By Miri -
Russian speaking Jews
constitute about 20% of Israel's total population today.
Notwithstanding their large numbers, the fact that they have been
calling Israel their home for quite a few decades by now, and that
especially many of the younger generations perceive of themselves as
Israelis, the veteran Israeli population still refers to them as
"Russians", suggesting that they are a homogeneous whole.
Negative stereotypes of
Russian speaking Jews also still persist,
and racist portrayals of Russians as alcoholics, gangsters and prostitutes are quite common place, including in Israeli media. Also children and young people of Russian background complain about discrimination and racism by
their peers and teachers. More recently the community is commonly associated with the
extreme political right, and as such is being depicted as an obstacle
to peace in the region. Many Russian speaking Jews in Israel thus feel that after having suffered for being Jewish in the
Soviet Union, today they suffer for being Russian in Israel.
Ironically, at the same
time Russian speaking communities are often accused of isolation, and
of not being willing to integrate themselves. Instead, it is argued,
they refuse to learn Hebrew, retain their distinct culture(s) and thereby
create "Russian ghettos" in their neighbourhoods, a notion
which is especially worrisome to those Jewish Israelis who still
believe in the Zionist goal of creating a unilingual and unicultural
Jewish society in the homeland.
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Youth from Russia arriving in Israel, ca. 1990 |
Mass immigration from the
former Soviet Union started in 1989, and within only one decade it is
estimated that more than a million Russian speaking immigrants
arrived in Israel. For many, the decision to leave their home country and
migrate to Israel constituted a purely pragmatic one, motivated primarily by
so called "push factors", such as the economic crises,
the political instability, and the growing nationalism and anti-Semitism in
post-Soviet Russia, rather than "pull factors", such as a positive
identification with Judaism, Zionism or Israel. In fact a lot of the
Russian speaking Jews would have reportedly preferred to migrate to
the US, yet Israel successfully pressured the government to deny
Soviet Jews refugee status, and thereby facilitated their mass
immigration to Israel.
In the beginning the new
immigrants were welcomed rather enthusiastically; especially veteran Ashkenazi Jews regarded them
as "safeguards against the alarming rise of the Mizrahi and Arab
populations" and as "bulwarks of the endangered
Ashkenazi-Western culture". This however changed soon,
especially when it became apparent that approximately half of the migrants
were not Jewish according to Halakhic law, which only recognises those people as Jews, who were either born to a Jewish mother, or who undergo Orthodox
conversion.
According to Israel's Law of Return, however,
anyone with a Jewish grandparent, or anyone married to a Jewish spouse, is
eligible for Israeli citizenship. Yet in a state where
Jewish Orthodoxy still holds the monopoly on administering the right
to marriage and burial, those Russian speaking Jews who do not
qualify as Jews under the Halakha, are obviously less welcome, at least by the more religious section of society. In addition to that, due
to the harsh repression of Jewishness by the Soviet regime, the great
majority of the Russian speaking immigrants only had a vague notion
of Judaism and of what, according to Israeli Jews, constituted Jewish
culture.
The integration process of
Russian speaking Jews was further complicated by the few economic
opportunities that the small Israeli state provided for them. Over
60% of the new immigrants brought with them academic degrees, yet the
job market in Israel was too small to absorb all of them. In addition
many Russian speakers lacked technical or language skills and so many
of them eventually had to face a downgrade in their occupational and
economic status. Particularly women, many of who had been trained in
the Soviet Union in domains considered to be "non-feminine"
in Israel, such as engineering and technology, faced problems in
finding employment in their professions.
All those difficulties
considerably increased the feeling that they were not wanted in their
new home country and contributed to what the veteran community refers to as "the self-isolation" of the Russian
community and its reliance on a growing ethnic subculture. On the
occupational and economic side many immigrants came to rely on so
called local co-ethnic networks, which by now entail thousands of
small businesses run by Russian speaking Jews, including food and
book stores, restaurants, bars, small trades in building and reconstruction, car
maintenance, real estate, medical and personal services, and
consulting.
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Russian book store in Arad |
Due to the fact that many of the Jews constituted an essential part of the local "intelligentsia" of the Soviet Union,
including writers, poets, journalists, theatre and film directors and
other artists, the communities soon established their own Russian
speaking cultural institutions in Israel. They founded Russian
speaking theatres, such as the successful bilingual Gesher theatre in
Jaffa, Russian orchestras, set up Russian libraries, which also
commonly function as cultural centres, and which are regularly
visited by popular Russian musicians and bands, theatre companies and
other artists. Russian speaking media similarly started flourishing
and by now there are eleven weeklies, five monthlies and over fifty
local newspapers published in Russian in Israel. In addition there
are several regular programmes on radio and TV, and five TV channels
directly transmitting from Russia.
It is therefore not
surprising that those living in areas with a large percentage of
Russian speakers often do not even see the necessity to improve their
Hebrew as most of their needs are met within this strong and
multi-faceted subculture.
![]() |
Liebrman's Yisrael Beyteinu: "No Loyalty, No Citizenship" |
In order to also be represented on the government level, the first "Russian
immigrant party" Yisrael BaAliyah (a double meaning for "Israel
on the Up", or "Israel through Immigration") was
established in 1996 and already in the same year won 5,7% of the votes which
translated into 7 seats in the Knesset, making it the sixth
largest party.
In 1999 former Likud member
Avigdor Lieberman founded another party with the goal of constituting a
platform for Russian immigrants. As opposed to Yisrael BaAliyah, the new party
Yisrael Beiteinu ("Israel our Home") is based on an
explicit right wing nationalist agenda, and contributed to the above
mentioned generalised association of Russian speaking Jews with a
hard line approach to negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. It
should be emphasised here that the party's political stance
by no means only appeals to (some of) the Russian speaking communities,
but attracts instead a large array of hardliners from different
backgrounds. In the 2009 elections the party won 15 seats, making it
the third largest party in the previous Knesset, and facilitated
Lieberman's ascent to the post of Foreign Minister.
The development of the
strong Russian speaking subculture in Israel is by no means
unique or surprising. Instead it emphasises once more the impossibility of the
coming true of the Zionist dream of creating a homogeneous Jewish
society. It is indeed sad to see that, rather than celebrating
Israel's cultural heterogeneity and appreciating the manifold
contributions of the Russian speaking communities to an increasingly
multi-cultural society, many Israelis still insist on the realisation
of the melting pot theory and charge those who are “not Israeli
enough” with non-compliance.
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