Liad Magen (Photo: Facebook)
More reverse aliyah. Ynet has a piece from a 32-year-old computer programmer in Tel Aviv named Liad Magen who says he wants to return to the Diaspora. An important trend; estimates are that Israel is losing 1 million (maybe closer to 2, the Jewish Channel says) citizens to this brain drain, and it’s amazing to me that American media have not made more of the spiritual crisis that this represents for many young people. Like Jeffrey Goldberg, who spent years as an Israeli then moved back to the United States– which he believed to be unsafe for Jews– in part because he could never adapt to Israel’s “coarseness.”
Magen:
And I haven’t said a word about the security situation, the constant existential threat we cope with here, and our violent and bloody recent history. Yet this isn’t really new – it was never easy to live here. Even when my mother moved to Israel, as a young, idealist woman, my grandmother attempted to dissuade her: “It’s hard for Jews to live with other Jews, because everyone tries to gain at the expense of the rest,” she said some 30 years ago, and was right. This is exactly the feeling here. Everyone tries to gain at everyone else’s expense.
The solution of returning to the Diaspora and living overseas always captivated us, the wondering Jews; we always heard those amazing stories about the uncle from America, who of course achieved success easily. Especially in my field, as a computer engineer, relocation is not a dirty word. Many of my friends are overseas, in Europe, Australia and the United States. Even friends who served in the army with me, and completed a full combat service, left for the US and opened successful companies there. All of them are doing well.
Political science and the historical discussion of the nature of the nation are too restrictive because they assume that the elemental nation-state must be consolidated on the basis of a territory and language.
From the early 19th century onward Jewish communities undergo a process of virtual national consolidation on a foundation with two key components.
The first component consisted of the remnants of pre-modern Jewish trade networks that had been constructed around a common faith requiring a commitment to Jewish sacred law. Jewish sacred law (or Halakhah) provided a uniform commercial code that regulated Jewish networks of trust in mercantile and financial industries.
The second component was a new national consciousness associated with the idea of a Jewish Volk that must take possession and control of Palestine even if the vast majority of Jews never migrate there.
More on Israel’s brain drain, an excerpt from Ami Kaufman’s “Israel’s bizarre decision to give up on education – and its future”:
“Israel’s problems, of course, don’t stop at grade schools. The higher education system is in total chaos. I’ve also had the opportunity to hear Manuel Trajtenberg, the chair of the Planning and Budgeting Committee of the Council for Higher Education in Israel…
Trajtenberg, … is fighting a losing battle as well. Besides aging faculties, low results and more – Trajtenberg is fighting the biggest brain drain a Western country has ever seen.
The numbers are staggering (2007):
– 25% of active Israeli researchers reside in the U.S.(!!!). This is astonishing compared to other countries: Nearby Canada has “drained” only 12.5% of its faculty, Holland 4.3%, Italy 4.2%
– 33% of Israeli computer science researchers reside in the U.S.
– 28.7% of Israeli economists reside in the U.S.
What does all this mean? That Israel has decided what its national priorities are: Less basic and quality education. The ones that are educated are leaving because they can’t make it here, and they’re not coming back. Israel has given up.
Taking these conditions into consideration, the anti-democratic legislation, the nationalism and the religious coercion taking over Israel is not only well under way – it has a bright future.”
http://972mag.com/israel%E2%80%99s-bizarre-decision-to-give-up-on-education-and-its-future/28962/
Is this to mean that the “spiritual crisis” is really just Israeli Jew’s realizing that the “market is saturated” with people gaining at other’s expense? So, this guy wants to what, move to a place with fewer jews to set up shop? Not a very flattering portrayal of the tribe…and if this is the only reason people want to leave, I don’t think other countries should be opening their arms to welcome them…sucks to be you Liad.
I could understand that Jews were forced to live on their wits as an insecure minority and found that there were some advantages, as well as many dangers, in that situation. Liad’s grannie’s contention that Jewish people cannot easily live with each other – ie are used to somewhat mistrusting all those around them – is rather worrying, one of those internal traces (as they seem to me) of anti-Semitism in some forms of Jewish culture. The second idea, that Jewish uncles ‘of course’ achieve success ‘easily’ among non-Jewish people, is mentioned ironically but it is the counterpart of the first idea and easily makes me uneasy.
Thanks for the figures, patm. If education is being drained out and religion and militarism left in that can’t be good. And thanks for the info about Ohio the other day.
>> I haven’t said a word about the security situation, the constant existential threat we cope with here …
…and the constant existential threat his nation presents to others.
>> Even when my mother moved to Israel, as a young, idealist woman, my grandmother attempted to dissuade her: “It’s hard for Jews to live with other Jews, because everyone tries to gain at the expense of the rest,” she said some 30 years ago, and was right. This is exactly the feeling here. Everyone tries to gain at everyone else’s expense.
I’m appalled by this man’s – and his grandmother’s – blatant anti-Semitism! ;-)