National Minority, National Mentality, and Communal Ethnicity

Changes in Ethnic Identity of Former Soviet Union Jewish Emigrants on the Israeli Kibbutz

Bibliographic Data

ID9954476
AuthorsDavid Mittelberg (University of Haifa, corresponding author), Nikolay Borschevsky (Oranim Academic College of Education)
Year2004
Volume42
Issue1
Pages89-115
Publication date2004-02-25
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Migration (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-7985 • E-ISSN: 1468-2435
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.0020-7985.2004.00275.x
OpenAlexW2009591898
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited12

In this paper we examine and compare the ethnic identity of the Jews in the former Soviet Union (FSU) and the process of change in ethnic identity among the new immigrants from the FSU. This analysis considers the role of the kibbutz as the first experience of Jewish community in their lives, as well as the location of the first phase of their process of absorption and resocialization into new and unfamiliar surroundings. The data are drawn through a longitudinal research design, with a pre‐ and post‐analysis of changes in the ethnicity of migrants studied from their arrival on the Israeli kibbutz until the completion of the five‐month kibbutz programme. We found that pre‐migration Soviet Jews defined their ethnicity as a discriminated national minority with a weak symbolic ethnicity content. The ambivalent nature of the ethnicity of Jews while in the FSU was expressed in the fact that although a majority were deculturized from traditional dimensions of Jewish life, they nevertheless felt they belonged to a specific ethnic group. Post‐migration ethnicity was found to be remarkably altered; the former ambivalence was dissolved. On the macro‐level, membership in the economically and politically successful Russian‐speaking group of Israeli society is a source of self esteem, rather than a sign of shameful otherness. On the micro‐level of ethnicity, the encounter in the initial phase of absorption in Israel, within the kibbutz Jewish community, often demands a re‐examination of their private concept of Jewishness, serving as a first step in resolving their ambivalent ethnic identity. Consequently, their new ethnic identity may now well have weaker boundaries, but a more positive (non‐alienating) content than that left behind

Ambivalence · Emigration · Ethnic group · Geography · Identity (music · Immigration · Jewish identity · Judaism · National identity · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Gender Studies · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Jewish Identity and Society · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology

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