CBS reports that between 50,000 and 100,000 of the 1 million 'Russians' who made aliyah since the early 1990s have returned to the Former Soviet Union, and are leading a Jewish renaissance there.
Many will regard this as an indictment of the way Israel has absorbed the Russian olim; things must be pretty grim in Israel, the thinking will go, if people are actually prepared to return to Russia. But the opposite is true. Approximately half the Jews who arrived in Israel during the first and second aliyot left the country within months; more than a quarter of the Jews involved in the fourth aliya left as well. I'm not aware of any statistics on the number of Anglo olim who left, but we all know plenty of Anglo 'yordim.' If only 5-10 percent of Russian olim have chosen to return, and it took them years to decide to do so, that makes this one of the most successful aliyot ever.
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