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CHAPTER 12 AFFINITIES AND AFFILIATIONS: THE MANY WAYS OF BEING A RUSSIAN JEWISH AMERICAN* Aviva Zeltzer-Zubida Recent census data suggest that there are about 300,000 immigrants from the former Soviet Union and their children living in the New York metropolitan area (March 1998 Current Population Survey). Most of those who left the Soviet Union since the early 1970s immigrated to Israel, where they received immediate citizenship under the “law of return” and extensive “absorption ” and resettlement services. Those who chose to immigrate to the United States were assisted by Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HAIS) agents in Vienna—which was the first stop for all immigrants from the former Soviet Union—and flown to Rome, where they were housed, sheltered, and offered classes in English while their applications to immigrate to the United States were processed. The vast majority of those who landed in New York stayed in the city and were aided by the New York Association for New Americans (NYANA), which offered preliminary resettlement services. After studying the city, NYANA identified several neighborhoods that had relatively cheap and available housing, easy access to transportation, and an established Eastern European Jewish community, which the agency hoped would ease the newcomers’ transition and resettlement in the new country (Orleck 1987). The majority of this immigrant group settled in Brooklyn, making Brighton Beach the largest Soviet immigrant community in the United States. Others settled in Queens, Staten Island, Long Island, and parts of New Jersey, forming vibrant ethnic neighborhoods there as well.1 The children of the latest immigration wave from the former Soviet Union—the children of the refuseniks who came in the mid-1970s and of those who came in the 1990s seeking a better life—are now coming of age as 339 * All names of individuals reported throughout the chapter are pseudonyms. they negotiate their identity and place in American society. Drawing on data from the Immigrant Second Generation in Metropolitan New York Study, this chapter explores the process of identity construction among these young Russian Jewish Americans.2 Susan Emley Keefe (1992) describes ethnic identity as (1) the perception of differences between ethnic groups, (2) the feelings of attachment to and pride in one’s ethnic group and cultural heritage, and (3) the perception of prejudice and discrimination against one’s own group.3 Nevertheless, ethnic identity is not manifested in or constructed from only what people say or perceive themselves to be but also from what they do (Ogbu 1990). Ethnic identity is constructed through interpersonal and intergroup relations (Alba 1985; Waters 1990), and as with other social identities, contact with and opposition to “the other” is a key element in defining the boundaries between “us” and “them” (Sales 1999). Ethnic identity is constructed through, and at the same time has implications for, people’s and groups’ relationships with others, their actions, and their behavior (Hurtado, Gurin, and Peng 1994). Hence, the general theoretical framework that informs this chapter views the formation of ethnic identity as a multifaceted and contingent process subject to various negotiations with an interactive social, institutional, and structural context (Nagel 1994). Thus, ethnic identity is understood as having symbolic aspects (Gans 1979; Alba 1990), as well as real implications for individuals’ life chances and trajectories (Nagel 1994). There is no simple answer as to who these children of Russian Jewish immigrants are, and what they may become. The truth is that many of the second-generation Russian Jews are ambivalent about the different dimensions of their identity and many of them find it difficult to define who they are. We might say that they are ambivalently “American,” ambivalently “Russian,” and ambivalently “Jewish” as they adopt existing identities or construct and negotiate new ones. For example, drawing on their parents’ experiences in the former Soviet Union, some might view Jewishness as a primordial category that carries few behavioral attributes but has a deep cultural meaning. Others may adopt the common Jewish American identity that has an ethnic character. Embracing the Jewish Orthodox identity and way of life is another possibility that may appeal to some. And those who find it hard to assume existing identities can construct eclectic identities that are a little bit of many things at the same time, fusing Russian-ness, Jewishness, and American -ness in new and creative ways. Although these identities are not necessarily mutually exclusive and tend to fluctuate over time, they are derived from different experiences, based on different ideologies and...

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