Olena Bagno

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

Karin Amit**, Ruppin Academic Center, Israel Olena Bagno, Tel-Aviv University, Israel William P. Bridges, University of Illinois–Chicago, USA Don J. Devoretz , Simon Fraser University, Canada Yitchak Haberfeld, Tel-Aviv University, Israel Irena Kogan, Mannheim University, Germany John R. Logan, Brown University, USA Rebeca Raijman, Haifa University, Israel Moshe Semyonov, Tel-Aviv University, Israel

Jews are a people full of paradoxes. Against all odds they survived, landless and stateless, through centuries of political limbo. As individuals they suffered because of their religious, ethnic, and cultural dissimilarity, but these same differences secured Jewish longevity as a collective. Depending on the level of legitimacy given by a state to the community, Jews eager to advance their political careers either relied on Jewish communal structures or ignored them. The establishment of the State of Israel added another wrinkle to this already complex relationship between Jewish politicians and the state. New existential questions have emerged, and political science does not always have satisfactory answers. What does it mean for an individual to enter politics when he or she belongs to a majority nation as opposed to being part of the minority? And what does it matter vis-avis his/her political career that in one’s own land a citizen does not speak the language of the place, while...

This article studies the influence of religion on political attitudes in Israel by testing two propositions: “religion-friendly” democratization and “greedy” socialization. The former implies that accommodation of religious demands stimulates democratization, the latter argues that domineering religious socialization does not motivate democratic attitudes. Analysis of data from representative surveys conducted in 2006–2013, supports “greedy” socialization over the “religion friendly” hypothesis. I show that in most instances, socialization in religion-friendly environments does not moderate the political attitudes of religiously conservative groups. The results suggest that unbounded accommodation of religious needs in non-religious institutions may strengthen undemocratic political attitudes.

... cluded from citizenship. As a result, anyone can interpret it as he/she wishes. In addition, to show that the party is not ethnically bound, a Druze, Hamed Amer, was placed as number twelve on Israel Beiteinu's list. Danny Ayalon, a ...

In the last 10 years, approximately 200,000 Jewish immigrants from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) have made their home in Germany. CIS immigrants in Germany experienced trouble inseparable with immigration, along with uncertainties that related to their tentative status in German society. In accordance with the mainstream theory of political socialisation, FSU Jewish immigrants should act and feel similarly regardless of the political domain they have joined. This study provides evidence of the opposite. I compare basic democratic orientations and political behaviours of adult immigrants from the FSU to Israel and Germany and found significant differences that can be accounted for by the lifelong openness model of political socialisation. The study is based on primary data collected in Germany in 2005-2006 and secondary data from the ESS, the WVS, and the German Microcensus-2004. Political orientations expressed by CIS Jews in Germany, Ukrainian Jews, and CIS Jews in I...

The ongoing Ukrainian crisis grew out of the upheavals in Ukraine and quickly became a major confrontation in the international arena, involving all the major powers. Months following the onset of the crisis, the implications of the chapter remain at the center of the international agenda and threaten global stability. More than 1200 casualties among the Ukrainian civilian population have been reported by the UN, along with the 298 civilians of various countries killed in the crash of the Malaysian aircraft on July 17, 2014, some 40 km west of the border with Russia. From Moscow’s perspective, its involvement in the crisis began as a response to a challenge issued by the West, especially the United States, seeking to harm Russia’s geopolitical goals, marginalize its position in the former Soviet republics, and obstruct its superpower aspirations. Behind this conflict of interests lies a history of Russian-Western friction, 1 driven, especially since Vladimir Putin’s rise to power, b...

Over the course of the ongoing war in Ukraine, the identity of the global Russian-speaking Jewish community was put to the test. The conflict in Ukraine marked the first time in the history of Russian-speaking Jews that every expression, blog or Twitter post, and opinion article were recorded on the World Wide Web. This readily available data enables us to reconstruct the information climate that surrounded Russian-speaking Jews. The present article explores the sway of this climate on the political discourse of Jewish elites in Ukraine, Russia, and Jewish Russian-speaking diasporas between 2014 and 2015. Our findings suggest that identities of these groups are multilayered, but not hierarchical. Moreover, the elites’ common ethno-cultural Jewish identity coexists with distinct political affiliations. The allegiance of minorities to host societies is a well-known phenomenon. However, its mechanisms have yet to command sufficient research interest. Is it fear, prudence, genuine attachment to the country of residence, or other factors that stand behind the minorities’ commitment? This paper fuses thematic maps with content analysis to show that the “infosphere” is a key to understanding the position of Jews toward host regimes and their co-ethnics in other nation-states.

This paper studies the influence of religion on political attitudes in Israel by testing two propositions: “religion-friendly” democratization and “greedy” socialization. The former implies that accommodation of religious demands stimulates democratization, the latter argues that domineering religious socialization does not motivate democratic attitudes. Analysis of data from representative surveys conducted in 2006-2013, supports “greedy” socialization over the “religion friendly” hypothesis. I show that in most instances, socialization in religion-friendly environments does not moderate the political attitudes of religiously conservative groups. The results suggest that unbounded accommodation of religious needs in non-religious institutions may strengthen undemocratic political attitudes.

Two questions arise when the role of a diaspora in crisis is considered. Do diasporas embody an internal threat to the security of the nation state? And why do some efforts to use diasporas as a tool of international politics succeed while others fail? In this paper, the Ukrainian 2014-2015 crisis involving Russia is analyzed in order to suggest answers to these questions. I examine the political reactions of the Jewish political Diasporas in Ukraine and Russia toward the crisis.

Israel Beiteinu (IB) received  fifteen seats in the Eighteenth Knesset and became one of “the hits of the season” in the 2009 elections. This chapter explains IB’s success in 2009 within the framework of the assimilationist-ethnic debate, arguing that the dynamics of the vote for IB in the last ten years supports the assimilationist argument and is indicative of immigrants’ political integration into the Israeli political continuum. Immigrants from the FSU are individuals who entered the country no earlier than 1989 under the legal regulations of the Law of Return and who were at least eighteen years old in March 2009. Most
of them are concentrated in the center-right of the political spectrum. In 2009, IB capitalized on rising insecurity levels and produced messages that attracted a significant number of secular nationalistic floating votes from both immigrants and veteran Israelis. It positioned itself as an answer to the needs of secular right-wing voters from the areas that endured the volatile security conditions created by the military operations in Lebanon and Gaza.
This chapter starts with an analysis of the strategic positioning of IB as a catch-all party with ethnic attributes. Then, it describes and compares the profiles of the IB voters with the rest of the Israeli non-Arab electorate. IB voters in 2009 shared a secular worldview with the Left and a nationalistic ideology with the Right. Societal-level insecurity is the unique factor that differentiates IB voters from the rest. This work also delineates the definition of an “ethnic” party along the lines of ethnic structure and ethnic practice. In the long run, appeals
based on attributes of ethnic structure (e.g., FSU origin) ought to become less successful for immigrants’ mobilization compared to appeals based on salient issues (e.g., security or institutionalized religious dogmatism).

The Minsk II Agreement, reached on February 12, 2015 between Ukraine and the separatist provinces in the east of the country, did not lead to an immediate ceasefire. The Russian-backed separatists intensified the fighting and succeeded in encircling and defeating the Ukrainian forces in the Debaltseve bulge. Russia is thus working to establish the separatist provinces as a significant actor and position them as leverage against Ukraine’s tilt to the West. Overall, Russia is working to create a “frozen conflict” in Ukraine, which can be heated up if the need arises to protect Russian interests. However, it is still too early to assess the effectiveness of Russia’s tactic, particularly in the context of the Ukrainian crisis. The economic sanctions have not been lifted, and in the meantime, Russia has expanded its competition with the West to other arenas, first and foremost the Middle East. It is stepping up its efforts to rehabilitate its status in the region, eroded in recent years because of the political turmoil in the Arab world.

In den vergangenen fünfzehn Jahren haben geschätzte 220.000 Juden, einschließlich ihrer nicht-jüdischen Angehörigen, vom Asylrecht Gebrauch gemacht, um aus der früheren Sowjetunion nach Deutschland zu immigrieren. Nach dem Niedergang der UdSSR wurde Juden das Recht zugesprochen, als Asylsuchende einzureisen, da sie als in ethnischer Hinsicht nicht-Deutsche auch nicht dem Kriterium des jus sanguinis, des deutschen Staatsbürgerschaftsrechts entsprachen. Unter dieser Regelung reisten bis zum Februar des Jahres 2006 insgesamt 197.195 Juden sowie deren (nicht-jüdische) Familienmitglieder nach Deutschland ein. Weitere 8.535 reisten als Touristen ein und wurden im Laufe ihres Verbleibs in Deutschland „naturalisiert“, sofern sie nur ihre jüdische Herkunft nachweisen konnten.

What stimulates political action among ethnic and immigrant groups? Are these  groups fundamentally different? And if so,  should the difference be acknowledged to improve the  models that predict protest? This paper proposes answers to these questions using two sources of data for the general population and ethnic and immigrant minorities.  Analysis of the 2008 wave of the European Social Survey (ESS) and three primary surveys conducted in Germany, Israel and Ukraine in 2005-2008 suggest that different sentiments guide political actions among majority, immigrants and ethnic minorities. Moreover, ethnic and immigrant statuses have opposite impact on propensity to protest: immigrant status decreases action, while ethnic status increases it.