Demography and business in Israel: The promised land needs people THIS month Teva, an Israeli drug firm, announced that it had poached a new boss, Jeremy Levin, from Bristol-Myers Squibb, an American rival. Mr Levin is exactly the kind of immigrant Israel needs. He swotted at Oxford and Cambridge and has run companies in New York. He has lived in six countries and has contacts in dozens. And he loves Israel. "The opportunity to live and work in Israel," he said, "is compelling." The dynamism of Israeli business owes much to immigration. In the decade after the Soviet Union collapsed, 1m immigrants flocked to Israel. This huge influx of energy and talent helped kick-start Israel's start-up boom. Diaspora ties help, too. Israeli entrepreneurs nearly all know people in other countries. Many divide their time between home and abroad. Their connections keep the latest ideas from Palo Alto and Hong Kong flowing into Tel Aviv, and help Israeli start-ups find new markets and new recruits. But Israel's demographic advantage is fading. The Soviet Union will not collapse again. "We're not going to get another million Russians," sighs an official in Tel Aviv. Immigration has collapsed from 200,000 in 1990 to a mere 17,000 in 2010. Living standards are higher in America, and the neighbours less scary. The fastest-growing population groups in Israel are those least plugged in to the high-tech economy: Israeli Arabs, who lag educationally, and haredim (ultra-orthodox Jews), whom the government pays to study the Torah. Two-thirds of working-age haredi men don't work. They do procreate, however. In 1960 only 15% of Israeli schoolkids attended Arab or haredi schools. Now it's about 50%, and if current trends continue it will be 78% by 2040, according to the Taub Centre, an Israeli think-tank. If tomorrow's haredim are as workshy as today's, the start-up nation is doomed. But trends that can't continue, won't, says Glenn Yago of the Milken Institute, a global think-tank. The haredim are highly literate and perfectly capable of working. Some day, they will have to.