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Originally Posted by Kippy Winstead
dude i worked with a russian jew who had a VERY low opinion of israelis... she all jews do but that russians dislike them more... she added of course that russian jews are the best... followed by american jews... then some others i forgot but she said the worst were israelis...
now does this sort of issue come up over there... where its like i'm a russian jew and youre a german jew and so forth??? ethnic enclaves etc...
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Basically, israelis are able to classify the russians into two kinds. The ones that immigrated before 1990 (beforee the fall of the USSR) and those that immigrated after.
Before 1990, tend to be the more ideological Russians, that came for zionist reasons. This is because at this time, it was more difficult to get out of the USSR, and those that came did so on their own initiatiion and effort. They tended to be quite educated, cultured etc, identified themselves as jews, and tried to intigrate into israeli society. By now their kids speak hebrew at home and are as likely to have a moroccan jew friend as a russian jew friend. They are also not looking to 'move up' to a european or american citizenship.
The ones after 1990 are more problematic. This I blame largely on Israel and the jewish agency. Once the USSR fell, the jew agency entered and tried to propogandize to get immigrants. They told of all the absortion help they would get etc. So many non -jew russians heard and saw Israel as the ticket to the western world/ european citizenship. Either they had one jew grandparent that caused them to have jew written on the ethnicity part of their russian passport, or they 'created' a jewish grandparent, which apparently is not so difficult in the former soviet union. These are the current russian immigrants. And one of the israeli ministers got in trouble when he said the basic truth 'the immigrants from the USSR after 1990 are just criminals, or the elderly and handicapped looking for good healthcare'. Basically, they do stand out in israeli society. They still have russian accents, have only russian friends, they look like that russian boxer in rocky, wear crosses and pray to jesus, and are looking to get a better citizenship. They also hate arabs as much as they hate israel for 'not giving them enough absorption money'.
Of course the above is generalizations, but they do come from somewhere. Still I have good friends and have met good people from both categories. And the best boxers to train with tend to be the newer russians.
As far as other ethnic enclaves, ethiopians still have it alittle, since they are relatively new immigrants. Ashkenazi and sephardic are basically indifferentiable for the most parts currently and intermingle/intermarriage freely.