"ethnic Jews have been fleeing RuZZia every chance they get.
"https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/03/07/jews-returning-to-russia-from-israel/513764a0-a4d7-4909-bd0c-4da2bef45a9b/
Once again Tenshits ignorance is on full display. Now we'll get a diversion to another interpretation of what he really meant.
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JEWS RETURNING TO RUSSIA FROM ISRAEL
By Fred Hiatt
March 7, 1992
MOSCOW -- The shelves may be bare and the future uncertain, but an increasing number of Jews are reversing a historic process and returning from Israel to Russia and Ukraine.
Scores or hundreds are coming back each month. While they remain far fewer than the thousands still going the other way, their return is a striking reflection of changes in both countries -- of the demise of the Soviet Union, where many Jews once felt imprisoned, and of economic troubles in Israel, where golden optimism about mass immigration has been supplanted by job and housing woes.
The reverse migration is remarkable given the continuing downward spiral of living standards here and the fears of rekindled antisemitism. At the same time, the birth of democracy in Russia and Ukraine has persuaded at least some Jews to stake their futures here.
"One doesn't live only for not having problems," said a returning woman who asked to be identified only as Masha. In one of the ironies of the reverse emigration, the former refusenik asked that her identity be concealed not because she fears officials here, but because she owes money to Israel.
No one knows how many Jews have returned, because many return clandestinely on tourist visas, like Masha, without officially classifying themselves as return emigrants. In that way, they can leave Israel without repaying the government for assistance they have received, as required by Israeli law.
Yosef Ben-Dor, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy here, said as many as 50 per month are officially applying to return, not counting the unofficial return emigrants. Moscow's chief of visa registration, Sergei Alpatov, said his office is tied up with applications from returning Jews.
Uri Gordon, head of the Jewish Agency's immigration and absorption department in Israel, estimated late last year that 7,000 Soviet emigrants had left the country during 1991, a number that other officials attacked as too high. Gordon also warned that if employment did not pick up in Israel, many more would pour out this year.
"There are thousands more who want to come," said Nikolai Efanov, 43, who returned last fall after trying out life in Israel. "The situation with absorption is disastrous."
Efanov and Masha present contrasting tales that illustrate the variety and complexity of motives, both for leaving and returning. Efanov, an administrator, left Moscow for economic reasons and, failing to find housing or work in Israel, returned for economic reasons.
"I like it more there. I didn't want to come back, but I had no choice," said Efanov, still wearing an Israeli flag lapel pin.
When he returned after a year, Efanov said he was "shocked" by the economic deterioriation in Russia. "Of course, I got letters, read newspapers, listened to the radio," he said. "But I could never imagine it would really be this bad."
Masha, on the other hand, a longtime sympathizer with the human rights movement, went to Israel with her teenage daughter as a Zionist and to escape antisemitism here, but said she was disappointed by the spiritual and intellectual climate she found. Like many emigrating Jews, Masha is a non-believer, and she said she was dismayed by what she took to be religious narrow-mindedness in the Jewish state.
"There's plenty of cheap, delicious food," she said. "But it's sleepy, it's hot, it's provincial, there's no pulse of intellectual life."
And when Russian intelligentsia complain, Masha added, "Israelis respond, 'We're sick and tired of your cultural pretensions, we're sick and tired of you dragging your collected classics around. You have bad breath, you'd better have some dental work done, and then worry about your spiritual life.' "
So Masha, a worker in the movie industry in Moscow, toiled as a maid for three months in Israel to earn her air fare back. Now, though she is sharing a small apartment with her ex-husband and struggling like all Muscovites to find food, she said she is happy to be here.
Ben-Dor, the Israeli Embassy spokesman here, said both cases represent exceptions. Certainly, returnees present a one-sided, negative view of life in Israel. "The whole phenomenon {of return emigration} is practically nonexistent . . . not more than a curiosity," he said.
Since Soviet law changed last July, allowing emigres to retain their citizenship here, Ben-Dor added, "the psychological climate" has changed as well. Jews who once left Russia thinking they would never return can now come back to visit relatives or conduct business.
Two El Al flights arrive full from Israel every week, airline officials said, adding that they also have no way of knowing how many of their passengers intend to stay.
"There's pretty hard unemployment" in Israel, Ben-Dor said. "A lot of people may be coming back to try to make money here, instead of depending on Israeli welfare."
Indeed, 60 percent of immigrants in Israel are unemployed, and 30 percent say they hope to leave within five years, according to a recent poll. Tales of joblessness and housing shortages have found their way back to the Soviet Union, slowing the outflow of Jews.
In 1990, the peak year of emigration, 200,000 Jews left the Soviet Union for Israel, with more than 34,000 going in December of that year alone. Israeli officials predicted the number would double in 1991.
Instead, the 1991 total declined to 167,000, with only about 6,000 leaving in December. Last month, the total dropped still further, to little more than 4,000.
"I never expected so much indifference on the part of the Israelis," Efamov said. "They accepted us as a sort of toy, and then when they realized how many of us there were, they just dropped us."
Efamov went to Israel without his wife and family, hoping to establish himself and then bring them along. Instead, he found housing costs exorbitant. He tried life on a kibbutz and in the desert, but could not find work there. He scouted opportunities for his wife, an advanced aircraft engineer, and decided she too would be unlikely to find work in her field.
Reluctantly, he decided his family's future was more secure here, despite all the unknown factors. He was able to return, he said, only because he was not supporting a family and so could save money to repay Israel for transportation, housing and welfare benefits. Unlike many returning Jews, he also had an apartment to come home to.
"For those who most want to leave Israel, it's hardest to do so," he said, referring to unemployed immigrants with families who cannot save money and have sold their former homes in Moscow or Kiev.
Masha and her daughter left Moscow last spring after an antisemitic taunt at school convinced them that the future might be dangerous. But Masha, whose father was a Communist, now acknowledges that she harbored serious misconceptions about Israel.
"Somehow, we thought it would be like Moscow or Leningrad, except that Jews would be loved and there would be plenty of food," she said. Instead, she said she found a preoccupation with Jews as "the Chosen People" which made her and other non-believing Russian intellectuals uncomfortable.
When Moscow democrats rallied in the streets against a hard-line coup attempt last August, Masha felt she should be with them. She said a common Israeli reaction to the death of a Russian Jew, one of three citizens who fell in a confrontation with Soviet tanks, was that he should not have sacrificed himself for "other people's freedom."
"We felt we betrayed those democrats, just so we could go to a country where there is enough food," she recalled.
So she returned in December, repaying some but not all her debts. Israeli law says immigrants can treat their benefits as grants unless they leave, in which case all aid must be repaid, with interest.
"We do realize there is an attempt by these people not to pay back what they owe to the Israeli government and the Israeli taxpayers," Ben-Dor said. "It is one of the risks we are taking, but we think the risk is justified."
Now Masha says her fears of antisemitism were overblown, stimulated by one exceptional incident. Efamov, on the other hand, is gloomy about his future. "There will be nothing good here," he said. "It makes no sense to come back."
Correspondent Jackson Diehl contributed to this report from Jerusalem. |
