A WOODEN WELCOME TO RUSSIAN JEWS
A WOODEN WELCOME TO RUSSIAN JEWS The recent stream of Russian Jewish emigrants has now dwindled to a trickle, and it is estimated that some forty percent of those who do manage to leave the Soviet...
...For some time now, we have viewed expatriate Israelis — of whom it is estimated there may by now be as many as 200,000 in the United States — with suspicion...
...Their number could easily reach 15,000 per year...
...And what do we expect of them...
...And yet we are here...
...That desire may or may not have, as one of its parts, a specifically Jewish component...
...Finally, there is an issue of self-respect that is here involved...
...In the first instance, it is about being free from — from a police state, from the special harassment to which Jews are subjected...
...Freedom for Judaism is another question entirely...
...Ourselves the children of refugees, proclaimers of the oneness of the Jewish People, do we not feel compassion and responsibility, and must we not act on those feelings...
...these y or dim are spoilers, defectors...
...The miracle of Jewish resurgence in the Soviet Union was supposed to be • about Israel and Jewishness, not about the United States and upward mobility...
...Hardly...
...But how can we presume to impose on these newcomers standards of belief or behavior that are higher than the standards of the second and third generation Jews most of us are...
...But the fact is that whenever Jews have been given the opportunity to "vote with their feet," from the days of early settlement in Palestine right up until our own times, they have rejected Palestine-Israel, preferring instead the more developed countries of the West...
...Can there be any doubt as to how we should feel...
...Approximately one out of twenty went to Palestine...
...The question itself startles...
...How shall we feel about these Russian Jews, the ones who prefer America to Israel...
...The Israel that invites us is not the underdeveloped territory of an earlier time...
...Between 1882 and 1933, more than three million Jews left their homes in East and Central Europe, westward bound...
...The fact may be thought unpleasant, but it is not less a fact for that...
...And now, in threatening measure, this same harsh judgment is imposed upon Russian Jews...
...But America...
...This attitude, which lurks just beneath the surface of most policy discussions on immigrant Jews from the Soviet Union, reflects a dangerous misperception of our own condition, and could, if unchecked, provoke a most distressing debate...
...What they want is quite simple: freedom, a chance at prosperity, a new life for themselves and their children...
...it is a bustling, modern country, one which many of us have visited — not a strange and exotic land we do not know...
...In this era of detente, we sometimes have to be reminded that Russia is a totalitarian state, doubly oppressive to Jews, and the desire to be out of it is wholly understandable...
...When Valery Panov was interviewed on network television a year ago, and said out loud he was an atheist, some American Jews were deeply perturbed, as still more have been by the remoteness of many Russian Jews from the organized Jewish community...
...That is where Jews belong, we think, and we are fully prepared to offer such help as we can to Jews seeking a new life in Israel...
...And, after Israel's independence, in virtually every case where Jews had the choice, they chose France, or England, or America, or Canada — not Israel...
...A double standard is also expressed in our response to the Jewishness of these new immigrants...
...Insofar as these new immigrants are Russians seeking freedom, we understand their choice...
...Yes, a considerable number of Russian Jews evidently prefer the United States to Israel...
...insofar as they are Jews in pursuit of Judaism, we think they have erred, and they become smaller in our eyes...
...And there is another fact that is still more central to our understanding of what the Russian Jews are about: every American Jew — all five and one-half or so million of us — has, in effect, preferred America to Israel...
...We are asked to take care of the Russians who come to America because they are Jews, but those of the Russians who come to America often seem impatient with their Judaism...
...And it is the ways in which that last question gets answered that cause problems for American Jews...
...A WOODEN WELCOME TO RUSSIAN JEWS The recent stream of Russian Jewish emigrants has now dwindled to a trickle, and it is estimated that some forty percent of those who do manage to leave the Soviet Union choose to come to the United States rather than to go to Israel...
...We have, for all practical purposes, made precisely the same choice some Russian Jews now make...
...For we, too, have a choice...
...Leonard Fein...
...Let us welcome our cousins, make room for them, understand them, look forward to the day when they will, as has every wave of immigration in the past, enrich the lives of our communities with new perceptions and new ways...
...If we condemn them, do we not condemn ourselves...
...What do they want from us, with us...
...And let us do it with a whole heart, rejoicing in their freedom, rejoicing in their presence in our midst...
...But, leaving aside abstract considerations of Israel's "centrality" in Jewish life, is it not clear that the American Jewish community is a viable option for Jews who want to be Jews...
...By coming here, they suggest that Israel is not all we like to say it is...
...For if it is not, what in the world are we doing here...
...We work hard to promote Israel's viability...
...Those storied Jews who risked so much to gather in front of the Moscow synagogue, who celebrated Pesach surreptitiously, who studied Hebrew in hidden forest groves — what are they doing here...
...We have no problem at all with Russian Jews who go to Israel...
...If we are disappointed that the Russians choose to join with us, some part of the source of that disappointment must be our own lack of confidence in ourselves as a vital Jewish community...
...Yet there is an ambivalence in our communities these days...
...Is Jewish atheism, or ambivalence to organized Jewish life, a new phenomenon...
...After all, had our own fathers or grandfathers taken a different turn in the road, it could so easily be we who would now need help from our American cousins...
...If — as we pray — large scale emigration of Jews comes once again to be permitted, we may anticipate a substantial influx of Jews to our communities...
Vol. 1 • October 1975 • No. 4
