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‘Non-Jewish and Christian’: perceived discrimination and social distance among FSU migrants in Israel

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 17; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13537121.2011.522074

1743-9086

Rebeca Raijman, Janina Pinsky,

Diaspora, migration, transnational identity

Abstract This paper focuses on a specific group of post-1989 Former Soviet Union (FSU) migrants in Israel, those who prefer to keep their Christian religion in a country with an explicitly Jewish character. Specifically, we focus on (1) immigrants' perceptions of state and institutional discrimination against non-Jewish immigrants, and (2) immigrants' construction of social distance and social boundaries across ethno-cultural groups. Our findings suggest that Christian immigrants challenge the hegemonic definition of who is a Jew, strongly contest the Israeli ethno-national regime of incorporation that discriminates against non-Jewish citizens, and advance claims for equal rights. Religion becomes the most important marker for identity construction. Shared national background (country of origin) does not necessarily guarantee solidarity and cordial social relations between immigrants. Keywords: non-Jewish immigrantsIsraelChristiansdiscrimination Notes 1. Majid Al-Haj, Immigration and Ethnic Formation in a Deeply Divided Society: The Case of the 1990s Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in Israel (Leiden: Brill, 2004); Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract, 2006: Table 2.23. 2. See Ifat Weiss, “The Golem and its Creator, or How the Jewish Nation-State Became Multiethnic,” in Challenging Ethnic Citizenship: German and Israeli Perspectives on Immigration, ed. Daniel Levy and Yfat Weiss (New York: Berghahn Books, 2002), 82–104; Ian Lustick, “Israel as a Non-Arab State: The Political Implications of Mass Immigration of Non-Jews,” Middle East Journal 53 (1999): 417–33. 3. The large number of non-Jews arriving under the law of return is explained by the high rates of intermarriage in the FSU. See Larissa Remennick, Russian Jews on Three Continents. Identity, Integration, and Conflict (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2007), 14–18. 4. Asher Cohen, Non-Jewish Jews in Israel [in Hebrew] (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University and Keter, 2005); Yair Sheleg, Jewish not according to the Halacha: On the Issue of Non-Jewish Olim in Israel [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: The Israeli Institute for Democracy, 2004). 5. Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled. Being Israeli: The Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 6. See ibid., 315–16. 7. Rebeca Raijman, “Only Jews: Discriminatory Attitudes towards Non-Jewish Olim in Israel” (paper presented at the international conference on Migration, German Israeli Foundation (GIF), Israel, 2008). 8. Charles Hirschman, “The Role of Religion in the Origins and Adaptation of Immigrant Groups in the United States,” International Migration Review 38, no. 3 (2004): 1206–33. 9. Cohen reports than only 5% of the total non-Jewish population has completed the conversion process. See Cohen, Non-Jewish Jews, 5. 10. Sheleg, Jewish not According to the Halacha. 11. Moshe Kenigshtein, “Strangers among Friends? Non-Jewish Immigrants in Israel,” in The “Russian” Face of Israel: Features of a Social Portrait, ed. M. Kenigshtein [in Russian] (Moscow: Mosty Kultury-Gesharim, 2007), 218–50. 12. Rebeca Raijman and Yanina Pinsky, “Christian Immigrants in the Jewish State: Ethnic Identity and non-Jewish Migrants from the Former Soviet Union,” in Canadian “Promised Lands of Settlement?” Migrants, Integration and Identity in Canada and Israel (Vancouver: CERIS, 2009), 141–9. 13. Jimmy Sanders, “Ethnic Boundaries and Identity in Plural Societies,” Annual Review of Sociology 28 (2002): 327–57. 14. Michele Lamont and Virag Molnar, “The Study of Boundaries in Social Sciences,” Annual Review of Sociology 28 (2002): 167–95. 15. Saskia R.G. Schalk-Soekar, Fons J.R. van de Vijver, and Mariette Hoogsteder, “Attitudes toward Multiculturalism of Immigrants and Majority Members in the Netherlands,” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 28 (2004): 533–50. 16. For an analysis of how people use religion to define the boundaries of group identities and relationships, see Paul Lichterman, “Religion and the Construction of Civic Identity,” American Sociological Review 73, no. 1 (2008): 83–104. 17. Sanders, “Ethnic Boundaries,” 330–32. 18. Thomas Pettigrew and L. Trapp, “Does Intergroup Contact Reduce Prejudice? Recent Meta-Analytic Findings,” in Reducing Prejudice and Discrimination, ed. S. Oskamp (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000), 93–114. 19. There are three main Christian sites in which the religious activities of immigrants from the Former Soviet Union are concentrated: 1) churches belonging to the Russian Orthodox Patriarch; 2) churches belonging to the Jerusalem Patriarch – Greek churches that have traditionally served as places of worship for Christian Arabs in Israel; and 3) Christian meeting groups (informal groups of people who are active in the above-mentioned churches) that gather in people's homes to discuss issues related to the Christian religion. See Yanina Pinsky, “Christian Immigrants in a Jewish State: The Identity of Non-Jewish Repatriates from the Former Soviet Union in the 90's Immigrant Wave” (MA thesis, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Haifa, July 2007). 20. For a detailed outline of the instrument, socio-demographic characteristics of participants, and characteristics of the churches attended by the migrants in Israel. See Pinsky, Christian Immigrants in a Jewish State. 21. See Kenigshtein, “Strangers among Friends?,” 230–34 for similar findings on feelings of discrimination among non-Jewish migrants from the FSU. 22. See Raijman and Pinksy, “Christian Immigrants in the Jewish State,” 149. 23. In Russian, there is a terminological difference between ‘ethnically Jewish” and ‘Jewish by religion’ that does not exist in Hebrew because of dominance of the Orthodox definition of Judaism. 24. On the churches' role as alternative families see Adriana Kemp and Rebeca Raijman, “Christian Zionists in the Holy Land: Evangelical Churches, Labor Migrants, and the Jewish State,” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 10 (2003), 295–318. 25. Majid Al-Haj, “Soviet Immigration as Viewed by Jews and Arabs: Divided Attitudes in a Divided Country,” in Immigration to Israel: Sociological Perspectives, ed. Elazar Leshem and Judith T. Shuval (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998), 135–49; Alexandra Belinsky, “Perception of the Civic Status of the Arab Minority in Israel: Comparison between the Israeli-Born Jewish Students and the FSU-Born Students” (MA thesis, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Haifa, January 2007). 26. A small piece of parchment inscribed with biblical quote placed in a container and affixed to the door frame as a sign of Jewish faith and a good luck token. 27. During the process of conversion, participants are assigned an adoptive family that introduces them to the religious way of life. 28. Zvi Gitelman Immigration and Identity: The Resettlement and Impact of Soviet Immigrants on Israeli Politics and Society (Los Angeles: Wilstein Institute of Jewish Policy Studies, 1995). 29. Valeriy Chervyakov, Zvi Gitelman, and Vladimir Shapiro. “Religion and Ethnicity: Judaism in the Ethnic Consciousness of Contemporary Russian Jews,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 20, no. 2 (1997): 280–303. 30. For a discussion of the new migration flows to Israel since the 1990s and the challenges they posed to the Israeli regime of incorporation and society see Rebecca Raijman, “Immigration in Israel: A Map of Trends and Empirical Research: 1990–2007,” Israeli Sociology 10, no. 2 (2009): 339–80 [in Hebrew].