Israeli emigrants are no longer pariahs among L.A. Jews
Yitzhak Rabin caused a furor when he called them "worthless dropouts." But that was 15 years ago (Rabin was prime minister at the time). Since then, the Zionist ethos-and the attitude to emigrants from Israel-has undergone some refurbishing.
In the Southern California Jewish community, attitudes toward the area's approximately 150,000 yordim (in the pejorative Hebrew, meaning those who go down), are shifting as palpably as the region's tectonic plates, but a lot faster. Jewish communal organizations now accept Israeli expatriates as a legitimate component of the Jewish scene. And the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles which, like all Israeli missions, had traditionally lobbied against such acceptance, has removed itself from the fray.
The man the former outcasts have to thank for this sea-change in the attitude of the Israeli establishment is Consul-General Ran Ronen. Within six months of taking over his post in June 1989, the former Israel Air Force ace pilot brought the Foreign Ministry around to his view that it was counterproductive for Jerusalem to virtually force Diaspora communities to ostracize former Israelis. The Foreign Ministry accordingly declared itself neutral on the issue-at least in the case of Los Angeles and environs, home to one of the largest concentrations of yordim in the world.
The result: the creation of programs aimed at bringing Israelis into the communal fold. Last summer, for instance, the Los Angeles Jewish Community Foundation, with prompting from the Jewish Federation's Council on Jewish Life, earmarked a hefty $ 180,000 to hire Israelis to work at the city's Jewish community centers. They are to design programs to meet the special cultural and educational needs of their compatriots.
The federation has also helped set up an afternoon school for the children of Israeli emigrants. Based on an Israeli secular curriculum, it is meant for those who can't afford a Jewish day school, or who aren't disposed to join a synagogue.
Indeed, at the start of the current school year, Israeli parents had a relatively rich choice. They could register their children in the federation's Ami, a twice-weekly synagogue-based program centered in the city and in the nearby San Fernando Valley. Or, they could opt for the Israel Experience, a privately run but similarly oriented after-school program operating out of the North Valley Jewish Community Center, in Granada Hills.
These programs are being hailed as a godsend by many Israelis, who want to transmit something of their identity to their children. Many children don't even know Hebrew-as becomes glaringly apparent when the time of their bar or bat mitzvah approaches. "The kids may listen to Hebrew music at home," says the council's Elaine Albert, "and they may get shlepped to Israel once a year to visit saba and savta (grandpa and grandma). In the end, however, they are American kids with immigrant parents-no more, no less. For most Israelis, this is heartbreaking."
To deal with the predicament, community leaders and local Israelis are discussing the creation of a full-time joint day-school program containing elements of the Israeli curriculum. Such a program would be little short of revolu tionary. just three years ago, then-Jewish Federation President George Kaplan was asked whether he might support the establishment of a school based on a secular Israeli curriculum. "Over my dead body!" he thundered.
But with intermarriage and assimilation rampant, local leaders now hope that the Israelis in their midst might give the Jewish community a much-needed shot in the arm. Still, Jewish Angelinos remain decidedly ambivalent about their Israeli cousins.
The presence of a thriving Hebrew-speaking emigre population raises questions about the ostensible centrality of Israel for Jewish Americans. What's the point of supporting Israel with time and money, when many of the Jewish state's residents are bailing out?
On top of this, emigrant Israelis have managed to antagonize many Jews, to whom yored is synonymous with arrogance, clannishness, boorishness and acute materialism. Israelis, it's said, don't join synagogues. They don't give to Jewish causes and organizations. Hell, they don't even tip in restaurants. For their part, Israelis could tell you a thing or two about what they see as the snobbism, standoffishness and general wimpishness of American Jews. It will take years before the negative stereotypes on both sides are dispelled. For the moment, past assumptions are at least being re-examined.