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From 'Muteness' toEloquence: Immigrants'Narratives about LanguagesMaria N. Yelenevskaya & Larisa FialkovaPublished online: 29 Mar 2010.
To cite this article: Maria N. Yelenevskaya & Larisa Fialkova (2003) From'Muteness' to Eloquence: Immigrants' Narratives about Languages, LanguageAwareness, 12:1, 30-48, DOI: 10.1080/09658410308667064
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From ‘Muteness’ to Eloquence:Immigrants’ Narratives about Languages
Maria N. YelenevskayaDepartment of Humanities and Arts, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology,Technion City, Haifa, Israel
Larisa FialkovaUniversity of Haifa, Israel
Immigrationmobilises laypeople’s awarenessof language.When immigrants begin tolearna new language, comparisons between themother tongue and a new language areinevitable. If learning occurs simultaneously with entering a new language commu-nity, speakers become more sensitive to the cultural and social implications thatmultilingualism involves. This study is devoted to personal narratives of immigrantsto Israel from the former Soviet Union. It is based on 115 in-depth interviewswith 135immigrants, which make up approximately 75 hours of recording, transcribed in full.The interviewswere conducted inRussian, themother tongue of both the intervieweesand the interviewers.Immigrants’ interviews revealawarenessthat language is a statuscategory. Imperial attitude towards minority languages in the USSR has been trans-ferred to the linguistic situation in Israel.As in the Soviet Union, Russian is associatedwith superior culture. Hebrew, on the other hand, is perceived as an instrument ofupward mobility. In the situation of emerging bilingualism, immigrants separatedomains inwhich they use different languages and assign different symbolic value tothem.All the informants perceiveRussianas the language inwhich they can realisefullpotential of their personality, express emotions and feel at ease.
In a study of modes of folk linguistic awareness Preston expresses regret thatalthough the encouragement of sociolinguistic–folkloristic friendship islong-standing, the two fields have not interacted in so lively a manner as onemight have hoped (Preston, 1996: 71). The work reported here is part of afolkloristic project devoted to the study of personal narratives of immigrants toIsrael from the countries of the former Soviet Union (FSU). The topic of immigra-tion is closely related to language, and our goalwas to examine themobilisationof language awareness in our subjects. We briefly introduce the linguistic situa-tion in Israel and specific features of the immigrant group that we study, andthen report some reactions to the linguistic change in the life of this immigrantcommunity.
The Language Policy of IsraelJews in the Diaspora spoke different Jewish languages: Yiddish, Ladino,
Judeo-Arabic, Tat, andmore, all ofwhich had absorbedHebrewwords.Hebrew,‘the holy tongue’, was used for praying and reading religious literature andpoetry. From the end of the 19th century and to the early formative years of thestate of Israel, the shaping of the new Jewish identity was closely related to thechoice of language. Revitalisation of Hebrew and its transformation into alanguage for daily life was a cornerstone of the Zionist ideology (Spolsky &
0965-8416/03/01 0030-19 $20.00/0 © 2003 M.N. Yelenevskaya & L. FialkovaLANGUAGE AWARENESS Vol. 12, No. 1, 2003
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Shohamy, 1999: 65–93). To modernise Hebrew and to make it the dominantlanguage of the Jewish population of Israel, the policy of eschewal of alllanguages brought from theDiasporawaspursued (Olshtein &Kotik, 2000: 206).While some of the immigrants in the early waves willingly yielded their mothertongues and switched toHebrew, others did so under the pressure of society andtheir own children. The ‘melting pot’ philosophy prevailed in the policy of immi-grant absorptionuntil the 1980s.A change of policy occurred as a reaction to therapid influx of the Soviet Jews that began in 1989. For the first time in the coun-try’s history, the Israeli establishment had officially to foster an immigrantlanguage as a channel of information, education and culture, in the hope that itwould serve as a vehicle for easier and faster integration (Glinert, 1995).
FSU Immigration of the 1990s: What Makes it Different from OtherWaves?
Israel is a country of continuous immigration, and the 1990swere marked bymass immigration from the FSU. According to government sources, 835,410FSUimmigrants, approximately one-sixth of the total population of Israel, arrived inthe country between 1989 and 1999 (http://www.moia.gov.il). This massiveinflux of newcomers with a common background has to a large extent changedIsrael’s cultural scene, including its linguistic landscape.
TheFSU immigrants of the 1990sweremotivatedbypush factors (thedesire toleave the FSU) rather than by pull factors (attraction to Israel) (Ryvkina, 1996:186). Most of the newcomers were Russian-speaking assimilated Jews, unfamil-iarwith Jewish culture and languages. Furthermore, sincemixedmarriageswerecommonplace in the USSR, the group comprised a high percentage ofnon-Jewish family members who were not only ignorant of Jewish culture buthad no symbolic links with it either. Unlike their predecessors in the 1970s, theFSU immigrants of the 1990s can maintain contacts with their relatives andfriends who stayed behind, and the tourist traffic in both directions is heavy.Electronic technologies allow immigrants access to the media in Russia, and theestablishment ofdiplomatic relationsbetween Israel and the countries of the FSUencouraged trade, as well as cultural and scientific exchange.
As Spolsky and Shohamy (1999: 236) remark, the group of FSU immigrants inIsrael is large enough demographically to support the continuous use of theRussian language. The demographic factor is reinforced by institutional supportin the form of political parties founded to defend the immigrants’ interests, theRussian-language press (about 50 newspapers and magazines), and a TV chan-nel and radio stationsbroadcasting in Russian. Immigrant teachers run an exten-sive network of evening schools providing instruction in Russian in majorsubjects. Russian libraries and community centres have been opened in most ofthe immigrant enclaves, and service industries cater to Russian speakers in vari-ous domains. The Russian language hadmetaphoric significance in the USSR asa source of ‘wealth and power’ (Ries, 1997: 30–32) and it has retained this mean-ing for immigrants, as we will show later in the analyses. We can detect in theRussian speech community in Israel the three variables indicative ofethnolinguistic vitality: status, demography, and institutional support (Giles etal., 1977).
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As a result of these socio-political developments, the FSU immigrants of the1990s are the first immigrant group in Israel that has openly refused to suppressthe culture and language of the country of origin. Although in the last twodecades a more tolerant attitude to multiculturalism and multilingualism hasdeveloped in Israel, this stubbornness of the new immigrants is a source of socialand ideological conflicts that overflow into the media. Among recent examplesare protests against the use of the Russian language in the election campaign(IBAPress-Service, 12December 2002)and reports onRussian-speaking employ-ees forbidden to speak Russian among themselves (Sheikhatovich, 2002: 23).Government organisations also show concern about the unwillingness of theimmigrants to shed their ‘Russianness’and to continue to live on thebasis of theiroriginal culture, and to distance themselves from the Israelis (Horenczyk, 2000:18).
Linguistic Adjustment and Integration ProcessesSince the demise of the USSR increasing interest in FSU immigrants has been
evinced by linguists and sociologists in countries where large groups of formerSoviet citizens reside. In Israel, Germany, Greece and other countries, thesegroups represent Returning Diasporas, which until recently were widelyignored in the literature (Ben-Rafael et al., 1997:364). In Israel andGermany repa-triates receive citizenship upon arrival, and government support for their inte-gration, including state-financed language courses, is provided for them. It washoped that state assistance and affinity with the culture of the host countrywould facilitate repatriates’ linguistic adjustment and acculturation. Butresearch in both countries shows that seamless integrationdoes not occur: ethnicminority enclaves are formed, and insufficient language proficiency leads to therepatriates’ social and cultural autonomyand even alienation from the host soci-eties (see for example, Dietz, 2000; Remennick, 2002; Remennick forthcoming;Steinbach, 2001).
The second line of research devoted to FSU immigrants considers the role ofthe host language acquisition as the principal tool for immigrant integration.Since the educational level of the FSU immigrants is high, the jobs they aspired todemanded a high level of proficiency in the local language, and also in English.But second-language teaching in the FSUwas often inadequate, and this compli-cates immigrants’ professional integration. Studies investigating the depend-ency of occupational adjustment on language proficiency of former Soviets wereundertaken in the USA and Israel (see, for example, Chiswick, 2000; Kheimets &Epstein, 2000; Menahem & Geijst, 2000). The third direction in sociolinguisticresearch into FSU immigration concerns language maintenance and languageattrition, and their influence on the integration processes. Studies conducted inIsrael report that on average immigrants acquire Hebrew quite fast (see, forexample, Kheimets & Epstein, 2001a;Markowitz, 1997), but in spite of the grow-ing proficiency in the local language there is a marked leaning to the mainte-nance of Russian. Irrespective of age or the social group investigated, Russianscored better than Hebrew for its aesthetic value and as a vehicle of culture(Niznik forthcoming; Olshtein & Kotik, 2000).
Most of the linguistic studies investigating FSU immigrants were based on
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surveys and structured or semi-structured interviews, and only few turned toin-depth unstructured interviews, although the latter arewidely used in anthro-pological and sociological studies of migrants. As Findlay and Li (1997: 34–5)observe, it is important to focus on migrants as pro-active, socially embedded,intentional agents who influence and are influenced by the social worlds inwhich they are located. The meaning of migration is established over long timespans, and when migrants are engaged in an act of reflection about their immi-grant experience they can raise their consciousness to the discursive realm.Moreover, in post-modern societies, in which information and knowledge rankamong themost important commodities, the enhanced roleof reflexivity ismani-fest in constant reshaping of social practices on the basis of knowledge aboutthose practices (Fairclough, 1999: 74).
One of the primary features of language is reflexivity. Speech is permeated byreflexive activity as speakers comment on language, report utterances, describeaspects of speech events, and guide listeners in the proper interpretation of theirutterances (Lucy, 1993: 11). This reflexive activity intensifies when adults beginto learn anew language, since comparisonsbetween it and themother tongueareinevitable. If learning occurs simultaneously with entering a new languagecommunity, speakers also becomemoresensitive to the cultural and social impli-cations that bilingualism involves (James, 1999: 105).
When immigrants reflect on the roles of their mother tongue and variouslanguages of the old and new homeland in their experiences in the old and in thenew countries, they reveal consciously held views as well as unconscious valuesystems (Bugarski, 1980: 383), not easily inferable from surveys and structuredinterviews. By analysing these reflections this paper aims to explore whatapproach to language prevails in immigrants’ narratives, instrumental orsymbolic. It also examines how pre-immigration linguistic experiences affectlinguistic adjustment in the new country; and finally it seeks to determine whatvalues immigrants attribute to the languages that constitute the linguistic reper-toire of the community, in particular Russian, Hebrew, and Yiddish. With thesepriorities in mind, the paper seeks to show immigrants’ motivation in makingspecific language choices and to analysewhen a specific choice serves as a tool oras an obstacle to integration.
MethodThematerialused in this report was drawn from 115 in-depth interviewswith
135 immigrants, adding up to approximately 75 hours of recording, transcribedin full.1 The interviews were conducted in Russian, the participants’ mothertongue. In several cases familymembers and friends preferred group interviewsto individual ones, hence the mismatch in the numbers. All informants hadimmigrated to Israel in the 1990s. There were 39 men, 90 women, and six chil-dren. The subjects were found in a ‘snow-ball’ fashion, and althoughwe did notaim at creating a statistically representative sample, the group as awhole reflectssome demographic features of the immigrant wave from the FSU. First, themajority of the subjects came from metropolitan centres, such as Moscow, StPetersburg, and Kiev. Secondly, a high proportion (87) of interviewees heldacademic degrees, including PhDs (10). According to recent Israeli sociological
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research, about 60% of the FSU immigrants in the workforce have academicprofessions as compared to 30% among veteran Israelis (Leshem & Lissak, 1999:144). The educational level of the informants is relevant to this study, for weargue that many shared opinions and views on the role of language in life andcareer were rooted in our subjects’ cultural and educational background.
The context of the interviews varied; somewere held in the homes of the inter-viewers or interviewees, others in offices, still others in public places, such asparks, beaches, and the like. The average length of the interviews was 45minutes. All the subjects were told about the purpose of the study and that theinterviews would be audio-recorded for use in research on contemporary folk-lore and published under pseudonyms. Although changing our subjects’ names,we did not alter details of demographic data. Since we did not use any agenciesor community centres to find our interviewees, who lived dispersed throughoutIsrael and hailed from 49 cities and towns of the FSU, they can hardly beidentified.
For different reasons, six people refused to participate in the study. The over-all attitude to the project of those who agreed to be interviewed was positive.Many participants said they had enjoyed sorting out their experiences andre-living some of the memorable episodes. Moreover, some expressed the hopethat the results of the studywould be published not just in English but in Russianas well.
The interviews were unstructured. That is, our questions were not standard-ised. We chose this format as the most appropriate for a folkloristic project. It iscollaborativeby nature and helps interviewees feel that they are research partici-pants rather than passive subjects. The core of the interviews covered seventhemes: subjects’ reasons for immigration; first impressions of Israel; contactswith veteran Israelis; work and/or study experience in Israel; leisure activities;language use issues; habits and customs before and after immigration. Theypartially overlap with the field guide proposed by Linda Dégh in her unpub-lished Fieldwork Guide for Collecting Ethnic Culture and Folklore and quoted byKirshenblatt-Gimblett (1983: 41).
To analyse data we conducted several rounds of content analysis. First, weanalysed five interviews with FSU immigrants stored in the Israel FolktaleArchives and built around the themeswe havementioned.We identified catego-ries into which each unit of analysis could be broken down. These initial catego-ries were tested in the first 20 interviews, which we conducted ourselves.Additional themes cameup in these interviews, andwhenwe sawthat theywereimportant for our subjects we tried to pursue them in the following interviews;thus we expanded and re-classified the initial categories,whichwere afterwardsused for the analysis of the whole sample. While some of the categories, such asthe subjects’ reasons for immigration, were quantified, others were used to indi-cate trends. These are reported in such terms as ‘more’, ‘less’, ‘increasing’,‘decreasing’, and the like.
Subject matter categories are the ones most frequently used in content analy-sis. When applied to biographical studies they enable researchers to determinethemes salient for the interviewed individual (Carney, 1972: 172–4). Besidesanalysing the collected data for recurring motifs, we looked for images, associa-tions and symbols to check whether these revealed affinity with the language
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and culture of the old or of the new country. Finally we looked into assumptionsof cause-and-effect relationships explaining the interviewees’ position (Taylor&Wetherell, 1999: 40). Nancy Ries remarks, ‘like folk tales, personal narrativesrepeat particular structural lines, and rely on a stock of conventional details’(Ries, 1997: 24–5). These recurrent elements deserve special attention becausethey signal key categories and mental patterns characteristic of the investigatedgroup.
In reporting our findings we quote our informants extensively to enable thereader to grasp immigrants’ attitudes to the languages and cultural practices ofthe community.We chose for analysis only those excerpts that exemplify themesand attitudes pervading in the immigrants’ discourse. We translated passagesfrom the interviewswithout editing them in order to preserve specific features oforal narration and the individual style of each storyteller.
Findings and DiscussionReflections about languages emerged as an essential part of the subjects’ auto-
biography. For most of them, plunging into a new linguistic environment was atrying experience. Before immigration they were proficient only in their mothertongue, Russian. Even thosewho had lived in Ukraine, Byelorussia, Uzbekistan,or other countries of the FSU, did not speak the languages of the titular nationali-ties. Only one informant was Russian–Ukrainian ambilingual (Valdés, 1997),and six others reported fluency in Ukrainian, Byelorussian and Armenian. In allSoviet republics, except Russia, secondary schools were divided into twogroups: those in which instruction was in the language of the republic, andRussian was studied as a second language, and vice versa. A considerablepercentage of the population, including members of the titular nationalities,preferred their children to study at ‘Russian’ schoolswhich gave better opportu-nities for tertiary education and career.Although itwas euphemistically referredto as the ‘language of inter-ethnic communication’, in practice Russian was thestate language of the USSR, the language of politics, science, and culture. Evendoctoral theses had to be presented in Russian. To make the Russian languageand culture a unifying force of the country was a major ideological goal. AsHagendoorn et al. remark, Sovietisation of life was actually its Russification(1998: 485). The attitude to the languages of the republics is vividly expressed inthe following excerpt:
Rosa Ch., 27, immigrated in 1995 from Orsha, Byelorussia: A teacherand a Master’s degree student at the University of HaifaInterviewer: How is your Byelorussian?
Rosa: My Byelorussian? I understand it very well and I can readwithout any problems. But after five years in Israel I oncetried to say a sentence in Byelorussian, but Hebrew came outinstead. Yet I think that if life forced me, I wouldn’t have anyproblems, although I didn’t study it at school.
Interviewer: Not at all? Could you avoid learning Byelorussian at school?
Rosa: There were some kids who didn’t have to learn it becausetheir parents were officers, and there were some other kids
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exempted. There was a special formula ‘exempt due to healthreasons’. Well, and I was, I, sort of, fell into this category; that is, Idecided that a Jewish child could do very well withoutByelorussian.
Rosa was not the only informant who tried to avoid learning the language ofthe host republic. Ekaterina R., 24, a factoryworker fromTashkent, admitted thather knowledge of Uzbek was limited to a few words, although she studied it atschool. In her case, the excusewasgender: ‘OnlyDad spoke it.DadknowsUzbekand he communicated. And we, as Orientalwomenwewere quiet, and our menwere always in the foreground …’
Such nonchalance towards languages of the republics caused by the intuitiveknowledge that Russian speakers had better economic and social opportunitiesin theUSSRwas gone in the late 1980s, early 1990s, in particular after the dissolu-tion of the Soviet Union. Demand for greater autonomywent hand in hand withemphasis on elevating the status of national languages and cultures. As Brasspoints out, ‘Tendencies for linguistic nationalism to be directed against thecentralized leaders are especially likely to develop when the central elite isperceived to come from a dominant ethnic group, to favor centralization, and tohold predominant control over scarce resources, as in the case of Russians in theSoviet Union’ (1991: 305). And so Jews, who considered themselves a discrimi-nated minority, realised that what used to be their asset was turning into yetanother disadvantage and obstacle to having equal rights and opportunities.Growing nationalismwas cited as one of themajor reasons for emigration in oursample, and linguistic nationalism was seen as part of the threat.
Evgenii L., 66, immigrated in 1990 from Kiev: An architect and a painter(PhD)Evgenii: Once I was in the subway in the Square of October Revolution in
Kiev. This was the period when everybody spoke about theconsolidation of Ukrainian independence and its forms … Andthere was a big crowd of people talking Ukrainian. Theydiscussed what language should be used by the mass media, andwhat should become a national anthem, and things like that. Andeveryone treated the subject with great interest. I was standingnear the crowd listening and all of a sudden I asked myself: Andwhere am I? And there was no answer to this question. I wasn’tthere.
Note that Evgenii’s command of Ukrainian was sufficient to understand thediscussion, yet he couldn’t imagine himself living in the completely UkrainisedUkraine. Evgenii describes the beginning of what was later called a ‘linguisticwar’, a struggle in which mass media and even diplomats of the newly formedcountries and Russia were involved (Savoskul, 2001: 79).
Many of our subjects reported taking language classes before emigration. Forthe first time learning anew languagewas taken seriously, as it was viewed as animportant part of preparation for the new life. Not everybody, though, choseHebrew. Some of the interviewees, all of them professionals and academics of a
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mature age, decided to stake their professional future on English. Here are someof the reasons they give:
Lilia L., 43, immigrated in 1990 from Friazino, Moscow region, and in 2000re-emigrated to Canada: A physicianLilia: (About her father) … he decided for himself that he was unable to
learn Hebrew, well, he didn’t have enough time for it … Either he hasto learn a language or do research; that is he cannot do both at thesame time.
Evgenii L.Interviewer: Did you begin learning Hebrew there [in the Soviet Union]?
Evgenii: Just a little bit and I gave up very quickly. I understood that Iwouldn’t master it to such an extent as to make it useful in thefirst period. And I switched … and absolutely consciously Iswitched over to studying English intensively, since I knewthat it’s widely used in Israel. And in a short period of time Imade good progress in English, and it turned out that I’dmade the right choice.
Fluent English did not only prove to be an asset, but also a de-motivatingfactor for learning Hebrew. One interviewee says that upon arrival in Israel shequickly learned that her attempts to getwhat she needed in governmental officesand public places were much more successful when she spoke fluent Englishthan brokenHebrew. She even used this strategywith the Russian-speaking offi-cials, taking advantage of the prestige enjoyed by English in Israel. Anotherinformant claimed she had lost motivation to improve her Hebrew as she saw itas a threat to her proficiency in English.
Nina K., 60+, immigrated in 1991 from Moscow: An English teacher bytraining, now a pensionerInterviewer: Ninochka, you, probably, did not experience any difficulties
due to the lack of language, because you could speak English.
Nina: No, no, I didn’t. And, you know, right at the beginning, whenI was here … err, I was talking to a clerk, and he said, ‘Well,it’s a lost cause, you won’t speak Hebrew!’ I say to him,‘But why?’
‘Because you know English’.
Interviewer: Was he right?
Nina: He was absolutely right.
Interviewer: Did you try? Did you go to the ulpan? [Hebrew for a‘language school’]
Nina: In fact, I didn’t really have a chance to go to the ulpan… Andyou know there was something else: I felt that my Englishbegan to evaporate. I learned two words in Hebrew, I try to
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speak Hebrew and I no longer remember how to say thesethings in English.
The subjects who opted for English admit that even today, a decade afterimmigration, their Hebrew remains weak, yet they can easily get by speakingRussianandEnglish. They consider their proficiency in English to be a factor thatsecured their professional success in Israel. This is consistent with conclusionsmade by Kheimets and Epstein (2001), who investigated patterns of integrationof scientists from the FSU.
Yet most of the interviewees reported learning Hebrew before emigration.Several issues arise from these stories.The first one is the surprise andpessimismthat arose when people were confronted with the task of learning to read theHebrew alphabet:
Ella V., 69, immigrated in 1991 from Kursk: A teacher by profession, nowa pensionerElla: We got accustomed to Latin … I used to learn French, you know, and
there is at least something in it … But when I first saw thesecharacters, well they looked like hieroglyphs, nothing else! This wasthe impression, just hieroglyphs! I thought I would never be able towrite aleph, bet.
Note, that Ella apposes theHebrew alphabet to Latin but not Cyrillic. Both aremarkers of the culture of the other, but Latin seemsmore familiar and accessible.In Russian, as well as in Hebrew, the noun ‘hieroglyphs’ is not only associatedwith the Orient, but also has the figurative meaning of ‘illegible, difficult tounderstand’ and is pejorative.
Ella’s words are echoed by Sofia Y., 48, who compared her first attempts atwriting Hebrew letters to ‘drawing ears’; the association that is related to thegraphic features of the Hebrew letters bet, kaf, pei.Another informant, Laura M.,55, told us that the Hebrew alphabet had adorned the kitchen of her apartmentbefore immigration. ‘I hung them [Hebrew letters] in the kitchen, where I used tospend most of my time, right in front of my eyes. And in all these two years, Iwouldn’t have been able to write a single letter; that is I felt it was impossible,simply impossible.’
Another theme emerging from the interviews is that teaching Hebrew was athriving private business. It is important to note that before Perestroika, teachingHebrew was illegal, and some teachers were jailed. One interviewee told usabout her relative, who fell victim to this policy.
Yulia Kh., 53, immigrated in 1990 from Makhachkala, Dagestan: Ateacher by training, works as a cashierYulia: I remember grandmother’s brother … Once he was just going along
the street, and they took him. [Note the use of a traditional Sovieteuphemism: he was ‘taken’ instead of ‘arrested’.] And until now … hejust vanished in thin air, we don’t even know where his grave is.Because he taught children the Hebrew language. And mygrandfather also taught. After he disappeared, grandma forbadegrandpa to go out, ‘You’d better stay at home. What shall I do if they
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arrest you? Shall I have to let in tenants, or what?’ And she didn’t lethim out for a long, long time. For a very long time grandpa didn’t goout at all, granny told us all about it.
Since the system of Jewish education was destroyed there were virtually noprofessional teachers of Hebrew in the USSR when immigration to Israelresumed in the late 1980s. A few of our interviewees were lucky to have hadIsraeli teachers, employees of the Jewish Agency, as their language instructors,but the majority reported that their teachers were non-professionals. One suchteacher, a retired Russian diplomat named, Vassilii Ivanovich, had picked upsomeHebrewwhen posted to Israel in the early 1950s.Mentioning his name, ourinformant laughed heartily. It is a typical Russian name, and the expectation atthe time was that only Jews would teach Hebrew. So whenever the teacher wasnot Jewish, our informants emphasised the fact in their stories. In addition, thename reminds any former Soviet of Vassilii Ivanovich Chapaev, a legendarycommanderof theRedArmyduring theCivilWarwho later became thehero of aseries of popular jokes. Another Hebrew teacher was a student of humanities inthe town of Angarsk, Siberia. This young enthusiast of Hebrew decided to learnit for her own self-education. Every three months she would go to Novosibirskfor a crash course run by the Jewish Agency and then returned to her hometownto teach others what she herself had just learned. Some enterprising immigrantshaving no professional background in pedagogy were convinced that teachingwas the best way to activate their fragile Hebrew. Demand proved so high thatthere was no shortage of students.
Galit B., 60+, immigrated in 1994 from Kiev, Ukraine: A physician bytraining, now a pensionerGalit: And then my daughter decided to open an ulpan at home. In what
sense? She didn’t need the money. There were people who chargedfive or ten rubles per session, while she charged three rubles; that isshe had to tell somebody. She had to repeat everything to herself, tosay it once more out loud, to say it again (pause) err, to repeat all thislanguage again. And in this way, she talked to them and shememorised things herself.
Some of the amateurHebrew teachers were as eager to teach a language as toexpose their students to someelements of Jewish culture and history.Thesewerethe classes so highly praised by our interviewees. Their teachers’ stories aboutIsrael, as well as songs and tales in Hebrew, helped the students cope with thefeeling of insecurity –many admit to pre-immigration ignorance about the coun-try. Israel was a real ‘terra incognita‘ so any information about it, provided by afriendly source instead of hostile Soviet propaganda, was welcome. In addition,language classes integrating facts about the culture were a far cry from tradi-tional foreign language learning in the FSU, which was often restricted to meretranslation of texts with no communication.
Assessment of the first attempts at learning Hebrew varied widely. Whilesome believe that they had learned basic grammar and had accumulated suffi-cient vocabulary to communicate in the first stage of immigration, otherscomplained that in Israel they had to begin from scratch. Memories of the first
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months in Israel, when immigrants had no means of communication withmembers of the receiving society, still haunted our subjects andwere rendered ina highly emotional manner. Here are some examples:
Ludmila Z., 44, immigrated from Lubertsy, Russia in 1991: A technician bytraining, in Israel works as a home attendantLudmila: It was not a year of Hebrew, but a year of a deaf and mute person.
Well, during my second year here I already understoodsomething, but I couldn’t communicate, I couldn’t speak. I spokewith my hands and legs.
Asia Sh., 56, immigrated from Cheliabinsk in 1990: A school teacherAsia: We couldn’t address anyone, we couldn’t even ask a simple question.
Well, even not … Where is lishkat avoda [Hebrew for ‘unemploymentoffice’] or where is, say, merkaz klita [Hebrew for ‘absorption centre’]well, simply nothing. We were just dead, absolutely mute and deafpeople.
The theme of deafness andmuteness in this context is based on Russianverbalimagery. The word Nemets, ‘German’, originally meant an ‘alien’ and wasderived from nemoi, ‘mute’ (Fasmer, 1973, v.3: 62). Inability to express oneselfwas perceived as a social handicap and emphasised dependency on others. Theinterviewees also report that linguistic incompetence affected their sense oforientation in town, and made them feel as helpless as children and stupid.
When discussing language and ethnicity, Fishman refers to language as thequintessential symbol of ethnicity: ‘…the recorder of paternity, the expresser ofpatrimony and the carrier of phenomenology’ (Fishman, 1977: 25). Manysubjects spoke about the role of Hebrew and Yiddish for Jews. Hebrew emergedas the unsuccessful competitor of Yiddish as a vehicle of tradition, and culture,and as a primary indicator of Jewish identity.
Tamara Z., 51, immigrated from Zhitomir, Ukraine in 1991: An engineerby training, works as a home attendantTamara: I think Jewishness has to unite all the Jews. Culture and all of
it, it has to be unified. And I think that if someone is Jewish,he should know Yiddish. And if he doesn’t, he is not a Jew.
Interviewer: Do your children know Yiddish?
Tamara: They don’t. My children don’t know Yiddish.Like Tamara,many immigrants admit that they failed to transfer their knowl-
edge of Yiddish to the children, but this has not decreased the symbolic value ofthe language. Our younger informants, for example, Sofia Sh., 31 and Inna F., 26,said that their in-laws considered their inability to speak or understand Yiddishas a sign that they were not ‘ours’. Equally sure that the knowledge of Yiddish isan indispensable part of being Jewish isMoisei V., 74.While talking critically andpatronisingly about Jews from Morocco, he singled out his one such acquain-tance who could speak Yiddish. When the interviewer, aware that MoroccanJews were more likely to be proficient in Judaeo-Arabic or French, expressedsurprise, Moisei said, ‘Yes, he spoke Yiddish. After all, he is Jewish’.
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Anderson (1991: 133) cautions, ‘It is always a mistake to treat languages in theway that certain nationalist ideologues treat them – as emblems of nation-ness,like flags, costumes, folk dances and the rest.’ Our sample shows that somepeople perpetuate this prejudice. Thus in everyday talk, Yiddish, and lessfrequently Hebrew, are referred to as ‘the Jewish language’. The symbolic role ofthe ‘Jewish languages’ ismanifest when Yiddish is referred to as ‘such a culturedlanguage’ (Ella, 70+), or as a language not suited to expressing malice.
Albert R., 72, immigrated in 1991 from Kishinev: A street musicianAlbert: I must tell you straight, in all the nations there are good and bad
people. There are good and bad Jews. I have met bad Jews here. In theUnion [the Soviet Union] I never met bad Jews among my friends.Everybody was good. And here I’ve met bad Jews. Well, and … I playon the streets. And I met a Jew, who came up to me and said, ‘If youplayed next to my house, I would pour boiling water over your head’.And it was said in a JEWISH language!
The frequently expressed opinion that Yiddish is amore suitable language forJews than Hebrew is partially rooted in the imperial approach to minoritylanguages nurtured in the USSR.
Inna Kh., 52, immigrated in 1998 from Simferopol, Ukraine: A housewife,a philologist by trainingInna: I was lost in Hebrew … because the more I progressed the harder it
became. And I had hoped to take it by assault and fast, ha-ha-ha! AndI would say, ‘Dear, why couldn’t they communicate with God [inHebrew] as it had been prescribed and make Yiddish the language ofthe European Jews. And everything would be wonderful. After all,Russian became the language of all the peoples of the USSR. So whycouldn’t they do the same with Yiddish? After all it’s easier to learn.’
Even thosewhodon’t speakYiddishhave sentimentalmemories of it, evokingevents of childhood, festivities, and songs. Our interviewees gave examples ofwords inserted into Russian to express emotions. Inna Kh., for example, recallsthat her grandmother used to scold her in Yiddish, and her mother taught herByelorussian husband how to say ‘I love you’ in Yiddish. Many speak about thesecret function of the language and agree that this was an excellent stimulus forthe children to learn it in order tounderstandwhat adultswere trying to conceal.
Yiddish is not the only languagementioned in the sample as a secret means ofcommunication.Tat has the samefunction for Jews of theCaucasus.ElviraA., 20,fromDagestanwas taught the language by her mother to enable the girl to use itas a code inaccessible to outer groups. After immigration, the need for a secretlanguage didn’t disappear, but the privilege of using it moved to the youngergeneration. Parents report that their children speak Hebrew among themselveswhen they do not want their parents to understand. But in peer groups Russianserves as the language of exclusion of the Hebrew-speaking children (Niznik,forthcoming).
Some of our older interviewees recounted that, desperate for a means ofcommunication with veteran Israelis, they had to ‘recall’ Yiddish, which they
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hadn’t spoken since childhood.Albert R. said, ‘ I didn’t speakYiddish for awholefifty-year period. Can you imagine this?And all of a sudden they began to speakand I recalled everything.’ The language that had been neglected turned into asaviour.
Asia Sh., 56, immigrated from Cheliabinsk in 1990: A school teacherAsia: (About the first friendship in Israel) She came to the villa with gifts. …
We kissed each other as if we were old acquaintances. And slowly,slowly, I began to speak Yiddish with her. Well, there is no way out,absolutely not. There is nothing else to connect us. They turned out tobe from Rumania … and they don’t speak Russian. And I don’t speakRumanian. And how can we communicate? And Yiddish, it was a truemagic wand … I had never spoken Yiddish, never, but the situationwas really extreme.
While stories of revived Yiddish are numerous, none of our intervieweesreported exposure toHebrew prior to thedecision to emigrate. Yet like Yiddish itemerges as a symbol of an imagined community (Anderson’s term).
Maria P., 24, immigrated in 1991 from Moscow: A university studentMaria: (About the decision to emigrate) It all started when my mother’s sister
began learning Hebrew … My mother’s sister announced, kind ofcasually, that she was learning our native ancient Jewish language.And at first we couldn’t even understand what language she meant,because everyone knows what Yiddish is all about. But what isHebrew? This was unclear. It was in 1988. These things were still sorare then; that is, there were no announcements about the JewishEaster then; that is, everything was still underground.
First of all note the oxymoron – Jewish Easter – the usual reference of theRussian speakers to the Passover. But what is more important for us here is thebelief that one’s native language is the language of one’s ethnic group.
Ekaterina R., 24, immigrated in 1993 from Tashkent, Uzbekistan: A nurseby training, employed as a factory workerEkaterina: (About an encounter with an old acquaintance during a visit to
Tashkent after immigration) Well, she thumped her chest andkept saying that she was Jewish, and Hebrew was her nativelanguage. I say, ‘Well, well, go ahead, see you in Israel’. I say, ‘Tryand live a couple of years in Israel, or five years, like I did’, I say,‘then you will understand that the Russian language is more of anative language for you than the language you speak about. Forme Russian has remained Russian, although I don’t relate thelanguage to national issues.
Thumping one’s chest signifies that a speaker is anxious to prove that he/sheis right. Originally it meant that the speaker was ready to bet his life (Grigorievaet al., 2001: 37–39). Both Ekaterina and her friend had been baptised RussianOrthodox, yet the latter defines herself as Jewish, and even claimsHebrew to beher native language although it emerges from the interview that she cannot
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speak it at all.We also find belief that ethnicity determines one’s native languagein the interview of an ethnic Armenian, who claims that Armenian is her mothertongue, although she began to learn to speak it at age seven, but can neither readnorwrite it. We hear the samemotif in the stories of the Jews from the Caucasus.Some of them canbarely speak the Tat language, or only understandoral speech,yet they invariably refer to it as ‘our language’. The lack of correlation betweenhigh/low proficiency in a language and its perception as one’s mother tongue isa known phenomenon (Edwards, 1985: 110–113; Fishman, 1972: 104–105).
Linguistic naivete is found not only among laypersons; it also crops up in thework of government offices. One of our subjects, whose ex-husband is aRussian-speaker, was adopted as a child by an Azeri and a Ukrainian, and wasregistered as Ukrainian in Israel. This is how the interviewee describes herdivorce procedure.
Ekaterina N., 46 from Baku: An engineer by training, employed as acleanerEkaterina: Someone advised him he should say that he is Moslem …
And after he claimed he was a Moslem – nobody looked intohis passport there [in court] – everything was translated intoArabic. I was amused. I say, ‘What’s the use of translating forhim into Arabic?’
Interviewer: He doesn’t read Arabic, does he?
Ekaterina: If at all, translate into Turkish! And then they said to me thatthere are only two languages in Israel, Arabic and Hebrew.And if he is a Moslem, then, yes. But in fact, while he speaksat least a little bit of Hebrew, he doesn’t know Arabic at all.Only those words that are a little bit like Turkish. But then, Ialso know them. Yes, that’s how it was. That’s how it is here.
The issue of mother tongue is ideological. In Israel, for example, teachingHebrew as the mother tongue has always been closely related to passing on thenational ideology and values and the formation of national identity, whether tonative-born Israelis or to new immigrants. This has affected language teachingstrategies, although today the wisdom of this approach is being re-appraised(Spolsky & Shohamy, 1999: 65–94). Surprisingly, linguists are not immune to theconfusion between themother tongue and the language of ethnicity. Thus in herstudies of the Russian language abroad, Zemskaia (2001: 44), an influentialRussian scholar, limits her investigation to ethnic Russians and excludes ethnicGermans or Jews even if their first and home language is Russian.
The prestige and functionality of languages vary from one speech network toanother within the same speech community (Fishman, 1972: 98). Every immi-grant settling down in a new country consciouslyor subconsciously chooses oneof the two strategies in verbal behaviour: convergence, a speaker’s desire forsocial integration, or divergence, a speaker’s desire to promote social distance(Heinz, 2001;McCann &Higgins, 1990). In our material there are several storiesabout immigrants’ first attempts at convergence with the Hebrew-speakingmajority, followed at a later stage by a reverse strategy – divergence. Thus DanaL., a university student, was eager to look and sound like a true Israeli. She
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changed her first name, took private lessons to get rid of her Russian accent inHebrew, and changed her style in clothes; but when the goal was achieved andpeople could not recognise her as a ‘Russian’, she lost interest and drifted back toher Russian-speaking friends. Another student, Rosa Ch., was eager to findHebrew-speaking friends among her fellow-students, but only succeeded inbefriending a new immigrant fromBrazil,whose grandmotherwas from Russia.Mature adults also reported that in the beginning they were eager to mix withIsraelis. They wanted to understand their new compatriots’ way of life andvalues and enter desirable social circles. In addition, these ties were seen asmeans of improving their Hebrew.
Gaiane A., 77, immigrated in 1991 from Tashkent, Uzbekistan: ApensionerGaiane: (About the integration of the younger generations of her
family into Israeli society) I don’t know to what extent theywill assimilate. Nadia [Gaiane’s daughter-in-law] … Iremember she comes home and says, ‘That’s it. I understandHebrew and I don’t have to go to their parties any more’.
Interviewer: You’re kidding! (laughs)
Gaiane: ‘So, now’, she implied, ‘now I can choose acquaintancesaccording to my taste.’ And before that they would go outwhenever and wherever they were invited. And this was theright thing to do. The right thing to do, they needed thelanguage.
This sounds very calculating, and although other interviewees relating simi-lar experience showed more tact, all these utterances boil down to one thing.After the first period of euphoria, when the receiving society was excited at themass exodus of the Soviet Jews, and immigrants were moved by the heartywelcome of the old timers, both parties returned to their familiar networks. Forimmigrants this was also the beginning of separation of the functions of RussianandHebrew. Hebrew was assigned the role of the language ofwork and studies,and Russian was the language of home and leisure. Not only the middle-agedand the elderly acted like this;our young informants showedthe sametendency.
Elena A., 21, immigrated in 1995 from Makhachkala, Dagestan: Astudent at the University of Haifa (interview conducted by the student A.Sanina)Interviewer: I understand that you go or you would go to the theatre in
Russian and that you read Russian literature. So you don’tavoid Russian culture, the culture we absorbed there, do you?
Elena: Sure I don’t. And again, certainly, I read books in Russian. Itis not that I cannot read a book in Hebrew. It’s just that youread fiction to enjoy it; well, if I read a book in Hebrew, Imight enjoy it, aval [Hebrew for ‘but’] it won’t be the same. SoI don’t have proper understanding of the language yet. No, Idon’t have the same understanding of the language as I haveof Russian, because it is my native language, right? I still read
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books in Russian. In fact, I prefer to listen to music in Russian.And (pause) if I went to the theatre, I would choose Russian,that’s for sure.
Note that both the interviewer and the interviewee raised the favourite topicof the immigrants – Russian culture, of which the language is seen as the coreelement. In his book Imagined Communities,Andersonwrites about the sacral roleof languages: ‘Thegreat classical communities conceived of themselves as cosmi-cally central, through the medium of a sacred language linked to a superterres-trial order of power’ (1991: 13).
Smith (2002) claims that in a secular community culture inherits the sacralityof religion, and the language retains its role. This is particularly relevant for thepeople who grew up in communist societies. Brudny (1998: 15)maintains that inthe absence of a market economy and capital the most important power wassymbolic power, and intellectuals were regarded as crucial to the regime becauseof their role as creators of national symbols and myths.
The exaggerated loyalty to the culture and language of the ‘old country’ maylead to the ghettoisation of the community. As we have mentioned earlier, itworries Israeli society, and critical voices are heard within the community itself.An 18-year-old Master’s degree student, Shimon K., expresses indignation at‘thisRussiancommunity’ thatmakes no effort to integrate into Israeli society, buthas its own associations, hobby groups, and schools. He finds it appalling thatpeople are ‘deliberately trying to preserve Russian culture here’ and ‘don’t wantIsraeli culture’. But in the same interview Shimon, who is religious, says thatalthough all themembers of his family are fluent in Hebrew, they speak Russianathome.He reads fiction inRussianand says that forhimHebrew is the languageof religion. He regrets that his future children are unlikely to speak Russian; hedoes not expect to marry a Russian speaker, as so few of them are religious.
ConclusionOur aim has been to explore the mobilisation of language awareness in
members of a community brought up as monolinguals, and who found them-selves in a multilingual society. Our material confirms Preston’s conclusion thatthe details of language that non-linguists are aware of depend more on a varietyof sociocultural rather than strictly linguistic facts (Preston, 1996: 72). First thisrelates to the awareness that language is a status category. In the USSR Russiangave better access to economic resources and power, and the Jewish intelligen-tsia prided itself on knowing Russian better than ethnic Russians. The imperialattitude to minority languages and speakers of minority languages of the USSRhas been transferred to the linguistic situation in Israel, but now Russian, aminority language of Israel, is associatedwith a culture superior to the culture ofthe country’s majority.
Like all people in a bilingual situation, immigrants become aware of thespecialisation in function and valuation of language (see, for example, Hymes,1986:39;Lambert& Taylor, 1996).While Russian remains the chosen language ofinformal communications among adults,Hebrew and/or English are associatedwith formal settings and public spheres of social interaction. But these bound-aries are not rigid. Hebrew complements Russian in informal communications
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among the young, and Russian is increasingly used in formal settings, for exam-ple, in business, high-tech industries, and university research groups consistingof co-ethnics.
Immigrants’ narratives demonstrate both instrumental and symbolicapproaches to language. While proficiency in Hebrew and English is seen as avehicle of upward mobility, Russian is assigned symbolic values. All our adultinformants perceived it as the language in which they could realise the fullpotential of their personality, express emotions, and feel at ease. Yiddish andTat,but not Hebrew, on the other hand are valued as the heritage languages linkingFSU Jews to their historic roots.
Immigrants’memories of the initial, ‘mute’ period of life in Israel are chargedwith emotion. Predominantlymonolingual, often unfamiliarwith foreign travel,and hence never exposed to cultures outside the Soviet Union, the FSU immi-grants experienced the loss of ability to understand and to be understood as amajor component of the culture shock. The level of frustration was particularlyhigh in the intelligentsia. As Hodge and Kress remark, the socially powerful donot like to be ignorant, and the intellectually powerful do not like to be impotent(1979: 100). The loss of means of communicationwas regarded by the immigrantintellectuals as a barrier to using their knowledge and their intellectual andprofessional abilities, and therefore as an obstacle to attaining the desired socialstatus.
The biographical method applied in this study proved useful in tracing theevolution of language attitudesamongthe FSU immigrants.Previously taken forgranted, the mother tongue acquired a symbolic value. Forgotten or neglected,Yiddish came to be associated with the lost ancestry. Idealisation of Hebrew,typical of the first period of immigration, gave way to its perception as thelanguage of survival. The narratives clearly showed a complex interplay ofsymbolic and instrumental approaches to language.
CorrespondenceAny correspondence should be directed to Dr Maria N. Yelenevskaya,
Department of Humanities and Arts, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology,Technion City, Haifa 3200, Israel ([email protected]).
Note1. Sixteen interviews were conducted and put at our disposal for analysis by the
students of the University of Haifa: Hanna Shmulian, Svetlana Berenshtein, MarinaEl-KayamandAlina Sanina. The rest of the interviewswere conducted by the authors.
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