50,000 Israeli Jews return to Russia

I am not 100% sure how the data was obtained. There certainly is quite a number of people who move between the two countires on the regular basis so it may be hard to tell which one they really call home.

But overall this data is not surprising.

The exodus has stirred up a discussion in Israel, said Boruch Gorin, head of the public relations department at the Russian Federation of Jewish Communities, which commissioned the study. On the one hand, millions of Jews already live outside Israel. On the other hand, "living in Israel is an ideology, and that the people who sought a shelter in the country have been leaving is a blow to the ideology," he said.

Maybe it is indeed time to address the issue of the ideology Mr Gorin is talking about.