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‘Russians’ in the Jewish State: blood, identity and national bureaucracy

Ethnologie Francaise 45(2), special issue on 'Everyday Israel' (2015)

Julia Lerner

Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

P.O.B. 653

Beer-Sheva

84104 Israel

julialer@bgu.ac.il

Abstract: This article presents an ethnographic grasp of the question of the

belonging of Russian speaking immigrants in Israel as experienced in their

encounter with national bureaucracy. It discusses the embrace of religious

categories by the Jewish state, explaining its meanings and outcomes for the

everyday immigrants’ lives and identities. Unfolding one ethnographic narrative, I

reveal the discrepancy between Israeli citizenship and nationality, expose the

contradictions between the Soviet and Israeli perceptions of Jewishness, and

interpret the role of religion in the acculturation of Russian speaking immigrants.

Keywords: Post-Soviet/Russian speaking immigrants, Jewish identity, anthropology of

bureaucracy

המאמר מציג מבט אתנוגרפי על סוגיית השייכות של מהגרים דוברי רוסית בישראל כפי שהיא עולה

במפגש עם הביורוקרטיה הלאומית של מדינת ישראל. המאמר דן בשילוב של קטגוריות דתיות על ידי

וזהויות של המהגרים. בהצגת סיפור אתנוגרפי המדינה, מסביר את השלכותיו ומשמעותו בחיי היומיום

אחד אני חושפת את הפרצה בין אזרחות ללאומיות ישראלית, הבדלים בין תפישת היהודיות

הסובייטית והישראלית ומפרשת את התפקיד של הדת באינטגרציה של מהגרים דוברי הרוסית.

In his romantic anti-utopian novel Juvenile Sea [1934], Andrey Platonov describes the life

of Umrischev, a person classified as unclarified by the totalitarian soviet state. The status

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of unclarified was ascribed to individuals whose class origin and political consciousness

were not proven and assured. A special state department was responsible for

investigating the unclarified, who attended the department twice a month to inquire

about their identity. Soon the unclarified person begins “seriously, and more important,

sadly, to realize that he is actually vague, unclear, and definitely a pernicious person:

there is something in him, hidden and harmful, that is objectively evident but

personally unrecognized" [Platonov, 1990:10]. The heroine of my article, Sonya Plotkin

(pseudonym), immediately recalls Platonov's character when she finds herself

"unclarified" in Israel: “I am like Umrischev now, a vague and suspected person, not by

class, but rather ethnic purity“, she says. "Unclarified" immigrants in Israel are people

whose ethno-national status is unclear and the state religious bureaucracy is in the

process of investigating “who they really are”.

In this article I propose an ethnographic sketch of paradoxes in the everyday lives

of Russian immigrants within and between the ethno-national religious categories of

belonging to the Israeli state, exploring the major loopholes between the official

institutional categories of collective belonging and the actual experiences of immigrant

subjects. I will show how the historically constructed and institutionally maintained

interweaving of the religious, ethnic and national meaning of Jewishness in Israel

affects people’s choice of identity, sense of belonging and trajectories of immigrants’

relocation in Israel. In short, I intend to tell a story of how former Russian-Soviets cope

with the secular Jewish state and its religious principles.

Due to the massive wave of immigration in the 1990s, followed by a smaller

stream that continues until today, about one million immigrants from the former Soviet

Union arrived in Israel as Olim, Jewish "homecomers". This highly heterogeneous

collective was welcomed in Israel according to the Law of Return, and they were

immediately granted Israeli citizenship. However, state institutions soon faced the fact

that a high percentage of the Russian-speaking immigrants were of mixed ethnic origin,

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and many of them could not be considered Jewish according to Halacha (Jewish

religious law) which defines Jewishness solely on the basis of matrilineal descent. As a

result, there are several hundreds of thousands of Russian speaking immigrants who

have Israeli citizenship, live as a part of Jewish society in Israel, whose sons and

daughters serve in the Israeli army, speak Hebrew, and attend Jewish Israeli schools,

although their formal identity is still questioned according to official Jewish criteria of

belonging.

My analysis is based on a story that happened to one of my key Russian-speaking

informants. I shall reconstruct the ethnographic reality, as if I was part of it, following

the narrative of the informant through a series of interviews with her. I shall retell the

story preserving the original emotional tone of the narrator. Her feelings and the way

she makes sense of the described encounters and the resources she uses to cope with

them are the focus of my interpretation, which aims to reveal the state’s bureaucratic

apparatus as a powerful site of redefining personal identity and experience. As I

recount the story my explanation of the complexity of national belonging in

contemporary Israel will unfold step by step.

The research path I take here combines a close reading of the bureaucratic

regulation with the personal narrative providing a reflection on the bureaucratic

encounter. Guided by the anthropology of bureaucratic action and governmentality

approach [Gupta,2012; Heyman, 1995; Herzfeld, 1992; Kertzer and Arel, 2002;

Markowitz, 2007], I shall, however, take a perspective of the individual subject facing

the state’s regulations, categorization and documents. These procedures are not simply

instruments of bureaucratic organizations but rather are constitutive of ideologies,

knowledge and subjectivities [Hull, 2012]. Under cover of neutral modernist

bureaucratic language, they embody and enact the national ideologies and religious

authority [Handelman, 2004; Kravel 2012; Seeman, 2003]. Moreover, it is the

bureaucratic documents that the subjects actually face and decipher, while the clerks are

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guided by them in the immediate state-subject encounter. As the individual's self is

experienced and conceived through institutional systems of categorization [Douglas,

1986] the encounter with them may sometimes play a crucial role in her personal life.

While exploring the experience of an immigrant who redefines herself within the state

categories of identity and citizenship, I suggest considering migration as a continual

bureaucratic encounter.

Who belongs more? Sonya and her brother’s trajectories of integration

This is a story of Sonya Plotkin who immigrated to Israel more than twenty years

ago from St. Petersburg (Leningrad), Russia, in the (former) Soviet Union. As a teenager

during the time of Perestroika, within the general disorder of the late Soviet culture she,

among many others, discovered new meanings of her Jewish identity. Brought up in

late Soviet times, Sonya and her brother doubted the understanding that developed in

the Soviet period overlapping the Jewish identity and belonging to Soviet Intelligentsia

[Slezkine, 2005]. At that time, the soviet categories of belonging collapsed and people

were searching for “who they really were” [Markowitz, 1997]. The ethno-national

categories of belonging were ready to use as they were cultivated by Soviet policy and

everyday experience [Brubaker, 1994; Martin, 1998]. Therefore the young post-Soviet

people of Jewish origin easily translated them into their own "call of Jewish blood" (zov

krovi) and yearning for their historical native land [Shumsky, 2002; Ro’I, 2003]. Sonya

was eighteen when she decided (in 1990) to make Aliya and leave the Soviet Union for

Israel.

Like other children of Jewish families in the Soviet Intelligentsia, Sonya was

enculturated to fulfill the Russian-Jewish script of academic education as a taken for

granted stage of coming of age and also realizing one’s Jewish origin [Lerner et al.,

2007]. So in Israel, after spending a short time in a kibbutz “absorption” program,

where we became acquainted, Sonya enrolled in the academic studies program at Ben-

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Gurion University of the Negev. She chose the philosophy and social work

departments, explaining that as an immigrant she needed “to study something

practical", but as a Russian Jew she also needed something "to train the soul and feed

the mind”.

In the mid-90s, when I began my research on Russian immigrant students and

their encounters with academic knowledge, I found Sonya again and she became my

informant for a study of the culture and identity of Russian Israelis. Like my other

student informants, Sonya used her university knowledge of society in Israel as a means

for navigating her everyday life and a resource for belonging [see Lerner et al. 2007].

She also became involved in social and political activities, working with

underprivileged Bedouin groups in the Negev. During the elections to the Knesset,

Sonya’s voice swayed between what is considered the “left” and “radical left” in Israel.

She criticized Israeli policies in the occupied territories; she advocated for a more

socialist economy, and she fought Israeli xenophobia and what she called “religious

coercion”.

Following in Sonya’s steps, her brother also immigrated to Israel. In their youth

they were very close; together they were enraptured by exciting Zionist ideas. But in

Israel their routes diverged. Sonya's brother, a gifted musician, was "always looking for

something different” as she described it. In Israel he ended up in Zfat (Safed), the

Galilee city known for its spiritual atmosphere created by Jewish mysticism and artists.

There he became a religious Orthodox Jewi. He left classical music and began to study

the Talmud and Torah, as required of Jewish Orthodox men. He then acquired two

new religious professions, Shohet (religious slaughterer) and Sofer Sta'm (Torah scribe).

He also got married and fathered seven children. He did not teach his children Russian,

the "gentiles’ language” as he calls it. His major concern is with Jewish life in the Jewish

land according to Jewish laws. Sonya could not say for sure how he voted in the last

elections, but she told me that she and her brother avoid discussing political issues “in

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order not to fight”. In fact, she told me frankly and sadly that they have hardly spoken

to each other in the last several years, "We live very different lives."

Which of the two siblings belongs more to Israel and Israeliness? In terms of

economic, social and political integration, most of the Russian speaking post-Soviet

immigrants relocated themselves among the Israeli non-religious lower middle class

and developed right wing nationalist views [Shumsky, 2001; Philippov, 2007]. The

scholarly literature based on empirical research discusses the particular pattern of

integration of Russians in Israel, arguing that they become Israelis and adopt the major

Israeli ethos and national values but keep their cultural particularities, especially the

Russian language, Russian high cultural institutions, and educational activities [Elias,

2008; Lerner, 2011; Leshem, 2008; Lomsky-Feder and Rapoport, 2012; Markowitz, 1993;

Remennick, 2007]. In this sense, it appears that Sonya and her brother are not typical

Israeli Russians because they fall out of the dominant pattern of integration and

belonging. As an anthropologist interested in meanings, I wonder, however, what do

these diverse immigrant life-trajectories reveal about the immigrants' encounter with

the Israeli society and the Jewish state?

I suggest that these various trajectories of belonging teach us about the implicit

normative desired model of integration proposed by Israel to the newcomers. I argue

that most post-Soviet immigrants in Israel and many of their children maneuver and

position themselves between these two options – between the option of imitating and

adopting the ethno-religious Jewish ethos and the option of breaking the rules and

searching among the escapist routes that are well known in history – through

alternative political and religious activity, cultivation of transnational professional

identities, shrink into the apolitical private sphere, or emigration to another country.

The identity trajectories of Sonya and her brother mark two extreme options on this

scale of possible belonging resulting from encounters with officially defined categories

of Jewish belonging in Israel.

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The Russian face of the Religionization of Israeli society

Sonya’s brother represents a new and mostly unexpected transformation that happens

among the Russian-speaking collective -- they become religious. According to surveys

conducted in the past decade, 30% of Russian-speaking Israelis define themselves as

"religious", whereas the most recent study by Remennick and Prashizky [2010] reports

that only about 30% define themselves as non-believers, raising even higher the

percentage of FSU immigrants affiliated with some sort of faith. Why do previously

irreligious Russians take this track of integration in contemporary Israel?

Research on the sphere of religion in Israel reveals a strengthening of Israel’s

religious foundations over the past twenty years, together with the development of new

types of religiosity [Arian and Keissar-Sugarmen, 2012; Goodman and Yonah, 2004;

Goodman and Fischer, 2004]. Scholars of Jewish Israeli identity point out that one

needs to be at least somewhat observant in order to identify oneself – and to be

considered by others – as Jewish in Israel [Levy, Levinsohn, and Katz, 2004; Peres,

2006]. The wider Israeli public life also goes through complex processes of

strengthening the religious presence in the public sphere, political and power

institutions [Kimmerling 2004, Peri et al. 2012; Ram, 2008]. It appears also that Jewish

religious logic takes a dominant position in the ethos of immigrant absorption and in

the institutions responsible for absorption. Indeed, Israelization through religiosity

from the very beginning of the secular Jewish state was instrumental for the correction

of "problematic" immigrants, first Mizrahim (Jews of Middle Eastern and North African

origin) and later Ethiopians [Seeman, 2003; Shenhav, 2003; Weil, 1997].

Thus, the condition of “Civil religion in Israel" [Liebman and Don-Yehiya, 1983] or

“State Judaism” [Remennick and Prashizky, 2010] certainly imposes its influence on

newcomers. The newcomers decode and adopt (or sometimes imitate) the ultimate, but

also unarticulated, admission ticket to the Israeli public and political space. As one of

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the informants in my study of immigrant religiosityii stated, “The kippa (Jewish religious

skullcap) is similar to the communist party membership card in the Soviet Union”.

Thus, when Sonya’s brother became a religious neophyte, he “joined the party” and

took his Israeli belonging to its extreme Jewish Orthodox edge. But what about Sonya

and her option for belonging? And also, what is so problematic in the Jewishness of

Soviet Jews that requires correction?

Sonya’s disclosure

In the spring of 2010 Sonya and her Israeli-born partner, Ido, were patiently awaiting

the birth of their first son. They were also expecting Sonya’s mother to arrive from St.

Petersburg to fill the role of a traditional Russian Babushka (grandmother) and help

them with the baby.

One day when Sonya was shopping for baby items her mobile phone rang.

“Shalom, am I speaking with Sonya Plotkin?” asked a woman’s voice in Russian. “Rosa

from the Ministry of the Interior is speaking. Is it true that your mother is about to

immigrate to Israel?” “Yes”, answered Sonya. “We’ve received a message from our

offices in Russia. We have to clear up your Jewishness”. “What is it about my

Jewishness?” Sonya asked - “You have a problem with it”, said Rosa with the voice of a

scout who had exposed a plot. “What problem can I have with it?” wondered Sonya. “A

problem of incongruent documents. It seems that your mother’s mother is not Jewish,

and we found that we have here in Israel two children of hers, brother and sister, who

have been registered as Jews for twenty years! That's not possible"

Sonya was silent for a minute; she tried to remember "am I a Jew?" This question,

which had been important to her when she was eighteen, became irrelevant, and since

she began living in Israel was never troubled by how she was registered and where. A

long time ago she had adopted a post-modern fragmentary identity and stopped

thinking about who she “really” was. Sometimes she felt Jewish, sometimes Israeli,

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sometimes Russian, sometimes a woman. At that moment she recalled her childhood in

a Soviet school with her obviously Jewish family name, her youth during the last years

of the Komsomol (Communist Youth Union), her disappointment and search for other

sources of identity, her encounter with Zionism, secret Hebrew lessons, and how at the

age of 16 she chose to register herself as a Jew in her first Soviet passport. Her parents

were angry with her for risking her chances of admission to Leningrad University and

having an easier life. “Yes”, she recalled, “I am Jewish”. And that’s what she said to

Rosa from the Ministry of the Interior. “But if your mother is not Jewish,” Rosa

responded, “you cannot be registered as Jewish. You have to come and correct it.” “I am

not interested in correcting anything,” stated Sonya naively, “I am Jewish by blood”.

“But if the mother of your mother is not recognized as a Jew you cannot be a Jew, and

registered as a Jew. You may be registered as a “Jew’s grandchild” who was granted the

right of return”. “But I am not just a grandchild, I am Jewish myself, my father is

Jewish, the father of my mother is Jewish, I have 75 percent Jewish blood. It’s only my

grandmother whose origin is unclear.” Sonya started to panic. “That’s the only thing

that's important to us,” said Rosa. “And we have to correct it.” iii Sonya asked for time to

think. She said she was close to delivery and her thoughts were not on Jewishness at the

moment. “I have been Jewish here already for twenty years, so nothing will happen if I

stay Jewish for another two months.”

Here we need a short digression into the Soviet perception of Jewishness that

Russian immigrants bring with them to Israel, which makes them so problematic for the

Jewish State. It is well documented that Jews in the USSR defined their Jewishness

mostly in ethno-biological terms. This ethnic non-religious model of Jewish identity is

directly linked to the Soviet background of these immigrants and their participation in

the Soviet modernization and secularization project as it was constituted on the

ideological level as well as at the level of everyday experience [Chervyakov and Shapiro

1997; Gitelman 2003; Gitelman et al. 2003; Slezkine, 2005]. In their perception, religion

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and ethnicity in general and Jewish ethnicity in particular, are separate. The existence in

Russian language of two different terms for expression of ethnic Jewish identity and

Jewish religious affiliation – evrei and iudei – illustrates the unique Soviet success in

splitting between Jewish religion and ethnicity. Religion is a matter of false

consciousness, a primitive way of thinking, and altogether a matter of private beliefs,

and nationality is an objective reality that is literally “in the blood” [Chlenov, 2003].

This perception of Jewishness confronts different ones in the major destinations of

the Jewish post-Soviet Diaspora – the USA, Germany and Israel. In Israel, the strong

ethno-biological Soviet perception of Jewishness is not compatible with the Orthodox

religious perception of Jewishness, which dominates the Israeli mindset and forms the

basis for the national definition of who is a Jew. Indeed, according to Halacha there is a

crucial primordial blood kinship basis for the definition of Jewishness. However, it

takes into consideration only matrilineal ethnic kinship. In addition, ethno-biological

Jewishness is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for proper Jewishness in the

Orthodox view. Observing religious commandments, Shmirat Mitzvot, namely

practicing religious restrictions and regulations, is another important criterion. Both the

tendency of the Soviet Jews for mixed ethnic marriages and their ignorance of the

Jewish religious heritage make their Jewishness disputable on the level of public

discourse as well as institutional regulations [Cohen and Susser, 2009; Yacobson, 2010].

As a sensitive political and social question, the investigation of whose Jewishness

is doubtful is usually left by the state to religious institutions [the Rabbinate], which are

responsible for matrimonial law and other rites of passage procedures. The state

authorities, however, keep documenting the registration of Jewish nationality of

newcomers based on the same religious principles that are translated to modern

bureaucratic procedure. Since the state institutions embrace these principles, many

immigrants of partly Jewish origin are defined as non-Jewish. For many immigrants the

situation created a deep dissonance between their Jewish self-definition, their Soviet-

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based life experience and the inability to be accepted as Jews in Israel. Beyond

emotional or moral discomfort and the experience of exclusion, these immigrants

cannot, for example, marry in Israel, or be buried according to Jewish laws. To cope

with their doubtful Jewishness, people use a range of pragmatic, deliberate or

unconscious strategies. Now here comes Sonya’s time to face her dilemma of

belonging.

Uncertain categories, unclarified identities and certificated Jews

Thinking over the logic of this unexpected development in her life, Sonya figured out

how it actually happened. Her mother went to the Israeli consulate in St. Petersburg

and asked for permission to immigrate and receive an Aliya visa. It was impossible for

her to provide a certificate proving the Jewishness of her mother. Sonya’s grandmother

was one of the first Soviet nuclear physicists, and taking the Soviet modernist project to

heart she erased concealed her ethnic origin. However, the Jewishness of Sonya’s

grandfather was clear and easy to certify. In the documents she submitted, Sonya’s

mother also stated proudly that she had two children who had already been "true

Israelis” for more than twenty years and were definitely Jews. She received her Aliya

visa, but the alert and suspicious consulate clerk noticed irregularities and a serious

categorical mismatch. Apparently she reported up the bureaucratic chain, ”The children

are not Jews, they are ‘unclarified’. For your attention.”

"Unclarified" immigrants are people whose ethno-national status is unclear for the

state. The self-definition of these people, their family history and feelings of belonging

are not relevant to the state’s unequivocal religious classification. It appears that the

criteria of “being someone” and belonging to a certain collectivity are not part of a

person’s mind or with her memories but somewhere outside, in a different distant

objective reality where the state is conducting its investigation.

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Now that Sonya became “unclarified,” she was trying this status on. She reflected

a lot about her possible identities and asked herself who she really wanted to be. She

used to think of herself as an active part of the Zionist project, even as its modern

protagonist. She is far from being religious, but she describes herself as “very Jewish” in

her own way and according to her own understanding. But there was no way she could

prove her Jewishness to the State. Moreover, she could not prove that she wasn't Jewish

if she wanted to take advantage of some of the privileges of the non-Jewish affiliation in

Israel, such as Brit Ha-Zugiyut (Spousal Covenant), which permits Israelis "lacking

religious affiliation" to marry and divorce in Israel, a regulation that was approved by

the Knesset in the fall of 2010 [Fogiel-Bijaoui, 2013].

The next time Rosa called was when Sonya was observing her soon-to-be-born son

on an ultrasound screen. Sonya had already prepared herself to challenge the system.

“Well, I do indeed prefer not to be registered as a Jew in the category of religion, but

how do you suggest registering me in the paragraph of nationality?” “Well…” said

Rosa, “You can register yourself like your mother, with her citizenship…she has

Russian citizenship, yes?” Sonya tried to make the absurd explicit: “Are you really

suggesting that I define myself as Russian when I am three quarters Jewish by origin

and I gave up my Soviet citizenship more than twenty years ago and even there I was

registered as Jewish, not as Russian? In the column of ethnicity – natzional’nost,” she

emphasized in Russian, “what do you want me to write here?”

Rosa did not find an immediate answer; she consulted the Ministry of the Interior

regulations that suggested various options for registration of citizens’ nationality.

Paragraph 28.5 of the documentiv states the possibilities of nationality registration:

"According to the par. 4b of the Law of Return, a person can be registered as a Jew if he

is “a son of a Jewish mother or has undergone conversion (giyur) and does not practice

another religion or belief". The Jewishness of Sonya’s mother is "unclarified", so this

option is not possible for her. In addition, there are categories of “Karaite Jew” that

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should be registered as "Karaite" in Religion and Nationality or “Samaritan” that also

could be registered as "Samaritan" in both categories. Paragraph 28.8 states that a

person claiming to be a “Messianic Jew in no way can be registered as a Jew”, but no

other options are available for registration of such a person. The category of

registration as “unknown” is suggested only for a person who has lost her memory or

mind and both of them seem unsuitable for Sonya’s case.

Paragraph 28.9 refers to the registration of non-Jewish citizens. "They will be

registered according to a certificate. If there is no certificate congruent with their

statement; the nationality will be registered usually according to the other citizenship

that the person holds or other ethnic origin that he declares"(29.9.3 a). But what can

Rosa do if Sonya declares that she is Jewish!

These regulations reflect the reality of confusion or inseparability of religious and

ethnic definitions of Jewishness in Israel, both in religious prescriptions and in state

regulations [Kimmerling, 2004; Shafir and Peled, 2002]. The distinction between the

categories of “Religion” and “Nationality” formally exists in the forms of the State

registration de jure, but de facto this distinction is possible only for non-Jewish citizens,

and mainly for Arabs. Israeli Arabs can be registered as Arabs and Catholics or Greek

Orthodox or Muslims. But Jews in Israel cannot be Jewish in their nationality and

practice another religion, or choose not to be part of any religious denomination or

community, to be irreligious or atheists. To obtain the possibility of registration as

Jewish in nationality accompanied by “lack of religious affiliation”, Sonya would need

first to prove that she is Jewish according to religious Law, and then to use the secular

state’s legal procedure to get rid of the Jewish religious labelv.

“Here!” – exclaimed Rosa when her eyes met a possible lifebuoy. One of the

paragraphs (28,3, c) in the document suggests the peculiar option for registration "(--)"

and explains : "This option indicates that the resident declared his will not to register his

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religion and nationality even if he has certificates indicating his affiliations". “You can

choose to be registered as “unregistered”! You can have just two hyphens “--“.

“Just hyphens, empty of any meaning, suit me very well!” thought Sonya aloud.

She loved this option intellectually; she told me later that she already imagined herself

writing an article on the existential meaning of lines in human life. Now Sonya was

amused and decided to challenge Rosa a bit more. “Actually, I don’t care how you

register me. You can register me even as Palestinian…May I?”

Rosa noticed something unusual and suspicious in Sonya’s response. “Don't

bother trying, really…” she said and changed the subject to another “unclarified”

person – Sonya's forgotten brother. “And what about your brother? How is it that he is

registered as a Jew?” In answer Sonya broke into laughter. She was so amused that her

Orthodox brother, Shohet and Sofer, and head of a Kosher household is actually not a

Jew according to the Jewish state. “My brother? I will be so grateful to you if you can

call him as well and tell him that he is not a Jew.” “Your brother went through the Giyur

(conversion)? So why don’t we have any document confirming the religious conversion

in his file?” Sonya was now in a belligerent mood: “That’s because it was not actually “a

conversion”! We just did not have any other religion to convert from! My brother

underwent Giyur because he had doubts about his Jewishness just after he began

studying Torah!” “So why did he never submit his certificate of religious conversion?”

asked Rosa, still wondering. “Since he truly wanted to be a Jew, not for registration, but

‘for real’ – you see? He does not care about his registration with the state authorities. He

is a Jew before a different authority, one that he adopted for himself, God knows

why….”

Rosa sighed. It seemed to be one of the most complicated cases she had ever dealt

with. “Indeed, all this is not very nice,” she mumbled to herself. As a senior official in

the Ministry of the Interior, Rosa knew very well the paradoxical fact which was

recently discussed by researchers: Giyur does not serve religious purposes.

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Paradoxically, citizens with questioned or incomplete Jewishness who wish to correct it

are advised to subject themselves to the religious conversion procedure, which includes

theoretical and practical study of Judaism, and more importantly, requires the ability to

prove their genuine practice of a religious way of life. However, conversion is viewed

by the state as naturalization by religion, creating normative citizens of the secular

Jewish State [Goodman, 2008; Seeman, 2003, Kravel, 2012b; Neiterman and Rapoport,

2009]. Most citizens who apply to Giyur institutions (80 percent of them are women) do

not intend to maintain a religious way of life and they may even be non-believers. Thus,

it appears that both the citizens and the state conduct Giyur in order to obtain a

certificate. But if there is no document, as in the case of Sonya’s brother, then what is

Giyur for?

Empty hyphens of the Israeli citizenship

A few days after her last conversation with Rosa, Sonya gave birth to a son who was

named Robert surrounded by his exhausted parents and extended family including the

“unclarified’ grandmother and the ultra-Orthodox “non-Jewish” uncle. However, the

important task of confirming the newborn child's identity by registering him at the

Ministry of the Interior was still in store for him and his parents.

In preparation for this important registration procedure, Sonya and Ido discussed

Robert’s identity. Ido was indifferent towards Jewish nationalism, “Why does it matter

to you what is written in some document! It’s so meaningless!” But Sonya, who was

socialized in the Soviet Union, knew the crucial meaning of the written word, especially

if this word is registered in official documents. She was very ambivalent concerning

Robert’s nationality. On the one hand, she considered herself Jewish, her Jewishness

that was full of love and nostalgia for her grandmothers and grandfathers, who had

made their long journey from Belorussian and Ukrainian shtetls to the heart of the

Communist revolution and adopted it with full hearts. She identified herself with the

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complexity of the Soviet Jewish ethos. On the other hand, she suddenly asked herself

why she had to erase all other parts of Robert’s origin, for example, her famous

ethnically “unclarified” grandmother with whatever ethnicity she actually had. She

thought to herself, “Is this part unusable and defective because it is not Jewish?”

Eventually, Sonya decided. Her decision was influenced neither by her Jewish

identity nor by her critical reflexive philosophical knowledge and her political views.

She decided as a young caring mother, “Even the possibility that Robert will get a call

from Rosa one day makes me sick. I don’t want my son to be blamed for not meeting

the standard of ethnic purity”, she explained to me. ”I want him to recognize all the

mixture of his blood and absorb it into his consciousness. I made my choice of being

Jewish in my youth, so it hurts me when the Jewish state forces me to erase my

Jewishness as if it was only a bureaucratic category and not a deep experience and

memory of my whole life. And Robert will accumulate his own experiences and

memories and will make his own choice.”

When it was the young parents' turn to approach the Ministry’s registration

counter, Ido and Sonya submitted their form titled “Request for registration of the

newborn” on which they had marked the paragraphs of Religion and Nationality with

hyphens – “(--)“. “We request to register him with no religion and nationality”, stated

Ido. The clerk looked at the screen, checked the IDs of both parents and said without

hesitation: “Impossible. He has to be registered as Jewish, since his mother is registered

as Jewish.”

Sonya experienced a moment of dissociation. One day she was told that it was

impossible for her to be Jewish, another day that it was impossible to stop being Jewish.

She understood that the system still considers her as Jewish and that one little word

serves here as a gatekeeper between inside and outside, and at that moment she

succeeded in being on both sides. In terms of existential philosophy she was excited; she

was both amused and angry. Whom does this gatekeeper actually protect? Sonya was

17

thinking, “Two groups are struggling over this category, Jew, in Israeli society, the

Jewish Orthodox and Russian immigrants.” Neither group takes these registrations

seriously. Religious Jews in Israel and religious institutions do not seriously accept the

state registration. Registration as a “Jew” will not give Sonya recognized status for these

people. For ex-Soviets almost any official category is an ideological and thus a false

one; they are trained to use the categories and maneuver them, but they do not believe

that official identity reflects who you really are. So, why is it so important at all and for

whom? In its very beginning the Zionist Jewish state, and in particular by its founding

secular socialist elites formulated these state categories and constituted them as an

important basis of modern Jewish state bureaucracy and the mechanism if its' proper

functioning.

“Here is your own regulation", said Ido taking a sheet of paper out of his bag. “It

states clearly that the parents can decide to register their child with no religion and

nationality. It is our right!” Paragraph 16.c of the documentvi is dedicated to registration

of Nationality. It states that the newborn whose parents are both Jewish, or just his

mother is Jewish, will be registered as Jewish. But on request, and contingent on the

parents' agreement, the baby can be registered as (---). But 16.7, c states that "the

newborn whose parents are not Jewish will be registered as the nationality of his parents which is

usually their citizenship (Arab, English, French…)". Thus, for a baby who is born to a non-

Jewish mother the nationality is equal and identical to citizenship and can be freely

claimed by the parents, if mixed nationality can be deliberately chosen. The only

problematic category that is impossible for divided citizenship, religion and nationality

is the Jewish onevii.

The clerk was perplexed and approached the office manager for advice. “Sign it,”

she said brusquely when she came back. Little Robert was registered with no religion

and nationality, certificated as unclarified, free of ethno-religious categories for a while,

until one day he will be forced to deal with them, reject them or adopt them, convert

18

them and make his way within and between the state and religious, modern and

traditional categories that state and society present to him.

Conclusion

This ethnographic sketch presents insights on both the particular Russian-Jewish Israeli

encounter and the wider understanding of modern categories of national belonging. As

in most other places in the contemporary world, Israeli institutionalized categories of

belonging to a national collective are designed by the interplay of basic human

yearnings for definition and acceptance, grand modern narratives of pure classification,

order and control; as well as by the particular ethno-religious arrangements of exclusion

and inclusion. In Israel the peculiar ethnocratic, modernist and colonial context creates

a condition in which the aim for rational control and management of the modern

Zionist state and the logic of its secular bureaucratic institution are anchored in

Judaism’s primordial religious pathos of the exclusive chosen peoplehood. Embraced

by the Israeli state and applied to post-Soviet subjects, the strict religious categories of

belonging to Jewishness generate an absurd ethnographic reality that echoes canonic

literary scenarios reflecting on the private life within the classifications of the

authoritative power of the modern stateviii. In an attempt to make sense of the paradoxes

and contradictions that create this sense of absurdity I examined here the effect of the

encounter with classifications of the Jewish state on the personal identity of immigrants.

Far from being a representative picture, or even a portrait of the majority of

Russian speaking immigrants in Israel, the story related above touches on the most

crucial problematic of the Russian presence, belonging and integration in the Jewish

state. Russian immigrants bring to Israel their own complex perception of national

belonging that is anchored in the Soviet communist project, its exclusive non-nationalist

ambitions and peculiar ethno-biological consciousness. The encounter of immigrants

19

who are Jewish, partly Jewish or non-Jewish with the state’s categories of classification

of citizens result in different tracks of relocation.

Sonya and her brother challenge most of the sociological models of immigrant

integration. Integration theories usually take for granted the meaning of what is

considered “proper" integration, neglecting its normative nature. Being a normative

concept, “integration” reflects the state’s desirable trajectory of immigrants' adjustment,

which answers the state's interests and reflects its migration ideology [Vetrovec, 2011].

Hence, in this paper I suggest seeing in the trajectories of integration the result of

immigrants' encounter with the state’s ideology of belonging that is embedded in

official categorization of identity and relevant bureaucratic procedures and forms.

The Israeli state welcomes the inclusive homecoming migration, grants

immediate citizenship, and then imposes on the immigrants its national categories of

belonging based on religious principles. The immigrants are supposed to translate their

identities and experiences into the state categories of belonging and registration. These

categories reflect not only the bureaucratic logic of the state or the objective nature of

the formal law. They also correspond to the common knowledge and normative

perceptions in the host society. The bureaucratic encounter with these official categories

and their meanings, either through the state institutions or in the public discourse, has a

powerful influence on the trajectories of life that immigrants choose and the identities

they cultivate. Usually, they adapt themselves to the categories avoiding the in-

between, hybrid or anomaly positions.

The new unexpected pattern of relocation among the Russians described here, the

belonging via religion, is one possible result of this encounter and it teaches us about

the current normative expectations of desired “absorption” in Israel. However, the

manner of solving immigrants' uncertainty as for their status and identity does not

20

necessarily follow the line of accepting the normative hegemonic positive option and

even taking it to the extreme as Sonya’s brother did. It could also result in challenging

or abandoning the boundaries of the normatively desirable hegemonic belonging and

searching for other options of belonging beyond the national boundaries, as did Sonya,

who anchored herself in a cosmopolitan professional identity. And it could also end in

the choice of newly born Russian-Israeli Christians of all kinds [Raijman and Pinsky,

2012]. Living in the split between their citizenship and nationality, between their

experience and the official categories, the immigrants take the path of being part of the

Israeli society or choose to disbelong and relocate themselves either in symbolic,

emotional or spatial terms. One way or another, it is this life under the classifications of

authoritative institutions and an attempt to meet them that drive the process of

integration and belonging.

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NOTES

i in Israel this move is called Hazara be-tshuva, returning back to the religious origin of Judaism.

ii I refer here to the research of Russian speaking religiosity in Israel that I conduct together with Nelly

Elias.

iii According to the regulations the correction of nationality and religion should be agreed to by the

resident, and the task of the officials is to convince the subject of the necessity of this correction. In case

of failure the file is transferred to the Court for Family Affairs. There the state presents its case for

24

correcting the registration. The official should warn the resident that if he loses a case (which is obvious

in light of the strict definitions of Jewish belonging) he will be penalized and must pay court fees.

iv The document is the Ministry of the Interior "regulation for completion/correction of religion and

nationality information" (updates at 14.1.2008 and based on the law of Population registration from

1965) that aims to set the procedure of the registration of categories of citizenship and especially for

newcomers and newborns.

v In October 2011 a famous Israeli writer, Yoram Kaniuk, won his case at court and opened a new,

seemingly revolutionary, option for separation between ethno-national Jewishness and Judaism as

religion. He was granted the right to be registered as a Jew in the Nationality paragraph and “no

religion” in the paragraph of religion. However, paradoxically again, this option is open only to the

proper pure and proven Jews according to Halacha and through a long legal process.

vi The document is the Ministry of the Interior, department of Population Register, Regulation for

registration births in Israel (updated at 24/03/11), the document based on Law of residents registration

from 1965) . The Regulation sets the bureaucratic procedure of registration of a newborn and aims to

assist the practice of the state officials. The regulation lists possible condition of birth, marital statuses

of the parents and states the procedure of issuing of the birth certificate.

vii The “Arab” category also has emblematic complexity and vagueness: first of all, there is no possibility

of registration as “Palestinian” by nationality; secondly, when listed in line with English and French

citizen categories being an 'Arab' is constituted as a category of citizenship and reflects the ambiguity

of Israeli citizenship as explicitly based on civic membership and implicitly on ethno-national belonging

to the Jewish peoplehood [Ben-Porat and Turner 2011; Shafir and Peled, 2002].

viii As well as the work of Andrei Platonov reflecting on soviet communist bureaucracy, many Western

authors of the last century were preoccupied with life-experience under the sealed state powers, among

them Buhomil Hrabal, Franz Kafka, Robert Walzer.