I recently held a fascinating conversation with a lady who
immigrated to Israel from Russia. She edits a Russian language
intellectual magazine in Tel Aviv. I put before her my view of the
developing cultural-national identity of Israel, on the somewhat
optimistic assumption nowadays that it will sooner or later top the
agenda after a modus vivendi will have been reached in the conflict
between Israel and the Palestinian people.
The ethnic-cultural personality of Israeli Arabs is quite clearly
defined, I said. They are recognized as (theoretically) an equal
cultural entity, with their language as Israel's second official
language. Their language and heritage are perpetuated through an
Arabic language school system, their two religions accorded full
recognition and institutionalized on a (theoretically) equal base
with the Jewish religion. As modernity gains ground and
religious-communal identities are eroded (particularly if and when
Jewish religion-communal identity also erodes), language will
presumably become the main factor of Arab Israeli identity.
Israeli Jewish identity, I argued, is a far more complex and fluid
entity. But the fact is that the network of Hebrew state schools,
virtually all business, the vast bulk of communications, the
functioning of the courts, the police and the military-all these
are in Hebrew. That, I said, overrides all other differences and it
shapes everybody in basically the same cultural mold. As a
consequence, I expect that magazines like hers will not last long,
serving only the first generation of immigrants from the
Commonwealth of Independent States (previous Soviet Union). I
mentioned as an example Yiddish culture in the US, which did last
for about two to three generations, but has now disappeared almost
completely, leaving behind mere smatterings of sentimental
nostalgia. The same has occurred to all the other immigrant
cultures in America. It will undoubtedly happen in this case
too.
Both Russian and Hebrew Cultures
My interlocutor answered: "Don't compare us 'Russians' to any of
the former waves of immigration. The early pioneers from Russia and
Poland wanted to completely shed their past and the culture of
their origins. The German immigration of the 1930s, the only one to
contain a large proportion of intelligentsia, was so traumatized
that the newcomers didn't even want to have any further connection
with Germany and
Germanism. Immigration from the Arab countries does not really
count. It consisted mostly of people with a poor educational
background, containing but few intellectuals and university-trained
people; they were thrown into a modern civilization with which they
could cope only by trying to hide from it, as witness the Shas
movement."
"Now when a new issue of my magazine appears, there are immediate
comments and reviews in intellectual magazines not only in Moscow
and St. Petersburg, but even in Russian language publications in
New York. You must realize that since the collapse of the old
Soviet Union, Russian culture has assumed universal aspects and now
has many centers, Israel being among the most important. I am
appreciative of the Hebrew culture built here, but still, you are
far from having Tolstoy or even Bulgakov. We have no intention of
impoverishing ourselves by shedding them and their language. We
want to have a double culture--Hebrew and Russian. The one doesn't
exclude the other."
She continued: "Also your American parallel is not valid. More than
a million Russians have arrived here, most of them thoroughly
modern people, with an intellectual and professional class several
times larger than its proportion in Russia itself. Translating the
figures of Russian aliya into proportionate US numbers, if fifty
million Russians would have arrived in the United States, you can
rest assured that they would have changed the whole mental and
intellectual climate there and left a durable impact on the core
civilization. Just think what an impact a few tens of thousands of
German refugees had on American culture and academic life in the
1930s and 1940s. Also, we are not cut off from the Russian
homeland, as the German immigration was, and can continue to feed
and draw sustenance from it."
Against Old "Israelism"
The conversation made me ponder. Recently the Israeli sociologist
Baruch Kimmerling published a booklet entitled The End of the
Achusalim Dominance. The term achusalim was coined by him as a
Hebrew equivalent of the American acronym "Wasps," namely in our
case the old established secular Zionist Israelis of European
descent, partly socialist, partly nationalist. It was they who
created the state, dominated its economics and power structures,
the academic and scientific establishments, the civil service and
the army.
They are still powerful. But the center of power has largely been
usurped by right wing populist and religious elements that contest
the very conception of a secular, liberal, sometimes socialist
nationalism. Theirs is a proto-fascist, racist, illiberal outlook,
having scant respect for democratic processes. They have introduced
a violent, brutal tone into public discourse. They have
half-legitimized violence and murder as a means of achieving their
ends. This is witnessed by the hand-grenade attack on a Peace Now
demonstration that killed peace activist Emil Greenzweig in 1983,
the massacre of 29 Palestinians by Baruch Goldstein in 1994 in
Hebron, and the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin in 1995.
These elements have attacked the conception of "Israelism" and
tried to push it back to the Jewish religious community, somewhat
like the retreat of many Arabs from the modern conception of Arab
nationalism into Muslim fundamentalism.
Russian immigration brought us a mass of people half of whom barely
claim any sort of Jewish descent and whose interests are opposed to
the religious demands of the rightists. On the other hand, their
Soviet background has made them leery of anything called
"socialism," which they equate with Soviet totalitarianism.
However, true to the worst heritage of the Stalinist era, they
regard with contempt any "weakness," any appeal to humanism, any
concession on what you hold by force. In this, they see eye to eye
with the Israeli extreme rightwing. So, in some respect the
achusalim welcomed Russian immigration as a reinforcement of their
secular-western rationalist position, but in other respects they
were quite horrified at their blinkered approach, their
interpretation of everything in terms of their Russian background,
and their support for shady political leaders like Lieberman and
Sharansky.
Hebrew-speaking Israel
Many of the "Russians" frankly admit their Christian background,
and when drafted into the IDF swear allegiance on the New
Testament. Still, they send their children to Hebrew schools, enjoy
the rights of Jews under the Law of the Return, and are treated as
Jewish Israelis. Not many have accepted the Rabbinate's offer to
convert to Judaism. The growing Russian contribution to the Israeli
atmosphere is manifest for instance at Christmas, when Yuletide
decorations are beginning to festoon Israeli shopping centers. The
ever-freer sale of non-Kosher foods is another of their
contributions to the Israeli lifestyle. All in all, they are now
becoming bona fide Hebrew-speaking Israelis, thus heavily diluting
the supposedly "Jewish" basis of the Israeli nation.
Another growing element in the population is the foreign workers.
Numbering roughly 300,000 people, namely 5% of the population,
their origins are European (Rumanian, Ukrainian, Polish), African
(Ghanaian, Kenyan, Nigerian) and Asian (Filipino, Thai, Chinese).
They are mostly Christians. The religious parties, mainly Shas, are
continuously attempting to eject them from the country. However,
the foreign workers have already struck roots in the country, their
children attend Israeli schools and speak Hebrew. One day when they
will feel secure enough and the time will seem auspicious, many
will demand their full rights and Israeli citizenship. In view of
the fact that the almost all education, public life and employment
possibilities are in Hebrew, they will become part of the
Hebrew-speaking Israeli majority.
A State of Its Citizens
We thus see the watering down and erosion of the religious Jewish
definition, which in the past characterized membership in the
Israeli nation. In its place comes the enhancement of the cultural
linguistic definition. This is of course a process that will take
time. Nevertheless it will generate, or so it appears to me, the
"state of its citizens," which some Israelis have been calling for
although it may come under several possible guises which may try to
perpetuate the myth of Israel as "the state of the Jewish
people."
A final thought: this process, if it takes place as predicted here,
will inevitably exert a marked influence on the Arab citizens of
Israel. If the linguistic-cultural definition of Israeli nationhood
gains upper hand according to the term not of a "Jewish" but of a
"Hebrew" nation, what is there to stop a Moslem or Christian Arab
from joining it, while living daily within its confines? Will not
many Israeli Arabs begin to feel that a separate
educational-cultural system is a ghetto, barring full participation
in a larger culture with its broader opportunities? And what effect
will this have on other Palestinians, once we succeed in getting
over these nightmarish times? On the other hand, once we overcome
this conflict, will not Israel's hoped for openness to the region
begin to exert a powerful Israeli attraction toward a more relaxed
and easygoing tone in the region?
But these are speculations. One thing we may be sure about: the
future will have many surprises, which in retrospect will look
inevitable.