Modern Israeli society is basically a society of displaced persons. It was formed and continues to be formed as a result of the immigration from all continents of the world of hundreds of thousands of Jews who remain faithful to the common religious and cultural tradition and at the same time largely assimilated the way of life and culture of the peoples among whom they lived. The first waves of immigration began long before the establishment of the State of Israel. At the end of the 19th century, the Jewish population of Palestine was 25,000. Before 1948 , 626,000 Jews arrived in Palestine legally and illegally, 1 including 52,350 from tsarist Russia and the USSR. After the creation of an independent state, the immigration flow was not interrupted, although it was uneven. In the first 20 years of Israel's existence, more than 1.25 million Jews arrived in the country, mainly from Eastern and Central Europe, North Africa and the Arab countries of the Middle East. After a certain "immigration surge" associated with the six-day war in 1967, there was a decline, which practically persisted until the end of the 80s. Thus, until mid-1989, only 1,828,122 people moved to Israel, of which 215,954 were immigrants from the USSR .2 Mass immigration from the former USSR, which began in late 1989, increased the population of Israel by 836,173 people. Thus, the number of immigrants from Russia and the former USSR who moved to Israel from the beginning of the century to 1999 inclusive was 1,091,545 people. For comparison, about 350 thousand people arrived from North Africa (mainly after the creation of the State of Israel); from North America-about 108 thousand; from South Africa-11 thousand; from Ethiopia-57 thousand; from Argentina-55,700, etc. The economic and political development of the State of Israel and the social life of the country are largely linked to immigration flows, regardless of the country of origin, their number and specific features. Each such stream represents ... Read more