Many years ago, I took a visiting Israeli academic to lunch in a Toronto club. There were few people present, and nothing about the place was very interesting, including the food. 

I was about to apologize for taking my guest to such a dull venue when he exclaimed: “If only we had places like this in Israel!” He then said that being able to have lunch in a quiet club far away from the intensity of his daily life in Tel Aviv was idyllic. He craved it. This was one reason, he said, why he was happy to be in Canada.

I thought of this last month when I read a long report in the magazine section of the Israeli daily Ha’aretz about Israelis who have come to live in St. John, N.B. Not all of them seem to have done it for economic reasons. Several argued that it was the security and the serenity that made them move there.

At a time when Israel’s prime minister and many other officials were urging Jews, particularly in Europe in view of the anti-Semitic attacks, to leave their countries and settle in Israel, some Israelis, many of them native, chose to give up reasonable jobs and uproot their families in order to find peace and quiet in this relatively remote part of the world. There are Israelis in other towns in Canada and in many places around the world.

Local Jews welcome them in the hope that they’ll revive their at times dwindling communities. In some cases, longtime Jewish residents actively promote Israeli immigration. It works occasionally. Several recent arrivals have joined their congregations.

However, many more have come to assimilate and aren’t likely to revive the community or to take steps to make sure that their children receive a Jewish or even a secular Hebrew education.

There was a time when being a yored – a person who “came down” from Israel in contrast to an oleh (a person who has “made” aliyah, “ascended” to Israel) – was a stigma, particularly in the eyes of those who stayed behind. That’s no longer the case. There are over six million Jews in Israel today, more are coming and the birth rate is high, particularly among the ultra-Orthodox. Those who leave – there are probably a million Israelis living abroad today – aren’t going to wreck the country.

But most of them are likely to be lost to Judaism. Perhaps that’s part of their motivation for leaving. Assimilation in Israel is virtually impossible; it won’t be much of a problem in St. John or in any other place in the Diaspora.

Mercifully, most Israelis still want to stay Jewish. Periodic “happiness surveys” indicate that the overwhelming majority of those who reside in the country – including Arab citizens – are satisfied with being where they are. There’s therefore no reason to be alarmed that some want out. There’s hardly a country in the world, including Canada, that doesn’t have maladjusted citizens.

Nevertheless, the irony of it all shouldn’t escape us. At a time when aliyah is still central to the Zionist ethos and anti-Semitism renders Jewish life precarious in the Diaspora, there are Israeli Jews who go out of their way to live abroad. 

Let’s hope that they’ll be happy there, although I seem to recall that research suggests that the best-adjusted immigrants are those who were forced to leave their country. Those who did it by choice often agonize about whether or not they’ve made the right one. 

The Israelis in St. John and elsewhere may have exchanged discomfort at home for Diaspora Weltschmerz. They may soon discover that, despite all the problems, being a Jew in Israel is much more comfortable than trying to escape being Jewish elsewhere. Perhaps that’s why some children of Israelis abroad return to serve in the Israel Defence Forces. They seem to know that, in the long run, identity trumps security and comfort.