NATAN SHARANSKY
NATAN SHARANSKY GUEST COLUMNIST We are living through biblical times. The Russian chapter in Jewish history will soon end. In all the world only Israel will open its gates. This miracle can turn...
...Without the daily involvement of American Jews in absorbing Soviet Jews, it won't happen...
...They have almost no Jewishness...
...On November 30, a record 2,500 Jews came to Israel In the year coming this will almost certainly be an average figure...
...We were exiled from Spain, we were exiled from Italy and Germany...
...But this nes—this miracle—can also turn into a nightmare if we don't urgently solve the problem of absorption...
...This miracle can turn into a nightmare...
...But they know two things...
...If we fail, we will have lost a unique opportunity—one which our parents never had and our children will never have, an opportunity which may not be repeated in one thousand years...
...Israel will need $20 to $30 billion to absorb this wave of immigration...
...The potential of donations may be $2 billion, maybe $3 billion...
...A year ago we heard many voices in Israel asking: What shall we do with all these non-Zionists who are coming...
...In the next decade the Russian chapter in Jewish history will end...
...We were exiled to Babylon, some of us came back Then we were exiled again...
...Every day 1,000 to 2,000 Soviet [Russian] Jews land in Israel...
...My prognosis for next year is that half a million Jews will come If doctors conunue to come in the same proportion as in 1990, we will have at the end of next year as many new Russian doctors as there are doctors today working in all Israel...
...Because what's really important is that these people are coming And despite everything they know very deeply they are Jews...
...We need loans from the U S. • We need you to bring business to Israel • We need your capital • We need your marketing capabilities...
...They feel they cannot rely on anybody, including their ally America They are very upset today that American Jews are not coming to Israel, even as tourists...
...From the beginning of 1990, 2,000 violinists came to Israel—I'm not speaking about the pianists...
...A million to a million and a half Jews are in the pipeline in the Soviet Union, in the process of coming to Israel...
...True, they are the most assimilated ahyah in the history of Israel, people who know nothing about their own history, about Judaism, about tradition...
...In three to five years, Israel will be home to an additional million, perhaps two million or more Jews Two million is, I think, more realisuc than one million...
...In October, among the 20,000 Soviet Jews who came, 500 were doctors...
...Only now will we understand what it was all about...
...It's changing the atmosphere in Israel...
...Recently my wife Avital said to me, "I have a feeling that our years of struggle were introduction...
...In this atmosphere suddenly Soviet Jews are coming, a thousand or two thousand a day, with jokes about gas masks and Saddam Hussein, but they are coming and coming and coming...
...Natan Sharansky, a nine-yar Soviet "prisoner of conscience" until his release in 1986, lives in Jerusalem, where he chairs the Soviet Jewish Zionist Forum and is Associate Editor of the Jerusalem Report...
...We came to Israel...
...All our history is migrations Never in our history has anything happened like what is happening today...
...We have empty hotels all over the country...
...We need your building technology • We need your most talented contractors...
...No country in the world has ever faced this task It's as if the United States were to absorb 25 million immigrants each year We can never succeed in this absolutely unique historic operation without world Jewry Donations can't solve the problem...
...And they are bringing back to Israel the Zionist message—how important it is that we Israelis have our country, that we are building our country, that we are defending our country...
...They can change Israeli society, the Israeli future, the Israeli economy, the Israeli political map...
...The first is that even if you are the most assimilated Jew, even if the only dream of your life was to write on the ldentifi-cation cards of your children that they are non-Jews, even if you finally succeed and your children are officially considered non-Jews, you realize today that there is no future for them in the Soviet Union...
...This ahyah is the most educated ahyah in the history of Israel They are specialists in software, engineers, musicians, doctors...
...We need you to pressure our government to start moving more quickly...
...And second—even more important—you learn that when you are endangered and want to leave as a people in hundreds of thousands and millions, there is no country in the world except Israel that will open its gates...
...They will not be loyal citizens Today you don't hear those voices anymore...
...That event changes not only the fate of Soviet Jews but also the fate of Israel and of Jews all over the world...
...We are the people who left Egypt...
...In recent years Israelis have become very frustrated because they feel that almost all the world is against them...
Vol. 16 • February 1991 • No. 1
