Building a Diaspora

Russian Jews in Israel, Germany and the USA
Erscheinungsjahr 2006
ISBN: 978-90-04-15332-5
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 13, 374 Seiten, Format (B × H): 167 mm x 245 mm, Gewicht: 807 g

Reihe: International Comparative Social Studies

The crumbling of the USSR has set Russian-speaking Jews free to emigrate. From the threat of antisemitism to economic disaster, their “good reasons” to do so were numerous and within one and a half decade most of them moved out and scattered throughout the world. This book is about the million that settled in Israel, the half million now in the US and the 200.000 who settled in Germany.

This book presents the comparative work of an international team of researchers which delves into the building of communities, the formulation of collective identities and the articulation of public discourse by people who, after eighty years of Marxism-Leninism and compulsory removal from Jewish culture, are now reconstructing their ethnicity.

In every place, they face contrasting challenges and as a whole, constitute an ideal case for the study of the making of contemporary transnational diasporas.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ben-Rafael, Eliezer

Lyubansky, Mikhail

Gluckner, Olaf

Harris, Paul

Israel, Yael

Jasper, Willy

Schoeps, Julius

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Kultur- und Sozialethnologie: Allgemeines
• Geisteswissenschaften Jüdische Studien Jüdische Studien
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziologie von Migranten und Minderheiten

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface

PART A: BUILDING A TRANSNATIONAL DIASPORA
Chapter 1: Collective construction
Chapter 2: The shake-up of Russian Jewry
Chapter 3: Research Methodology

PART B: BUILDING COMMUNITIES
Chapter 4: When ethnicity becomes national and vice-versa: Israel
Chapter 5: A new American Jewry
Chapter 6: Russian Jews in Germany
Chapter 7: Communities compared

PART C: COLLECTIVE IDENTITIES
Chapter 8: RSJs’ images and self-images in Israel
Chapter 9: RSJs images and self-images in America
Chapter 10: RSJs’ images and self-images in Germany
Chapter 11: Divergent and Convergent Identities
Chapter 12: RSJs’ distancing from “others”

PART D: MEDIA DISCOURSE
Chapter 13: RSJs’ press and in the Press - Israel
Chapter 14: RSJs’ Press and in the Press - USA
Chapter 15: RSJs’ Press and in the Press - Germany
Chapter 16: RSJs’ Press and in the Press – In Comparative Perspective

PART E: PRACTICAL AND THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
Chapter 17: The phases of collective construction
Chapter 18: “Jewishness” versus “Russianness”?
Chapter 19: RSJs in perspective

Addenda
Addendum 1: The Experience of Non-Jewish “Russian” Immigrants in Israel
Addendum 2: Policy-making perspectives
Appendices
Appendix 1: SAM survey and Measures
Appendix 2: The media analysis: classification System
Bibliography
The authors

Über Autor(innen)

Eliezer Ben-Rafael is Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Tel-Aviv. His main research interests focus on the sociology of Judaism, immigration, ethnicity and language.

Olaf Glöckner is a Ph.D. student in history at the Moses Mendelssohn Zentrum, University of Potsdam. He specializes in contemporary Jewish Russian-speaking immigration to Israel and Germany.

Paul Harris is an Associate Professor of Political Science, Augusta State University. He is an observer of the German society with a special focus on immigration and public policy.

Yael Israel is a Ph.D. student in Sociology, University of Tel-Aviv. She specializes in sociology of religion and women studies.

Willi Jasper is Professor of 19th and 20th century German and Jewish Literature and Culture, University of Potsdam.

Mikhail Lyubansky is a clinical psychologist and a lecturer in Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His interests focus on racial and ethnic group relations.

Julius H. Schoeps is a Professor of Contemporary Jewish and German History, University of Potsdam, and the Director of Moses Mendelssohn Zentrum for the Study of European Jewry.