Russian Jews on Three Continents: Identity, Integration, and Conflict (review)

In three major aspects Larissa Remennick’s book successfully fills a gap in the study of the historically under-documented and sociologically under-examined global phenomenon of the Soviet Jews. The book appears just as the community of “Russian Jews” dispersed around the globe commemorates the fortieth anniversary of the beginning of the Soviet Jewry movement. Many observers symbolically chart the beginning of this movement to the aftermath of the Six Day War in 1967, when Israel miraculously won the war against its hostile Arab neighbors. From then on, Soviet Jews, in gradually growing numbers, “quietly considered the subversive option of emigration” (3). Though seeking emigration from the U.S.S.R. in the 1970s and the 1980s often amounted to an act of individual heroism, by the time the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews already had managed to escape the U.S.S.R. and resettle mostly in Israel and the United States.

The first aspect has to do with a fresh look at the process of identity and integration of Russian Jews by a “participant observer.” Indeed, a rare combination of first-hand experience in the processes of immigration, resettlement, and integration and the fact that the author is a professionally trained sociologist provides a unique opportunity for an in-depth analysis of the journey of Russian Jews. Notwithstanding the challenges that such a look may encounter, the book analyses Russian Jewish identity and integration with comprehensiveness resting on a critical examination of the studies and surveys of the subject done prior to 2007.

The second achievement is the book’s comparative focus as it describes Russian Jewish communities formed during the last thirty to thirty-five years in countries on “three continents,” namely, Israel, the United States and Canada, and Germany. The author suggests that despite the fact that these communities have resettled and integrated over a span of time into completely different host cultures with dissimilar socio-cultural, economic, and political environments, they have preserved not only a distinct Russian-Jewish identity but are also in the process of developing a new, global identity.

This discourse brings the author to the conflicting relations between the immigrant communities of Soviet Jews and the micro-hosting Jewish communities and macro-hosting societies. As this book suggests, the encounters of Russian Jewish immigrants with the receiving societies “have been tainted with intrinsic conflict over their identity and disposition vis-à-vis [the] established Jewish community . . . ” (371). The outcomes of this “intrinsic conflict” are different in each country of resettlement depending on many factors, including the country’s socio-economic status, welcoming attitudes of the hosting societies and their Jewish communities, individual circumstances involving age, gender, education, language proficiency, etc.

In spite of all the obstacles created by such a conflict, Russian Jews as a group “display both the signs of socio-cultural continuity verging on self-isolation and successful instrumental insertion into Western economies and lifestyles” (370). It is debatable, however, that self-isolation, which might be characteristic in Germany and, to a certain extent, in Israel, is much of a factor in the United States. In fact, the Russian Jewish community in the United States expanded from a handful of small isolated enclaves such as Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach to a number of sizable neighborhoods in major metropolitan areas, where in some urban districts of New York and Boston, Russian Jews comprise up to 25 percent of the entire Jewish community. The young generation of Russian Jewish immigrants is completely immersed in the American lifestyle, with virtually all attending college, so that New York’s city, state, and private colleges are overcrowded with Russian-speaking students.¹ Across the board, there is a high level of overall satisfaction with life: 64 percent of those who have lived in America for nine years or more, say they are completely or mostly satisfied with life.²

The third feature which makes this book innovative has to do...