Hebrew Learning and Identity Perception among Russian Speakers in Israel

language Press and Immigrant Community in Israel,” Revue Européenne des Migrations Inter-nationales 12.3 (1996): 173–188; Narspy Zilberg, Elazar Leshem, and Moshe Lissak, “Imagined Community and Real Community: Russian-Language Press and the Renewal of Community Life among FSU Immigrants,” Society and Welfare 19 (1999): 9–37 [in Hebrew].

14 Avraham Ben-Yakov, “Russian-Language Press in Israel,” Kesher 24 (1998): 2–15 [in Hebrew].15 Nelly Elias, Coming Home: Media and Returning Diaspora in Israel and Germany (Albany, NY:

SUNY Press, 2008.)16 Elias and Caspi, “From Pravda to Vesty: The Russian Media Renaissance in Israel.”17 Majid Al-Haj and Elazar Leshem, Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in Israel: Ten Years

Later. Research Report (The Center for Multiculturalism and Educational Research, Univer-sity of Haifa, 2000.)

18 Mutagim, FSU Immigrants’ Media Consumption Survey (Tel-Aviv, 2000) [in Hebrew].19 Hanna Adoni, Dan Caspi, and Akiba A. Cohen, Media, Minorities and Hybrid Identities: The

Arab and Russian Communities in Israel (New Jersey: Hampton Press, 2006).20 Caspi and Elias, “Being Here but Feeling There…”; Hefetz, “The Russian Press in Israel”;

Wartburg, “The Russian-Language Press in Israel—Two Generations”; Zilberg and Leshem, “Russian-language Press and Immigrant Community in Israel.”

21 David Deacon, Michael Pickering, Peter Golding, and Graham Murdock, Researching Com-munications: A Practical Guide to Methods in Media and Cultural Analysis (London: Arnold, 1999.)

22 See, for example, Meenakshi Gigi Durham, “Constructing the ‘New Ethnicities’: Media, Sex-uality and Diaspora Identity in the Lives of South Asian Immigrant Girls,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 21.2 (2004): 140–161; Myria Georgiou, Diaspora, Identity and the Media: Diasporic Transnationalism and Mediated Spatialities (New Jersey: Hampton Press, 2006); Bao-hui Hwang and He Zhou, “Media Uses and Acculturation among Chinese Immigrants in the U.S.A,” Gazette 61.1 (1999): 5–22; Nelly Elias and Dafna Lemish, “Spinning the Web of Identity: Internet’s Roles in Immigrant Adolescents’ Search of Identity,” New Media & Society 11.4 (2009): 533–551; Gillespie, Television, Ethnicity and Cultural Change; Vikki Mayer, “Living Telenovelas/Telenovelizing Life: Mexican American Girls’ Identities and Transnational Tele-novelas,” Journal of Communication 5.3 (2003): 479–495.

23 Arthur A. Berger, Media and Communication Research Methods: An Introduction to Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2000.)

24 TheterroristattackontheDolphinarium discothèque will be recalled in the collective Israeli memoryasa“Russian”terroristattack,asmostofthe21youngsterskilledwereimmigrantsfrom the FSU.

25 See Julia Lerner, By Way of Knowledge: Russian Migrants at the University (Jerusalem: Shain Center, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1999) [in Hebrew]; Fran Markowitz, A Community in Spite of Itself: Soviet Jewish Émigrés in New York (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993); Tamar Rapoport and Edna Lomsky-Feder, “Intelligentsia as an Ethnic Habitus: The In-culcation and Restructuring of Intelligentsia among Russian Jews,” British Journal of Sociology of Education 23.2 (2002): 233–248; Larissa Remennick, Russian Jews on Three Continents (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2007.)

26 Dependence on news broadcasts in Hebrew was particularly high among participants who had been interviewed in 2001, before the establishment of the Israeli channel in Russian, Israel Plus.

27 See, for example, Burgess, “The Resurgence of Ethnicity: Myth or Reality?”; Georgiou, “Crossing the Boundaries of the Ethnic Home: Media Consumption and Ethnic Identity Construction in the Public Space: The Case of the Cypriot Community Centre in North Lon-don”; Hargreaves and Mahdjoub, “Satellite Television Viewing among Ethnic Minorities in France”; Marzolf, The Danish-language Press in America.

28 Caspi and Elias, “Being Here but Feeling There…”; Chaim Herzog Institute for Media, Poli-tics and Society, Media Influence on the Collective Identity Construction amongst the Russian-speaking Community in Israel. Public discussion, Tel-Aviv, March 17, 2004 http://www.tau.ac.il/institutes/herzog/russien_press.doc[inHebrew];Isakova,“NotaGhetto,NotaMafia”;Kimmerling, “The New Israelis: A Multiplicity of Cultures without Multiculturalism”; Wart-burg, “The Russian-Language Press in Israel—Two Generations.”

BetweenRussianness,Jewishness,andIsraeliness

105104 January2011,4(1)JournalofJewishIdentities

Hebrew Learning and Identity Perception among Russian Speakers in Israel

Rinat Golan, Levinsky College of Education, and Malka Muchnik, Bar-Ilan University

This article probes the relation between the learning of Hebrew and the perception of identity among new immigrants to Israel from the Former So-vietUnion(FSU)fromthemid-1990stothemiddleofthefirstdecadeofthepresent century. In the research presented here two groups of immigrants were investigated: one that studied Hebrew at an ulpan, and the other who did not formally study the language. The ulpan is an institution designed for intensive study of Hebrew, primarily by adult immigrants. Our aim was to re-vealwhetherformallearningofthelanguageislikelytoinfluenceimmigrants’perception of identity as Russian, Jews, or Israelis. According to our survey andinterviewresults,suchaninfluenceexists.Immigrantswhostudiedatanulpanreportedastrongsenseofbelongingtothestateanddefinedthemselvesas more “Israeli” than “Russian” or “Jewish.” In contrast, immigrants who did not study at ulpandefinedthemselvesasmoreRussianthanJewishorIsraeli.

Introduction

The research presented in this article focuses on new immigrants from the FSUandthestudyofHebrewasaninfluencingfactorontheirperceptionofsociety, culture, and their own identity as part of the absorption process in Israel. We have studied the formal and informal characteristics of learning the language, in ulpan or independently, and the data was used to compare identity perceptions.

Immigration from the FSU in the beginning of the 1990s, when hundreds of thousandscametoIsraelinarelativelyshorttime,wasdifferentfromallpre-vious immigration waves. This immigration wave has been researched in re-spect to its magnitude, cultural and demographic characteristics as compared to the Israeli population, and changes in absorption policy. The special needs of this immigration required the planning of new services and intervention and follow-up programs.1

JournalofJewishIdentities2011,4(1)

The massive wave of immigration that began in the early 1990s decreased inthemiddleofthefirstdecadeinthiscentury.Duringthisperiod,thereweremany changes in immigrants’ characteristics, especially when compared to im-migrants from the USSR who arrived in Israel in the 1970s. Changes were ob-served in immigration motives, adaptation processes and demographic char-acteristics, sociocultural and linguistic aspects, and economic and employment conditions. One of the most salient changes is the strengthening of immigrants’ cultural and linguistic relation to their original countries, which caused socio-cultural isolation of the immigrants and their refusal to abandon the Russian language.2

Besides changes in immigrants’ characteristics, there was a changing ten-dency in Israel’s absorption policy—from a “melting pot” ideology to a more pluralistic ideology and readiness for a linguistic policy change.3 This change already started with the massive wave of immigration from the USSR in the 1970s, but instead of creating a multicultural society, it perpetuated ethnic groups’identitiesasdifferentfrommainstreamsocietyandledtoanemphasison the polarization between them.4 Itisnotsufficientforsocietytoadoptapluralisticattitudeifitdoesnot

respect and encourage the equal existence of all groups and the creation of multiculturallanguagepolicy.Thedifferencebetweenapluralisticandmul-ticulturalattitudeisthatthepluralisticmodelcreatesagapamongthediffer-entlanguagecommunitiesandemphasizesthedifferencebetweenthema-jority and the “others.” In contrast, multiculturalism is a dynamic situation, where each one of the groups is equally respected.5 Learning Hebrew while maintaining immigrants’ languages is likely to reduce the gap between the differentculturesandenrichallofsociety.Moreover,sincethe learningofa new language does not come at the expense of any other language, and maintainingthemothertonguedoesnotcreateaconflictwiththenewcul-ture, the use of both languages is not supposed to generate any fear of inter-culturalconflict.6

The acquisition of Hebrew by new immigrants is initially done for basic adaptation purposes, but among some of them it is later done in an ulpan as a part of the absorption program, which includes the formal learning of the language from linguistic, cultural, and ideological aspects.7 Some of the im-migrants drop ulpan classes and learn the language by themselves, only for es-sential needs. This phenomenon is similar to what has been found among im-migrantsindifferentEuropeancountriesandamongguestworkersinIsrael.8

Research on language learning among immigrants in Israel has revealed that the ulpan contributes to social acceptability, to a sense of belonging, and tothedevelopmentofanIsraeliidentity.Thelearners’attitudewasfoundtobepositive,particularlybecauseoftheirdesiretobepartofsocietyandfinda job. It was also found that new immigrants tended to maintain their mother tongue, especially among family members and friends coming from the same country, and continued exposure to the media in their original language. Im-migrants with a relatively good command of Hebrew tended to have good relations with Israelis, enjoyed their use of the language, and had positive at-

titudes toward it, as opposed to immigrants with poorer knowledge of the language.ThisisattributabletoconfusedfeelingsasaJew,Israeli,orRussian,and their relationship to the surrounding society.9

In light of the changes in immigrant characteristics discussed above, many immigrants—particularly older ones—do not feel they need to study Hebrew in ulpan and drop their classes, tending to learn the language in-formally. They try to get jobs as soon as possible, especially where the com-mand of Hebrew is not required and other Russian-speaking workers can help them by translating. Thus, the need for the present study rose in light of the changes in linguistic, social, and cultural aspects of immigration from the FSU in recent years, and especially because of both new linguistic tenden-cies—thechangeinhowHebrewisacquiredandtheofficialpolicychangetowardit.Researchonlinguisticproficiencyinasecondlanguageandtheamountofitsuseenablesabetterunderstandingoftheimmigrants’absorp-tion. The aim of the present study was to examine the function of Hebrew as alanguagelearnedbyadultsanditsinfluenceonsocioculturalabsorptionfromtheperspectiveofusage,attitudes,andsenseofidentityandbelongingto Israeli society.

Language and Identity: Social and Personal Aspects

Social and national identity is used here as the individual sense of belong-ingtoacertaingroupandidentificationwiththevaluesrelatedtomembersof this group.10 Social identity and relations between ethnic groups are also re-lated to acquisition of language.11 There is a correlation between immigrants’ motivationtogaincommandofthelocallanguageandthesenseofidentifi-cationwiththenewlanguageandlinguisticrelationswithdifferentgroups.Identificationwiththespeechcommunitywasfoundtobeagoodpredictorofsecondlanguageacquisitionanduse,aswellasasignofapositiveattitudetoward it. A number of theories were developed to understand the relation between language and identity. The Ethnolinguistic Vitality Theory presents social and psychological processes as mediating factors in the communication between ethnic groups. According to this theory, high ethnolinguistic vitality maintains identity and idiosyncrasy (including the mother tongue) in terms of demography,authorities’supportandcontrolofthemedia,andotherofficialentities.12 This theory deals with the objective and subjective view of iden-tity. Inasmuch as subjective vitality increases, i.e. the importance of individual feelingsforanimmigrant,languageacquisitionwilloccurinabettermannerand identity will be maintained.13

As a continuation of the Ethnolinguistic Vitality Theory, Howard Giles and Jane Byrne developed the Intergroup Model, which focuses on the relation between social identity theory and intergroup connections and the acquisi-tion of a second language.14 The researchers showed the interaction between a learner’s motivation to study a second language and their sense of iden-titywithlinguisticcontextsinsideandoutsidethegroup.Thismodelhasfive


HebrewLearningandIdentityPerceptionamongRussianSpeakersinIsrael RinatGolanandMalkaMuchnik


components:identitybetweengroups,comparisonofgroups,differentiationsbetween low and high identity in the group, the limits of the group, and the identity with other groups. Empirical evidence for the intergroup model was found in a research study conducted by Kelly et al.15

The relation between bilingualism and ethnic identity was studied by Meh-roo Northover, who also based it on the Ethnolinguistic Vitality Theory devel-oped by Giles and Byrne. 16SheexaminedvariouslinguisticpatternsamongyoungspeakersofGujaratiintheUnitedKingdomandfoundpatternsrelatedto theirmother tongueandassociatedcultureaswellaspatternsrelatedtoEnglish culture. Northover argues that language is perceived as represent-ingdifferentculturesandplaysan important role inpersonalandcommu-nity identity. She developed the Identity Structure Analysis Model, and found amongbilingualandbiculturalyoungpeopledifferentidentityprocessesandcomplex relations between the languages as well as between ethnic speakers’ identities and other groups. Immigrant speakers do not have the same values andidentitiesscale,andaccordingtoNorthover,weshouldcombinediffer-ent theories about identity and second language acquisition with the social, historical, and psychological processes of all groups and avoid making gen-eralizations.Theaffiliationgroupprovidestheimmigrantwithsupportandassistance.

A study conducted by Gabriel Horenczyk found that the identity construction process during the cultural transition period is not done in a social vacuum, but in the relationship context between groups, which challenges the forma-tion of new self-identity. 17 The seeking of supporting groups derives from the desire to avoid social isolation and from the necessity of maintaining a rela-tionship to the original personal, social, and cultural identity.18 Although iden-tityconstructioninculturaltransitioniscomplex,individualsbenefitfromthegroups’ sense of stability when trying to cope with new and unknown values. Thus, it seems that social identity is individual feelings toward a certain group andtheidentificationwithvaluesrelatedtothemajoritygroup.Thereisalsoacorrelation between the group’s image and its language. A group with a strong image has more intelligent and educated speakers.19

Intergroup relations that provide support for the reconstruction of selves and identities are made, inter alia, by free use of the mother tongue, mainte-nance of traditional customs in joyous and mourning events, and in compli-ance with the code of behavior of the original society. This is a way to reduce themental andemotional effort involvedwhen trying to copewithanun-known culture. The negative side of belonging to a supporting group is the reductionofindividualexpressionandwillingnesstomakeaneffortduringthe absorption process into the new society.

The desire to maintain cultural and linguistic identity is parallel to immi-grants’ struggle for full social integration and the demand for recognition of their own culture.20AnexampleforthisisthecaseofAustralia,wherewefindmany immigrants fromGreece having different bilingualism patternswithvarious components of identity. In a study conducted by Leo Papademetre among these immigrants and their Australian-born children, he found mini-

mal contact with Greek, their parents’ language.21 However, they fully identify with Greek heritage, customs, and traditions. The Greek language has become weakamongfirst-andsecond-generationimmigrantsbecauseofitsdecreas-ing use, in line with an increasing use of English.

Susan Bosher conducted a study among Asian Hmong students in an American college to examine the correlation between acculturation, ethnic identity, and acquisition of a second language while maintaining the mother tongue, and their academic success and self-assessment.22 She describes two oppositesocio-psychologicalattitudesinsecondlanguageacquisition—iden-tity loss versus identity preservation. According to her findings, Hmongstudentsdidnot losetheir identityafteracquiringEnglishandadoptinganAmerican lifestyle, and they continued to speak both languages. Their strong ethnic and community identity gave them a sense of stability and support which they needed in the transition stage. This feeling also helped them gain self-confidenceinEnglish.Moststudentsreportedthattheywantedtomain-tain their original language, and only a minority thought there was no correla-tion between language and their identity and culture. The students succeeded in their studies and managed to adopt the American style of life without giv-ing up their original ethnic culture.Wecanconcludethattwodifferentattitudesmayappearinlanguageand

identityinsocialcontexts:(a)theassimilationattitude,meaningafastidentitychange of the group according to intergroup relations, and (b) the pluralistic attitude,i.e.,maintenanceoftheoriginalcultureinordertoensurebetterin-tegrationintothenewsociety.Insofarasthegroup’sattitudedoesnotfitthedominantsocietywemayexpectanincreasingconflictinthecorrelationbe-tween the new group and the host society.23

The personal aspect of identity was studied by Bernardo Ferdman and Ga-briel Horenczyk, who claim that the cultural identity adopted by individu-als, including beliefs, behavior, values, and norms, characterizes the group to which they belong and its feelings and perceptions toward the same pat-terns.24 Three aspects of cultural identity can be noticed: (a) the construction of groups together with sub-groups, (b) individual feelings towards the group’s cultural characteristics, (c) individuals’ perceptions of their place within the group from the cultural perspective.

Another aspect of personal identity in a linguistic context can be perceived inimmigrants’effortstoadoptthelinguisticcharacteristicsofthenewsoci-ety. This is done to show a successful integration, as pointed out by Michael Schleifer and Gadi Ben-Ezer.25 They claim that individual narratives reflectthe complex processes of immigrants’ absorption. Although immigrants lose their mother tongue, they maintain their identity through personal stories. On theonehand,thesestoriesreflectimmigrants’cultureandrelationtothenewsociety,andontheother,theyreflectsociety’sattitudestowardsimmigrants.Thus, when studying the relation between language and identity, one must take into consideration individuals’ biography, values, and beliefs. Personal andsocialfactorsmayinfluencesensesofidentityaswellastheamountofuseof the second language.



Language and Identity among New Immigrants in Israel

Israeli society is comprised of a great variety of identities, reminiscent of a mosaic in which some parts are complementary to one another, while oth-ers are different and contradict one another.26 Part of the population has a common identity, whereas other groups have secondary identities which of-tenaddrichculturalaspects,butmayalsocreateconflictswithothersocialgroups.Identitydefinitions,suchas“whoIam,”sometimesleadtoafeelingof arrogance toward other groups, and this is claimed to have happened with immigrants who arrived from the Soviet Union in the 1970s with respect to thosewhoarrivedinthe1990s.Negativedefinitions,suchas“whoIamnot,”were an immigration trigger for many Jews who felt like strangers in their country.

Another component of Israeli social identity is the fact that the country is Jewish and Zionist and is open to world Jewry. Nevertheless, not all the inhab-itants of Israel are Jews and Zionists. Some immigrants from the FSU are not Jews, but have some family relationships with Jewish people, and others came to Israel for economic reasons. Among other identity components of Israeli so-ciety,asanintegratingordisintegratingfactor,wecanfindreligion,ethnicity,gender, and political association.

The integration of people from the FSU served as a model for studies con-ducted on immigration characteristics from social, cultural, economic, and lin-guistic perspectives. Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Elite Olshtain, and Idith Geist found thatwhilepeoplefromthefirstimmigrationwaveinthe1970stendedtowardasociocultural non-ethnic integration, people from the second immigration wave represent a secular non-Zionist model.27EliAmirclaimsthatwhendefiningthissecond wave population, it is more suitable to use the term “immigration” than “aliya” which presupposes an ideology with which many of them no longer identify.28

There is a strong correlation between immigration to Israel and acquisition of Hebrew. Since the revitalization of Hebrew as a spoken language, it has be-come a Zionist and national symbol. Therefore, the use of Hebrew is one of the means of creating a national identity among newcomers to Israel and unifying society.29 Language and national belonging actually form one entity, and we canthereforestatethatdilemmasandconflictsofidentitymaybeexpressedinthelinguisticfieldandinpatternsofbilingualism.30 When learning Hebrew in the past, the original languages of the immigrants were abandoned. The acquisition of Hebrew in ulpan began in the 1950s, and this also functioned as a frame for the creation of a new cultural identity.

From the psycholinguistic perspective, it is clear that encouraging bilin-gualism or multilingualism is positive and even desirable. Research conduct-edindifferentlanguagesshowsthatbilingualismcontributestoabettercom-mand of both languages.31 Israeli scholars recommend as well that minority groups be able to develop their mother tongues, and at the same time acquire the national language.32 During the 1990s, the direction began to change in Israel, and the growing tendency is to maintain Russian as a mother tongue,

as well as the culture that it represents. The use of Hebrew is mostly for basic necessities, and therefore no remarkable identity changes are found among immigrantsatthetimeoftheirfirstarrival,andwhenchangesareperceived,theyonlyhappenafteracertaintime.

In a study conducted by Zvi Bekerman, he reported on the strong desire of immigrants from the FSU at the beginning of their stay in Israel to assimilate and integrate in Israeli Jewish society, while denying and repressing their origi-nal Russian language and culture.33 This was clearly found in the study he con-ducted among young immigrants, who arrived in Israel in the 1970s and served as instructors to immigrants of the 1990s. During their work with young people who had recently arrived, instructors reported a renewed interest in their Rus-sian identity and use of the language, which they had repressed for a long time. Bekerman suggests that paradoxically the process of becoming Russian again allowedtheimmigrantstofinallybeIsraelis,sincebyadoptingadoubleiden-tity they put themselves in a situation where they accept their past as well as appreciate their present.

A double identity in Israel was also found by Malka Shabtay, who exam-ined immigrant soldiers from Ethiopia.34Shebasedherstudyonaredefinitionof identity during the transition from one culture to the other, i.e. from past to future. Thedefinition includes threeparts: (a) the ethnic group identity,(b) the principal events in life, and (c) the cultural Ethiopian-Israeli identity. Maintaining the Ethiopian identity gives them a positive self-evaluation and a strong sense of belonging to their ethnic group. As for the language, the use ofitisoneelementintheinteractionbetweenpastandpresent.Asignificantdifferencewas found between the absorption of immigrants fromEthiopiaand those from the FSU. While among Ethiopian immigrants an integrative model of absorption was found, among Russian-speaking immigrants, the ab-sorption model was found to be instrumental. Identity among adolescents was examined by Tamar Horovitz and Eleazar Leshem, who studied young immi-grants from the Former Soviet Union in the formal educational system.36 The findingsshowthattheyconsiderIsrael,Jerusalem,andtheHebrewlanguageas important symbols of Jewish identity, alongside their desire to maintain theiroriginalculture.Adolescentsandstudentsdefinedthemselvesindiffer-entlevelsofbeingIsraeli.Anotherinterestingfindingshowsthatthegroupsthat most identify with Israel and with Jewish culture were students who came to Israel with their parents, those who have social relationships outside the immigrant group, and those who have good command of Hebrew. The researchers’ conclusion is that Israeli identity is acquired gradually.

The fact that there is a desire to maintain the original language and culture proves that their immigration to Israel is similar to immigration to other countries. Young people from the FSU were described as willing to belong to mainstream society and adopt their cultural markers (clothing, appearance, behavior) on one hand, while ignoring and denying their parents’ cultural makers on the other. The attritionofthemothertongueandabandonmentoftheoriginalculturearelikelytocreateaflatidentity.37Thiskindofidentityisreflectedinbreakingcontactswithtraditions before having internalized behavioral norms of the new society.



In research on immigrants’ identity conducted by Marina Niznik, most participants reported that they consider themselves Russian more than they do Jewish or Israeli.38 She states that until the 1990s, there was no contradiction in integrating these three identities—Russian-Jewish-Israeli—whereas Jewish identityinthetwenty-firstcenturyisrelatedtoreligiosity.Accordingtothisstudy, in 1996 about 90% declared themselves to be Jews, while in 2000, only 45% said they viewed themselves as Jews. This gives rise to a question about the chances of integration for these immigrants. Itseemsthatimmigrantsdonotseeagapbetweendifferentdefinitionsof

identities. Sometimes Russian identity is stronger and other times Israeli iden-tity is dominant. This sense of identity depends on many factors, such as age, length of time in Israel, motivation, place of residence, et cetera. Ben-Rafael found that the longer immigrants stay in Israel and the younger they are, the greaterthetendencytodefinetheiridentityasIsraeliorJewish,andlessasRussian.39 Nevertheless, immigrants living in towns continue their Russian-style way of life and feel more Russian. The researchers’ conclusion is that thedevelopmentofaRussian-speakingcommunityinIsraelreflectsamulti-culture, and cultural integration occurs before second language acquisition. Thefindingsoftheresearchpresentedbelowwillillustratethesamerelationbetween identities.

The Present Study

The study presented here deals with two aspects related to the language acquisition of immigrants from the Former Soviet Union—the linguistic and socialaspects.Theaimwastoexaminetheinfluenceofulpan studies on the quality of the Hebrew spoken by the subjects, the quantity of their linguistic use,theirattitudestowardHebrewascomparedtoRussianandEnglish,theirsatisfaction with Hebrew study, their absorption in Israel, and their feelings toward Israel and their identity.

The main purpose of the present study was to examine how Hebrew is learned,formallyorinformally,itsuse,theattitudesofthesubjectstowardsit,andtheinfluenceoftheseonsocioculturalabsorptionandimmigrants’identi-ty.Weexaminedthedifferencesbetweenbothimmigrantgroups—thosewhostudied in ulpan and those who did not study formally—using a quantitative method, and the answers were subjected to a variance analysis. The indepen-dent variables were: study in the ulpan,useofthelanguage,linguisticprofi-ciency,andattitudestowardHebrewandIsraelisociety.

A special questionnaire was designed for the study and translated into Rus-sian.Theparticipantscompleteddifferentclosedquestionsregardingthefol-lowing issues: (a) linguistic use—the use of Hebrew in the private and public domains,participants’assessmentoftheirlinguisticproficiency,andattitudestoward Hebrew, Russian, and English; (b) sociocultural integration—Israelis’ relation to the participants, satisfaction with absorption, sense of belonging, and intention to stay in Israel.

The research subjects were 143 immigrants from the Former Soviet Union, whoarrivedbetweenthemid-1990sandthemiddleofthefirstdecadeofthe

twenty-firstcentury.Oftheparticipants,eightystudiedinulpan (55.9%), and the other sixty-three (44.1%) did not formally study in any framework. Most of the participants were married, had Israeli citizenship, and held jobs at an established Israeli workplace.

Language Acquisition and Identity DefinitionAs stated above, immigrants from the FSU learn Hebrew as a means of ad-

aptation in two ways—formally directed and guided ulpan courses, or informal learningwithout anyofficial framework.According to the linguistic examina-tion, we can distinguish between two periods: immigration at the beginning of the 1990s, and the wave of immigration in the late 1990s and the beginning of thetwenty-firstcentury.40Theseperiodsdifferfromeachotherinmanyrespects,amongthemlanguageacquisitionandidentityself-definition.MostimmigrantsfromthefirstperiodtendedtostudyHebrewformally,whereasmostimmigrantsfrom the second period did not feel an immediate necessity to study the language. They tended to drop ulpanclasses,findjobs,andlearnHebrewinformally.

From the sociocultural perspective, we found that most participants thought that Hebrew was more prestigious in Israel than in the world, while English was more prestigious in the world than in Israel. They stated that Russian is the least prestigious in Israel, while in the world it is more prestigious than Hebrew. The quantitative representation of Hebrew in the media and in governmental



services was found to be the highest among both groups of immigrants—those who studied in ulpan and those who did not do so. Most participants from both groups thought that their immigration to Israel had a positive economic aspect, theirsenseofsecurityasJews,aswellaspositivescientificandtechnologicalaspects. They thought that in terms of the other aspects—employment, housing, education, democracy, and culture—the immigration process had a negative in-fluence.

When comparing immigrants that studied in ulpan and these who did not, wefoundasignificantdifference inpersonal identityassessment,ascanbeseen in Figure 1.

Figure 1 shows that more participants who studied in ulpan (42.3%) per-ceive themselves as Israelis, as compared to these who did not do so (25.4%). Among those who did not study in ulpan, 47.5% viewed themselves as Rus-sian, as opposed to 28% that had studied in ulpan. The number of immigrants who feel Jewish was similar in both groups: among those who did not formally study Hebrew, 27.1%, and among those who had formally studied, 29.5%. The clearconclusionfromthefindingspresentedaboveisthattheformallearningofHebrewinfluencedimmigrants’identity.Thosewhohadstudiedinulpan definedthemselvesasbeingmoreIsraelithanJewishorRussian,whilethosewhohadnotformallystudiedHebrewdefinedthemselvesasbeingmoreRus-sianthanJewishorIsraeli.Anotherfindingfromthisstudyisthatalthoughformal study in the ulpan changed immigrants’ sense of identity as Israelis it hadalmostnoinfluenceontheirsenseofidentityasJews.Aslightdifferencewas found among participants who studied in ulpan,butthisdifferencewasnotsignificant.

Immigrants’ Feelings toward Israeli Societal Attitude

Fromour study, it appears that language acquisition influences immi-grants’ feelingsabout theattitudeof Israelisociety towardthemandtheirabsorptionprocess.Wehave found interestingdifferencesamong the twogroupsofparticipants, thoughmost immigrantsdefined Israelis’attitudestowards them as mid-low. These who studied in ulpan reported that Israe-lishadapositiveinfluenceonthem,especiallyinthefieldofemployment,whereas those who did not study Hebrew in ulpanreportedanegativeinflu-ence in the absorption process. To illustrate this feeling, one participant said, “Israelisoughttohaveabetterattitudetowardimmigrants.”Itappearsthatthe reason for this feeling is that most immigrants do not work in the profes-sion they had in the FSU, and this is frustrating. Moreover, this is a sign of low social involvement, lack of willingness to integrate in Israeli society, and social segregation of subjects, who did not study in ulpan and do not have a good command of Hebrew.

Participants from both groups reported reservations in having social rela-tions with veteran Israelis. Therefore, even studying in ulpan and knowing Hebrew did not help make social contacts with Israelis, and there were no significant differences between the two groups in this respect. Therewas

a general tendency to prefer association with members of their own com-munity, who speak their own language. For this reason, the frequency of social encounters between immigrants and their counterparts was greater than with Israelis.

Immigrants’ Feelings of Satisfaction

In the present study we found that study in the ulpan, use of Hebrew, lengthoftimeinIsrael,andsocialencounterswithIsraelisinfluencedthegen-eralsenseofsatisfactionreportedbyimmigrants.Thisinfluencewasfoundtobe greater among immigrants who studied in ulpan than among those who did not formally study the language. The satisfaction among those who studied in ulpan is expressed more in economic terms, particularly employment and housing, than in sociocultural terms. Thus, there is no doubt that the greater the use of Hebrew and the more social contact with Israelis, the greater the feeling of satisfaction with the absorption process.

We can state that a high satisfaction with social relations was clearly found among subjects who studied Hebrew in ulpan, and this proves the contribu-tion of language to social integration. In contrast, the continuing use of Rus-sianinallthedifferentarenasoflife—athome,inthecommunity,andinthemedia—contributed to the sociocultural segregation of the immigrants and prevented their integration.

Parents and Their Children’s Feelings of Belonging

WedidnotfindageneraltendencytohavesocialrelationshipswithIsrae-lis among either group of immigrants who participated in the study. Never-theless, it appears that this does not hurt the odds of their staying in Israel and feelingthattheybelongtothecountry.Therewerenosignificantdifferencesfound between the groups, and most participants reported a tendency to stay in Israel. Also from the perspective of feeling a sense of belonging to the coun-try, most subjects feel a positive change from the time they arrived in Israel. Generally, we found that a great majority of immigrants who studied in ulpan (82.1%) feel a positive change about their belonging to Israel. Asignificantdifferencewasfoundwhenaskinghowbothgroupsfeelwith

respect to the question of whether their children feel a sense of belonging to Israeli society (X² = 6.71, p > .01). Figure 2 presents the results for participants’ assessment for the sense of national identity in their children.

According to Figure 2, among subjects who did not study in ulpan, 78.7% think their children feel a sense of belonging to Israel, while 21.3% do not be-lieve their children do. By contrast, among those who have formally studied in ulpan, 95.1% think their children feel they belong to Israel, and only 4.9% do notthinktheirchildrendo.Theseresultsclearlytestifytotheinfluenceoftheulpan on the sense of integration into Israeli society. However, the testimony was presented by parents on behalf of their children, and we did not have the



direct answers of the children as to their feelings. Thus, we can not be sure that whatwasreportedindeedreflectsthechildren’sfeelings.Fromourfindings,wecanseethatgenerallyspeaking,mostsubjectsbe-

lieve their children have adapted to Israeli society and feel part of it, but a dif-ferenceexistsbetweenthetwogroupsofsubjects.Thisdifferenceistheresultof having or not having studied in ulpan. We can see then that the study of Hebrew is an important factor in immigrants’ feelings as to their own integra-tions as well as that of their children.An additional finding arising from this study is that themotivation to

study the language is transferred to children. Immigrants’ feelings regarding the future of their children in Israel and their integration into the new society are similar to those found by Smadar Donitza-Schmidt.41 In her study of lin-guistic decisions made by immigrants from the FSU, she found that among the young generation there is a decrease in the command of Russian as a result of the increase in the command of Hebrew, motivation to be socially integrated in Israel, entry into the Israeli education system, military service, and the need to learn an additional language (English.)

Gender and Its Influence on the Sense of Belonging

Genderisoneofthefactorsthatinfluencebilingualsituationsandtheac-quisition of a second language. In previous studies conducted in a variety of places in the world, it was found that women tend to maintain their mother tongue more than men, whereas men tend to acquire the new language more

rapidly than women. We can ascribe this to the circumstances, communica-tivenecessities,attitudetowardthetargetlanguage,andsocialconditionsofwomen as compared to men, especially in immigration situations.

In her study of linguistic integration of immigrants in New Zealand, Anne Pauwelsfoundthatalthoughwomenarecommonlysaidtohaveabetterabil-ity to express themselves than men, their linguistic competence in the new language (English) was not as good as that of men.42 Other research conducted among immigrants showed that women maintained their mother tongue bet-ter than men.43ThiswasfoundindifferentimmigrantcommunitiesinAustra-lia—those from Greece, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, and Poland—as well as among people coming from China and India and among the Maori commu-nity in New Zealand; among speakers from Puerto Rico living in the United States;andamongdifferentcommunitiesinScandinavia.

The explanation provided in the aforementioned studies about gender dif-ferences in language learning is related to social and communicative necessities andtodifferentattitudesofmenandwomentowardlinguisticfunctions.Wom-en are considered to be more conservative than men in terms of language, and this is the supposed explanation for the fact that they manage to maintain their mother tongue. However, the determinate cause is not only the linguistic as-pect, but other very important social factors. In countries of immigration, where genderdifferenceswerefoundconcerningtheuseofthelanguageofthehostsociety,socialdifferenceswerefoundaswell.Forinstance,menaremorelikelytohavejobsthanwomen,andtheyoftenmarrylocalwomen,whilewomenintheseimmigrants’communitiesoftenmarrymenoftheirsameorigin.Researchdealingwithbilingualismshowsdifferentattitudesofmenand

women concerning language use. Deborah Tannen points out that men see language as an instrumental necessity while women consider it a social and communicative device.44Oneofthemostimportantfactorsinwomen’sbettermaintenance of the original language seems to be the relation between gen-erations, namely the young generation’s education and maintaining relations with the older generation. Tannen claims that this may also explain why sec-ond-generation women become bilingual, while men tend to adopt the new language and abandon their original language. As stated above, the present study examined, among other issues, the personal details of the subjects to reveal whether any connection exists between these characteristics and the sense of belonging to the country. Of the 143 subjects, eighty studied Hebrew in the ulpan: thirty-four (42.5%) men and forty-six (57.5%) women. In contrast, sixty-three of the subjects did not study in ulpan: twenty-two (34%) men and forty-one (66%) women.Nosignificantgenderdifferenceswerefoundwithrespecttosocioculturalin-

tegration,i.e.theinfluenceofimmigrationprocessontheparticipants,fromtheperspectiveoftheirfeelingsaboutIsraelis’attitudetowardthem.Also,nodiffer-ences were found between male and female subjects regarding satisfaction with their absorption process and the frequency of social encounters with Israelis. As formen’sandwomen’sassessmentofHebrew,no significantdifferenceswerefound.However,amongmalesubjects,wefounddifferencesregardingtheiratti-


Figure 2: Participants distribution on assessment of feelings of their children


tude toward Hebrew. Only those who studied in ulpanreportedapositiveattitudetowardthelanguageanditsformalstudy.Theyattributedgreatimportancetolanguage learning and thought it would help them improve employment condi-tionsandprovidebettereconomicsupporttotheirfamilies.Bycontrast,womendid not see formal or intensive study of the language as important in improving their employment. Some believe their husbands are responsible for providing for the family, and view the study of Hebrew as an inherent part of that responsi-bility.AsimilarfindingwasreportedbyTaraGoldstein,whofoundthatdiffer-encesregardinglanguageacquisitionmaybeattributedtodifferentattitudesofthe immigrants and the host community towards men and women, especially in immigration societies.45 More women tend to maintain their mother tongue, and thistendencyisattributabletotheirneedtodefendthemselvesagainsttotalas-similation.

In the present study we examined whether male and female immigrants fromtheFormerSovietUnionperceiveadifferenceinthe status and prestige ofHebrew,Russian,andEnglish.Nosignificantgenderdifferenceswerefound,either among those who studied in ulpan or among these who did not formal-lystudythelanguage.Wealsoexaminedtheparticipants’attitudetowardthelearning of Hebrew according to gender. The results are presented in Figure 3 below.AscanbeseeninFigure3,adifferencewasfoundbetweenmenwhodid

not formally study the language and those who studied in ulpan (3.64 vs. 4.38) regardingtheirattitudetowardHebrew.Incontrast,amongfemalesubjects,averyslightdifferencewasfoundbetweenthosewhostudiedinulpan and those who did not. In other words, the formal study of the language did not contributetoachangeinwomen’sattitudetowardit.Analysisofvariance(ANOVA)wasappliedtoexaminethedifferencebe-

tween men and women with respect to the general assessment toward the studyofHebrew.Thefindingsshowasignificantinteraction(F(1.132)=4.34,

p < .05, Eta² = .03) between gender and study in ulpan. Nevertheless, the formal studyofHebrewonlyinfluencedtheattitudeofmen,notwomen.Thus,whensimpleeffectsanalysiswasappliedtodetecttheinteraction’sorigin,asignifi-cantdifferencewasfoundamongmaleparticipants(F(1.51)=9.59,p<.01,Eta²= .07), but not among female participants (F (1.81) = .11, p > .05). Theabovefindings show thatmen’sassessment changedwhenHebrew

was formally studied. Insomuch as men studied the language in ulpan, their positiveattitudetowarditimproved.Incontrast,amongfemaleparticipantsno changewas found in attitude toward the language as a consequenceofformal study. It is interesting to note that among male subjects who did not study in ulpan,apositiveattitudetowardlanguagewaslowerthanthatfoundamong female subjects (3.64 vs. 4.17). In contrast, among men who studied in ulpan,positiveattitudewashigherthanthatamongwomenwhoformallystudied Hebrew (4.38 vs. 4.24). We can conclude that men only began appre-ciatingHebrewafterhavingstudieditformally.Itcanbesurmisedthatthisisduetotheirinstrumentalattitudetowardlanguage,aftertheyrealizedthatithashelpedthem.Incontrast,femalesubjectshadapositiveattitudetowardlanguage from the beginning, and this only slightly increased after havingstudied in ulpan.Thiscanbeattributedtothesocio-communicativeattitudeofwomen toward the language.46

Family Status and Its Influence on the Sense of Belonging

One of the parameters examined in the present study was the family status of the participants. The analysis of variants (ANOVA) was applied to see the ulpan’sinfluenceonmarriedandunmarriedimmigrants.Amongthesubjectswho studied in ulpan,fifty-eightweremarried(72.2%)andtwenty-twowereunmarried (27.8%). Among the subjects who did not formally study the lan-guage, thirty-six were married (57.1%) and twenty-seven (42.9%) were unmar-ried. Nosignificantdifferencesbetweenmarriedandunmarriedsubjectswere

found in analysis of variants, except for their feeling a part of Israeli society. However,asignificantinteractionwasfoundbetweenfamilystatusandthefact that they had or had not studied Hebrew in ulpan concerning their feel-ings of belonging to Israeli society. This interaction is shown in Figure 4 below. Accordingtothefigureabove,wecanseethatdifferencesexistbetween

immigrants who have or have not studied at ulpan only among married par-ticipants, forwhomasignificantdifferencewas found.Amongthemarriedgroup, subjects who studied in ulpan feel much more a part of Israeli society thanthosewhodidnot.However,amongunmarriedimmigrants,nodiffer-ence was found between those who have or have not formally studied the language. Those who reported feeling a sense of belonging to the country are for the most part married subjects who studied in ulpan. Similar to what wasfoundforgenderdifferencesrelatedtolanguageattitude,heretooitwasfoundthatfromthebeginning,thepositiveattitudeofunmarriedparticipants


Figure 3: Attitude toward Hebrew study according to gender


towardsIsraelwashigherthanthatofthemarriedones,andthisattitudedidnotchangeafterhavingstudiedinulpan. In contrast, among married partici-pants the sense of belonging to the country increased with formal study of Hebrew.Theprobablereasonforthisistheinfluenceoftheirchildren,whoacquire the language more rapidly than their parents.Thefindingsofthepresentstudycanbeattributedtoseveralfactors.The

need to integrate into Israeli society and commitment to their family and its future seem to be stronger among married participants than unmarried sub-jects. This is due to the fact that one of the reasons married people immigrated to Israel was the desire to achieve economic stability and build a new home for themselves and their families, as has been found in previous research.47 The differencesfoundamongmarriedsubjectsregardingtheirsenseofbelongingcouldbeattributabletodifferentlevelsofeducationoraneconomicsituationthat requires them to work instead of studying the language. Another reason couldbethatsomeoftheimmigrantsdonotseeIsraelastheirfinaldestina-tion, but as a step on their way to the West. A relatively small part of the mar-ried immigrants and a larger part of the unmarried ones still do not feel that they are fully integrated into Israeli society. Instead, they feel they are in the process of adjusting to life in their new country. It is possible that the motiva-tion for immigrating to Israel, inter alia, was the result of the political regime and bad economic conditions in the FSU. Facing a strange democracy did not help their sense of belonging to Israel.48

Summary and Conclusions

The aim of the present study was to examine the relationship between the formal and informal study of Hebrew among immigrants from the FSU and their sociocultural absorption in Israel. The influence of language learningwasexaminedwithrespecttoidentityandsenseofbelonging,andattitudestoward Hebrew and Israel.

A clear and direct correlation was found between the study of Hebrew in ulpan and the sense of identity among immigrants who arrived in Israel in the twenty-firstcentury,ascomparedtothosewhoarrivedinthebeginningofthe1990s. Previous research on language and identity reported a weaker sense of identificationwithIsraelandastrongeridentityasJewsandwiththecountryof origin.49Thefindingsofourresearcharedifferent,andshowthatthesenseof identity is related to the formal study of Hebrew. While a decade ago im-migrants tended todefine themselvesas Jews,most subjectsof thepresentresearch who studied Hebrew in ulpandefinedthemselvesasIsraelis.Whencompared to participants who did not study in ulpan, we found that only a quarter of those felt Israeli. Half of the immigrants who did not study in ulpan felt Russian, whereas only a quarter of those who studied in ulpan reported feeling Russian. In other words, the formal study of Hebrew contributed to reducing foreign identity and increasing Israeli identity. As for their report-edfeelingsasJews,althoughtherewasnosignificantdifferencebetweenthegroups, those who studied in ulpan tended to feel more Jewish than the others.

The clear conclusion from our research is that there is a strong correlation between the formal study of Hebrew and the immigrants’ sense of identity. One could argue that immigrants interested in Jewish or Israeli identity choose to enter ulpan in thefirstplace.However,wearedealingherewith immigrantswho were remote from Judaism and Zionism, and according to our interviews it is evident that it is ulpan that contributed to strengthening Jewish identity andevenmore tostrengtheningIsraeli identity.To illustrate thisfinding, thefollowing are a selection of statements made by the immigrants interviewed: “EverybodyisIsraeliandonlyafterwardsJewish,”“IfeelthatIbelongmoretothe country than to the nation,” “The best sign that I belong to the country is that when I am abroad I feel Israeli.” One of the women interviewed was very deter-minedwhendefiningherself,asfollows:“IamanIsraeliwhospeaksRussian.”

Immigrants who did not study in ulpan for various reasons, such as lack of time, need to work, lack of interest, low motivation, or other obligations, re-ported a stronger feeling of being Russian and a weaker feeling of being Israeli or Jewish. This is true in the other direction as well, and those who kept feeling RussianevenafterimmigratingtoIsraelwerenotmotivatedtoformallystudyHebrew, which could have helped increase their feelings of being Jewish, and even make them feel more Israeli. Here are some statements from interviews conducted with them: “In Russia, I was a Jew. Here I am Russian,” “I am very proud of being Russian, and I am proud of Russian culture, even if I feel that IbelongtoIsrael,”“IdefinemyselfasaRussianwithRussianculture,andIthink that one only needs to know a minimum amount of Hebrew.” Wecansee that thedifferences foundbetweenthegroups inourstudydo

notfocusonthedefinitionofJewishidentity,whichwasandremainedweakinbothgroups,butratheronthedefinitionofIsraeliidentity.Mostparticipantswhostudied in ulpantendedtodefinethemselvesasIsraelis,whereasthosewhodidnot formallystudy the language tended todefine themselvesasRussian.Thisfalls in line with other studies conducted in this area, which found a tight relation betweenknowledgeofthelanguageandfeelingidentifiedwiththecountry.50



Hence, the ulpanfillsanimportantandpositiveroleinsocioculturalabsorp-tion, as was also found by Ben-Rafael, Olshtain and Geist and Horovitz and Leshem.51 Assessments of participants who studied in ulpan were found to be positive, and we can clearly see their desire to integrate into society and work-places.AlthoughcommandofHebrewwasnotprovedtobeasufficientfactorfor full integration into Israeli society, the readiness to be integrated was much more salient among those who studied in ulpan and had a good command of Hebrew. This group reported satisfaction with their absorption process as well aswiththeattitudeIsraelisocietyhastowardthem.Positivechangesreportedby participants regarding their Israeli identity since arriving in the country can be attributed to the influenceofulpan, while the remaining Russian identity amongimmigrantsistobeattributedtothefactthattheydidnotstudyHebrew.The language factor, the amount it is used, and how it was acquired were found tobesignificantwithrespecttoimmigrants’feelingsandabsorption.ThedecreasednecessitytostudyHebrewcanbeattributedtothefactthat

Russian is a language available in the media as well as on Israeli streets, given the tremendous waves of immigration in the 1990s and the change of language policy, which turned the country into a more multilingual society. Not all of the immigrants chose to join Hebrew courses at ulpan, and some of those who did so decided to drop it at the beginning. They are therefore only able to engage in basic communication in Hebrew when needed for immediate purposes. These immigrants do not identify themselves with local society and local language. Although they agreed that it was important to learn Hebrew in Israel as a means to make personal progress, they stated that at this stage of their life, they prefer maintaining their culture and speaking their mother tongue. They also choose the amount of knowledge and use of Hebrew they think they need. This is done for two reasons—their basic immediate necessities and their desire to become a part of the new society. Their understanding of what this kind of integration shouldentail,however,isdifferentfromwhatweknowofpreviouswavesofimmigration.Inotherwords, itshouldfittheirattitudetowardthelanguage,their social tendencies and their identity feelings.

Participants who did not study in ulpanwere found tohave adifferentidentitythanthepatternknownfromtheformerimmigrationwaves(inthe1970s and 1990s). The new identity is more Russian and less Jewish and Israeli. The immigrants of the 1990s are involved in Israeli society through their fam-ily members living in Israel and through their children, who study at state schools and/or serve in the army. In contrast, those who studied at ulpan feel more connected to the country anddefine themselves asmore Israeli thanRussian or Jewish, and report satisfaction from the absorption process.

The special demographic components of the recent immigration present a compound and new model of absorption. On the one hand there is the model of immigrants who study in ulpan and as a consequence of intensive study havegoodproficiencyofthelanguageandincreasetheiruseofit.Thiscon-tributed to their feeling of satisfaction, identity, and belonging to Israel. They are eager to make personal progress in the new country, but still maintain their relation to the mother tongue and to other immigrants. On the other

hand,wefindimmigrantswhohaveaverypoorcommandofHebrew,sincethey dropped ulpan classes. However, they manage to use very basic language for everyday needs. They have a stronger relation to Russian language and identity, but this does not prevent them from being involved in Israeli life and feelingattachedtothecountrywhilemaintainingcontactwiththeircommu-nity, with which they share language and culture.

From this study we can conclude that ulpan is important not only as a means of learning Hebrew, but also as a social and cultural experience. It is evident that it serves as a bridge connecting immigrants and Israeli society, reinforcing their sense of belonging to the Jewish people. The assumption that there is a relation between formally studying the language and feelings of identity was fully proved. Thus, although we studied immigrants who were primarily willing to maintain their previous cultural and linguistic identity, they managed to achieve social integration, and expressed satisfaction about their new feelings of identity. Since this was only found among those who chose to study at ulpan, the relation between the formal studying of the lan-guage and its social context is clear.



Endnotes

1 Elazar Leshem, Immigration and Absorption of Jews from the Former Soviet Union (Jerusalem: HenriettaSzoldInstitute,1994),5–11.

2 Maria Yelenevskaya and Larisa Fialkova, “From ‘Muteness’ to Eloquence: Immigrants’ Nar-ratives about Languages,” Language Awareness 12 (2003): 30–48; Anat Stavans and Gil Gold-zweig, “‘Must’ or ‘Have’: Insights on Learning Hebrew as a Second Language by Ethiopian and Russian Immigrants in Israel,” Israel Studies in Language and Society 1 (2008): 59–85.

3 Glinert H. Lewis, “Inside the Language Planner’s Head: Tactical Responses to a Mass Im-migration,” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 16 (1995): 351–71.

4 Harvey E. Goldberg, “Historical and Cultural Dimensions of Ethnic Phenomena in Israel,” in Studies in Israel Ethnicity, ed. Alex Weingrod (New York: Gordon & Breach, 1985), 179–200; Harvey E. Goldberg, “Ethnic and Religious Dilemmas of a Jewish State: A Cultural and His-torical Perspective,” in State Formation and Ethnic Relations in the Middle East, ed. A. Usuki Osala (The National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, 2001), 47–64; Chen Bram, hakara, he’ader hakara vehakara shguya bikvutsot bekerev ‘olei ħever hamdinot [Recognition, non-recognition and misrecognition of groups among immigrants from the Former Soviet Union], in rav-tarbutiyut bemivħan haisraeliyut [Multiculturalism in the Israeli Context] ed. Ohad Nachtomy (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005), 163–91.

5 Avi Sagi, “Identity and Commitment in a Multicultural World,” Democratic Culture 3 (2000): 167–87.6 John W. Berry, “Acculturation as Varieties of Adaptation,” in Acculturation: Theory, Models, and

Some New Findings, ed. Amado M. Padilla (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980), 19–25.7 Deborah Golden, “Now, Like Real Israelis, Let’s Stand Up and Sing: The Teaching of the

National Language to Russian Immigrants in Israel,” Megamot 42 (2003): 388–412; Leshem, Immigration and Absorption of Jews from the Former Soviet Union, 5–11.

8 Wolfgang Klein and Clive Perdue, “The Basic Variety,” Second Language Research 13 (1997): 301–48; Rinat Golan, “Basic Variety and Communicative Processes in Hebrew among For-eign Workers in Israel,” (MA thesis, Tel Aviv University, 2001).

9 Aaron Fein, hitnasutam shel ‘olei brit hamo’atsot belimudei ulpan vehit’anyenutam beulpan hemshex [The Experience of Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union Studying in Ulpan and their Interest in Continuation in Ulpan] (Research report, Tatspit Research Institute, 1991); Ilan Ros-iner and Jacob Ezrahi, ulpanei hemshex: meħkar ha’araxa [Continuation in Ulpans: Evaluating Research](TelAviv:MartinsHoffmanCounsellors,1992);DavidMitelbergandLilachLev-Ari,klita ħevratit uzehut yehudit shel ‘olei rusia tse’irim hashohim beulpanim kibutsiim [Social Absorp-tion and Jewish Identity of Young Russian Immigrants at Ulpanim on Kibbutzim] (Research Report, Haifa: Haifa University, 1992); Eliezer Ben-Rafael and Idith Geist, haulpan kemisgeret shel klita ‘avur ‘olim miħever ha’amim umeartsot hama’arav [The Ulpan as a Means of Absorption for Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union and Occidental Countries] (Research Report, Tel Aviv: The Institute for Social Research, Tel Aviv University, 1993); Elana Shohamy et al., medi-dat yeda keshoni shel ‘olim bimkomot ha’avoda [Measurement of the Language Knowledge of Im-migrants in Workplaces] (Research Report, Tel Aviv: The Pinchas Sapir Institute for Research and Development, Tel Aviv University, 1998); Amira Rom, “tahalix rexishata shel morfemat hayedua’ be’ivrit bekerev bnei no’ar ‘olim dovrei rusit,” [The Process of Acquisition of the HebrewDefinitenessMorphemeamongTeenageRussian-speakingImmigrants](PhDdiss.,Tel Aviv University, 1999); Smadar Donitza-Schmidt, “shimur safa o ‘ibud safa? harusit bekerev ‘olei ħever hamdinot beisrael,” [Languagemaintenanceor language attrition?Russian amongimmigrants from the Former Soviet Union in Israel] Hed Haulpan Heħadash 85 (2004): 57–63.

10 Malka Muchnik, Language, Culture and Society (Tel Aviv: The Open University of Israel, 2002), vol. 2, 14–62.

11 Rod Ellis, “Social Factors and Second Language Acquisition,” in The Study of Second Language Acquisition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 197–206; Caroline Kelly, Itesh Sachdev, PetraKottsieper,andMaysaIngram,“TheRoleofSocialIdentityinSecondLanguagePro-ficiencyandUse:TestingtheIntergroupModel,” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 12 (1993): 288–301; Howard Giles and Jane L. Byrne, “An Intergroup Approach to Second Language Acquisition,” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 3 (1982): 17–40.

12 Howard Giles, Richard Y. Bourhis, and Donald Taylor, “Towards a Theory of Language in Ethnic Group Relations,” in Language, Ethnicity and Intergroup Relations, ed. Howard Giles (London: Academic Press, 1977), 307–48.

13 Richard Y. Bouris, Howard Giles, and Doreen Rosenthal, “Notes on the Construction of a ‘Subjective Vitality Questionnaire’ for Ethno-linguistic Groups,” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 2 (1981): 55–144.

14 Giles and Byrne, “An Intergroup Approach to Second Language Acquisition,” 17–40.15 CarolineKelly,etal.,“TheRoleofSocialIdentityinSecondLanguageProficiencyandUse:

Testing the Intergroup Model,” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 12 (Dec. 1993): 288–301.

16 Mehroo Northover, “Bilingualism and Ethnicity,” in Language, Identity and Immigration, ed. Elite Olshtain and Gabriel Horenczyk (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, Magnes Press, 2000), 239–55; Giles and Byrne, “An Intergroup Approach to Second Language Acquisition,” 17–40.

17 GabrielHorenczyk, “Conflicted Identities:AcculturationAttitudes and Immigrants’Con-struction of their Social Worlds,” in Language, Identity and Immigration, ed. Elite Olshtain and Gabriel Horenczyk (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2000), 13–30.

18 Victor Schwar, “‘aliya veshiluv ħevrati,” [Immigration and social integration] in toxniyot leshi-luv ħevrati shel ‘olim [Programs for the Social Integration of Immigrants](Jerusalem:HenriettaSzoldInstitute,JointIsrael&theMinistryofWorkandSocialAffairs,1999),11–23.

19 MichalZack,“LanguageFunctionsinaConflictSituation,”inCitizen’s Language in Israel, ed. Dan Avnon (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2006.)

20 Yitzhak Schnell, Foreign Workers in Israel (Jerusalem: The Floersheimer Institute for Policy Studies, 1999.)

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23 Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Elite Olshtain and Idith Geist, hebetim shel zehut vesafa biklitat ‘olei ħever hamdinot ha’atsma’iyot [Aspects of Identification and Language in the Absorption of Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union] (Jerusalem: The Institute for Innovation in Education, The He-brew University, 1994.)

24 Bernardo Ferdman and Gabriel Horenczyk, “Cultural Identity and Immigration: Recon-structing the Group during Cultural Transition,” in Language, Identity and Immigration, ed. Elite Olshtain and Gabriel Horencyzk (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2000), 81–100.

25 Michal Schleifer and Gadi Ben-Ezer, “hanarativ ha’ishi bahagira: shnei hebetim vehashlaxot lezehut vesafa,” [The personal narrative of immigration: Two aspects and implications of identity and language] Hed Haulpan Heħadash 89 (2005.)

26 EfraimTavori,“zehuyotħevratiyotbeħevrarav-gonit,”[Socialidentitiesinavariegatedso-ciety] in rav-goniyut verav-tarbutiyut baħevra haisraelit [Variegation and Multi-Culture in Israeli Society] ed. Rina Laor and Deborah Mann (Tel-Aviv: The Cathedra for Education on Values, Tolerance and Peace, Bar-Ilan University, 1999), 31–41.

27 Ben-Rafael, Olshtain and Geist, Aspects of Identification and Language in the Absorption of Im-migrants from the Former Soviet Union.

28 EliAmir,“‘itsuvzehutbeħevratmehagrim,”[Shapingidentityinanimmigrantsociety]inrav-goniyut verav-tarbutiyut baħevra haisraelit [Variation and Multi-Culture in Israeli Society] ed. Rina Laor and Deborah Mann (Tel-Aviv: The Cathedra for Education on Values, Tolerance and Peace, Bar-Ilan University, 1999), 41-44.

29 Golden, “Now, Like Real Israelis, Let’s Stand Up and Sing,” 388–412.30 Ben-Rafael, et al. Aspects of Identification and Language in the Absorption of Immigrants from the

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32 Bernard Spolsky, “Hebrew and Israeli Identity,” in Language and Identity in the Middle East and North Africa, ed. Yasir Suleiman (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1996), 181–9; Bernard Spolsky, “Mul-tilingualism in Israel,” Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 17 (1997): 138–150; Bernard Spolsky, Language Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Bernard Spolsky and Elana Sho-hamy, The Languages of Israel: Policy, Ideology and Practice (Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, 1999); Elana Shohamy, Language Policy: Hidden Agendas and New Approaches (London: Routledge, 2006.)

33 Zvi Bekerman, “From Russia to Israel and Back: Stories of Selves and Bodies,” in Language, Identity and Immigration, ed. Elite Olshtain and Gabriel Horenczyk (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, Magnes Press, 2000), 105–22.

34 Malka Shabtay, “Identity Reformulation among Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel,” in Language, Identity and Immigration, ed. Elite Olshtain and Gabriel Horenczyk (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2000), 141–54.

35 Stavans and Goldzweig, “‘Must’ or ‘Have’: Insights on Learning Hebrew,” 59–85.36 Tamar Horovitz and Eleazar Leshem, “Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in the

Cultural Space in Israel,” in Aliya Profile: Processes of Absorption of Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union 1990–1995, ed. Moshe Sikron and Eleazer Leshem (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1998), 291–333.

37 RitaSever,“mesimaħolefetomatsavkiyumi?alternativa limdiniyuthaklita:sikumduaħmatsav,” [A Passing Task or an Ongoing Situation? An Alternative to the Absorption Policy: A Summary Report] Hed Haulpan Heħadash 87: (2003) 18–41.

38 Marina Niznik, “The Russian Language as a Base Factor: The Formation of Russian Com-munity in Israel,” in Diasporas and Ethnic Migrants: Germany, Israel and Post-Soviet Successor States in Comparative Perspective, ed. Reiner Münz and Reiner Ohliger (London/Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2003), 355–69; Marina Niznik, “The Dilemma of Russian-born Adolescents in Israel,” in Contemporary Jewries: Convergence and Divergence, ed. Eliezer Ben- Rafael, Yosef Gorny,andYaacovRo’i(Leiden/Boston:Brill,2003),235–52;MarinaNiznik,“SpecificsoftheCultural Integration of the Russian-speaking Immigrants in Israel,” Diasporas, Independent Academic Journal 1 (2003): 48–67; M. Niznik, “Acculturation of Russian Adolescents in Israel,” in Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Bilingualism,ed.JeffMacSwanandKaraMcAlister (Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press, 2004), 1703–1721.

39 Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Mikhail Lyubansky, and Olaf Gluckner, Building a Diaspora – Russian Jews in Israel, Germany and the USA (Leiden: Brill, 2006.)

40 RinatGolan,“rexisha formalituvilti formalit shelhasafaha’ivritbekerev ‘olimħadashimmiħeverha’amimvehashpa’atam‘alklitatamhaħevratitvehatarbutit,”[FormalandInformalAcquisition of Hebrew Language among New Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union andItsInfluenceonSocialandCulturalAbsorption](PhDdiss.,Bar-IlanUniversity,2008);Golan and Muchnik, “Formal and Informal Language Acquisition by Immigrants from the FormerSovietUnionanditsInfluenceontheirSocialAbsorption,”Hed Haulpan Heħadash 92 (2008): 107–15.

41 Donitza-Schmidt,“LanguageMaintenanceorLanguageAttrition?”57–63.42 Anne Pauwels, Women and Language in Australian and New Zealand Society (Sydney: Austra-

lian Professional Publications, 1987), 7–31.43 Anahina Aipolo and Janet Holmes, “The Use of Tongan in New Zealand,” Journal of Multilin-

gual and Multicultural Development 11 (1990): 501–21; Michael Clyne, Community Languages: The Australian Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Janet Holmes, “Women’sRoleinLanguageMaintenanceandShift,”Working Papers on Language, Gender and Sexism 3 (1993): 5–24.

44 Deborah Tannen, You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (New York: Bal-lantine Books, 1990.)

45 Tara Goldstein, “‘Nobody is Talking Bad’: Creating Community and Claiming Power on the Production Lines,” in Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially Constructed Self, ed. Kira

Hall and Mary Bocholtz (New York & London: Routledge, 1995), 375–400.46 Tannen, You Just Don’t Understand.47 MosheLiskandEleazarLeshem,“hitgabshutahaħevratitvehatarbutitshelhakehilaharusit

beisrael,” [Social and cultural integration of the Russian community in Israel] in merusia leisrael: zehut vetarbut bema’avar [From Russia to Israel: Identity and Culture in Transition], ed. Moshe Lisk and Eleazar Leshem (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2001), 27–77; Rimona Wiesel, “ma’ase haisraeliyut: bogrei na’ale baderex uvabait,” [The Israeli Act: Na’ale Gradu-ates in the Way and at Home] (PhD diss., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2005.)

48 Aluf Har-Even, israel bame’a ha-21: tarbut ezraħit meshutefet beħevra rav-tarbutit [Israel in the 21st Century: Common Civic Culture in a Multi-Cultural Society] (The Cathedra for Education on Values, Tolerance and Peace, Bar-Ilan University, 1999), 106–17.

49 Ben-Rafael, Olshtain and Geist, Aspects of Identification and Language.50 Ellis, “Social Factors and Second Language Acquisition,” 197–206; Kelly et al., “The Role of

Social Identity inSecondLanguageProficiencyandUse,” 288–301;Giles andByrne, “AnIntergroup Approach to Second Language Acquisition,” 17–40.

51 Ben-Rafael, Olshtain and Geist, Aspects of Identification and Language; Horovitz and Leshem, “Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union,” 291–333.


Hebrew Learning and Identity Perception among Russian Speakers in Israel

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