Absorbing Coaches and Athletes from the Former Soviet Union in Israel

Abstract

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted in the opening of its gates and a mass exodus of Jews to Israel. Around a million Soviet Jews immigrated to the Jewish state. Among them were also hundreds of athletes, coaches, physical education teachers, and sports scientists. In this paper, I examine the efforts of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Absorption to absorb the immigrants engaged in sports. Sports culture in the defunct Soviet Union differed greatly from sports culture in Israel. While sports could ostensibly have served as a bridge between the immigrants and the Israelis, the disparity between the sports culture in the Soviet Union and that in Israel was too great. Many of the immigrants chose to attend ethnic sports clubs where they could preserve their Soviet patterns of behaviour. The paper discusses the social and professional barriers that prevented the immigrants from integrating into Israeli sports. One of the conclusions is that Israeli sports did not manage to exploit the full potential of the Russian immigrants and did not reap long-term benefits from their abilities.