The New Soviet Aliyah: Israelis Greet the Immigrants with a Mixture of Joy and Fear

There are some things needed for the successful resettlement of Soviet Jews in Israel that money can’t buy.

Jobs can be created, housing can be built but this alone won’t make the Soviet olim feel welcome.

Only their Israeli neighbors can do that The charismatic mayor of the city of Ra’a-nana, Ze’ev Bielski, was one of the first Israeli leaders to say openly that the Israeli government and the Jewish Agency for Israel must make special efforts to avoid alienating veteran Israeli citizens in their enthusiasm to help new Soviet immigrants.

To illustrate his point, Bielski labeled his pilot project for the direct absorption of Soviet Jews in Ra’anana “Natasha-Rachel.”

Natasha, he explains to his Diaspora audiences, represents the hopes and dreams of the Soviet immigrant families.

Rachel represents the aspirations of the Israelis, both the pioneering Ashkenazim who built the country, and the thousands of Sephardic Jews from Iraq, Morocco and other countries who underwent the trying absorption of the 1950s and ’60s.

“If Rachel sees us working to give Natasha a nice apartment, good furniture, and a secure job, and she has none of these things,” Bielski asks, “how is she going to feel?”

SPIRIT OF VOLUNTARISM

To an impressive extent, Israeli society is rising to the occasion and welcoming their brethren from the Soviet Union with open arms. A spectrum of organizations and individual volunteers have offered clothes, furniture and helpful advice to the new arrivals.

Without such a positive spirit of voluntarism, direct absorption in Ra’anana and elsewhere could not succeed.

But to many Israelis, while the current Soviet influx may be a blessing for Zionism, in a practical sense it is a somewhat worrisome fact of life.

For while most arc happy the Soviet Jews arc getting out and pleased that thousands of them are going to Israel, that joy is severely tempered with apprehension that they will eventually have to pay a heavy price for the Soviet aliyah.

In a country where unemployment is high and the price of housing already far outreaches salary levels, the prospect of more competition for jobs and desirable housing is a cause for worry.

Just ask your average cabdriver.

“Where are the Soviets going to find work?” asks Yossi, a cabby from Jerusalem. “There’s no jobs here at all — not here in Jerusalem, not in Tel Aviv, not in Haifa.”

Shimon, who drives a cab in Tel Aviv, laments, “And what about our Israeli youth? It’s already hard for them to find work, and they arc leaving the country.”

Young Israelis, even those who are relatively well-off, are the most worried, since they, like the new olim, want to build their lives, purchase a home and begin a career.

Levi and Noa, a Tel Aviv couple about to wed, are successful Israelis. They are young, educated and about to get married. Levi, 28, is an accountant and Noa, 24, works in a bank.

They currently live in an apartment in a fashionable neighborhood in northern Tel Aviv. But after their wedding, they will move into Levi’s parents’ home in the central town of Hadera.

They are making this move because they have no money to buy their own apartment now, and if they continue renting, they will never be able to save the money to buy their own place.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Levi says of the Soviet Jews. “I’m happy that they’re getting out. We want them to come. But we don’t want to pay that much for them.”

He resents, in particular, the easier mortgage terms an immigrant couple can receive, which will cover more than half the total cost of the apartment. He and Noa can only get a mortgage for a fraction of the total cost ~ they must save up the rest.

WORKED AS CARPET SALESMAN

“We arc professionals, we have jobs, and we don’t see the day when we will have our own home,” Levi says.

Like countless other young Israelis, Levi spent a year and a half in the United States, working as a carpet salesman.

He contends that if he hadn’t had his accounting degree to assure him a good job in Israel, he probably would have stayed in the United States instead of returning to Israel last winter.

“This government doesn’t seem to care when a half-a-million people leave the country to go to America to find work there,” he complains. “But when a million Soviets come here, they make such a fuss.”

Noa speaks disparagingly of the pledges by Israeli leaders that the new immigrants will be housed and employed.

“We paid our dues to this country,” she says. “We served two and three years in the army. The government didn’t give us money to get an apartment. They didn’t promise us a job.”

Veteran immigrants to Israel dismiss such complaints, saying that they sound awfully familiar.

GRIPES AGAINST OLIM’S RIGHTS

The gripes “arc not so much against Russian olim as against the rights that olim have in general,” says Judy Ben-Ami, who came to Israel from Seattle seven years ago.

“I heard similar complaints when I was a university student,” says Marcello Landsmann, who immigrated from Spain. “Israelis would ask why I, as a new immigrant, could study for free, when they had served in the army and had to pay their own way. They have to understand that this is the way the country is.”

The fear that the Soviets will further crowd the job market is the strongest of the worries. A recent Jewish Agency poll shows that only 16 percent of Israelis believe that Soviet aliyah will not impact negatively on unemployment.

The Hebrew press has picked up on some of the grumbling and often portrays the new immigrants as demanding and selfish.

A recent newspaper article, dripping with sarcasm, described the attitude of a Romanian immigrant who came to Israel for economic rea- sons. The immigrant was complaining because she had been led to believe that every new immigrant to Israel gets an apartment as a present, and now she feels cheated.

“Never mind that in Romania, they barely had anything to eat,” the article said. “That was the reason they decided to come to Israel.”

In the article, the woman demands her promised apartment — “not a villa, mind you, but just a nice five-room flat.” She goes on to complain that her absorption center “is more Communist than Romania.”

There are, of course, two areas in Israel where the Soviet newcomers are not only welcomed, but desperately wanted — among the West Bank settlers and in the development towns in the Negev and Galilee.

Etta Bick lives in the West Bank settlement of Alon Shvut, made up of 250 families.

‘TERRIBLE FRUSTRATION

Communities like Alon Shvut feel “a terrible frustration” that they arc not getting Soviet immigrants, Bick says sadly. “Our communities arc cohesive, well-organized and ready to give.”

That Jewish Agency funds cannot be used to settle Soviets in their community feels like “a slap in the face” from the Israeli government and American Jewry, Bick says.

The development towns in the Negev and Galilee arc not receiving Soviet Jews for less political reasons. Employment opportunities arc limited there. Because of this, thousands of Israelis from previous waves of immigration have left the region for the center of the country.

In a desire to show early success at absorbing the current wave of Soviet Jews, the government and Jewish Agency have been much more reluctant to send them to the development towns than they were previous immigrant groups. As a result, the olim have been steered to more populous areas around Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

This decision has bred resentment. In the northern development town of Ma’alot, tempers flared in January when the Jewish Agency sent only Ethiopian Jews to the town’s absorption center, after promising the town’s leadership that both Ethiopian and Soviet Jews would be sent.

JOBS FOR SKILLED WORKERS

Uri Gordon, chairman of the Jewish Agency’s Immigration and Absorption Department, said at the time that they could not send Soviets there, “because of the employment situation,” which angered Ma’alot residents.

One Ma’alot resident, Elaine Levitt, wrote in the Jerusalem Post that Gordon’s statement was especially disturbing, “because it implies that employment is not an important factor in the absorption of Ethiopian Jews.”

The controversy focused attention on the touchy issue of whether the Soviets were being treated as more desirable than other immigrant groups because they arc of European origin.

When asked directly if racism has to do with the excitement over the coming Soviet aliyah if the words “talented,” “educated” and a “good aliyah” are code words for the fact that they arc of European origin most Israelis, including Sephardim, will deny it.

But the issue surfaces in Israeli humor.

One joke going around asks, “Why is the new Soviet aliyah like turpentine?” The answer: “Because it will thin out the color of the country.”

Undeniably, some bitterness lingers in the Moroccan and Yemenite communities as they compare the corrugated metal shacks, or ma’aba-rot, where they lived when they came to Israel to the subsidized apartments where the Soviets arc now living.

Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet prisoner of Zion, has recently harnessed his savvy political skills to defuse ethnic tension. He has participated in demonstrations for Yemenite Jewry, held dialogues with Sephardim, and in general tried to project his concern for all Israelis, not just Soviet immigrants.

Sharansky “has eaten a lot of conscious lately,” one Israeli observer quipped.

Cynical talk notwithstanding, most Israelis seem prepared to assist the new immigrants.

Many have stepped forward to act as “a depicted families,” helping those in direct absorption cope with the mysteries of the Israeli banking system and the job market.

A trim, athletic-looking Israeli woman named liana Babayut strolls into the home of a Soviet immigrant family in the Mevasseret Zion absorption center. An elderly woman living there gazes at her, smiles a mouthful of gold teeth and proclaims her a “miracle.”

Babayut is a teacher who lives with her attorney husband in a villa near the absorption center. When asked how she met the family, Babayut replies, “Why, I just knocked on their door.”

The Israeli government and the Jewish Agency arc hoping that Babayut’s attitude will be infectious.

For it is only this positive spirit, coupled with a stable economy and sufficient housing, that will have Mayor Bielski’s Natasha and Rachel eventually living happily side by side.