Nativ, once a clandestine organization that promoted Jewish identity and immigration to Israel from behind the Iron Curtain, is hoping that last month's cabinet decision redefining its mission will reverse its decline since the Soviet Union collapsed.
During most of its existence, Nativ was subordinate to the prime minister. But after the fall of communism, successive premiers paid it less and less attention.
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Last year, however, Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman, himself a Soviet immigrant, entered the government and promptly took Nativ under his wing. He secured both a budget increase to bail it out of a financial crisis this year and a promise to triple its funding in 2008.
In early July, an interministerial committee recommended that Nativ's operations be expanded to Germany, and the cabinet approved this recommendation a few weeks ago. According to the decision, Nativ emissaries will operate in Germany for a two-year trial period.
Some 200,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union currently reside in Germany, and they are considered in great danger of assimilation. "There's a window of opportunity of a few years, after which we are liable to lose this community," a senior Strategic Affairs Ministry official said.
The committee also recommended that Nativ prepare for the possibility that rising anti-Semitism in some of the former Soviet countries could lead to a new wave of immigration to Israel. One of its findings was that 85 percent of those entitled to immigrate to Israel from the former Soviet Union under the Law of Return had no exposure to the State of Israel or "Zionist messages," while 40 percent do not even know that they are entitled to immigrate.
Both the unclarity of its mission in recent years and the transition from secret to public activity have been hard on Nativ, as has the suspicion with which it is viewed by the Foreign Ministry, the Immigrant Absorption Ministry, the Finance Ministry and the Jewish Agency. However, it recently underwent a comprehensive "business analysis," commissioned by its new director, Naomi Ben-Ami, to help it get back on track.
The analysis concluded that it should transfer massive resources from its headquarters in Israel to its 10 offices in Germany and the former Soviet Union. In September 2007, it will open a new office in Berlin, located in the Israeli embassy. Later this year, it will open a new center aimed at strengthening Jewish identity in Kharkov, Ukraine.
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