A Study on Cultural Identities of Jewish Immigrants from Former Soviet Union in Israel : Focused on the Language Use and Acceptance of Religion of the Newcomers who immigrated during the 1990s

이스라엘의 구소련 유대인 이주자들의 문화정체성 연구 - 1990년대 이주한 뉴커머들의 언어 사용과 종교 수용을 중심으로

Since 1989 about one million Jews from Former Soviet Union have immigrated to Israel. Now Russian speaking Jews are the second largest ethnic groups after the Israeli Jews who were born in Israel. Although FSU Jews have returned to their ethnic homeland, they continue to live as 'foreigners' due to a cultural distance between sending and receiving society, such as, lack of knowledge about Jewish tradition and religious practice and low level of Hebrew proficiency. Because of this reason FSU immigrants tend to continue remain strong ties with Russian language and culture. There are several reasons for such a relatively slow process of language shift of FSU Jewish immigrants, the language shift to Hebrew. Firstly, majority of FSU immigrants moved to Israel since the 1990s are older than 45. Secondly, their first residences in Israel are mostly located in small and mid-sized cities, where the proportion of Russian speaking immigrants is more than 30%. And finally they consider Russian culture is 'superior' to Israel's Levantine culture. For many Jewish diasporic communities, Judaism was a dominant factor for self-consciousness, but because of Soviet regime, aimed to break all the religious institution including Jewish, Soviet Jewry was uprooted from their religious traditions. Besides about 30% of FSU immigrants are not defined as Jews by the Jewish religious law(Halakhah). And many of them are reluctant to convert to Judaism. FSU Jewish immigrant agree that Israel must be a Jewish state, but for them 'Jewish' does not include religious elements. FSU immigrants consider that religious affiliation of citizens of Israel should not affect their civic rights.