Immigration from the mid-1960s through the late 1980s came with alternating troughs and wavelets that allow us to generalize about some facets of population-building that predated it or still persist.

Two major groups found their way to Israel during this period: "Russians" during détente and "Americans," both largely propelled by Jewish-Zionist motives and thus accurately termed aliyot.

Rina Greenberg Ukraine, 1973

Détente-era
Détente-era aliyah stemmed from the Jewish and Zionist awakening in the Soviet Union after the Six-Day War, abetted by the Nixon-Brezhnev détente doctrine and strenuous efforts by world Jewry and Israeli organizations. Israel made this aliyah possible by complying with the Soviet stipulated method: family reunification invitations sent by Israelis to individual Soviet Jews. It also acquiesced, for lack of choice, in the route from the Soviet Union to transit camps in Europe, where Israel had to compete with other destinations -- the United States and Europe itself -- that recognized Soviet Jewish emigrants as political refugees.

As time passed, the proportion who chose Israel dwindled, partly because the USSR released only such Jews as it thought would eschew Israel. Israeli governments during this period sought to stanch the "leak" by means of direct flights from the USSR and urged other countries not to recognize outgoing Jews as refugees, but Moscow's manipulative power transcended Jerusalem's.

These were also the years when North American aliyah, never very strong an estimated 80,000 in 50 years peaked. This aliyah defies Israeli truisms and has created truisms of its own. It is exclusively a "pull" aliyah, motivated by religious and/or Zionist factors even though some refer to themselves as "refugees" from various aspects of the home culture, in part to reinforce the difficult decision they have made. Some Jewish student leftists made aliyah after gentile colleagues shunned them for backing Israel in the Six-Day War. Many American olim are motivated by the Zionist slogan, "aliyah to build the country and to build the oleh." A minority come in the belief that life in Israel would fix their social maladjustments.

Some American olim perceive Israel as a backward place they have a mandate to improve socially, religiously, politically, and territorially. Many such people leave in bitterness; some who stay gravitate to the extremes. Across the board, North American olim are not wealthy. Occupationally they are concentrated in the public services and small business; few penetrate the elites. Their hosts alternately admire them and wonder about them (or suspect their sanity) for the great material sacrifice their move purportedly entailed. Several absorption regulations were introduced to ease their way: leniencies in foreign currency regulations, importation of a duty-free automobile, and the "temporary resident" status, ordinarily limited to three years but extendable by request.

Itzik Moshe Tbilisi, Georgia, 1980

Some American born Jews, chiefly haredim, settle in Israel but hold on to their tourist status. To this day, the Zionist establishment maintains a network of emissaries and programs for the 2,000 or so North American Jews who make the move each year. To lure them further, the foreign currency mousetrap has been held open for such olim, restrictions on overseas holdings being deferred first for ten years, then for twenty, and now for thirty.

The period after the Yom Kippur War, however, also witnessed the country's deepest immigration trough. Soviet aliyah fell to near zero, American aliyah returned to its traditional trickle, and the stigma attached to emigration by non-immigrants faded. By the mid-1980s, the national migration balance had tipped into the red, with emigrants exceeding new immigrants. Housing built in the 1970s for anticipated waves of aliyah -- from Iran, for example -- was made available to non-immigrants. The attitude toward emigrants ("yordim") changed; castigation yielded to understanding and hopes of inducing their return by offering benefits almost as generous as those given to olim. The governmental absorption apparatus withered and a "direct absorption" program was introduced, which provided the newly landed handful with an initial cash grant of about $10,000 for a family of four and told them, in effect, to make it on their own.

Waves and Wave Breakers

The Absorption Ethos

The First Big Aliyah: The Mizrahim

The Tattered Magic Carpet

The Second Big Aliyah: The Russians

Ethiopian Olim: The Unmeltables

What Has Immigration Accomplished?

Copyright Israel Yearbook & Almanac
.......................