April 10, 2002

The family divide
By Tovah Lazaroff

Anastasia Stirovsky, who lost her sister in the shooting down of Sibir Airlines flight last October, is now fighting to have her non-Jewish mother be allowed to remain in Israel. (Jonathan Bloom)

(April 10) - Should Israel allow the non-Jewish mother or father of an immigrant serving in the army, or of a terror victim, to live here? Tovah Lazaroff examines a complex issue that pits personal concerns against the state's core ideological values

"Do I, a captain in a combat unit, have to be killed, so that my mother can receive Israeli citizenship?" asked German Rojykov last month in a letter he wrote to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Under current law, the answer is yes: the question of "who is a Jew" supersedes family ties. The child of a mixed marriage, Rojykov, 25, immigrated more than four years ago under the Law of Return, which grants immediate citizenship to the child or grandchild of a Jew. His father is Jewish, but his mother is not and the couple is divorced. So Rojykov's mother, Ludmilla, is outside the purview of the Law or Return, which applies only to spouses or children of Jews, but excludes non-Jewish parents.

Rojykov didn't live long enough to mail his letter. He was killed only days after composing it, while leading a charge against terrorists shooting at passing cars near the Lebanese border on March 12. The letter was publicized after his death.

Before his death, Rojykov led a battle on two fronts: In the army he defended Israel, but in his private life, he fought the government by seeking citizenship for his mother. Ludmilla came to Israel two years ago to be with her only son in Kiryat Shmona under a special law designed to help soldiers with non-Jewish parents. It allows the parents to stay in the country while their child is serving in the military. The non-Jewish parents must leave when the child is released from the IDF, unless, the child dies, like Rojykov, while in uniform. Then the parents are granted automatic citizenship, should they chose, like Ludmilla, to remain.

The irony is that had her only son lived, Ludmilla would still have been separated from him. Unless the Interior Ministry had granted a special exception, she would have had to leave the country.

Now, no such intervention is needed. Her son's death granted her a reprieve. Legally, by right, she can remain close to his grave for the rest of her life.

Rojykov, who was not Jewish according to Orthodox Jewish law, was considered Jewish according to Israeli state law, and was thus allowed to immigrate. According to his friends, he didn't think of himself as Jewish, but did believe he was Israeli, so much so that he was willing to give his life for his new country. Proponents of recognizing family ties as an important qualification for special immigration status argue that as such, Rojykov is an example of a new type of secular Israeli.

But beyond his individual case, a much larger question looms. Those intent on guarding the Jewish nature of the state claim that only those with a Jewish identity have the right to immediately immigrate. Open the door to non-Jews, and the identity of the Jewish state is in peril.

Civil rights activists argue that there is a human rights issue that supersedes the question of "who is a Jew." Once this question is taken out of constraints of Orthodox religious law, as the state has already done, the whole issue becomes very murky and confusing. In an era where many have mixed and non-Jewish families, the state must recognize the innate right of families to live together, irrespective of whether or not they are Jewish.

Legal activists working on behalf of new immigrants say that Rojykov's story is just one example of a growing number of cases in which Israeli law forces people to chose between family ties and allegiance to the state.

Oded Seller of the Jerusalem based activist group, the Association for Civil Right in Israel, says that it is easiest for the public to connect to tragic stories of soldiers whose family members are barred from citizenship. "It illustrates how terrible the situation is," he says.

But these soldiers represent only one of many different types of cases in which relatives are separated by an immigration law that fails to prioritize the family. Notes Nicole Maor, an attorney for the Israel Religious Action Center in Jerusalem, "It is a huge issue on all fronts."

How huge? According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, only 49 percent of the 60,192 new immigrants in 2000 are registered as Jews with the Interior Ministry, compared with 96% in 1990. This statistics are based on the self-reported information given to the Ministry by the immigrants themselves and does not reflect the number of immigrants who are Jewish according to Orthodox law.

Irit Rosenblum, who chairs the New Family Organization, says her nonprofit advocacy group in Tel Aviv counts 200,000 intermarried couples in Israel, most of whom are new immigrants from the Former Soviet Union. They came in legally under the law of return which grants citizenship to non-Jewish spouses, Rosenblum says. With each one of these couples, it is possible that there are non-Jewish relatives who will want to immigrate to join their family.

Ruth Bar-On, who directs the immigrant aid organization Selah in Tel Aviv says, "all these people have mothers and fathers. Most people do not forget their parents. What are the things you need in life: you need to be with your family" - including teens who come here on youth immigration programs and do not realize that their parents will not be able to join them should they settle here.

The stories of these divided families have recently come to light with more frequency because a high number of those killed, about 21%, are new immigrants. Many of them have relatives with problematic stories when it comes to the question of citizenship and immigration, Rosenblum says.

Bar-On says her organization runs across these cases as part of helping a family deal with a tragedy, such as a death in terrorist attack. "Although our existence is threatened, there is no excuse to ignore basic issues that have to do with humanity and human dignity."

WHEN Iryna Sotnikova, 37, lost her husband Oleg in a terrorist attack in August 2001, many Israeli officials offered condolences in person and in writing. She still has a stack of letters including one from the prime minister, the president, the interior minister, and many others expressing sympathy and offering to help.

But her one request - Israeli citizenship - has yet to be granted. She is now on a tourist visa, which is due to expire at the end of April.

The couple married in the Ukraine in 1985 and had a son, Dennis, the following year. The marriage fell apart a few years later, and Oleg remarried a Jewish woman and immigrated with her to Israel in 1997. Two years later he divorced his second wife and reconnected with Iryna, asking her to come to Israel to give the relationship a second chance.

The couple remarried in Cyprus last July. They had only one month together. Sotnikov, a truck driver, was shot to death on August 29 by Palestinian terrorists while making gas deliveries to Jewish communities in Samaria.

"We lived life anew. Everything was very nice, but you cannot run from your destiny," says Iryna.

Since then, Iryna has struggled to stay. She receives insurance benefits, but cannot work because her tourist visa does not allow her to do so.

"I can't take the body back to the Ukraine, so I want to stay here," Iryna says. She also hopes Dennis, who is currently attending school in Ukraine, will be allowed to return to Israel. But so far, the government has refused to let Dennis even visit.

Interior Ministry spokesman Tova Ellinson says that the office works hard to help relatives of those who die in terrorist attacks or in defense of the state. The Ministry is investigating this case because it fears Oleg married his second wife merely to immigrate to Israel - a suspicion firmly denied by attorney Boaz Wilensky who is representing Sotnikova with the help of Selah.

"What is fictitious here?" he asks. "Iryna and Oleg Sotnikova were married. They have a son together. They lived together. He was Israeli, and he was killed by terrorists who thought he was Israeli."

Another woman fighting to stay is Elena Stirovsky. Though not Jewish herself, she was married to a Jewish man with whom she had two daughters, Iryana and Anastasia. In 1999 Iryana emigrated from Russia to Israel to further her music studies at Tel Aviv University. "Iryana had a real voice, like a gift from God," Stirovsky recalls.

Anastasia, now 19, joined Iryana here, a year later. Last October Iryana lost her life while on the Sibir Airlines flight shot down by an errant Ukrainian Army missile into the Black Sea en route from Israel to Siberia.

After Iryana's death, Anastasia flew to a town near the Black Sea where all the relatives gathered and her mother met her there. Anastasia told her mother she wanted to continue studying in Israel, but it was hard to be alone now that her sister was gone. She asked her mother to join her, which Stirovsky did. But Elena faces deportation when her tourist visa expires at the end of this month.

Having lost her sister, Anastasia says it is even more important for her mother to be allowed to says here.

"Now I'm completely alone," she says. "And I don't want to stay alone. My mother is the only family I have."

LEGAL advocates for civil rights insist that family reunification is a human rights issue. "Families have the right to live together," contends Seller from the Association for Civil Right in Israel, "and the state has to take this into consideration."

But the state has other considerations to take into account.

Spokesman Ellinson points out that the Interior Ministry accepts that the 1950 Law of Return allows for a wide circle of people to come into the country, in that the law encompasses three generations of people connected to Judaism. The law was intended to be the antithesis of the Nazi Nuremberg Laws, which condemned even someone with only one Jewish grandparent to the gas chambers.

Though the Law of Return has increasingly come under criticism for being outdated, most lawmakers are afraid to tamper with it because of its sacrosanct nature. The law both defines the nature of the state and insures that it remains a haven for Jews in distress. Such proponents as the Jewish Agency has firmly resisted any efforts to alter it.

But when the law was first designed, mixed marriages were not such a large issue, nor was their such a large influx of non-Jewish immigrants. A number of politicians - including Shas Interior Minister Eli Yishai - fear it is being used by immigrants who feel no connection to the country, but simply want to improve their lives economically. He has spoken out about the need to close what he calls "loop holes" in the existing law that allow for extended family members to enter the county under the Law of Return. Yishai warns that if measures are not taken, Jews risk becoming a minority in their own state.

Deputy Minister Yuli Edelstein, himself an immigrant from the FSU says, "We have already passed the line of logic in terms of the demographic profile of the immigrants. We have nearly a quarter of a million people who are not Jewish who have immigrated here, so there is already a reason to rethink the whole situation. The Jewish community in the FSU is not a bottomless pit. If you want to keep the numbers of immigrants up, you have to do it artificially."

Maor says one of the complex pieces of working to improve laws on family unity is that any such action also impacts the Law of Return, and opens the door to even a larger number of non-Jewish immigrants.

One solution supported by Shinui MK Yossi Paritzky would narrow the scope of the Law of Return, but broaden the number of non-Jewish family members who can enter as citizens. Paritzky proposes that the law should only include the second generation, not the third. But he would also favor granting citizenship to parents of those who immigrate under the existing law.

An even narrower approach to the problem, targeted at the more than 7,000 non-Jewish soldiers in the IDF, is the suggestion that the parents of those immigrants drafted into the army should receive automatic citizenship. This idea received public support last month from President Moshe Katsav following the death of Rojykov in March.

Former prime minister Ehud Barak had, in fact, promised in his 1999 election campaign to solve the problem of non-Jewish parents of immigrant soldiers. Construction and Housing Minister Natan Sharansky, who was the interior minister under Barak, tried changing the law to allow those parents a residency status that would lead to citizenship. But when Shas took over the Interior Ministry following the last election, it dropped the proposal.

Meretz MK Amnon Rubinstein filed a similar bill in the Knesset which passed three years ago. It passed its first reading, and was then was also dropped after Sharon took office.

In the last two months, the cabinet's legislative committee rejected a similar proposal by Sharansky, a proposal to grant permanent residency status to the non-Jewish parents of Israeli soldiers. Sharansky, the only minister to support the proposal, is now planning to refile a bill asking that parents and siblings of those who serve in the IDF be granted citizenship.

Yishai opposes the bill, fearing non-Jews abroad desiring to immigrate here would use the military as a means to get citizenship, thereby creating an Israeli "foreign legion."

But leaving current status quo will only create further situations like that of the Rojykovs, warns Paritzky.

"We will see more and more of these problems, and feel more and more ashamed," Paritzky says. "I do not want the country to give citizenship based on the death of a child. This is not the way to give citizenship."

UNLIKE Paritzky, Edelstein doesn't favor changing the Law of Return. He believes the situation will be improved if the Jewish Agency stops pushing those who are not Jewish to immigrate.

Separately, he believes the state needs to take a look at the whole issue of what happens to relatives of non-Jewish Israeli citizens. He says he supported Rubinstein's legislation, and had it passed, stories like that of Rojykov would never have happened.

National Religious Party MK Shaul Yahalom agrees that soldiers such as Rojykov should be allowed to bring in their non-Jewish parents, but is against any further tampering with the Law of Return. He points out that no nation in the world grants automatic citizenship to every family member, adding that if the US did so, it would be obligated to accept the families of every foreigner issued a Green Card.

Likud MK Naomi Blumenthal, a former chairman of the Committee on Immigration and Absorption, says its not the Law of Return or the laws regarding family unity that need to be changed. If the non-Jews converts, many of the problems they encounter, including the right to immigrate, disappear.

"We do not allow enough opportunities for immigrants to convert," Blumenthal says. "I believe in most of those cases the parents want to be Jewish and to belong to the Jewish people."

Benjamin Ish-Shalom, who directs the Joint Institute for Conversion, headquartered in Jerusalem agrees. "If they do not convert, they will never be fully accepted," says Ish-Shalom.

In the last half year since his institution opened, it has served more than 5,000 students. More than 85% want to convert, Ish-Shalom says. Among the younger generation, it is 100%. The institute also runs a program for non-Jewish soldiers.

But Rubinstein says what is happening with proposals such as his, "is the beginning of a new secular Jewish identity for people who want to associate with the state without converting."

Legal activists like Rosenblum agree: "We have to understand that the Israeli state is a secular state, even though it is Jewish. There are secular Jews in the world. Zionism is a secular idea. It doesn't fit into the religious idea, that is the basis of the conflict."

Those fighting for individuals such as Ludmilla Rojykov and Elena Stirovsky acknowledge the complexity of the problem.

"It is not an easy thing and there are no easy solutions here," says Selah's Bar-On. "But definitely something had to be done. It is a national problem, and in the interest of all political parties, religious and non-religious to sort this out."

Adds Rosenblum: "According to Zionism, the idea is to bring in as many Jews as you can bring, and those who are related to Jews. It should not be about parting families."

Who's a Jew, who's an Israeli - Many complex situations arise when an Israeli marries a non-Jew, and that non-Jewish spouse is waiting to obtain citizenship.

Hadas Tagari, an attorney for the Association for Civil Rights, this February filed a petition for citizenship before the High Court of Justice with respect to four couples. Each case involves an Israeli who married a non-Jew who is also not Israeli. While the spouse waited for citizenship, the couple had a child or several children, and then obtained a divorce.

In each case the non-Jewish parent is no longer eligible for citizenship and will have to leave the country. But, the parent does not want to leave his children.

One of the petitioners, Laura Greem, says she can't imagine having to leave her three-year-old son, Tomi. Greem came to Israel from Romania in 1997 as a foreign worker because her grandmother had lived here for many years before dying in 1993. Neither she nor her grandmother are Jewish, but her grandmother had married a Romanian Jew and immigrated with him under the Law of Return.

While here, Greem fell in love with an Israeli named Haim and married him in Cypress in May 1998. She applied for citizenship and was told it would take five years. In the interim she received residency status, but after a couple of years, the relationship fell apart.

"My husband had a son from a previous marriage who died of cancer," says Greem. "This was a very big shock for him. He wanted a divorce, to get away from everything."

Once they got divorced, Greem was no longer eligible for citizenship and was told she would have to leave the country. But her husband refuses to let her take their son Tomi with her, Greem says.

"I cannot leave my son here, so I asked for a visa to stay to take care of him," Greem says.

At some point she thought about conversion. "I am in Israel, and in Israel everyone is Jewish. I do not want to be the black sheep," Greem says.

She was discouraged however, because it is a very long process, and she would have to put her son in religious schools.

"This I cannot do. But I want to stay in Israel and become a citizen. I didn't think it will be such a big problem to stay here with my child."

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