Downloaded By: [University of Haifa] At: 19:23 20 March 2008 The mass immigrations to Israel: A comparison of the failure of the Mizrahi immigrants of the 1950s with the success of the Russian immigrants of the 1990s Sammy Smooha * The two mass immigrations to Israel are compared, demonstrating the failure of the Mizrahi immigrants of the 1950s versus the success of the Russian immigrants of the 1990s. Almost in every respect the Russian immigrants had advantages over the Mizrahi immigrants: they arrived with greater human resources, the state was more affluent and less discriminatory against them, the society was more culturally open and socially tolerant, and their proportion in the total population was much smaller and hence not threatening. Whereas the Mizrahim lost their culture and ended up in the lower strata of society, Russian immigrants are in the process of entering the middle class and in control of the pace and rate of their assimilation. Keywords: immigration; Mizrahim; Ashkenazim; Russian immigrants; Israeli society Israel experienced two waves of mass immigration, one in the 1950s and another in the 1990s. About one million new immigrants arrived in each wave. In the earlier wave half of the immigrants came from Europe-America (Ashkenazim) and half from Asia-Africa (Mizrahim, Sephardim). In the later wave over 90% were Ashkenazim from the former Soviet Union (FSU) and the rest came from the Asiatic parts of the former Soviet Union, Ethiopia, and other non-European areas. Although half of the immigrants in the 1950s were Ashkenazim, at the time of their arrival and in the ensuing decades, these European Jews were not considered to be problematic by the 630,000 old-timers of whom 77% were Ashkenazim. For this reason the first mass immigration is seen as Mizrahi and contrasted with the second Ashkenazi Russian mass immigration. The comparison between the two waves may be instructive with regard to issues of immigration and immigrant integration and the impact of immigrants on the host society. Conceptual framework The comparison will be based on the following conceptual framework. Each wave of immigration will be traced at three points in time: the initial setting prior to the encounter with old-timers, the encounter dynamics during the first decade, and the situation several decades thereafter. The process that takes place over this extended time scale is conceived of as a continuum ranging from ethnic formation to assimilation. The immigrant group may assimilate culturally and socially but also may gradually evolve as a separate ethnic group. The relative progress of these competing developments determines the position of the immigrant group on the continuum. The various conditions conducive for assimilation can be classified into variables relating to the immigrants themselves, the old-timers, and the society at large. 1 ISSN 1353-1042 print/ISSN 1744-0548 online q 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13531040801902708 http://www.informaworld.com *Email: ssmooha@univ.haifa.ac.il The Journal of Israeli History Vol. 27, No. 1, March 2008, 1–27