Russia beckons Jews who fled

MOSCOW - Watching over rambunctious children at a central Moscow Jewish school, a four-story building filled with brightly painted menorah motifs, Sofia Savinikh says it’s sometimes hard to remember why she left home in 1991.

The Achei Tmimim Day School, run by the local Lubavitcher community, educates nearly 200 students in the Jewish faith. It’s one of about a dozen schools with dedicated curricula and kosher cafeterias in Moscow — facilities unheard of during the Soviet Union, when state-sanctioned anti-Semitism barred Jews from many jobs and schools.

Four months after returning to Moscow from Israel, 47-year-old Savinikh, a daycare provider, says the land she left 15 years ago is a changed place.

“It used to be that being a Jew was nothing to be proud of. Now I say I’m Jewish without fear.”

Lured by political changes and a booming economy, thousands of Jews like Savinikh — part of a million-strong wave of immigration that fled Soviet repression for Israel in the 1970s, 80s and 90s — are returning to Russia. The growing clout of Russia’s Jewish community was underscored on Wednesday when Vladimir Putin arrived in Israel for the first trip by a Russian or Soviet leader ever to the Jewish state.

“I could say it’s a miracle,” said Avraham Berkowitz of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Russia. “Jewish life here has come back with great force and vigor.”

Home from the Holy Land
Jewish community leaders estimate some 57,000 Jews have come back to Russia from Israel, and perhaps thousands more keep a foothold in both countries, taking advantage of lucrative trade between their homeland and the Holy Land.

FREE VIDEO Return to Russia April 23: As Jewish families gather to retell the story of their ancestors' exodus from Egypt, there's a new exodus gaining attention. NBC's Preston Mendenhall reports. Nightly News

That success is reflected in the mirrored façade of Moscow’s seven-story, $20 million Jewish Community Center. Inside, the draw of a computer center, a theater, a Jewish literature library and a fitness club (one major donor is a fitness club magnate) has breathed life into a nondescript northern Moscow neighborhood.

“Jews were quitting the country, saying they will never set foot here again, never come back, because they were never given the opportunity to be Jewish and to live a normal kind of life,” said Rabbi Berl Lazar, Russia’s chief rabbi. “Today, they're coming back, and they see actually their future here. It says a lot about the changes that have happened in Russia.”

‘Hurdles’ for Jews
The changes are at all levels of Russian life. Gone are the official ban on public worship and discrimination at the workplace. Passports no longer designate ethnicity — once a barrier to a good job or education.

“The moment you mentioned ethnicity, immediately hurdles appeared,” says Savinikh.

Yet the Savinikhs — Sofia’s husband, Evgeniy, is still in Israel but planning on joining his wife and twin daughters at the end of the month — found life in the Jewish state also had its hurdles.

Sofia Savinikh held down jobs in a toilet paper factory and banana laboratory. Evgeniy Savinikh found that every company he worked for seemed to go bankrupt, as Mideast violence took its toll on the Israeli economy. They say they were fortunate not to be “cleaning floors,” Sofia Savinikh says. Many highly educated Soviet Jews who emigrated to Israel only found menial jobs.

In the end, the Savinikhs say, Israel never felt like home.

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