CRISIS IN THE KREMLIN : Israel, Soviet Jews Keep Close Watch : Mideast: Strangers in a strange land are worried about relatives. Sharon calls for increased emigration.

Galina Rubinstein, a new immigrant from the Soviet Union, nursed both a cup of tea and confusion about the fate of friends and family in the Soviet Union, which until a few months ago was her homeland.

She came in May with a young daughter to flee the kind of national upheaval that at the time was still a whisper and that turned into a coup d’etat that came close to toppling President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Rubenstein left behind her husband, an engineer whom she expects to arrive in Israel during the next few weeks--if the borders stay open in the wake of upheaval in Moscow.

“He stayed behind to get rid of furniture and take care of a few personal things. I would get settled here. I hope the delay wasn’t a mistake,” she said, leaning back in her chair at a downtown restaurant.

Few countries distant from the Soviet Union are watching the events in Moscow with as much intense and informed interest as Israel. The rise of Gorbachev meant freedom of Jews to emigrate, and more than 300,000 have come in the past 18 months. Even though it is now clear that the attempt to unseat him has failed, the episode bred a distinct nervousness among Israelis, and officials have been sounding the alarm.

On Wednesday--while events were still unfolding in the Soviet Union--Housing Minister Ariel Sharon, who heads a Cabinet committee on immigration, said that Jews should leave the Soviet Union as soon as possible. “I am calling on the Jews in Russia . . . to come to Israel. The question now is saving lives of Jews,” he said. “Leave everything behind and save his life.”

And in a speech to American Jewish fund-raisers, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir made it clear that despite the latest turn of events in Moscow, Israel still wants Soviet Jewry to emigrate immediately.

Foreign Ministry officials said the Shamir government appealed to President Bush to use his influence to ensure that, whatever the nature of the government in Moscow, the pace of emigration would be maintained. According to the officials, Secretary of State James A. Baker III responded with assurances that emigration of Soviet Jews remains a priority with the Bush Administration, officials here said.

The Jewish Agency, the quasi-governmental group that arranges immigrant flights, reported that its offices in the Soviet Union remained open throughout the crisis and that Soviet citizens continued to line up at the Israeli Consulate to apply for visas. About 65,000 Jews already hold exit passes, agency officials said.

Analysts in Israel are divided over the extent to which political changes in Moscow will affect immigration. Some believe that any regime would have required Western aid and therefore would have tried to curry favor with Washington and Europe by letting the Jews go. This was also the line taken by Israeli officials.

Others had taken a more downbeat view. They said that the concern of a conservative regime would have been inward, aimed at restoring a pre-Gorbachev order that excluded unrestrained emigration.

Beyond this issue, there had been much give and take--before news came from Moscow that the coup had failed--about the future of the Middle East should the Kremlin have shifted rightward. Soviet influence in the Middle East receded with an inward-looking Gorbachev government, and there had been concern that a reversion to pro-Arab activism might have breathed new life into hostilities. Gorbachev also has also been inching toward a renewal of relations with Israel, a prospect linked with the American-brokered peace process and the willingness of Arab states to go along.

If the coup had prevailed, a rightist Soviet government might also have attempted to regain lost favor with former Arab clients such as Syria by taking a tougher line on emigration, surmised Galia Golan, a professor at Hebrew University and prominent expert on Soviet affairs. Arab governments have complained that the outflow is eventually going to displace Palestinians from their homes.

Even before the Soviet crisis, officials in Jerusalem were pondering whether the Middle East peace conference, scheduled by Washington and Moscow for October, might be put off. The Soviets were considered mere understudies to the American role, but their participation allayed Arab concerns that the negotiations would be dominated purely by the United States. For Israel, a Soviet role was viewed as a step toward normalizing relations broken off 24 years ago in the wake of the 1967 Middle East War.

On Wednesday, when it was clear that the coup had collapsed, Prime Minister Shamir said he hoped that a Middle East peace conference would go ahead in October and that Moscow would renew diplomatic ties with Israel.

Gorbachev’s “new thinking” in foreign affairs altered the political and military map of the Middle East. Not only did it bolster Jewish emigration to Israel but it also changed the military balance in a stroke. Under Gorbachev, the Soviets informed Syria that they would no longer underwrite Syria’s efforts for military parity with Israel and would sell arms only on a cash-and-carry basis.

The Soviet abandonment of Iraq, a sometime client, opened the way for the Bush Administration to gain backing from the United Nations for its military action to free Kuwait.