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Immigration from the USSR saved Israel

2020-01-07T22:59:18.067Z


Asher Cohen


"Bring them here to a country that will have counterweight to the ultra-Orthodox ... that if there is no election, there won't be much for the ultra-Orthodox," the Spanish Chief Rabbi, Yitzhak Yosef, was quoted as saying. He added that "hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of Gentiles came to Israel because of the law of who is a Jew ... Many, many of them, Communists, hostile to religion, haters of religion."

There is no doubt that in Israel nearly 450,000 people are not registered as Jews. "Others" in the Central Bureau of Statistics language, most of them immigrants from the former USSR. For a long time, they include not only immigrants, but more than 100,000 young people who were born here as "others" or immigrated at an early age and most of their education passed in Israel. "Other" children are born in Israel every year.

There is a serious public debate within the meaning of the Law of Return, in which most of the immigrants who come today are not Jewish according to Halacha and many are far from the Jewish world. However, Rabbi Yosef chose a generalization that affected all immigrants.

The immigration in the 1990s saved the State of Israel. It did not save Israel from the ultra-Orthodox. It rescued it as a Jewish nation-state whose very existence is entirely contingent on the existence of a crucial Jewish majority.

In the late 1980s, before the immigration began, the demographic ratio in Israel was about 80 percent Jewish and about 20 percent Arab. In those years, the fear of the "demographic problem", which was based on a large gap in the fertility of both populations, increased: the birth rate among the Arabs was significantly higher than that among the Jews. Without a significant increase, this gap could have devalued the relative weight of the Jewish majority.

The dramatic increase - about a million people in a decade - has saved the demographic balance first. One million immigrants added to the Jewish majority in Israel preserved the existing situation in light of the gaps in its birth; They and their descendants have maintained the existing demographic balance up to the current decade, where birth deficits have narrowed dramatically, to near balance. Today the situation is about 21 percent Arab, 74 percent Jewish and 5 percent other.

From a halakhic point of view, not just national, there is a well-known and well-known approach that sees someone who is not Jewish, but is a descendant of a Jew, the "seed of Israel." In relation to this, conversion policies should be as close to, contained and as possible as possible within the halakhic boundaries. Rabbi Chaim Amsalem, in his book "Zera Israel," proved this from a variety of Halachic sources. Some rabbis and judges in the state courts do take this halakhic approach in the field of conversion, but they have also been criticized by Rabbi Yosef.

In my book "Non-Jewish Jews," which focused on the identity of non-Jewish immigrants according to Halacha, I discussed the processes most of them undergo. Not only are most of them from the seed of Israel and have a sense of identification and belonging to the Jewish people; They, and certainly their descendants born here, intervene in Jewish society in Israel, serve in the IDF, speak Hebrew and integrate throughout Jewish society in Israel. It should be stressed: Some of the Jewish society identify with it and feel part of it, they have a Jewish father and mother of 16.

Rabbi Yosef made a generalization by highlighting the negative phenomena of a minority among those immigrants, and attributing them as a common characteristic for all those hundreds of thousands.

The State of Israel, the clear expression of the miracle of kibbutz exile, does not need divergent and far-reaching religious leadership in conversion laws and in doing so facilitates assimilation laws. Israel needs an inclusive and close religious leadership that is not only aware of the great historical miracle of our time, but is also ready to face the historical challenges this miracle has brought with it.

Prof. Asher Cohen is the head of the School of Communication at Bar-Ilan University

For further opinions of Asher Cohen

Source: israelhayom

All news articles on 2020-01-07

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