My Poly-Ethnic Park: Some Thoughts on Israeli-Jewish Ethnicity

Diaspora 7:2 1998 My Poly-Ethnic Park: Some Thoughts on Israeli-Jewish Ethnicity1 Moshe Shokeid Tel Aviv University In spite of a common assumption that most major sources of immigration to Israel have dwindled, it seems there are always new waves of Jews, sometimes from the most unexpected places, ready to return from their diaspora to their "homeland." The discovery and the dramatic exodus of Ethiopian Jews, for example, was completely unforeseen by the founders of the state. So too was the influx ofJews from the crumbling Soviet Union, whose prospects of immigration and even of survival as Jews seemed most unlikely only a few years ago. Some Jewish romantics are still looking for the "ten lost tribes" hidden in distant, exotic lands. No doubt, one can always discover, away from home, some rituals and traditions reminiscent of Judaism. I remember my own youthful fascination with the fate of the lost Israelites banished from their land, who ended up beyond the mythical Sambation river. No less enchanting were the stories of the Jewish kingdoms headed by heroic warriors and queens. Those mythical Jews seemed far more appealing than many of the men and women I met in my neighborhood. As is the case for many other Israeli sociologists and anthropologists ,2 my encounter with issues of immigration and ethnicity has become a lifelong career. So much so, I must confess, that in recent years it has lost its hold on me and I have tried to escape the subject completely. I was looking for a new field, away from Israel and its never-finished project of integrating old and new Jewish immigrants. Ironically, even as Israel was emerging as a durable state, its new diaspora also gradually emerged. Since the early 1950s, there developed, in the United States in particular, a diaspora composed of Israeli-born citizens of my own generation who were ready to leave the Zionist new haven and never go back. The study of that new Jewish diaspora seemed to me essential to any understanding the social dynamics and the culture that characterize contemporary Israeli society (Shokeid, Children). Diaspora's invitation to write an overview of the present situation ofthe Israeli ethnic scene presented a tempting challenge. Now, with that subject no longer at the core of my current work, I 225 226 Diaspora 7:2 1998 felt I could examine it in a more relaxed fashion. I could also afford to depart from my usual methodology of introducing "thick" ethnographic data in the orthodox anthropological tradition. A major question that still haunts many observers of Israeli society is, naturally, to what extent the new state, nearly fifty years old, has managed to forge a unified nation and culture. I shall tackle that issue only from the sociological and anthropological perspective, relating the question to the leading discourse in the research tradition that has dominated the field for the past several decades.3 I will refrain, however, from the temptation to compare the Israeli case with those of other immigrant societies. The Rise and Fall of the Integrationist Conviction Since the early 1950s, the study of immigrants has been the major project for sociologists at Hebrew University. Eisenstadt's path-breaking work, The Absorption of Immigrants, served as the source of theoretical inspiration for a generation. It was thoroughly sociological in a complex Parsonian tradition. Its mode of analysis seemed to enable prediction. It was rooted in the genre of modernization theories that became influential during the 1950s with the emergence of the new nations liberated from the yoke of colonialism . These theories sought to identify the elements that support or impede social changes related to the transformation (specifically, the modernization) of traditional societies. However, my own encounters with new immigrants during the 1960s, first as part of my training in sociology and later as a rural sociologist with the Land Settlement Department, left me dissatisfied with the application of these theories, which seemed to neglect the particular cultural and historical traditions of the individuals and communities under research. Since the late 1960s, in the style of British anthropology, I have carried on a long-term participant observation study in one village ofJewish immigrants from the...