A Troubling Reverse Exodus

No country in the world places a higher spiritual and patriotic value on immigration than Israel. In Jewish religious law there is no greater mitzvah (commandment) than to return to the land of Zion. Since the birth of the Jewish state in 1948, 1.6 million Jews have settled in the country, and Jerusalem encourages others to come by offering generous financial and moral support. Last week, speaking in New York to the annual convention of the Labor Zionist Alliance, former Premier Golda Meir asked for the aliyah (immigration) of 2 million Jews to Israel in the next two years. "It is the one answer the Arabs understand," she said, referring to the constant threat of Arab-Israeli hostilities.

There is a pressing point to that appeal for more immigrants. Israeli officials are troubled about a continuing exodus from the Jewish state. Precise statistics are hard to come by because the stigma attached to emigration is so great that few Israelis who leave the country for good ever declare their intentions officially. Nonetheless, government officials estimate that about 300,000 Israeli Jews -- nearly one out of ten -- now live abroad.

Dry Bread. The exodus figures loom even larger because of a sudden 50% drop in immigration; that is largely a result of the Kremlin's sharp cut back in the number of Russian Jews al lowed to leave the Soviet Union. Only 8,518 Russian Jews immigrated to Israel in 1975, compared with 16,816 in 1974 and 33,477 in 1973. Jerusalem is just as alarmed by the fact that 40% of new immigrants from Western countries have returned to their original homelands within five years. Last year a total of 19,000 Jews left Israel, while only 19,700 arrived. This year, the Finance Ministry estimates, at least 16,000 will emigrate--and there are real fears that Israel may lose more Jews than it gains.

About 80% of the expatriate Israelis have gone to the U.S.; perhaps 100,000 of them have settled in or around New York City, and about half as many in Los Angeles. There are other large Israeli communities in Chicago and Boston and, outside the U.S., in Montreal, Toronto, Caracas and Rio de Janeiro.

Those who stay call those who leave yordim (from the Hebrew verb meaning to descend) and look down on them as deserters. When Gary Bertini of the Israel Chamber Orchestra became the ninth Israeli conductor to leave the country in the past ten years, an angry music lover wrote to the Jerusalem Post:

"Is Mr. Bertini eating dry bread here, or is the applause of the Gentiles sweeter to his ears than that of the Israeli Jews?"

Some of the yordim reply that they have left for one reason only: greater opportunity. They believe Israel cannot offer the scope, either financially or intellectually, that the emigres are seeking. Says Columbia University Sociologist Amitai Etzioni, a former Israeli who came to the U.S. in 1958: "In Israel, you deal with Israel. In the U.S., you deal with the U.S., the world--and Israel." Cardiologist Yzhar Charuzi says that his career would have been stunted if he had remained in Israel. "Here I have my opportunities," says Charuzi, now head of the coronary-care unit at Los Angeles' Mount Sinai Hospital.

"There I have my emotions. If I follow my emotions and my opportunities disappear, then I think that I would find that my emotions would go too. I would have stagnated there. I bless the moment I decided to leave."

Most of the artistic and professional yordim vehemently reject the idea that money might be a motive for leaving Israel. Nonetheless, most emigrants not only earn more outside Israel, but they also escape the country's sky-high prices and its increasingly burdensome taxes (TIME, Jan. 5). "I'm more prosperous here," says a former auto mechanic who left Haifa ten years ago and now owns a busy Gulf service station in Hollywood. "In business I'm like a dolphin in the ocean. I love it. My roots are still over there. But I guess I feel like Marco Polo. He went all the way to China to make money."

Guilt Feelings. Most of the prodigal Israelis feel embarrassed about having emigrated because of pressure from relatives and friends remaining in Israel. Many American Jews also feel that no good Israeli should leave his country. Leah Harris, a Sabra (native-born Israeli) who married an American, believes "every Israeli in the U.S. has a kind of guilt feeling. We weren't brought up to be deserters."

Still, the yordim vacation in Israel, subscribe to Israeli papers, buy Israeli goods and, most important, raise money to send back. They also tend to seek one another's company, sometimes even avoiding American Jews, with whom they may have little in common except their devotion to Israel. Even faith in Judaism is not a strong link: Israelis are often less religious than American Jews.

Since last May, the Jerusalem government has been trying to lure the yordim home by offering inducements like government-subsidized mortgages, but the response has been discouraging. Only 1,000 have gone back so far. Moreover, many Israelis who have remained complain bitterly that the returnees have no right to special privileges. Appeals to patriotism may prove more effective. An Israeli poster shows a bleak landscape with thorns on parched earth. The poster reads: WE DON'T PROMISE

YOU A ROSE GARDEN.

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