Russians Bring Chill to Israeli Melting Pot - by Susan Poizner
The Guardian, October 6, 1992

Strife between Russian immigrants and Israelis is spilling over among schoolchildren. Susan Poizner on a failure of "immigrant absorption".

Israeli teenagers suffer from adolescence as much as anyone else. But in addition to having to deal with puberty and final exams, they have an extra challenge. It's called "immigrant absorption" and it's the foundation on which their country was built.

So when Ella, a Russian immigrant, appeared in Jerusalem's Leyad Ha'Universita secondary school, 16-year-old Tammy Barash and her classmates were expected to welcome the new student with open arms. "My teacher told me to talk to Ella and make her feel at home," Tammy says. "I did, but not because I wanted to. I don't like Ella as a person. It has nothing to do with her being Russian."

Israelis pride themselves on their ability to absorb people of vastly different cultures into their society. Their country was established as a place of refuge for Jews from around the world. But while the "Ministry of Absorption" deals with all the immigrants' immediate physical needs, absorption on a personal level is less well organised. Most adults go about their daily routine without encountering new immigrants and so friendships amongst adults are unlikely to develop. But because Israeli youngsters study with their immigrant peers at school, it is they who are expected to ease the newcomers into the fold.

They're not doing a very good job, according to Julia Mirsky, a clinical psychologist who works with immigrant teens. "The teenagers are really the problem because they're not very accepting of people who are different and they can often be extreme. At best the Russian and Israeli kids are estranged. At worst conflicts break out over trifles."

While the conflicts may be petty, the results can be perilous as happened in Jerusalem this March. Five Israeli teenagers severely beat up a Russian immigrant youth outside their school because the boy was Russian. "We think it's unfair that Russian immigrants get all kinds of advantages that we don't," one of the assailants told investigators.

Feelings are fuelled, it seems, by the sheer number of Russian students in the classes. Russian immigrants are hustled into the national school system shortly after their arrival. In some schools, 30 percent of students are from the former Soviet bloc and some Israeli teenagers see that as a threat. There is also a fear that the Russian students will take up the limited number of places in Israel's universities.

Russian students often find themselves out in the cold: "I had a little problem when I first came to school here," says Yuri Slobodov, a Russian born teenager who has now lived in Israel for four years. "The kids didn't accept me. They wouldn't talk to me and I wouldn't talk to them. I had one friend, an Israeli, who was also not accepted. But I wasn't worried. I knew one day I'd be like them."

Today Yuri is like them. He has taught himself to speak Hebrew without an accent. He has learned to like the music Israelis enjoy. And he dresses in Nikes and Levis, just like everybody else. But today fewer Russian immigrants are as motivated as Yuri. The massive wave of Russian immigration has created an instant peer group for all Russian-speaking teens in recent years. You no longer need to know Israelis to have friends.

Even those who dare to venture into a foreign culture find the gap too big to bridge. Israelis seem wild and irresponsible to the Russians, who had a strict upbringing. "In Russia they don't even recognize that children go through a period of adolescence and that they need to rebel," Mirsky explains. "Children are just expected to do what they are told." And while parents aren't particularly sensitive to their children's needs while they're living in Russia, once they arrive in Israeli things get much worse. Suddenly, the adults are preoccupied with their own problems, such as studying the language and finding a job. Russian youth have only each other to turn to for support.

"The problem is that when you have two isolated groups, the stereotypes are more likely to develop. This makes the immigrants and Israelis drift even further apart," says Mirsky. "It's dangerous at this age because teenagers are very impressionable and if they decide that they hate Israelis or Russians, they're likely to keep that attitude for the rest of their lives."

Little has been done to draw the two camps closer together. Recently, however, the Joint Israel Committee, which works with immigrants, produced a series of television dramas about Russian and Israeli youth, showing the similarities and differences between cultures.

"We wanted to bring relations back from a group level to an individual level, with Marina, an individual Russian immigrant, and Michal, and Israeli teen who can identify with Marina's problems," says Mirsky, who worked on the project.

There still is a certain naivety however. In one episode Marina, the Russian immigrant, wistfully describes her situation. "Maybe one day I'll be more accepted and have more Israeli friends," she says, "but now I'm a bit lonely and it bothers me a bit because in Russia I had lots of friends."

In Israel, the fictional Marina would still have lots of Russian friends. That's part of the problem.