How long is ‘the Russian street’ in Israel? Prospects of maintaining the Russian language

Abstract

The article illuminates a sociolinguistic aspect of the large wave of immigration from the Former Soviet Union to Israel in the 1990s. It also investigates the discrepancies between the declared linguistic ideology, language management strategies, and actual language practices. The ubiquitous presence of Russian in the Israeli public sphere goes hand in hand with the rapid shift from Russian to Hebrew in the second generation of immigrants. The article discusses future perspectives of the maintenance of Russian in Israel through coordinating family efforts to preserve the immigrant heritage and multilingual educational policy at the state level.

Keywords:

• Russian
• home language maintenance
• immigrant family
• Israel educational policies

Acknowledgements

I am thankful to Professor Larissa Remennick, Editor of this volume, for her valuable corrections and comments to different versions of this paper.

Notes

 1. Lewis H. Glinert, “Inside the Language Planner's Head: Tactical Responses to a Mass Immigration,” Journal of Multicultural and Multilingual Development 16, no. 5 (1995): 351–71; Bernard Spolsky and Elana Shohamy, The Languages of Israel: Policy, Ideology and Practice (Clevendon: Multilingual Matters Ltd, 1999).

 2. Nelly Elias and Dan Caspi, “From Pravda to Vesty: The Russian Media Renaissance in Israel,” in Every Seventh Israeli: Patterns of Social and Cultural Integration of the Russian-speaking Immigrants, ed. Alek D. Epstein and Vladimir Khanin (Bar-Ilan: Bar-Ilan University, 2007), 175–98; Elazar Leshem and Moshe Lissak, “Development and Consolidation of the Russian Community in Israel,” in Roots and Routes: Ethnicity and Migration in Global Perspective, ed. Shalva Weil (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1999), 136–71.

 3. Spolsky and Shohamy, The Languages of Israel, 67–89.

 4. Larissa Remennick, Russian Jews on Three Continents: Identity, Integration and Conflict (New Brunswick, NJ: Transactions Publishers, 2007), 23–9; Mila Schwartz, “Exploring the Relationship between Family Language Policy and Heritage Language Knowledge among Second Generation of Russian-Jewish Immigrants in Israel,” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 29, no. 5 (2008): 400–418.

 5. Nina Kheimetz and Alek D. Epstein, “Confronting the Languages of Statehood: Theoretical and Historical Frameworks for the Analysis of the Multilingual Identity of the Russian Jewish Intelligentsia in Israel,” Language Problems and Language Planning 25, no. 2 (2001): 121–45.

 6. Shulamit Kopeliovich, Reversing Language Shift in the Immigrant Family: A Case-Study of a Russian-speaking Community in Israel (Frankfurt: VDM Verlag Dr. Muller, 2009).

 7. Bernard Spolsky, Language Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

 8. Joshua A. Fishman, Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages (Clevendon: Multilingual Matters Ltd, 1991).

 9. Joshua A. Fishman, “From Theory to Practice (and Vice Versa): Review, Reconsideration and Reiteration,” in Can Threatened Languages be Saved?, ed. Joshua A. Fishman (Berlin: Verlag, 2001), 451–83.

10. Fishman, Reversing Language Shift, 94.

11. Miriam Isaacs, “Haredi, Haymish and Frim: Yiddish Vitality and Language Choice in a Transnational, Multilingual Community,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 138 (1999): 9–30.

12. Fishman, Reversing Language Shift, 98.

13. Moshe Sicron and Elazar Leshem, eds., Profile of an Immigration Wave. The Absorption Process of Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union, 1990–1995 (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1998), 35–40, 67–71.

14. Marina Niznik, “Acculturation of Russian Adolescents in Israel,” in Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Bilingualism, ed. Jeff Mac Swan (Somerville, MA, 2004), 1703–21; Kopeliovich, Reversing Language Shift in the Immigrant Family, 35–49.

15. Larissa Remennick, “From Russian to Hebrew via HebRush: Inter-Generational Patterns of Language Use among Former Soviet Immigrants in Israel,” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 24, no. 5 (2004), 431–53.

16. Shmuel Shamay, Zinaida Ilatova, and Tamar Horowitz, “‘Reverse Integration’: the Challenge Posed by FSU Immigrants to the Israeli Education System” [in Russian], in Zoloto Galuta, ed. Moshe Kenigshtein (Moscow and Jerusalem: Gesharim, 2009), 269–99.

17. For a detailed account, see Zinaida Ilatova and Shmuel Shamay, “Attitudes towards Schooling and Parental Strategies of Russian-speaking immigrants” [in Russian], in Zoloto Galuta, ed. Kenigshtein, 253–68.

18. Shamay, Ilatova, and Horowitz, “Reverse Integration,” 272.

19. Nina Vlasova-Kuritz, “Rodnie Inostrantzi” [Native Foreigners], Zvenya [Bulletin of the Russian Teachers' Association] no. 7 (2004): 14–16.

20. Marina Niznik et al., Russkii bez Granits [Russian Without Borders] (Moscow: Russian World Publishers, 2009).

21. Alexander Kuchersky, Vzyat i Prochitat [Let's Read!] (Jerusalem: Gesharim, 2009).

22. Schwartz, “Exploring the Relationship,” 412–16.

23. Elana Shohamy, The Hidden Agendas of Language Policy (Clevendon: Multilingual Matters, 2006).

24. Elana Shohamy, “Language Policies and Language Realities in Israel: A Critical View,” in Studies in Language and Language Education, eds. Anat Stavans and Irit Kupferberg (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2007), 305–323.

25. Michal Tannenbaum and Marina Berkovich, “Family Relations and Language Maintenance: Implications for Linguistic Educational Policies,” Language Policy 4, no. 3 (2005): 287–309.

26. Spolsky, Language Policy, 68–80.

27. Shohamy, “Language Policies and Language Realities,” 313.

28. Marina Niznik, “The Russian Language in Israel: Is it Half Alive or Half Dead?,” in Zoloto Galuta, ed. Kenigshtein, 185–202.

29. Olga Kagan and K. Dilon, “A New Perspective on Teaching Russian: Focus on the Heritage Learner,” Slavic and East European Journal 45, no. 3 (2001): 507–18.

30. Niznik, “The Russian Language in Israel,” 187–8.

31. Fishman, “From Theory to Practice,” 470.

32. Spolsky and Shohamy, The Languages of Israel, 89–99.

33. Niznik, “The Russian Language in Israel,” 190.

34. Larissa Remennick, “Resetting the Rules of the Game: Language Preferences and Social Relations of Work between Russian Immigrants and Veteran Professionals in an Israeli Organization,” Journal of International Migration and Integration 6, no. 1 (2005): 1–28.

35. Niznik, “Acculturation of Russian Adolescents,” 1712.

36. Zeev Elkin, “History of the Lost Opportunities: Jewish Self-identification and the Policy of Acculturation of the Russian-Speaking Immigrants in Israel (Russian),” in Zoloto Galuta, ed. Kenigshtein, 39–54; Gregory Kotlyar, “The Future of the Jewish Education Programs in Russian in Israel” [in Russian], in Zoloto Galuta, ed. Kenigshtein, 177–84.

37. Kopeliovich, Reversing Language Shift in the Immigrant Family, 45–59.

38. Fishman, “From Theory to Practice,” 480.

39. Spolsky, Language Policy, 124.

40. Fishman, “From Theory to Practice,” 459.

41. Judith R. Harris, “Where is the Child's Environment? A Group Socialization Theory of Development,” Psychological Review 102, no. 3 (1995): 458–89.

42. Shulamit Kopeliovich, “Family Language Policy: From a Case Study of a Russian–Hebrew Bilingual Family towards a Theoretical Framework,” Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education 4, no. 3 (2010): 162–178.

43. Toshie Okita, Invisible Work: Bilingualism, Language Choice and Childrearing in Intermarried Families (Amsterdam: Ashgate, 2002).

44. Harris, “Where is the Child's Environment?,” 470.

45. Ibid., 477.

46. Okita, Invisible Work, 66–71.