My article on the Russian conference in JTA

I am including the link below to my published piece in JTA, and then the piece as I actually wrote it which was nearly twice as long and contains some important stuff which was unfortunately cut in the editing process. I am presently on deadling for a Jewish Week piece on
on sharply contrasting feelings among Russians about Avigdor Liberman as he stands poised to ascend to the government--the grass roots loves him but the intelligensia is much more ambivalent. I fly back to NY tonight and tommorow will place online here all sorts of stream of consciousness stuff on this trip and my encounter with Russian Israel. See below them link to JTA piece and then, for hard core rubyjewsday junkies, (if such truly exist), read the longer version.

http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=17190&intcategoryid=1

By Walter Ruby

RAMAT GAN—

Is the glass of the million-strong Russian-speaking community in Israel half empty or half full?

According to some of the leading lights of the Russian community, academicians as well as political leaders, who gathered here for a just concluded conference on the “Russian-Speaking Jewry In the Global Perspective: Power, Politics and Community” held at Bar-Ilan University, the state of Russian-Israeli reality at present is decidedly negative. Speaking in language at once emotional and clinical, they drew a picture of a community, which despite its huge demographic clout—about one out of six Israelis is Russian-speaking—faces considerable discrimination from veteran Israelis, who manifest a barely concealed antipathy to Russian language and culture. Even as Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the mainly Russian Yisrael Beiteinu party, jockeys for a powerful position within the coalition government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Russian sociologists and political scientists at the conference argued that the perception of Russian political power is somewhat illusory and that in other high prestige professional fields such as academia and the arts, Russians confront a ‘glass ceiling’ that prevent them from reaching the top.

Noting that there is not even one Russian university president in Israel, and only two Russian full-time Russian professors in the social sciences in all of Israel’s universities,” Dr. Eliezer Feldman, a sociologist from the Institute of Social and Political Research, commented, “In general, the situation is very bad. There is great resentment from veteran Israelis towards a community that wants to hang onto its language and culture.” Pointing out that a growing number of young Russians with higher education, including many who came to Israel as children or were born here, are now moving to Moscow in search of greater professional opportunity and higher pay, Feldman said, “What is significant in this is that those who have left or are planning to leave are not marginal people who can’t find themselves here, but rather talented young professionals. They don’t want to deal any more with a situation where they are part of a community that is near the bottom of the Israeli social ladder, on the same level as the Israeli Arabs. Should we be content that the Ethiopians are even lower than us?”

Dr. Alec Epstein, a political scientist at the Open University of Israel, remarked, “There is great frustration that even our best and brightest are being denied entry into the Israeli elite. Those Russians who have achieved great success and become well known, whether in politics, business, or the arts, have been accepted by veteran Israelis as representatives of the Russian community but almost never on their merits as individuals representing the best of Israel.” Epstein noted that in 2004, a widely discussed poll appeared in the Israeli media listing the 100 most influential figures in Israeli culture, and there was not a single Russian-speaker. In 2005, there was one Russian out of 100 in the same poll—Yevgeny Arye, artistic director of the mainly-Russian Gesher Theater.

Epstein said he felt insulted and incensed last spring when Olmert formed a cabinet without a single Russian-speaker—the first time there has been no Russian in the cabinet since 1996, and asserted that he made his selections based on his appraisal of the talent of prospective ministers, rather than on the basis of ensuring that particular ethnic communities would be represented. “Olmert appeared to be saying that not one of one million Russians in Israel was smart and talented enough to serve in his cabinet,” said Epstein. “I took that comment very personally.”

The conference, which drew 150 participants from Russia and the U.S. as well as from Israel, also made clear sharp divisions within the global Russian community. Dr. Sam Kliger, director of Russian Jewish Affairs at the American Jewish Committee, expressed displeasure that simultaneous translation of speeches at the conference was only available in Russian and Hebrew and not in English, a perceived slight that compelled him to deliver his remarks in Russian rather than in English as he desired, and which, he said, was symptomatic of a sense among Russian-American participants at the conference that “We are not taken seriously here. The sentiment at the conference is that the two axes of the Russian Jewish world are Jerusalem and Moscow, not the triangle of Israel, America and the former Soviet Union that we Russian-American Jews see as reality.” Zeev Khanin,, a professor of political science at Bar-Ilan, and chairman of the conference, which was sponsored by Bar-Ilan and the Rappaport Center for Assimilation Research and Strengthening Jewish Vitality, responded that the decision not to pay for English-language translation was based purely on budgetary considerations, but added, “The reality is that Russian Jewish organizations in America are still much smaller and weaker in terms of political clout and financial resources, than Russian Jewish bodies here and in Russia.”

Despite a fiery speech at the conference by Yuri Shtern , the second most powerful figure in Yisrael Beiteinu, contending that a plan being pushed by Lieberman advocating radical changes in Israel’s political system to create a strong executive would accrue to the advantage of grass roots Russian speakers, conference participants from varied political position indicated skepticism about Lieberman personally and about the efficacy of his plan.

“The reality is that Lieberman not really interested in helping Russians, but, rather, is completely out for himself,” said Alla Shainskaya, director of Biological Mass Spectrometry at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, and a member of the Meretz Party. “I believe he is a demagogue and dangerous to democracy.” Yuli Edelshtein, the former Minister of Immigrant Absorption and a prominent member of the Likud Party, remarked, “My personal opinion is that Lieberman’s plan and his desire to join Olmert’s government is a great mistake. Even if Olmert manages to bring Lieberman into the government over the objections of the Labor Party, Lieberman will not accomplish anything by going in except to split the national camp. If he goes that route, he will lose support on the political right, even within the Russian community.”

Not all participants in the conference agreed with the analysis that things are bad and getting worse for the Russians in Israel. Veteran political scientist and expert on emigration Prof. Yochanan Peres of Tel Aviv University and a Russian-born colleague Dr. Sabina Lissitsa, made a presentation of the results of a recent survey they conducted which showed relatively high levels of satisfaction among Russians with the quality of their housing, with their childrens’ academic progress and with the advancement of the Russian community in the Israeli political sphere; even while expressing frustration with their socio-economic status in relation to veteran Israelis and with their level of integration into Israeli culture and social relations with Israelis. Overall, Lissitsa said, “While there has not been as much progress as many Russians would like, there have been many positive developments and the situation is not nearly as bad as many contend.” Asked how their relatively upbeat report can be reconciled with expressions of gloom and doom by top-notch Russian academics and politicians, Peres replied that, as a general principle, leaders of communities in transition from disenfranchisement to empowerment like the Oriental Jews in Israel in the 1960 and 70’s and African-Americans in the U.S., “always present the state of things as worse than the objective reality” because, despite their personal success, they feel responsible to articulate the larger community’s overall sense of frustration. Paraphrasing a famous remark by Winston Churchill during World War II after the early tide of German victories had been blunted, but the Allies had not yet begun to win major battles of their own, Peres said that integration of Russian Jewry in Israel “is not yet at the beginning of the end, but rather at the end of the beginning.”

Naum Krupetsky, an 80-year-old retired doctor who came here from Ukraine with his family in 1991, said he agreed with the analysis of Peres and Lissita, remarking, “Community leaders often exaggerate how bad things are. In fact, pensioners like me have a wonderful life here, with good pensions that allow us to spend our time meeting and discussing political and cultural issues.” He added, “I myself have one daughter who is a physics teacher in a high school with a husband who is an electrician who live very well and are well-integrated. In contrast, my second works as a supermarket cashier and her husband despaired of making a decent living here and moved back to Ukraine. The reality is that some are more successful than others in adapting to a capitalist society where each individual has to take greater personal initiative than in the Soviet Union. Yet overall, I think Russians have done better than many here are saying.”

Nearly everyone in attendance agreed that the conference, which was the second such event convening of Russian Jewish academics and politicians from around the world under the aegis of Bar-Ilan and the Rappaport Center for (the first took place here two years ago) represents an important opportunity to take the temperature of world Russian Jewry that should be continued on a regular basis. Martin Horwitz, director of the American Jewish World Service Jewish Community Development Fund in Russia and Ukraine remarked, “This conference has been a very creative interchange between representatives of Russian-speaking Jewish communities around the world that gives us an opportunity to learn from each other’s experiences in developing new approaches to difficult problems.”

Olga Gershenson, a Russian-born and Israeli-raised academic who now teaches a course on Russian-Israeli films at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, commented, “This is the first conference I have ever attended that I witnessed a meaningful interaction between politicians and academics. The conference was quite politicized compared to most research conferences, but that is because there is so much at stake here and the issues hit very close to home.”

Khanin, the convener of both this conference and its predecessor in 2004, pronounced himself “very pleased that we have now developed a cadre of young Russian-speaking academics who specialize in this issue and have something to say to each other and to the larger Israeli society and Jewish world on the condition of Russian Jewry in Israel and around the world.” Yet Khanin said he was “disappointed that not one Hebrew-language media organ deigned to cover the conference. I see that as symptomatic of a general obliviousness from Israeli society concerning the issues facing the Russian community, and it is that very attitude that hurts us the most.”