July 7, 2008

By Anshel Pfeffer

The Jewish community in the former Soviet Union could disappear in a generation unless assimilation is curbed there, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the weekly cabinet meeting yesterday. The government decided to set up a special body to increase immigration from those countries and strengthen Jewish identity there.

In the special cabinet discussion, a representative from Nativ - a once-covert agency founded in the Prime Minister's Office in the 1950s to bring Jews to Israel, and to serve as a liaison for Jewish dissidents in the Soviet Union - told the ministers that there are some 880,000 people in its former territories who are eligible to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return. More than half, the representative added, are not Jewish according to religious law. The special government body created to address the problem will act as an inter-ministerial committee, jointly chaired by the Jewish Agency, the Ministry for Immigrant Absorption and Nativ. It will be headed by Cabinet Secretary Oved Yehezkel.

The briefing on the state of the Jews in the former Soviet Union revealed that only 10 percent of this population are involved in Jewish activity, with assimilation reaching 80 percent in some communities.

Nativ's director, Naomi Ben Ami, told Haaretz that, in light of these figures, "the Jewish Diaspora is going to lose this region's Jewry in one generation." Additionally, the cabinet was told that some 38,000 Jews who came to Israel during the years 1989 and 2007 have returned to their countries of origin.

Some 70 percent of the people eligible to immigrate from the former Soviet Union are older than 45; 36 percent of them are older than 65.

Immigrant Absorption Minister Jacob Edery called on the government to increase funding for immigrants by 50 percent, to open new absorption channels that will attract young professionals and to expedite the tax reforms necessary for attracting immigrants.

The cabinet meanwhile resolved to put extra emphasis on and increase funding for Nativ and Agency activity in the states in question. In addition, it has been agreed that immigration-assistance organizations, including Nativ, will focus on Russian-speaking Jews living in Germany, who constitute a sizable minority there.

The initiative to expand Nativ's operations to include Germany has angered Jewish community leaders, who blasted it in talks with Olmert last year. Nonetheless, Nativ is planning to operate cultural centers in Germany, focusing on Russian-speaking young adults and teenagers, in the coming months.

Germany has made no official protest, but senior German foreign ministry officials said they supported the Jewish community's position and expected explanations from Israel.

The 211,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union currently residing in Germany are also considered "in great danger of assimilation," as one government official involved with Nativ's activity there told Haaretz last year. "There's a window of opportunity of a few years, after which we are liable to lose this community," he added.