Cultural citizenship and performing homecoming: Russian Jewish immigrants decipher the Zionist national ethos

Abstract

The paper explores the mutual relation between cultural citizenship and national homecoming. Using the case study of Russian-Jewish immigrants in Israel, it refines the theoretical debate over cultural citizenship by showing how homecoming migration shapes the homecomers' bargaining power over the local cultural tenets. In particular, the research examines the ways in which the ‘Russian’ immigrants negotiate the national ethos of homecoming that constitutes the Israeli civic, discursive field, while dismantling it into its root components: affinity to the place, collective memory, and the warrior ethos. Each of these components constitutes a sphere of action that embodies the tension between Israeliness and Jewishness, nationalism and citizenship, and the personal and the collective. Our main contention is that in the case of homecoming migration, the inextricable affinity between citizenship and nationalism shapes the homecomers' cultural citizenship: on the one hand, it secures their right to participate in the local cultural discourse and avails bargaining power, while on the other hand, it neutralizes the homecomers' subversive voice, and reduces their capacity to undermine the constitutive, national tenets. The analysis is based on immigration stories gathered via in-depth interviews that were conducted with 43 Jewish university students who immigrated to Israel from the former USSR in the beginning of the 1990s.

Keywords:

• cultural citizenship
• homecoming
• immigration

Notes

 1. The snowball technique was employed to solicit participants in the study.

 2. Discussion about the nature of this immigration see in Ben-Rafael et al. (2006) and Remennick (2007).

 3. On the meaning and consequences of interviewing immigrants in the local language see Lomsky-Feder and Rapoport (2003b).

 4. Two of the interviewers are Israeli-born and the third was a student who came to Israel from the former Soviet Union, much like the interviewees. Involving a student-immigrant in the research was meant to reduce the social and cultural distance between the researcher and the interviewee (Bourdieu 1996).

 5. For an extended version on this issue see Lomsky-Feder and Rapoport (2001).

 6. The estimated rate of leaving Israel among Russian immigrants is about 6% (Haaretz, Amiram Baraket, ‘The Olim from North America are leaving faster than those from the Former Soviet Union’, 15 August 2003).

 7. All names are fictitious.

 8. Accordingly Ben-Rafael et al. (2006, p. 124) found that 44% among their subjects link Israeli Identity with life in Israel and almost the same percentage (41%) define Israeli Identity as belonging to Israeli people.

 9. Accordingly Ben-Rafael et al. (2006, pp. 121–122) found that the main motives to immigrate to Israel among their subjects were instrumental and not ideological.

10. Special arrangements are offered for male immigrants who enter the country after they have turned 18. Women immigrants over 18 are exempted from service.

11. Some had completed their three-year obligatory service, most of them were in the academic program (Atudah B), some had managed to get themselves released from service for various reasons, and others had already completed the shorter service demanded of immigrants who had served in the Russian army. The interviewees served in various capacities and held different ranks.

12. For an extended version on this issue see Lomsky-Feder and Rapoport (2003a).

13. The dominant model of masculinity among Russian Jews disavows military service and soldiering. The Jews' motivation to serve in the Second World War was exceptional in this regard. However, not all of the Jews successfully evaded the Russian armed forces. Hence, five of the men interviewed had served in the Russian army before they immigrated to Israel.