By Lloyd Levy
EILAT, Israel — The supermarkets in Israel stock many authentic Russian foods, such as marvellous black bread, and herrings. The range of Vodka is unfathonable in its diversity. Somehow they stir ancient folk memories in my Jewish soul. Yet ex-President Bill Clinton was recently quoted as saying that Israel would be a better place if the Russians had not come.
The Russians constitute approximately a fifth of the Jewish population of Israel. They have brought with them enormous scientific, business, and artistic talent. Many Government Ministers come from thier ranks, most famously Avigdor Lieberman, the Foreign Minister. Israel and Russia have a strong and growing political and trade relationship.
This is a historic process of enormous significance, for reasons that go back to the foundation of Zionism over 120 years ago. The early Russian/Zionist thinkers were mostly what could be called “cultural Zionists”, who believed in building up Jewish settlements in Palestine, in order to create a new Jewish role model of pioneers with a Jewish soul and values, without specific religious connotations. Perhaps their best known advocate was Ahad Ha’am, and his protege Chaim Weizmann, although there were many others. However, progress was pitifully slow, until “Western” Jewry, in the form of Theodor Herzl, established what is known as “political” Zionism. This had the aim of creating a State via a political process, by dealing at a governmental level with Turkey and the other Great Powers of the day.
In a sense, political Western Zionism represented the Jewish “body” whereas Russian Zionism represented the “soul.” Political Zionism was triumphant, and Israel became a determinately secular society, essentially Miami in the Eastern Mediterranean. Yiddish culture was deliberately discouraged. Yet the amazing thing is that the Russian presence nowadays, has in many ways brought back the Eastern European “soul” into Israeli life, even though many of the Russians are scarcely if at all halachically Jewish. .
Liberal and “left” elements in the West are appalled at the new Russian influence, hence comments such as those of Bill Clinton quoted earlier. Netanyahu is anathema to them, and they will go bananas when Avigdor Lieberman becomes the next, or next but one, Prime Minister of Israel.
Yet the fact remains that Israel’s “Western” body has now been reunited with its Russian soul.
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Levy is a freelance writer who divides his year between homes in London and Eilat