Abstract: Jewish emigration from Israel of the recent decades brought the creation of the communities of Israeli passport holders in the various countries of the world, including Russia and other post-Soviet states. Although this fact is commonly accepted as a totally new phenomenon, the returned migration of Russian and other Jews, who first immigrated to their historical Homeland - the Land of Israel/Palestine, and in a period of time came back to Russia has centuries-long history. In the 17th - 19th centuries this trend included Jerusalem and other Palestine Jewish communities' envoys, educators and fundraisers, who visited Russian and East European Jewish communities and sometimes stayed there for years, as well as Russian Jewish pilgrims to the Holy Land, who on returning were often respected as «representatives» of the Land of Israel and its Jewry. Some members of First, Second and Third Zionist Aliyot (waves of Jewish ideological repatriation) to the Land of Israel/Palestine of the late 19th and early 20th centuries created another substantial group of «Israeli Returnees» to Russia and the USSR. The article shows that typical patterns of immigrants from the Palestine to Russia and the early USSR are very close to, or even similar with «ideological re-immigrants», envoys, labor migrants, «economic refugees», and other relevant subgroups among current Israeli diaspora in Russia and the CIS.
Abstract: Austria shows another interesting example of the Israeli Diaspora community -«Israeli Sephardi Russians». This group consists of three to four thousand former Soviet Jews that stayed in Austria which was a transit point for Jewish emigration from the USSR to the West in 1970s, or returned there from Israel, as well as of those FSU Jews that joined them in the 1990s. The overwhelming majority of this group is composed of representatives of «oriental» Jewish communities of the (former) Soviet Union - mostly Bukhara, as well as Georgian and, to lesser extent, Caucasian (Mounting) Jews. A significant number or even majority of the Austrian Jewish immigrants with roots in the former USSR spent a certain period of their life in Israel, and thus are Israeli passport holders. As a result «Israeli Sephardi Russians» together with a few hundred «Israeli Ashkenazi Russians» and some two thousands of Israeli passport holders that were born either in Israel or in the Diaspora beyond the FSU, now compose one third to 40% of the Austrian Jewish population (the latter is estimated between 10-12,000, or 15-20,000; according to other sources, 95% of them in the Austrian capital of Vienna, although only 7,014 of them are officially registered as Jewish community members).
Abstract: Wladimir Kaminer has become something of a poster-boy for the 'Kontingentflüchtlinge [Quota Refugees]', the term applied to Jews from the former Soviet Union who immigrated to Germany between 1990 and 2006, as a result of a decision made first by the GDR and then adopted by the reunified Federal Republic. Kaminer writes little about his Jewishness in his work, but, in his first book, Russendisko (2000), he discusses the Jewish identity of Russian-speaking Jews living in Germany, viewed through the lens of Multikulti [multicultural] Berlin. Kaminer depicts them as just another of Germany's ethnic minority groups and, as such, nothing special. Given both Germany's past and the reasons offered by the German government for allowing these Jews to emigrate in the first place, Kaminer's opinion is undoubtedly controversial. This article investigates how and why Kaminer adopts this position. It examines the pre-migration experiences of Jews from the former Soviet Union, which include: antisemitism, attitudes towards religion and discourse about the Holocaust in the Soviet Union, as well as the experiences (more unique to Kaminer) of Berlin in the 1990s, the heyday of multicultural optimism. Although Kaminer is an unusual case study who deliberately subverts the reader's expectations of his identity politics, this article aims to show that his writings on Russian-speaking Jews, while highly subjective, have a wider application than might first appear.
Abstract: Que font les petits-enfants de l’histoire et des valeurs de leurs grands-parents quand ceux-ci ont connu l’immigration et traversé des épreuves majeures ? Comment tracent-ils leur propre chemin entre la fidélité au passé de leur famille, les tâches du présent, la préoccupation de transmettre à leurs enfants leurs références identitaires ? Comment se passent d’une génération à l’autre les traumatismes et les valeurs ? Quel regard les descendants des immigrés portent-ils sur leur histoire familiale ? Comment assument-ils la difficile responsabilité d’en témoigner ? Comment construisent-ils leur identité et leur place dans la société ? Les auteurs présentent et analysent vingt-cinq entretiens qu'ils ont menés avec des petits-enfants de Juifs venus de Pologne, qui ont connu l'exil, la difficile intégration en France, la guerre et la Shoah, les bouleversements historiques du XXe siècle. Deux entretiens réalisés en Pologne les complètent. A travers des récits de vie intense, les auteurs proposent une réflexion originale sur ces questions dont l'actualité récente en Europe a montré l'importance des enjeux individuels, sociaux, politiques. Ils éclairent aussi des aspects méconnus du judaïsme. A une époque où les migrations tendent à devenir un phénomène généralisé, où les guerres et les génocides se multiplient, les auteurs souhaitent contribuer à une réflexion sur le devenir des immigrés et de ceux qui ont été confrontés à un traumatisme historique majeur, et sur l'aide qu'ils pourraient recevoir.
Abstract: Cette thèse étudie la politique migratoire vis-à-vis d’un groupe ethnicisé accueilli en raison de son identité putative, tout comme analyse la relation à une identité assignée de ces migrants. Dans une première partie, la recherche porte sur la construction par l’Allemagne entre 1990 et 2010 d’une politique d’accueil destinée à des personnes identifiées comme juives par leurs papiers d’identité et résidant sur le territoire de l’ex-Union soviétique, dans le but de renforcer démographiquement la Communauté juive allemande : dans ce cadre, en vingt ans, plus de 200 000 personnes catégorisées comme « réfugiés du contingent » puis comme « migrants juifs » ont immigré en Allemagne. Nous y montrons qu’il est attendu de ces migrants qu’ils remplacent symboliquement les Juifs d’Allemagne émigrés avant 1933 ou exterminés sous le IIIe Reich. Mais, en raison de l’inadéquation entre les Juifs espérés et les migrants juifs postsoviétiques, déjudaisés et rencontrant des problèmes d’intégration professionnelle en Allemagne, l’accueil de ces migrants va progressivement se restreindre. À travers la mise en doute de l’authenticité de leurs papiers d’identité, la véracité de leur identité juive va être questionnée. Dans une seconde partie, s’appuyant sur des entretiens biographiques, ce travail analyse la mise en récit de l’identification comme Juif de ces migrants, avant l’immigration, pendant le processus migratoire et après l’immigration, interrogeant le passage d’une identification comme Juif stigmatisante à une identification valorisante puisque clef d’entrée pour l’immigration en Allemagne.
Abstract: Катастрофа европейского еврейства привела к почти полному исчезновению еврейской общины Германии. Чудо случилось в 1990-х годах, когда русскоязычные евреи стали тысячами прибывать в эту страну. Для местных евреев неожиданная иммиграция казалась удачным шансом, выпавшим еврейским сообществам и обществу в целом. Однако первое поколение русско-еврейских иммигрантов столкнулось с большим числом социальных проблем и трудностей интеграции на рынок труда. К этому следует добавить культурное отчуждение от немецкого общества и серьезные различия в культуре, ментальности и идентичности с местными еврейскими общинами. А также конфликты между старожилами и новоприбывшими относительно желаемых моделей организации еврейской жизни – в силу чего и через тридцать лет после начала иммиграции русские евреи все еще мало представлены в общенациональном еврейском руководстве. И все же, впервые после окончания Второй мировой войны у еврейских общин Германии появился шанс построить плюралистическую модель религиозных, культурных, образовательных и политических проектов. Второе поколение русских евреев Германии не сталкивается с проблемами интеграции, подобные проблемам родителей, и большинство из этого поколения вольется в немецкий средний класс и профессиональную элиту страны – или уже находятся там. Но при этом совершенно непонятно пока, до какой степени второе поколение русских евреев будет искать собственные корни, интересоваться еврейским наследием и участвовать в жизни еврейских общин.
Abstract: This book traces the global, national, and local origins of the conflict between Muslims and Jews in France, challenging the belief that rising anti-Semitism in France is rooted solely in the unfolding crisis in Israel and Palestine. Maud Mandel shows how the conflict in fact emerged from processes internal to French society itself even as it was shaped by affairs elsewhere, particularly in North Africa during the era of decolonization.
Mandel examines moments in which conflicts between Muslims and Jews became a matter of concern to French police, the media, and an array of self-appointed spokesmen from both communities: Israel's War of Independence in 1948, France's decolonization of North Africa, the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the 1968 student riots, and François Mitterrand's experiments with multiculturalism in the 1980s. She takes an in-depth, on-the-ground look at interethnic relations in Marseille, which is home to the country's largest Muslim and Jewish populations outside of Paris. She reveals how Muslims and Jews in France have related to each other in diverse ways throughout this history--as former residents of French North Africa, as immigrants competing for limited resources, as employers and employees, as victims of racist aggression, as religious minorities in a secularizing state, and as French citizens.
In Muslims and Jews in France, Mandel traces the way these multiple, complex interactions have been overshadowed and obscured by a reductionist narrative of Muslim-Jewish polarization.
Abstract: In the context of the Dutch immigration debate, tributes to the Holocaust and the memory of Europe’s dead Jews increasingly serve to dismantle multiculturalism as a failed paradigm and to drive a wedge between a revitalized, redeemed, color-blind, post-racial Europe and disenfranchized immigrant, minority and Muslim populations. Embedded in these invocations of the Holocaust and its moral imperatives is a ‘spectropolitics’ of tolerance, in which tolerance, staged as an essential touchstone of Dutch identity, supplies a differential norm that measures the civilizational and racial disjuncture between Europeans, minorities, and Muslims, and validates the new dual paradigm of Dutch citizenship and immigration policy: securitization and disciplinary integration. The centrality of the Holocaust as paradigmatic of Dutch and European racial history meanwhile sidelines the colonial past as constitutive of European identity; displaces an alternative understanding of race as (bio- and necro-political) instruments of colonial rule; and disavows the continued application of these instruments of racial rule in Dutch and European post-colonial societies.
Abstract: Sweet Burdens presents a detailed ethnographic study of the lives of Russian-Jewish immigrants in Germany over the past twenty years. Focusing on the first generation of adult immigrants, Sveta Roberman examines how they question and negotiate their moral economy and civic culture vis-à-vis the host German state and society, on the one hand, and the Holocaust past, on the other. She approaches the immigrant-host encounter as one of many cycles of social exchanges taking place in multiple and diverse arenas. The book sheds light on a number of issues, including the moral economy of Jewish-German relations, immigrants’ performances of civics and citizenship, modes of inclusion and exclusion, consumption and consumerism, work and the phenomena of unemployment and underemployment, the concept of community, and the dynamics and difficulties of reinventing Jewish identity and tradition.
Abstract: This paper describes and analyzes the multiple ethnic identities
and identifications among first-generation Jewish Israeli immigrants
in Europe, and specifically in London and Paris, by means of closedend
questionnaires (N=114) and in-depth semi-structured interviews
(N=23).
Israelis who live in Europe are strongly attached to Israel and are
proud to present themselves as Israelis. Despite their place of residence,
these Israelis, particularly those residing in London and over the age
of 35, manage to find ways to preserve their Israeli identity. They also
perceive the need to expose their children to other Israelis as another
means of preventing assimilation. On the other hand, those who are
under the age of 35, and in particular those residing in Paris, have less
opportunity or less need to maintain their Israeli identity in Europe.
The older Israelis in London are also somewhat more integrated with
the proximal host and have a stronger Jewish identity than do younger
Israelis, particularly those residing in Paris. Living in Europe allows
Israelis to flourish economically without having to identify with or
belong to a cultural and social ethnic niche. The ethnic identity of
first-generation Israeli immigrants in Europe is multifaceted. While it
is primarily transnational, it is also dynamic and constantly changing
though various interactions and is, of course, susceptible to current
local and global political and economic events. For younger Israeli
immigrants, assimilation into the non-Jewish population appears to be
a possible form of identity and identification. This assimilation may be
moderated among young adults who build bridges with local Jewish
communities in tandem with their transnational formal connections
with Israel, a process that can benefit both sides. Such a process - the
reconstruction of ethnic Israeli-Jewish identity and collaborative
identification with local Jews - has the potential to strengthen and
enhance the survivability of European Jewry at large.
Abstract: Настоящая книга представляет собой второе издание (исправленное и дополненное) книги автора "20 лет Большой алии: статистический анализ перемен", вышедшей в 2013 году, которая, в свою очередь, явилась логическим продолжением предыдущей книги автора “Еврейское население бывшего СССР в ХХ веке (социально- демографический анализ)”. Если первая книга автора была посвящена развитию со- ветского еврейства в стране исхода, то нынешняя – тем изменениям, которые претер- пела еврейская русскоязычная община в Израиле, где сейчас проживает ее бóльшая часть. Наш анализ охватывает период с начала 1990-х годов до настоящего времени, и включает динамику общей численности репатриантов по республикам исхода, их расселение по городам и регионам Израиля, демографические аспекты, образование (как взрослого населения, так и детей и молодежи), владение ивритом и английским языком, компьютерную грамотность, армейскую/национальную службу. Особое внима- ние уделяется профессиональному трудоустройству репатриантов, и в частности, специалистов с высшим образованием. Рассматриваются также изменения в эконо- мическом положении репатриантов, их состояние здоровья, а также общая удовлетво- ренность жизнью в Израиле, национальное самосознание, традиции и ценности. По сравнению с предыдущим изданием, данные уточнены в соответствии с новыми ис- точниками и с учетом тенденций последних лет. Данные по репатриантам сопоставляются со всем еврейским населением Израиля, а по возможности – с еврейскими иммигрантами из бывшего СССР в США и Германии. Книга предназначена для демографов, социологов, специалистов, занятых проблема- ми интеграции репатриантов в различных сферах и всех интересующихся данной про- блемой.
Abstract: This chapter offers a comparative overview of immigrant trajectories and inte-gration outcomes of Russian-Jewish youths (the so-called 1.5 generation) who immigrated to Israel and Germany with their families over the last 25 years. At the outset, I compare Israeli and German reception contexts and policies and present the generic features of the 1.5 immigrant generation. Next I overview the Israeli research findings on Russian Israeli 1.5ers – their schooling, social mobility, cultural and linguistic practices, parents’ role in their integration, and juxtapose them with (still limited) German data. e final section presents two recent German studies of young Russian-Jewish adults and the initial findings from my own study among these immigrants living in four German cities. My interviews with 20 men and women, mostly successful professionals or entrepreneurs, indicate that their upward social mobility was facilitated by the continuous welfare support of their families, school integration programs, and low financial barriers to higher education. Despite common occupation-al and social downgrading of the parental generation in both countries, the 1.5-ers in Israel had to struggle harder to overcome their inherent immigrant disadvantage vs. native peers to access good schools and professional careers. Most young immigrants deem full assimilation in the host country’s main-stream unattainable and opt instead for a bilingual and/or bicultural strategy of integration
Abstract: In 1900 over five million Jews lived in the Russian empire; today, there are four times as many Russian-speaking Jews residing outside the former Soviet Union than there are in that region. The New Jewish Diaspora is the first English-language study of the Russian-speaking Jewish diaspora. This migration has made deep marks on the social, cultural, and political terrain of many countries, in particular the United States, Israel, and Germany. The contributors examine the varied ways these immigrants have adapted to new environments, while identifying the common cultural bonds that continue to unite them.
Assembling an international array of experts on the Soviet and post-Soviet Jewish diaspora, the book makes room for a wide range of scholarly approaches, allowing readers to appreciate the significance of this migration from many different angles. Some chapters offer data-driven analyses that seek to quantify the impact Russian-speaking Jewish populations are making in their adoptive countries and their adaptations there. Others take a more ethnographic approach, using interviews and observations to determine how these immigrants integrate their old traditions and affiliations into their new identities. Further chapters examine how, despite the oceans separating them, members of this diaspora form imagined communities within cyberspace and through literature, enabling them to keep their shared culture alive.
Above all, the scholars in The New Jewish Diaspora place the migration of Russian-speaking Jews in its historical and social contexts, showing where it fits within the larger historic saga of the Jewish diaspora, exploring its dynamic engagement with the contemporary world, and pointing to future paths these immigrants and their descendants might follow.
Introduction: Homelands, Diasporas, and the Islands in Between
Zvi Gitelman
Part I Demography: Who Are the Migrants and Where Have They Gone?
Chapter 1 Demography of the Contemporary Russian-Speaking Jewish Diaspora
Mark Tolts
Chapter 2 The Russian-Speaking Israeli Diaspora in the FSU, Europe, and North America: Jewish Identification and Attachment to Israel
Uzi Rebhun
Chapter 3 Home in the Diaspora? Jewish Returnees and Transmigrants in Ukraine
Marina Sapritsky
Part II Transnationalism and Diasporas
Chapter 4 Rethinking Boundaries in the Jewish Diaspora from the FSU
Jonathan Dekel-Chen
Chapter 5 Diaspora from the Inside Out: Litvaks in Lithuania Today
Hannah Pollin-Galay
Chapter 6 Russian-Speaking Jews and Israeli Emigrants in the United States: A Comparison of Migrant Populations
Steven J. Gold
Part III Political and Economic Change
Chapter 7 Political Newborns: Immigrants in Israel and Germany
Olena Bagno-Moldavski
Chapter 8 The Move from Russia/the Soviet Union to Israel: A Transformation of Jewish Culture and Identity
Yaacov Ro’i
Chapter 9 The Economic Integration of Soviet Jewish Immigrants in Israel
Gur Ofer
Part IV Resocialization and the Malleability of Ethnicity
Chapter 10 Russian-Speaking Jews in Germany
Eliezer Ben-Rafael
Chapter 11 Performing Jewishness and Questioning the Civic Subject among Russian-Jewish Migrants in Germany
Sveta Roberman
Chapter 12 Inventing a “New Jew”: The Transformation of Jewish Identity in Post-Soviet Russia
Elena Nosenko-Shtein
Part V Migration and Religious Change
Chapter 13 Post-Soviet Immigrant Religiosity: Beyond the Israeli National Religion
Nelly Elias and Julia Lerner
Chapter 14 Virtual Village in a Real World: The Russian Jewish Diaspora Online
Anna Shternshis
Part VI Diaspora Russian Literature
Chapter 15 Four Voices from the Last Soviet Generation: Evgeny Steiner, Alexander Goldstein, Oleg Yuryev, and Alexander Ilichevsky
Mikhail Krutikov
Chapter 16 Poets and Poetry in Today’s Diaspora: On Being “Marginally Jewish”
Stephanie Sandler
Chapter 17 Triple Identities: Russian-Speaking Jews as German, American, and Israeli Writers
Adrian Wanner
Afterword: The Future of a Diaspora
Zvi Gitelman
Abstract: Настоящая книга представляет собой логическое продолжение предыдущей книги ав-тора “Еврейское население бывшего СССР в ХХ веке (социально-демографический анализ)”. Если предыдущее исследование было посвящено развитию советского ев-рейства в стране исхода, то нынешнее – тем изменениям, которые претерпела еврей-ская русскоязычная община в Израиле, где сейчас проживает ее бóльшая часть. Наш анализ охватывает период с начала 1990-х годов до настоящего времени, и включает динамику общей численности репатриантов по республикам исхода, их расселение по городам и регионам Израиля, демографические аспекты, образование (как взрослого населения, так и детей и молодежи), владение ивритом и английским языком, компь-ютерную грамотность, армейскую/национальную службу. Особое внимание уделяется профессиональному трудоустройству репатриантов, и в частности, специалистов с высшим образованием. Рассматриваются также изменения в экономическом положе-нии репатриантов, их состояние здоровья, а также общая удовлетворенность жизнью в Израиле, национальное самосознание, традиции и ценности. Данные по репатриантам сопоставляются со всем еврейским населением Израиля, а по возможности – с еврей-скими иммигрантами из бывшего СССР в США и Германии.
Книга предназначена для демографов, социологов, специалистов, занятых проблема-ми интеграции репатриантов в различных сферах и всех интересующихся данной про-блемой. Многие статистические материалы, представленные в книге, публикуются впервые.
Abstract: Budúci rok v Jeruzaleme… Tieto slová Pesachovej hagady každoročne zaznievajú v židovských domácnostiach, v ktorých si pri sederovej večeri pripomínajú vyslobodenie z egyptského otroctva.
Budúci rok v Bratislave… Tieto slová sa postupne stali zaklínadlom skupiny židovských emigrantov, ktorí odišli zo Slovenska po 21. auguste 1968. Našli nové domovy v rôznych štátoch a svetadieloch. Postavili tam domy, zasadili stromy, vychovali deti. Napriek všetkému časť ich osobnosti sa spája s krajinou mladosti. Prakticky každý z nich (väčšinou opakovane) už navštívil „svoje mesto“. Stretli sa s príbuznými a priateľmi, obnovili spomienky spojené s minulosťou, ochutnali pochúťky, ktoré možno (hoci nie vždy) jesť aj inde, ale najlepšie chutia tu…
Napriek všetkým pozitívam však nenašli atmosféru svojej mladosti. Chýbali k nej ľudia: vrstovníci so spoločnými skúsenosťami a zážitkami. V Bratislave totiž ostala len hŕstka Židov povojnovej generácie. Väčšina židovských rovesníkov tiež emigrovala.
Práve preto viacerí začali rozmýšľať o Stretnutí tých, ktorí pred rokom 1968 tvorili mladú generáciu židovskej komunity. Niektorým nestačili slová či spomienky a pokúšali sa tieto túžby naplniť. K prvým organizátorom sa pridávali ďalší, náhodná skupina dobrovoľníkov sa postupne menila na kolektív, ktorý spájal spoločný cieľ. Vďaka úsiliu mnohých sa v máji 2005 Bratislava stala dejiskom Stretnutia. Táto kniha hovorí o jeho prípravách, priebehu, sprievodných emóciách a dozvukoch… Patrí všetkým, ktorí pomohli zmeniť sen na realitu.
Abstract: In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
The influx of Jewish émigrés from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) since 1990 has altered the shape of Jewish life in Germany, and profoundly influenced the 105 Jewish communities of the Federal Republic. Between 1990 and 2005, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) had admitted 219,604 Jewish émigrés from the FSU, and could boast that it has the "fastest-growing Jewish population in the world." The restriction of the flow of Jewish émigrés from the FSU in 2005 as a direct result of new German immigration laws radically changed this situation. The intense immigration of Jews from the former Soviet States between 1990 and 2005 followed by a rather abrupt reversal in immigration policy reshaped the sense of Jewish community, memory, and identity in Germany. These shifts have placed pressure on both German-Jewish relations and relations within the Jewish communities. Certain basic assumptions concerning German-Jewish relations have been called into question on an unprecedented scale: the overwhelmingly positive view of Germany as an immigration destination for Jews; what it means to be Jewish in Germany; the very idea of a singular unitary Jewish community (Einheitsgemeinde) under the umbrella of the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland (Central Council of Jews in Germany) in post-Wall Germany; and, perhaps most significantly, the absolute, and hitherto unquestioned centrality of the Nazi Judeocide for the self-understanding of German Jews. Recent developments threaten both the unity of the Jewish communities themselves as well as the tremendous gains made in the ongoing, genuine public discussion of and confrontation with the Nazi past since the 1980s.
In this article, I suggest the sociocultural construction of a new Jewish identity or culture within the Jewish community in Germany and what might be referred to as a post-Holocaust sense of community, memory, and cultural identity within the Russian Jewish community, one that finds a powerful resonance in contemporary German culture more generally. The Jewish Museum of Munich, which was founded to be a museum of Jewish life in Munich and specifically not a Holocaust museum, is an example of precisely this sense of post-Holocaust identity formation and memory. The museum to be built in Cologne—scheduled to open in 2011 and designed by the same architects who designed Munich's museum, Wandel Hoefer Lorch & Hirsch—is another case in point. The simultaneous emergence of a new Russian Jewish émigré majority culture within the Jewish minority of Germany, and what I refer to as a "post-Holocaust sensibility," coincides with a broader marginalization and fragmentation of Jewish identity in Germany despite the growth in sheer numbers over the past two decades.
The approximately 10,000 Jews of Munich serve as both an exemplary model and as a demonstrative case-study of shifting Jewish identities in contemporary Germany. Like other Russian Jewish émigrés within Germany, they have their own complex histories and collective memories forged by years of repression and persecution under Stalinism and post-Soviet discrimination. In Munich, these émigrés have the additional task of becoming part of a Jewish community that has been especially challenged by historical precedents and recent developments within the community itself. Munich is a city of particularly conflicted postwar memory. Russian Jewish émigrés comprise approximately 75% of the Jewish population of Munich, and their integration into German society and the existing Jewish community is decisive if the Jewish community is to survive and grow. The official, stated intention at the outset of the programs enacted in 1991—the HumHAG (humanitärer Hilfsaktionen aufgenommene Flüchtlinge or Refugees Accepted as part of a Humanitarian Aid Program) and the so-called Kontingentflüchtlingsgesetz (Quota Refugees Act), which first made possible the mass immigration of Jews from the FSU into Germany—was ostensibly to rescue the Russian Jews from an oppressive situation, but the subtext was clearly to strengthen Germany's diminishing Jewish community of 28,000.
This study was conducted in the spring of 2007 with the assistance of advanced undergraduates fluent in German in the German Studies Program at the College of William and Mary as well as various members of the Jewish community very close to the situation: Rabbi Steven Langnas, Professor Michael...
Abstract: In the early 1990s, more than 1.6 million Jews from the former Soviet Union emigrated to Israel, the United States, Canada, Germany, and other Western countries. Larissa Remennick relates the saga of their encounter with the economic marketplaces, lifestyles, and everyday cultures of their new homelands, drawing on comparative sociological research among Russian-Jewish immigrants. Although citizens of Jewish origin ostensibly left the former Soviet Union to flee persecution and join their co-religionists, Israeli, North American, and German Jews were universally disappointed by the new arrivals' tenuous Jewish identity. In turn, Russian Jews, whose identity had been shaped by seventy years of secular education and assimilation into the Soviet mainstream, hoped to be accepted as ambitious and hard working individuals seeking better lives. These divergent expectations shaped lines of conflict between Russian-speaking Jews and the Jewish communities of the receiving countries. Since her own immigration to Israel from Moscow in 1991, Remennick has been both a participant and an observer of this saga. This is the first attempt to compare resettlement and integration experiences of a single ethnic community (former Soviet Jews) in various global destinations. It also analyzes their emerging transnational lifestyles.
