit or live in lands of our Messiah...or will you deny that to us?
Any country is allowed to restrict immigration to retain the character of it's nation. Must France allow unlimited Russian immigration? Japan? United States? They don't. Neither does Israel.
The "Right of Return" applied only to Jews. If you call that racist you must call every nation on the planet racist, including Russia. Also, last I heard, Christianity was a religion, not a racial grouping.
So, to answer your question, no, Christians or Russians or anyone else who is not Israeli or Jewish do not have an automatic right to migrate to Israel, or anywhere else for that matter. Thank G-d for that. The whole point of Israel is to have a Jewish state where we can live without persecution, something we have faced in Russia and everywhere else.
Oh, and the line about kidnapping, how many historical sources do you want that from? Russia's history is not a pretty one. For that matter, neither is anyone else's. I will state flatly that the United States committed genocide against Native Americans in the early years of the nation. Where did I learn that? In American public schools, of course. That's an ugly piece of history that Americans face up to. It doesn't make the U.S. any less free, open, tolerant, or great today. That was then this is now.
You can deny Russia's darkly anti-Semitic or face up to it and make today's Russia a very different place indeed. I have never accused you of anti-Semitism. I have never accused any living Russian of taking part in a pogrom. However, history clearly shows Russia had violent anti-Semitism and pogroms. If Russia is truly to be a great, prosperous, tolerant, and free nation (which I certainly hope it is becoming) it must face it's past just as America did.
Israel does not practice apartheid. We leave that to the Arabs.
Muslims (about 17-18% of the population), Druze (1%), and Christians (a fraction of a percent) who live in Israel are free to continue to live here, to practice their religion, to speak their languages, to enjoy their native cultures. Do you know how much time and money is spent on Russian language programming by the Israel Broadcasting Authority to accommodate the ethic Russian population? I think not. There is no restriction on Orthodox Russians attending Orthodox churches, what few exist in the country.
Israel is primarily a Jewish state. That does not mean "everyone else get out". Everyone else who has Israeli citizenship has all the rights and benefits that conveys. However, no free nation has open immigration. Israel only has open immigration for Jews. There are times and circumstances when non-Jewish immigrants are permitted into the country to live, and we have an estimated 250,000 Russians whom the rabbinate does not consider Jewish. Most do have Jewish relatives and they are counted (by their own choice) as part of the Jewish population. Most integrate into Israeli society.
So, if you consider that you cannot just move to Israel if you want to racist or apartheid, fine. Then every nation in the world is equally racist. Some, like Japan, are more so, as they have some of the most restrictive immigration laws in the world. Funny, I've never heard the term apartheid applied to the Japanese. Have you?
Right of Return is one grandparent of either side...which is Israeli law and open to non jews, obviously.
Anti-Americanism (the United States is part of the West, no?) will get you nowhere on Free Republic. It will make you decidedly unpopular.
Yes, the idea was to allow a very liberal definition of "who is a Jew" to allow those living Jewish lives and facing persecution for it to enter Israel. The net result has been to let in a lot of (about 250,000) non-Jews. IMHO, it is greatly abused by people who are not Zionists, who do not really identify as Jews, and who don't really belong in the country. They had to claim to be Jewish and to have a rabbi sign a letter to that effect to immigrate, or that, at least according to Israeli law, is how it's supposed to be done.
The issue of "who is a Jew" is a hotly debated one in Israel. The intention was NEVER to let in non-Jews.
Six million Poles and 22 million Russians did NOT die in concentration camps. Rather, most died fighting Nazism. They, too, are victims of Hitler and the Nazis and should be remembered and honored. However, Hitler never had a plan to exterminate all Poles and Russians as he did Jews and Roma (gypsies). I noticed you didn't mention the 3 million Roma dead. By percentage of the population they lost more than the Jewish people did.
You should know, RussianConservative, that doctors trained in Russia have to re-study in order to qualify as doctors in the U.S. or Israel. That's just a fact. That doesn't mean that Russian doctors aren't perhaps better than doctors from countries in other areas.
ONLY A MATTER OF TIME I FEAR
My father went to med school in Poland. When he moved to Israel, he had to retake one year and redo his residence.(He was then drafted and served as a naval surgeon.) When he emmigrated to America, he had to redo his residence here.
Of the 6 million Poles who died in WW2, 1/2 were Jews. About 1 in 5 Poles were killed during World War 2. A few hundred thousand civilians also died at the hands of the Soviets. Personally, I believe that WWII ended only when the last Soviet soldier left Poland.
Again truth be told - the reason so many Jews were to be found in the east - not all inside Russia - but in Austria-Hungry and Poland and Ottoman Turkey - was because they were kicked out in the West. Norman England was the first "judenfrie" nation in Europe. Even in these eastern havens they were restricted. Jews for example payed a dhimmi tax to the Turks just like the Christians and had pogroms fall on them as well - but are not remembered well by Westerners.
History is not as simple as we all like to think.
English King Edward 1st expelled all Jews in 1290 AD and confiscated their wealth. It took 400 years for the Jews to return when English dictator, Oliver Cromwell asked the Jews to return to England to re-boost English international trade.
The Russian pogroms date back only to 1881-1884 when a wave of Jewish pogroms swept southern Russia after the assasination of Czar Alexander II the emancipator of the Serfs.
The communist Soviets (who were of many ethnic and religous backgrounds) hated all minorities that had a tradition that had the potential to divert loyalty away from teh communist party. So Soviet communists also discriminated against Jews because of that - many times those persecuting Jews were party memebers who happened to be Jews themselves.
Actually, I can make the case that that was when the Great War (WW1) finally ended.
By the way, most Hisidics and Orthodox Jews not in least Zionists...why? Because Zionist is nationalistic not religious and most peoples living on Kabutzies atheists.
Ok, if you are so smart, 12 million die in concentration camps, mostly located in Poland...who were other 6 million? As for Russian civilians, they do not die in concentration camps, I never say such, and they do not die fighting Germans...unless you consider example of 40,000 killed in Stalingrad on first day of air bombardment as "fighting". Most killed in mass murder or executions or bombardments or starved. Another 8 million Russian soldier die in battle or slave camps.
Wrong, Hitler had all measure to clear Poland of all Poles, as it was first wave for Liebensroumen...can't have colony land if no land available.
Do some serious reading:
Czechs & Slovaks were to be Germanized.
Poles, exterminated or sent off as Ouslander Arbieten (foreign worker: slave) in Germany.
Russians to be cleared out from all cities, mostly killed off the rest left in small villages as slave labor, agricultural.
Jews, exterminated.
Roma, exterminated
Roma were mostly killed off in Yugoslavia and Russia, where they have highest percentages (rest is in Romania but as allie, Romania did not let Hitler have his way). Those rolled up into general death toll.
How much is that because of skill or how much because to allow otherwise would flood markets with doctors, causing competition, lower incomes for doctors and such?
To allow otherwise would allow to many doctors in markets to keep evil competition from showing its face...this way, numbers kept small with obstacles....no compeitition...better revenue. Of course you get screwed...but you have insurance for that.
See post #52. Also, why do you want so badly to believe that Russian doctors are as highly trained and skilled as Americans? I'm sorry if that hurts your feelings, but get serious.
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