| YOUTH ALIYAH
A constant in the process of absorbing new olim has been the
recognition of the importance of successfully integrating
immigrant children into Israeli society. In 1934, Youth Aliyah was
conceived as a means of facilitating this crucial development. The
organization was established during the time of Hitler's rise to
power, when Jewish youth were robbed of any chance to work or
study in Germany, and it aimed to bring German Jewish students
to Eretz Israel for education. In the organization's first 50 years, it
absorbed and cared for almost 230,000 young people, so that ten
percent of Israeli citizens received services from Youth Aliyah
earlier in life. Although the structure and mechanisms of the program have changed over the organization's history, the fundamental underlying purpose has remained constant: to bring young Jews to Israel, integrate them into society, educate them, and give them a stake in working to develop the Land. In accomplishing these goals, Youth Aliyah has incorporated elements of rescue, rehabilitation, education, and ideology. As immigration patterns have changed throughout Israel's history, Youth Aliyah has reconfigured its programs in order to meet new demands. At its inception, in the years preceding the establishment of the state, the organization bore the markings of the ideologies which had been influential since the Second Aliyah, specifically communalism with a stress on personal labor. Young people were brought to Mandatory Palestine and educated on kibbutzim, with emphasis placed on group learning, agriculture, and a combination of work, study, and social activities. Most of the participants were members of the pioneering youth movement, and in concert with the movement's goals, Youth Aliyah emphasized the idea that "those who are absorbed will become the 'absorbers,'" paving the way both for their parents to come, as well as other young people. At the close of World War II, Youth Aliyah performed the crucial function of assuming the role of parent for 15,000 children who had been orphaned by the Holocaust. Subsequently, the founding of the State of Israel and the massive influx of immigrants that followed brought about important changes for the organization. With the educational system overwhelmed by the addition of thousands of new students, many of them from Asia and Africa, Youth Aliyah worked to encourage North African children to immigrate before their parents had made aliyah. In 1971, the wave had subsided, but with many second generation immigrant youth still socially and economically disadvantaged, Youth Aliyah began to take responsibility for the education of a number of these youngsters, schooling them in kibbutzim, boarding schools, and day centers. Responding to evolving needs and changes in the broader Israeli education system, Youth Aliyah became focused less on the pioneering spirit of the kibbutz, and more on bettering the disadvantaged elements within Israeli society. Group education remained an important facet of the program, but was coupled with an increasing emphasis on achieving one's individual potential. Today, Youth Aliyah continues to educate young Jews arriving from the Diaspora, including a substantial number of students from Ethiopia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). In February 1994, the Government of Israel and the Jewish Agency joined forces to establish Na'Aleh 16, a program designed to bring youth from the CIS to Israel in order "to educate them and expose them to Jewish and Zionist values and to Israeli cultural and social life." Academically, the goal is to teach the students Hebrew, enable them to earn high- school certificates, and help them to continue on with post-secondary academic programs, should the students choose to do so. Youth Aliyah offers plans of study both for religious and secular students, but both groups receive instruction in Bible, Jewish-Zionist history, and Jewish holidays. Students go on study trips to areas of historical importance, meet with Israeli youth and youngsters from different backgrounds, and all are encouraged to pursue their special talents in the sciences, arts, and sports, with many receiving individual lessons. One of Youth Aliyah's newest programs, Na'Aleh 16 hopes to bring as many as 5,000 young people from the former Soviet Union to study in Israel. Many of their predecessors who participated in similar programs have chosen to continue living in Israel and make aliyah. WESTERN IMMIGRATION While most immigration to Israel in the years immediately following the establishment of the state was motivated by the desire to flee persecution, aliyah from Western countries marked a new era in which olim came not because they were being pushed by extreme conditions in their countries of origin, but primarily because of their attraction to Israel. This "free" immigration increased significantly in the wake of the Six-Day War, during which the threat of a united Arab attack on Israel galvanized support for the Jewish state throughout the Diaspora. These olim, a disproportionate number of whom were Orthodox, were motivated by Zionist convictions and a desire to see Jewish society in Israel succeed and be able to provide for its self-defense. The 1967 War had a particularly profound impact on the young, 5,000 of whom went to Israel during the month after the war's end, volunteering to help in any way that they could. By the start of 1968, the number of volunteers grew to 7,500, approximately 1,800 of whom chose to make aliyah and remain in Israel. These young people, hailing from 40 countries, worked in kibbutzim and moshavim, served as civilian auxiliaries to the Israel Defense Forces, reconstructed Hebrew University and Hadassah Hospital buildings on Mount Scopus, participated in archeological excavations, and worked as doctors, nurses, teachers, and youth groups leaders. In addition, many studied Hebrew during their stay. Western aliyah was not limited to the young, however, as many responded to the "Call to Aliyah," in which the Jewish Agency and the Zionist Organization urged Diaspora Jews to come and develop the Land. Largely as a result, immigration increased to over 30,000 in 1968, and to over 40,000 in the years 1969 and 1970. In order to encourage the expansion of "free" immigration from the West, the Jewish Agency, together with the new Ministry of Immigrant Absorption (established in 1968), set about the task of streamlining the process of absorption. The two combined to form a joint Government-Agency Authority on Immigration and Absorption, which formulated and later passed into law various proposals designed to ease the transition to Israeli society. These included the provision of interest-free loans, tax breaks and exemptions, help in finding employment and housing hostels, absorption centers, or ulpanim (residential programs teaching intensive Hebrew language), and free health care for six months. In addition, a Student Authority was established in order to provide assistance to the increasing number of students who came from abroad to study in Israeli universities and yeshivot. The new agency provided the students with assistance and grants, and aided the universities in constructing the additional dormitory rooms and lecture halls needed in order to accommodate the increased enrollment. IMMIGRATION FROM THE FORMER SOVIET UNION The current wave of immigration has been dominated by the arrival of vast numbers of Jews from the former Soviet Union. Historically, the treatment of Russian Jews took a significant turn for the worse with the assassination of Alexander II in 1881, when the government sought to protect itself by blaming the nation's maladies on them, resulting in an onslaught of pogroms. At the same time, Jews had long formed a distinct social class and found themselves the perpetual target of government conversion, assimilation, or expulsion efforts. After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the new Soviet government officially repudiated antiSemitism, but nonetheless viewed integration and assimilation as the only "progressive" solutions to the "Jewish problem." Thus, while religion was suppressed on a wide scale, the persecution inflicted upon Jews far surpassed the pressure exerted upon other religious groups to forsake their beliefs, especially during the time of Stalin's rule. In 1965, a slight thaw in Soviet policy permitted several hundred Jews to emigrate to Israel under the rubric of "reunification of families." The warming of relations was soon to freeze over, however, when the Soviets severed ties with Israel in the wake of the Six Day War in 1967. Although tens of thousands of Jews applied for exit permits to enable them to emigrate to Israel, only a small number were successful. As a result, hundreds of Jews, including many young people, began to protest openly, sending petitions to Soviet leaders, the Government of Israel, and the United Nations secretary-general and Human Rights Commission. They instituted Hebrew courses and openly celebrated Israel Independence Day. As a result, many of the activists were jailed. Jews throughout the rest of the world engaged in a struggle for the freedom of these "Jews of Silence," organizing demonstrations in front of Soviet consulates throughout the West, inundating the Kremlin with letters demanding that the "refuseniks" be released, and saving an empty seat at the Passover seder table in order to symbolize solidarity with Soviet Jewry. Throughout the 1970's only a small number of Jews were granted permission to leave the Soviet Union each year. In the 1980's, increasing numbers were allowed to emigrate. A large percentage of those leaving chose to go to the United States. This trend was reversed in late 1989, at which time the weakening Communist hold on power in the Soviet Union paved the way for an increase in the number of Jews permitted to emigrate. The United States closed its borders to a massive influx of Soviet Jews, and when in 1990 the floodgates opened and Jews left the Soviet Union en masse, approximately 185,000 made aliyah in that year. Nearly 150,000 more arrived in 1991, despite the ebb in immigration that resulted from the Gulf War. Since then, the inflow of olim from former Soviet Union has remained steady at about 66,000 each year. As of the end of 1994, over half a million Jews had arrived from the CIS in this current wave, and the Jewish Agency reports that this number could double over the next few years. The Agency remains prepared to facilitate the exodus of Jews fleeing trouble spots, as it did most recently in Chechnya. Absorbing a wave of immigration on this enormous scale has posed significant challenges, but has also yielded substantial rewards. The olim from the former Soviet Union, as a group, are very highly educated, and have contributed a great deal to the advancement of the Israeli economy. About sixty percent of those in the work force are members of the academic, scientific, and white collar professions, as compared to twenty-eight percent of veteran Israeli workers. A full thirteen percent of the olim are engineers, and there are large numbers of doctors, artists, nurses, scientists, and teachers. Striving to secure jobs for these olim in their original fields has been a difficult task. Some of the immigrants had been trained in areas not relevant to the needs of the Israeli economy, such as mining, petroleum engineering and naval engineering. Others found that their fields were simply saturated, and as a result, job offerings were scarce. In order to combat these problems, the government has arranged numerous job fairs and retraining programs in order to assure that these workers will secure employment. For example, in order to meet the need for health care for the elderly that was generated by the wave of aliyah from the CIS (13.4 percent of olim from the former Soviet Union are elderly, as compared to 10.9 percent of the veteran population), the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee -- through its Israel operation, JDC-Israel -- designed a program to retrain doctors from the CIS to be geriatricians. The Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, in cooperation with JDC-Israel, has launched similar programs to aid single parents (over 20,000 single parent families have come as a part of the ex-Soviet aliyah), scientists, small entrepreneurs, engineers, artists, and workers in the 45-64 age group, who have faced particular difficulties in finding employment (some of these programs are detailed in the section on Aliyah: the National Effort). A 1995 study conducted by the JDC- Brookdale Institute found that among olim who have been in Israel for a period of two years or more, the employment rate is nearly equal to that of the general population in Israel, with an equal proportion of men in the work force. Over half of these immigrants report that they are employed in the occupation of their choice, a percentage which increases with the length of their residence in Israel. Meanwhile, the government and people of Israel are preparing to welcome the continued inflow of olim from the former Soviet Union, and are doing everything possible to ease their transition into Israeli society. ETHIOPIAN IMMIGRATION A second, and very different, component of the current wave of immigration to Israel has been composed of the Jewish community of Ethiopia. An ancient community, the Ethiopian Jews believe themselves to be descendants of Menelik, the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (the classical name for Ethiopia). Known as the community of Beta Yisrael ("House of Israel"), because they were separated from the rest of the Jewish community during the period of the First Temple, well before the Talmudic or rabbinic periods, the Ethiopian Jews practice a version of Judaism prescribed by the letter of the Bible along with a number of Apocryphal texts. Having dreamt of a return to Eretz Israel for centuries, the first wave of Ethiopian immigrants began to arrive in 1982, when about 3,700 Jews were brought to Israel in small, covert operations with the acquiescence of Ethiopian authorities. The emigration was brought to a halt by the Ethiopian government when news of the operations was leaked to the public. A major mission was undertaken to transfer the Ethiopian Jewish community to Israel from late November 1984 until the beginning of 1985. By its conclusion, Operation Moses had brought nearly 7,800 Ethiopian Jews into Israel by smuggling them into Sudan, as it was impossible for Israeli jets to land in Ethiopia itself. Then, In 1989, Israel and Ethiopia renewed diplomatic relations. Shortly thereafter, in 1990, fighting between government and rebel forces gave renewed urgency to the plight of the Ethiopian Jews, and in April of that year, representatives of the Jewish Agency went to Addis Ababa to process the hundreds of Jews who began to arrive in the capital city in the hopes of emigrating to Israel. Between the conclusion of Operation Moses and April 1991, some 13,200 Jews fled to Israel. At that latter date, however, the rebels under the umbrella group of the Ethiopia People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) were closing in on President Mengitsu's forces in Addis Ababa, putting the Jews who had gathered there in imminent danger. The Israeli government organized Operation Solomon, a massive effort which in 36 hours and 28 flights transported nearly 14,200 Ethiopian Jews to Israel. The mission cost $50 million, part of which was used to obtain permission for the departure from Ethiopian authorities. Olim have continued to arrive in Israel since Operation Solomon; at the close of 1994, 6,800 more Ethiopians had made aliyah, and the total population of Ethiopians here has reached approximately 52,000. Although the Ethiopian aliyah is only a tenth of the size of the wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union, it has presented substantial challenges of its own, largely because of the change in cultural environment and lower socio-economic and education levels among the Ethiopians. For these reasons, the government and a number of public bodies, including JDC-Israel, have created many special programs designed specifically to facilitate the absorption of Ethiopian olim. Much of this effort is directed at the younger generation, nearly all of whom have been integrated into the education system, most attending religious schools. Although ten percent of these children are still studying in special absorption classes, and another ten percent of arriving youth study in separate ulpan classes for one year, this is a substantial improvement, when compared to the seventy percent who studied in special classes just a few years ago. In addition, 890 Ethiopians will be studying in institutions of higher learning in the 1995-6 academic year, a number which should increase as more youngsters make their way through the Israeli school system. The government is also channeling many resources into housing, in order to assist those Ethiopians who remain in temporary mobile home sites to move into either public housing or permanent private housing. Indeed, by taking advantage of heavily subsidized mortgages, nearly eighty percent of all Ethiopian families who lived in mobile home sites have purchased their own apartments, in cities around the country. Public housing is provided only to those families who, despite the special mortgages, still cannot manage to buy their own apartments. Though the employment rate among those living in the mobile home sites mirrors the national rate, the government has launched initiatives with the aim of training Ethiopians in a greater variety of vocations. Efforts at social integration are also crucial, and the government has worked closely with local authorities in areas containing high concentrations of Ethiopian olim, in order to facilitate this process. INTEGRATION OF OLIM INTO THE ARMY The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has traditionally been one of the primary vehicles for social integration in Israel, as the one experience, since the establishment of the state, common to all Israelis - native-born and immigrant alike. As a meritocracy, it recognizes and rewards individual effort and achievement, without reference to social or economic class or background. This has provided new immigrants with an avenue to gain social acceptance, meet other Israelis from various backgrounds on a basis of equality, make a tangible contribution to national security, and gain pride, self-esteem, and a sense of belonging to their new country. At the same time, because the IDF has consciously seen its role as contributing directly to the task of "building the nation," it has undertaken a number of responsibilities not typically associated with the military. The army has devoted considerable resources to educating new immigrants about Israel, by taking them on trips throughout the land, and by teaching them the history of the Jewish people and the principles of citizenship in a functioning democracy. The IDF emphasizes the principle that it is not enough to make new immigrants into good soldiers for the years that they serve in the army, but that they must also be helped to become contributing members of society for the rest of their lives. In order to accomplish both goals, the IDF devotes particular attention to the new immigrants' needs, both as individuals and as members of a particular group. Also, the army identifies talented and gifted individuals, giving them special training and education, and assisting them in finding appropriate employment after leaving the military. The IDF defines its objectives as the integration of new immigrants both into a military framework and into the larger society. New immigrants have served in the IDF's most elite units and have risen to the highest level of command. Success in the army has, in turn, led to impressive achievements in all sectors of Israeli society. The training and educational opportunities offered by the IDF, the gains of self-confidence, and the expanded horizons attained through military service, have created both the route and the motivation for many new immigrants to pursue higher education, and to achieve significant roles in business, government and politics. On a personal level, military service often facilitates the development of deep personal friendships between new olim and the native Israelis with whom they serve, which often last a lifetime. These relationships, which bring immigrant and long-established Israeli families together, have been a major element in integrating Israeli society over the years. JDC-Israel and the IDF are making special efforts to establish a comprehensive information campaign to help Ethiopian immigrant twelfth- graders prepare for their army service. The goal is to provide them with important information about IDF options, and to encourage and motivate them toward serving honorably. There is also a program which follows up on Ethiopian draftees, provides support and explains to officers cultural differences which can be a source of friction. One-on-one meetings between soldiers and officers from the Ethiopian community who have already been drafted, or who have already been demobilized, and their younger compatriots who are at earlier stages of their army service. Together with the IDF, JDC-Israel is implementing courses which provide Ethiopian soldiers approaching demobilization with vocational guidance and counselling towards their absorption into the civilian work world. Part of this program entails familiarizing participants with future channels for employment assistance, such as JDC-Israel employment coordinators. Participating soldiers are registered and the employment coordinators follow-up after demobilization. Over 200 soldiers took part in these unique programs in 1995, and another 200-250 will participate in 1996. ALIYAH: THE NATIONAL EFFORT The continued facilitation of successful Jewish immigration requires a tremendous amount of energy, innovation, and resources. This mammoth task is not the duty of any one body, but rather is the responsibility of the Government of Israel working with the assistance of Jews from the Diaspora. In 1929, the Jewish Agency for Israel was established as the arm of the World Zionist Organization charged with facilitating the development of the Jewish National Home. After the founding of the state in 1948, the Israeli government assumed many of the functions which had once been the province of the Jewish Agency. In 1952, the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization entered into a special covenant with the government, which codified into law their status in Israel. Passed by the Knesset in 1952 and amended in 1975, the Law of Status authorized these agencies to continue their work here. Specifically, the following roles were delineated: the Jewish Agency would take responsibility for aliyah (facilitating the departure of olim from their countries of origin and arranging for their transport to Israel), |
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