Usually we hear of Jews leaving a country in order to travel to Israel - it is, after all, the Jewish state. Some Jews in Israel though are leaving in order to return to wherever they originally came from. Israel, it turns out, is no paradise.
The Moscow Times reports:
Dzhadan is part of a tide of emigrants who have returned to Russia from Israel over a litany of concerns: the second intifada, Israel's worsening economy, an inability to adapt to cultural and social realities. According to a study released this March, at least 50,000 emigrants returned from Israel from 2001 to 2003.
The exodus has stirred up a discussion in Israel, said Boruch Gorin, head of the public relations department at the Russian Federation of Jewish Communities, which commissioned the study. On the one hand, millions of Jews already live outside Israel. On the other hand, "living in Israel is an ideology, and tthat the people who sought a shelter in the country have been leaving is a blow to the ideology," he said.
Most Jews -- including Nossik and Dzhadan -- that come back to live and work in Russia retain Israeli citizenship and travel to Israel on a steady basis, Gorin said. Dzhadan said he plans to visit friends in Israel, but would never return there for good because he belongs to Russian "civilization."
The key, I think, lies in describing Israel as an “ideology.” It’s not simply a state and it’s not even simply “Jewish.” Instead, it’s a political, social, and religious ideology which not every Jew is entirely comfortable with. Even those who approve of it sometimes only do so at a distance — there are, after all, lots of Jewish supporters of Israel who don’t take the step of moving there. It’s not so surprising, then, that some who do live there decide to leave.
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