The Second Promised Land: Exploring the Secondary Migration of Soviet Jews from Israel to Canada

Between 1989 and 2009, over a million Jews left the former Soviet Union and arrived in Israel.One in six later chose to leave Israel, with many arriving in Canada.This strong pattern of onward migration occurred despite Soviet Jews being well-integrated by standard measures.The pattern is only partially explained by existing theory and push factors in Israel, including security concerns or economic and socio-cultural factors.It is better explained through the addition of key characteristics of Soviet Jews as multipliers on push-pull factors, including low ties to Israel, high economic human capital, and human capital from previous migration experience.Examining the responses of Soviet Jews who engaged in onward migration to Canada contributes to the current understanding of Jewish identity, and to existing theory on migration, characterizing it not as a unidirectional process with a concrete terminus but as a lifelong, ongoing process with multiple possible outcomes. Chapter 1 -IntroductionWhen exit visas finally made their way to Jewish applicants in the Soviet Union, they were put to use.While the departure of Soviet Jews was limited in earlier decades, largely due to government refusal to grant permission and emigration paperwork, from the 1970s onwards Jews in the Soviet Union departed their home country in rapidly increasing numbers.Early departures, between the 1970s and 1988, numbered approximately 291,000 people, with the majority (165,000) selecting Israel as their destination country. 1 This initial wave was dramatically eclipsed by the next wave of Jewish emigration from the USSR, which began to surge just two years before the Soviet Union's collapse in December 1991.In a twenty-year span between 1989 and 2009, over 1.6 million Jews left the USSR and the countries encompassed by the defunct union, with the majority again choosing Israel (1 million).2 The sheer size of this later wave of movement led to significant impacts on all aspects of the diaspora.This included the Jewish communities in the former Soviet states, the population and development of Israel as a Jewish state, and the communities formed by emigrants in other countries, including Canada.However, while the overwhelming majority of the Soviet Jews initially moved to Israel, a new trend emerged a decade later: they were leaving Israel, just as they had left the USSR.Some returned to the post-Soviet states, and thus returned 'home.'However, many others chose to migrate to a new, third country and go through the arduous process of moving countries and integrating a second time.This was caused by a variety of factors commonly found as struggles in immigrant communities: difficulties with language or career acquisition, struggles with the 1.Mark Tolts, "Demography of the Contemporary Russian-Speaking Jewish Diaspora," in The New Jewish Diaspora: Russian-Speaking Immigrants in the United States, Israel, and Germany, ed.

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