Content uploaded by Galia Plotkin Amrami
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Galia Plotkin Amrami
Content may be subject to copyright.
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
This article was downloaded by:
[Tel Aviv University]
On:
20 November 2008
Access details:
Access Details: [subscription number 792067588]
Publisher
Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,
37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Social Identities
Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713445719
From 'Russianness' to 'Israeliness' through the landscape of the soul:
therapeutic discourse in the practice of immigrant absorption in Israel with
'Russian' adolescents
Galia Plotkin-Amrami
a
a
The Porter School of Cultural Studies and The Cohn Institute for the History and the Philosophy of Sciences
and Ideas, Tel-Aviv University, Israel
Online Publication Date: 01 November 2008
To cite this Article Plotkin-Amrami, Galia(2008)'From 'Russianness' to 'Israeliness' through the landscape of the soul: therapeutic
discourse in the practice of immigrant absorption in Israel with 'Russian' adolescents',Social Identities,14:6,739 — 761
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/13504630802462869
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13504630802462869
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf
This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or
systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or
distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents
will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses
should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss,
actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly
or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
From ‘Russianness’ to ‘Israeliness’ through the landscape of the soul:
therapeutic discourse in the practice of immigrant absorption in Israel with
‘Russian’ adolescents
Galia Plotkin-Amrami*
The Porter School of Cultural Studies and The Cohn Institute for the History and the Philosophy of
Sciences and Ideas, Tel-Aviv University, Israel
(Received 13 March 2008; final form 5 July 2008)
This article explores the increasing incorporation of professional therapeutic knowledge
and practices into the state-led apparatus of absorption of new immigrants in Israel.
Singling out this phenomenon is the seemingly unexpected alliance between the
therapeutic ethos, which leans on individualist, a-national and universal values, and
state-led absorption practices, based on a Zionist, collectivist and local ethos. According
to the Zionist ethos, the newcomer ‘returning to an historical homeland’ is expected to
become part of a territorially bounded collective entity and to adopt a new national
identity that will predominate over other identities. The therapeutic ethos undermines
moral authorities promoting collective redemption through identification with commu-
nity goals and challenges a patronizing attitude towards new immigrants. Analysing the
rhetoric and practice of Na’aleh a decade-and-a-half-old project for adolescents
immigrating from the former Soviet Union, characterized by a ‘therapeutic absorption
policy’, this article examines the meaning of ‘therapeutic’ absorption in shaping a new
Israeli citizen within the current social context. In order to clarify the historical
uniqueness of this phenomenon, Na’aleh’s absorption paradigm is compared to Youth
Aliyah the project that absorbed youngsters in a distinctly different ideological period
of Israeli history (early 1940s), particularly with regard to the status of Zionism. A locus
of comparison is the perceptions of the absorbing personnel and the absorbed
immigrants in both ventures. The main claim of this article is that the psychologizing
of the absorption apparatus both challenges and fortifies the traditional role of statist
Zionism under global, postmodern conditions, typified by the erosion of the nation-state
and questioning the moral status of its constitutive ethos. Therapeutic absorption
transforms the newcomer into the object of therapeutic intervention rather than
assimilative education. However, it simultaneously enables the ‘Russian’ teenagers from
a ‘pre-therapeutic society’ to internalize a ‘therapeutic habitus’, which grants them the
skills and competency to become a ‘local’ and to attain symbolic goods significant in
their new social environment. Therapeutic personnel, characterized by emotional skills
and cultural proximity to the absorbed pupils, rather than ideological identification with
Zionist project, serve as a newer version of traditional agents of Israeli socialization, by
virtue of their own unique course of absorption in Israel that blends the process of
‘becoming Israeli’ with socialization into a professional/therapeutic culture.
Keywords: therapeutic discourse; immigration; identity construction; nationalism
*Email: plotking@post.tau.ac.il
Social Identities
Vol. 14, No. 6, November 2008, 739761
ISSN 1350-4630 print/ISSN 1363-0296 online
# 2008 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13504630802462869
http://www.informaworld.com
Downloaded By: [Tel Aviv University] At: 20:45 20 November 2008
Reflective introduction: Autographical past and ethnographic present
Upon arrival from the Former Soviet Union (FSU), I became a ‘new immigrant’ who
would undergo a process of absorption in Israel. Under this status, I was subject to various
rituals of transition aimed at connecting us, new immigrants, to the national myths
informing the Israeli collective consciousness. Hebrew studies, visits to sites of historical
significance and various other programs were meant to mold the identities of the
immigrants to match characteristics of the local collective. Hence, I was exposed to the
ideological meaning of the concept ‘Aliyah’ (literally meaning ‘to ascend’)asa‘return to
the historical homeland’.
1
This included anticipation that the immigrant will ‘become an
Israeli’ and adopt a new national identity that will predominate over other identities
(Lomski-Feder & Rapoport, 2001). After several years, I, in turn, became part of the
immigration absorption mechanism in Israel. By virtue of my therapeutic training,
acquired at an Israeli university, I was employed by various agencies organizing absorption
programs for new immigrants. The activities were ‘therapeutic’, both in their goals and
their methods support groups and workshops, led by professionals from a wide range of
therapeutic professions, aimed at helping ease the emotional adjustment of new
immigrants. I felt that my academic training as a therapist and my professional experience
in the treatment of new immigrants marked another milestone in my own absorption into
Israeli society. It enabled me to acquire the psychotherapeutic language and the skills
needed to employ it. This language not only became part of my professional tool-kit, as a
group facilitator and educational advisor, but also formed the interpretive framework that
allowed me to connect with cultural identities that were new to me, as a native of the FSU,
but are an integral part of the mosaic of Israeli identities, largely based on a therapeutic
ethos.
This article has been written in an attempt to explore a personal Israeli history outside
the bounds of a professional-therapeutic paradigm; to consider the process of ‘becoming
Israeli’ in terms of an encounter with therapeutic discourse, and the transformation of this
discourse into a meaningful one. The article aims at analysing the meaning of the adoption
of therapeutic knowledge and practices by State agencies responsible for the absorption of
new immigrants. It does so by turning both absorbing and absorbed selves into subjects of
anthropological research. In other words, to analyse the contemporary practices of the
absorption, I have enlisted my own narrative of personal absorption, starting from the
status of an absorbed person, on through the status of absorbing personnel, identified with
the therapeutic profession. The reflective maneuver of an encounter between the
autobiographical past and the ethnographical present enables an escape from the
dichotomy existing between the objective description and the subjective experience of
the researcher. This dichotomy embodies the structural paradox of anthropological
discourse that, on the one hand, posits the researcher’s experience as central to the process
of knowledge production and, on the other hand, is encumbered by non-narrative,
positivist scientific concepts (Rabinow, 1977). In the encounter between various time axes,
that of the writer and that of his/her subject (Fabian, 1983), I see a reflective act that
positions the research object’s present within the writer’s past and connects emerging
insights in the process of ethnographic knowledge production with moments of discovery
and experiences on an autobiographical timeline. Reflective thinking, as a methodological
tool, grants the power of explanation to the researcher’s untold personal history.
However, it should be noted that my hybrid role in the field as a product and agent of
Israeli absorption policy and as a researcher, carries with it certain contradictions.
2
As
several authors show, participant observation often requires researchers to use their social
740 G. Plotkin-Amrami
Downloaded By: [Tel Aviv University] At: 20:45 20 November 2008
selves as their primary research tool (Powdermaker; Stacey; Kaplan Daniel; Krieger;
Ganguly-Scrase as cited in Hume & Mulcock, 2004, p. xvii). However, for many
ethnographers, ‘drawing boundaries between the private and preexisting selves that they
bring with them to the field and the researcher selves that they must develop once they
arrive is constantly confronting’ (Hume & Mulcock, 2004, p. xvii). Therefore, using the
autobiographical narrative as an ethnographic tool providing insight into the field of
research requires that I be constantly aware of my ability to draw boundaries between my
preexisting and researcher selves, in order to critically reflect the contemporary practice of
immigrant absorption. However, it also allows the field of research to be distinguished
from the autobiographical narrative and told as its own story, peopled by absorbing
therapeutic personnel and the young people they are absorbing.
The ‘Na’aleh’ project
the arena of encounter between the Zionist and therapeutic ethos
Over the past two decades, psychologizing the practices of absorbing newcomers in Israel
appears to be an accelerating trend. Therapeutic work with various immigrant populations
has become a particularly flourishing field since the onset of a massive wave of
immigration from the former Soviet Union, at the beginning of the 1990s. Various
professional agencies develop and conduct workshops and support groups for immigrants
on topics such as ‘inter-cultural gaps’, ‘the psychology of transition’, ‘inter-personal
communications skills’ or ‘encountering the different’. It is nearly impossible nowadays to
find a State agency dealing with absorbing immigrants that does not employ therapeutic
practitioners to some extent. Moreover, the agencies active in Jewish communities in the
FSU also extensively utilize therapeutic personnel. Therapeutic tools are enlisted not only
for absorption in Israel; they are also used to select and prepare potential immigrants for
immigration, while they still reside in the diaspora.
These developments indicate the appearance of a new immigration narrative, linking
the state of immigration with the need for therapeutic intervention. This narrative assumes
the transformation of the absorbed immigrant, the traditional object of Zionist
socialization, into an object of professional-therapeutic theory and practice. However,
the utilization of social workers, pedagogues, mental health practitioners and social
scientists in the absorption of various groups of newcomers is not a new phenomenon in
Israel. From the earliest stages of its existence, the State of Israel has been deeply involved
in regulating the demographic structure and defining the boundaries of the Israeli national
collective through different actions, among them the selection and the socialization of
newcomers.
3
Israel’s early policy of absorption was based on the modernist melting pot
vision and assimilation model aimed to ‘tailor’ the new comer to fit the ideal type of the
New Modern Israeli Jew (Mizrachi, 2004). In general, the dominant narrative of the
immigration and the absorption rested on the perception of Aliya as an upward-directional
movement towards progress, liberation and national rehabilitation. This narrative was a
part of a widespread belief that viewed the immigration to Israel as a unique phenomenon,
because ‘Jews were viewed as strangers in their countries of origin and sought to find a new
home by means of migration’ (Benski & Markowich, as cited in Shuval & Leshem, 1998,
p.10).
The contemporary narrative of the immigration, developed in response to immigration
waves to Western countries in the 1980s1990s, implies a different conception of the Aliyah
to Israel. This narrative associated Aliya with stress and trauma, rather then individual and
collective redemption. Therefore, it challenges the notion of Israel’s uniqueness with regard
to immigration and the moral status of Zionism. Within the context of absorption
Social Identities 741
Downloaded By: [Tel Aviv University] At: 20:45 20 November 2008
practices oriented towards transforming the newcomer’s identity into an Israeli one, the
therapeutic orientation has the potential, at least theoretically, to create tension between
the conflicting demands of the Zionist ethos, on the one hand, and the therapeutic ethos,
on the other.
4
While, the Zionist ethos is based on an affinity with place (Gurevich & Eran, 1991),
with the territorial borders of a nation-state, the therapeutic ethos, by comparison, is
perceived as universal, belonging to Western culture.
5
Professionals who promote it are
characterized by a ‘culture of critical discourse’ that experiences itself as distant from
particular historical locality (Gouldner, 1979). The Zionist ethos poses moral imperatives
to every Israeli-Jew, positing the adoption of a cohesive, enlisted, ascetic, unifying national
identity (Ram & Yiftachel, 1999). The therapeutic ethos, in contrast, empowers the
narrative of personal identity that rests more on intimacy than on connection with stable
historic communities and normative frameworks (Illouz, 1997). The therapeutic ethos
undermines moral authorities promoting collective redemption through identification with
community goals (Rieff, 1996).
These tensions raise the question of how the two ethos, the local and the collective, on
the one hand, and the universal and the individual, on the other, manage to co-exist within
the framework of a project aimed to design the passage rites of immigrants into
‘Israeliness’, and on what cultural soil did this alliance develop?
A fascinating field for examining these questions can be found in the Na’aleh (Noar
Oleh Liphney Horim Immigrant Youths Before their Parents) project. This project was
implemented in 19921993 by the government of Israel, through the Ministry of
Education. Its declared aim was to
bring Jewish youths, who have immigration rights under the Law of Return, to high school
studies in Israel, where they would attain a matriculation certificate along with the formulation
of a Jewish, Zionist identity. This, in the hope that they would naturalize, no later than their
senior year of high school and become useful citizens in the State of Israel.
6
The beginning of the Na’aleh project coincided with the second big wave of
immigration from the Former Soviet Union (19891996) (the first one was in the 1970s).
Therefore the project’s first and major target group, during the 1990s, was adolescents from
the FSU.
7
This wave of immigrants is depicted, by scholars, as a potentially mobile group.
8
They are also defined as a linguistic-cultural unit (Kimmerling, 2004) as they are strongly
identified with Russian culture and identity (Ben-Rafael, Olshtain, & Geijst, 1998;
Kimmerling, 2004).
9
Kimmerling characterized this wave of immigrants as pioneers of
the model of the ‘new Israeli man’ (Kimmerling, 2004, p. 412), which is based on ethno-
cultural pluralism, rather than a product of the ‘melting pot’ policy aimed to produce a
unified type. This model may be associated with the characteristics of the FSU immigrants,
stated above. However, according to the author, the ‘Russian-speaking immigrants’ entered
a society that placed more emphasis on individualistic values and was characterized by a
reduced involvement of the State in individual and familial matters (Kimmerling, 2004).
The Na’aleh project illustrates, as I intend to show, this ideological shift within the
Israeli Society. It does so by virtue of the ‘policy of therapeutic absorption’ employed by its
founders. The combination of Na’aleh’s ideological mandate as a national project of the
absorption of newcomers, along with its ‘therapeutic policy of absorption’ intended ‘to
grant a sense of belonging, identity, backing and support’ (Bendes-Ya’akov & Friedman,
1996, p. 17) to the absorbed pupils, turns it into a unique arena for a complex and dynamic
encounter between the Zionist ethos and the therapeutic ethos.
742 G. Plotkin-Amrami
Downloaded By: [Tel Aviv University] At: 20:45 20 November 2008
On the one hand, one can easily discern the signs of the Zionist ethos in the founding
ideas of the original architects of the project. First, they fashioned an image of the pupil as
a future Israeli citizen, ‘destined to attain a recognized matriculation certificate ... at a
level that would allow direct entry into the institutes of higher education’ (Bendes-Ya’akov
& Friedman, 2000, p. 19), while forming a Jewish, Zionist identity by ‘granting Jewish/
Israeli education at its best’ (Bendes-Ya’akov & Friedman, 2000, p. 18). Second, they
structure hierarchical relations between the absorbers and the absorbed through the use of
a social and historical context in FSU countries and the presentation of Na’aleh as a rescue
project, intended to meet the ‘true needs’ of its pupils and to allow them to progress via the
prestigious education they will receive in Israel:
The parents sought to extricate their children from distress, mainly financial, and from a state
of uncertainty that continued to grow in the CIS at that time. They wanted to enable them to
receive education at the highest level .... (Bendes-Ya’akov & Friedman, 2000, p. 5)
The presentation of Na’aleh as a prestigious learning project, based on stringent
criteria for accepting candidates,
10
gave it the status of a progressive, modern project; a
status based on the messianic potential of the Zionist ethos as a modern ethos that
promises collective-universal, national redemption alongside progress and liberation.
However, the therapeutic ethos also gradually penetrated the absorption apparatus of
Na’aleh and determined the basic assumptions of its implementers:
The basic assumption of partners in the Na’aleh project focused on the major influence of
separating children from their parents at adolescence and to the anticipated cultural shock in
the transition from the FSU to Israel ... therefore, a therapeutic absorption policy was
planned and support and accompaniment were provided throughout the project. (Bendes-
Ya’akov & Friedman 2000, p. 6)
The recognition of the need for supporting the pupil serves as one of the major
components of the therapeutic absorption policy upheld by the directors of Na’aleh. The
role of representative parents, adopted in light of the lack of the pupils’ real parents in
Israel, legitimized granting the absorbed pupil ‘all the support s/he needs’ with the primary
and main component of this support being ‘emotional and psychological’.
11
The amount
of support provided, or the ability of the organization to maximize what was defined as the
inherent needs of the pupil, determined the ‘nature and quality of care’
12
granted the
pupils:
Ultimately, it’s the amount of people and the amount of attention that the organization can
give; the frequency of visits necessary for the caretaker to really be connected with the
children ... as much support as possible. (Personal communication with a psychologist
employed by Na’aleh, January, 2001)
Hence, Na’aleh organized the project of accompanying the absorption of the pupils in
Israel with the help of two professional units a Therapy Unit and a Pedagogical Unit.
These units, staffed by therapeutic professionals, are defined in terms borrowed from the
world of psychotherapy (empowerment, support, help in coping, etc.) and they employ
psychotherapeutic techniques (individual treatment, counseling and group facilitation).
The Therapy Unit
treat the Na’aleh students and help them deal with mental and emotional pain ... The unit has
two main goals: The first is to operate as a national psychological outpatient center for
NAALE’s young men and women, and the second is to be a supervision and support
framework for the educational staff working with NAALE groups at various locations.
(Therapy Unit, 2008)
Social Identities 743
Downloaded By: [Tel Aviv University] At: 20:45 20 November 2008
The aim of the educational counselors is to
build an additional support circle for the NAALE students, who are in Israel without their
parents and thus help them with personal and group educational process they are going
through. This support will consist in giving the students an increased ability to face different
situations affecting the students on a case by case basis, and in maintaining an educational
dialog with the teams. (Pedagogical Supervision at Na’aleh, 2008)
Na’aleh pupils receive an enlarged package of therapeutic services, as compared with
their peers in regular Israeli educational institutions (the ‘normative population’). They
receive educational and psychological support, both individual and group-based, given by
professionals from a wide spectrum of therapeutic fields, usually new immigrants
themselves with ‘in-depth familiarity with the cultural world where the pupils originated’
(Educational supervision and the informal education, 2001). All pupils attend, on a regular
basis (12 weekly), group sessions conducted by practitioners from the educational unit
social workers, group facilitators, educational counselors or art-therapists. The psycholo-
gical counselors are also generally available to all students. The structure of the treatment
system allows for the Na’aleh student, in addition to group support, to receive individual
relatively short-term therapeutic support from the Na’aleh psychologist working with his/
her school, or long-term therapy in therapeutic stations located outside the school.
Generally speaking, the mental state of every student is known to the Na’aleh therapeutic
personnel, either through direct interaction or as the subject of discussion in the
supervisionary sessions given to the absorbing teams by the Na’aleh therapeutic personnel
that accompanies the absorption process.
Once the therapeutic paradigm becomes the driving paradigm in the immigrant’s
absorption process, as it does in Na’aleh, it can undermine the hierarchy established
between the absorbers and the absorbed embodied in the Zionist ethos and can ‘empty’ the
process of Israeli socialization of its local and collective content. As a patronizing attitude
towards the new immigrants is perceived, in the therapeutic paradigm, being out of synch
with the professional values of therapeutic personnel:
We believe that the therapist must beware of referring to the patient with a condescending
attitude that grants priority to local norms that the immigrant must learn and identify with. It
is not the therapist’s role to recommend which values are good for the patient and which s/he
should abandon. The therapist’s professional training does not prepare him/her for this task.
(Dresnin & Springman, 2000, p. 139)
This article attempts to decipher the meaning of therapeutic absorption in constructing
and shaping a new Israeli citizen. I wish to examine how the new immigrant, currently
absorbed in Israel, appears to be an object of therapeutic discourse, while his/her absorber
is considered as having professional therapeutic skills, and what is the socializing effect of
therapeutic knowledge and praxis, within the current Israeli cultural context. In order to
further clarify the historical uniqueness of this phenomenon and to map out the conditions
that created an affinity between therapeutic discourse and the discourse of national
identity through its concomitant practices, I would like to compare the perceptions of the
‘absorber’ and ‘absorbed’ focused upon in the Na’aleh discussions with the parallel issues
of the Youth Aliyah at its onset (the late 1930s). The Youth Aliyah serves as an interesting
case for comparison as it also absorbed youngsters without their parents. However, the two
projects operated in two ideologically distinctive periods of Israeli history, particularly with
regard to the status of Zionism: Na’aleh developed in a period of global post-modern
tendencies, while the Youth Aliyah developed during the era of the modernization of
Israel.
13
Although the two projects are different in their official goals and the
744 G. Plotkin-Amrami
Downloaded By: [Tel Aviv University] At: 20:45 20 November 2008
characteristics of the youngsters being absorbed into Israeli society,
14
I believe that the
comparison between the paradigms of immigration and absorption that characterizes both
ventures provide a powerful framework for understanding the emergence of the
contemporary therapeutic orientation within the absorption mechanism. Through this
comparison we will be able to determine whether the contemporary therapeutic
orientation, in fact, shattered the ‘ideological continuity’ that characterized the Youth
Aliyah throughout its existence (Gottesman, 1987), or whether it allowed statist Zionism
to carry out its traditional role under global, post-modern conditions typified by the
questioning of the moral status of its constitutive ethos the Zionist ethos.
Based on contemporary psychological articles in the field of immigration and
absorption, organizational documents characterizing Na’aleh’s activities and research on
Na’aleh and Youth Aliyah, in-depth interviews with Na’aleh professionals concerning the
counseling practices they employed in the project, as well as the personal experience of the
author, who worked for Na’aleh from 19982000, I will ask:
a. How is the Russian adolescent immigrant currently absorbed in Israel, conceptua-
lized and treated as an object of therapeutic practice? How is the conceptualization
in the Na’aleh era different from that of the Youth Aliyah era at its inception?
b. What are the characteristics of Na’aleh’s therapeutic absorbing personnel and how
have their roles been transformed in comparison to the roles of their counterparts at
Youth Aliyah at its inception?
c. How do therapeutic interventions, implemented during the process of absorbing
youths by Na’aleh, serve as practices of shaping the identity of the ‘Russian’
immigrant and what is their socializing effect?
d. How does the personal immigration biography of the therapeutic absorbers at
Na’aleh define the socializing effect of psychological knowledge, in the context of
immigration, and carve out their roles as current day agents of Israeli socialization?
The absorbed teenagers: from Zionist socialization to therapeutic intervention
Michel Foucault (1972) treats discourses ‘as practices that systematically form the objects
of which they speak’ (Foucault, 1972, p. 49). He suggests mapping out the ‘surfaces of
emergence’ (p. 41) of the objects of discourse by indicating how a particular discourse
‘finds a way of limiting its domain, of defining what it is talking about, of giving it the
status of an object and therefore of making it manifest, nameable, and describable’ (p.41).
How does the new immigrant, a traditional object of Zionist socialization, become an
object of therapeutic theory and practice within a particular social context? Or, in other
words, what is the psychological story of immigration that has become one of the founding
narratives of today’s policy of immigrant absorption in Israel, at least within the Na’aleh
project?
At first the immigrant feels lonely and helpless; s/he is dejected in light of all s/he has lost and
frightened of the unknown. The second stage is a manic one the immigrant denies and
represses the very fact that a change has occurred in his/her life or takes an opposite stance.
S/he claims that what was lost was of little value and exaggerates the advantages of the new
situation, in order to ease his/her adjustment to the new environment. The third stage involves
nostalgia and sorrow and even a sense of depression. The immigrant recognizes the feelings
s/he has repressed and the pain of the world that has been lost. Alongside yearnings and
sorrow, s/he begins to internalize elements of the new culture, and there is an increasing
interaction between his/her inner and outer worlds. At the fourth stage, the immigrant retrieves
the ability to enjoy and to plan for the future. S/he stops idealizing the world s/he has left and
Social Identities 745
Downloaded By: [Tel Aviv University] At: 20:45 20 November 2008
sees it as it was. S/he stops mourning what has been lost and combines the culture of origin
with the new culture. (Grinberg & Grinberg as cited in Bendes-Ya’akov & Friedman, 2000)
The above description is one of many, based on multi-stage psychological models,
characterized by the conceptualization of the process of immigration with the help of
mental indicators. The therapeutic paradigm conceives of the immigration situation as
pathogenic, influencing the psyche, i.e. creating psychological vulnerability. In a
psychological paradigm, immigration is perceived as a complex mental process that
temporarily disrupts the mental balance of the immigrant. This process revolves around
loss and the consequent damage to self image (Mirsky & Prawer, 1992). During a process
of immigration, ‘it is highly probable that mental distress will occur due to the need to cope
with cultural change’ (Bendes-Ya’akov & Friedman, 2000, p. 11). This process can ‘trigger
various anxieties and even lead to developmental regression’ (p. 9).
This attitude can be supported by statements made in the interviews by the psychological
and educational counselors, employed by Na’aleh:
It’s very difficult, we construct a system and tell people to come, but it’s very hard, the children
need someone to help them get through these years. (Personal communication with a
psychologist employed by Na’aleh, April, 2001)
Aliyah is a very serious crisis; it has all kinds of side effects that must be prevented ...
(Personal communication with a psychologist employed by Na’aleh, February, 2001)
It’s the disintegration of someone who was already unhealthy; it’s a psychotic state, a
personality disorder, with severe neurotic symptoms, dysfunctions, grave difficulties in the
family system, accelerated maturation; something is lost. (Personal communication with a
psychologist employed by Na’aleh, April, 2001)
The state of the pupil, who has been absorbed by Na’aleh, is even more difficult than that
of the ‘regular’ immigrant (Ben-Shalom & Hornshik, 2000), due to the combination of a
number of factors, perceived as pathogenic, even without the influence of immigration
adolescence, separation from parents and living under dormitory conditions: ‘Separation
from the parents, on one hand, and on the other hand, the ability to function in a group,
rather than a family ... it’s clearly a crisis state’ (personal communication with a
psychologist employed by Na’aleh, February, 2001). Psychological articles do indeed refer
to teenagers as an ‘at-risk’ population. They emphasize the ‘loss of commonly structured
communication cues and the impoverishment of ego powers’ (Ben-Shalom & Hornshik,
2000, p. 200) that stem from ‘double marginality’ both inter-generational and inter-cultural
(Levin as cited in Bendes-Ya’akov & Friedman, 2000). The pathogenic influences of the
immigration process are presented in the therapeutic paradigm as universal and normative,
that is
experienced by every individual who transfers from one culture to another ... inevitable and
temporary, stemming more from the dramatic change of external environment than from the
personal emotional problems of the immigrant. (Mirsky & Prawer, 1999, p. 72)
Na’aleh’s absorption policy rests on assuming the normative nature of the pathogenic effects
of immigration, resulting in vulnerability even of those pupils with ‘normative per-
sonalities’: ‘ ... the Na’aleh program creates a situation of pressure and crisis, even amongst
the strongest pupils of normal personality’ (Bendes-Ya’akov & Friedman, 2006, p. 6).
An analysis of psychological writings about immigration allows us to identify additional
theoretical principles for defining immigrants as objects of therapeutic discourse. In
psychological models of immigrant adaptation, an analytic distinction is made between
746 G. Plotkin-Amrami
Downloaded By: [Tel Aviv University] At: 20:45 20 November 2008
two dimensions, conceptualized differently by various researchers. The personal-inner
dimension is distinct from the external-social dimension (Taft as cited in Ben-Shalom &
Hornshik, 2000) as is objective versus subjective adaptation (Antonovsky & Katz as cited in
Bendes-Ya’akov & Friedman, 2000; Scott & Scott, 1989). The distinction has also been
termed the difference between psychological and social-cultural adjustment (Kennedy as
cited in Sokolov, 1996; Searle & Ward, 1990). The social-cultural dimension focuses on the
interaction between the individual and social institutions and in the cultural norms of the
designated country (Searle & Ward, 1990), whereas the psychological dimension refers to
changes on an intra-personal level (Sokolov, 1996). Despite the distinction, both dimensions
are connected as there is a positive correlation between ‘psychological well being’ and ‘social
adaptation’. It seems that the emotional/subjective dimension, as predictor of the
immigrant’s social adaptation, serves as the theoretical rationale for therapeutic investment
in the ‘soul’ of the immigrant as an impetus for his/her successful adaptation.
In summary, it may be stated that conceptualizing immigration as a pathogenic factor
establishes the immigrant population as mentally vulnerable or a ‘population at-risk’
(Furedi, 2004). Normalizing and universalizing the pathogenic effect of immigration and
conceptualizing the absorption process according to subjective intra-psychic standards can
be perceived as the ‘statements’ of a discourse (Foucault, 1972) that defines the absorbed
immigrant as an object of discourse, requiring analysis, categorization, explanation and
treatment.
Psychological conceptualizations of the immigrant seem logical or ‘thinkable’
15
within
the current Israeli cultural context. In order to demonstrate their historical relativity, one
should examine how the same object was defined in another period of Israeli history.
Therefore, I would like to address the perceptions of a pupil absorbed by Youth Aliyah
during the 1940s, in order to establish the two poles of the developmental continuum, from
the Youth Aliyah to Na’aleh, and to highlight the differences between the two eras and the
assumptions they bred.
During the formative stages of the immigrant absorption enterprise, Youth Aliyah
pupils were mainly defined as ‘normal’, despite the pathogenic nature of the environment
they hailed from:
... almost any child ... may be defined as ‘normal’. It should be noted that among the
‘normal’ children handled by Youth Aliyah were thousands of refugees from pre-war
Germany, remnants of the death camps ... and other victims of circumstance whose early
environment was dismally, often grotesquely pathogenic. (Wollins, 1971, p. 9)
The harsh experiences undergone by the pupils were undoubtedly considered as
‘burdensome’, but not for all. Rather, it was for the few who had ‘shaky characters’,as
described by the first social worker of Youth Aliyah:
It should not be surprising if those of shaky character are not able to meet requirements. The
bothersome experiences of immigration and of persecution are much harder for these youths
than for normal youths. By and large they had to part from their families long before they
made Aliyah. The father remains somewhere in the world, or in a concentration camp, the
mother in one of the refugee ships sailing without destination and younger brothers and sister,
in the arena of war or detention camps. Entry into Israel constituted a complete revolution for
them ... This difficult process for some Youth Aliyah pupils, made for difficult mental
reactions. (Straus-Vigert, 1941, p. 333)
Moreover, Youth Aliyah began with an assumption opposite to the therapeutic
assumptions of Na’aleh, according to which ‘the changes in the lives of the young people
Social Identities 747
Downloaded By: [Tel Aviv University] At: 20:45 20 November 2008
and in goals suitable for teenagers, play a weighty role in coping with a reality of separation,
on the one hand, and of rooting, on the other’ (Gottesman, 1987, p. 118).
The Youth Aliyah platform reduces the importance of therapeutic action and
aggrandizes the significance of educational aspects, further widening its authority by
granting to education additional therapeutic-rehabilitation functions:
Education heals and rehabilitates: mental rehabilitation and the restoration of self-respect for
youths who have been persecuted, despised and torn asunder from their roots is the by-product
of an educational process and not of a direct therapeutic-rehabilitative act. (Gottesman, 1987,
p. 118)
These statements are important for they enable us to gain an understanding of the
driving paradigm of the Youth Aliyah policy makers. As Gottesman worked as a
counselor, educator and inspector for many years in the Youth Aliyah program and later
headed the program, they give us an insider’s view of the project and its motivation.
16
Yet,
this is not to say that the Youth Aliyah was not attentive to the mental and physical needs
of its young immigrants. This attentiveness was embodied in the careful selection process
prior to immigration. The Youth Aliyah established severe selection procedures for
potential students.
17
The screening criteria became even stricter with the rise of the Nazi
party to power, as Zionism was no longer the only motivation for immigrating to Israel
(Shapiro, 1942). The young immigrants who displayed mental problems after immigrating
to Israel, were addressed through the central medical care system that was developed ‘to
oversee all the health related issues regarding the young pupils’, including cases of mental
illness, such as ‘teen-madness’ (Shapiro & Noak, 1941, pp. 328329).
However, the therapeutic attentiveness to the mental well-being of the Youth Aliyah
pupils was motivated by collective national interests, rather than individual needs of the
pupils. The realization of the individual needs of the pupils in Youth Aliyah could only be
met as part of the needs of the collective.
According to Youth Aliyah, there was not and could not be a conflict between individual
personality development and a social education that aims at achieving collective goals. On the
contrary, the teenage pupil’s personality would be fully realized together with the realisation of
social goals. (Gottesman 1987, p. 40)
Accordingly, the guiding principle for selecting candidates, throughout the Youth Aliyah
project, was achieving ‘the goal of our national resurrection’:
We were duty bound to bring strong and healthy youths, whose future role was to work the
land and be able to overcome the harsh living conditions they would face. This ideal
necessitated rigorous physical and mental screenings ... and the enterprise [Youth Aliyah] as a
whole wanted these immigrants to have high mental and physical level ... the goal of our
national resurrection required that we immigrate strong and healthy abilities. (Shapiro &
Noak, 1941, p. 327)
The prevalence of the collective goals diminished the traditional role of psychotherapy
focusing on the individual self.
18
Within this ideological framework the mental vulner-
ability of those adolescents, who made Aliyah, could not be perceived in terms of a
common universal state, a kind of indicator for normal processes of absorption. Rather, it
was perceived as relating to ‘rare isolated cases’ (Straus-Vigert, 1941) and therefore could
not be translated into an actual therapeutic absorption policy as it functions today.
Moreover, mental vulnerability was associated with the pre-immigration state of the
immigrated pupils, namely, the Nazi persecution or the death of their parents, rather than
748 G. Plotkin-Amrami
Downloaded By: [Tel Aviv University] At: 20:45 20 November 2008
with the act of Aliyah itself. The very act of Aliyah to the Jewish State was perceived as
having in and of itself therapeutic powers to cure the illnesses of the Jewish diaspora:
... there was a tendency, which still lingers on today, to place exaggerated faith in the
therapeutic powers of the Jewish State as such. (Palgi, 1962)
It would seem, therefore, that the beginning of Israeli modernization bred a perception
of the absorbed pupil essentially different from current perceptions. Immigration was
generally not considered a factor that could harm the mental health of those ‘strong’
youths, and only ‘certain types’ with a ‘shaky character’ were perceived as being vulnerable.
For such a ‘normative’ population, these experiences were even considered more
strengthening than pathogenic. The emphasis in the image of the teenager absorbed
within the framework of Youth Aliyah, was not on his mental vulnerability or emotional
adjustment by ‘therapeutic absorption’, but on his spiritual fortitude, and the concomitant
power of ideological education as an ‘complete, exclusive answer to the problematic nature
of reality as experienced by the pupil’ (Gottesman, 1987, p. 127).
Giving preference to educational, as opposed to therapeutic acts, is essentially an
ideological position of an enterprise that defined its dominant principle as ‘ideological-
national’ rather than ‘philanthropic-rehabilitative’ (Shapiro & Noak, 1941, p. 327). Such an
enterprise could flourish in an Israeli historical-cultural reality, in which the Zionist ethos
was perceived as the universal moral authority. Therefore, any intervention made with
regard to pupils in the course of selection and absorption was directed at the collective goal
of national renewal, constructing the connection between ‘the true needs of Israeli children
and the historic needs of the people of Israel and the State of Israel’ (Gottesman, 1987, p.
42). The moral status of the Zionist ethos, at the beginning of Israeli modernization,
allowed the founders of the Youth Aliyah enterprise to represent national vision as the
ultimate solution for the pupil’s absorption.
The Na’aleh project developed within post-modern global conditions, in which Israeli
ideological society takes an ironic view of own founding myths (Gurevitch, 1998) and
decries absolute commitment to social frameworks in favor of values of self-realization
(Aviram, 1997). It is characterized by a transformation of the relationship between the
individual and society, as compared to modern systems that dictated the superiority of
social needs (Yogev, 2001), and lacks faith in values and truisms based on objective and
universal truths, preferring relativistic, pluralistic perceptions (Aloni, 1997). Such a reality
favors the growth of a ‘therapeutic absorption policy’, based on a distinction between the
needs of the individual and the needs of the nation. Contemporary therapeutic ethos
decries the assimilative stance taken by absorbers as ‘authoritative’ or ‘anachronistic’:
Getting carried away by ‘Israeli superiority’ can stem from a latent assumption on the part of
the therapist that the conditions for integrating and succeeding in Israeli society are the re-
fashioning of ‘foreign’ world views, values and norms as they blend into the Israeli ‘melting
pot’. This is an authoritative stance that can turn into over-direction on the part of the
therapist ... it’s also an anachronistic perception that ignores the fact that Israeli society, in
contrast to the myth of the ‘melting pot’, includes communities, living side by side, that differ
in their perspectives and in their life styles. (Dreznin & Springman, 2000, p. 139)
In addition, the power of a therapeutic rationale can be found not only in pluralistic
orientations matching the current moral climate. It also derives from the central value of
the therapeutic paradigm wellbeing a value whose current social validity is undoubted.
The pluralistic absorption ideology is perceived today as important and preferable for the
mental wellbeing of immigrants from the FSU (Ben-Shalom & Hornshik, 2000).
Social Identities 749
Downloaded By: [Tel Aviv University] At: 20:45 20 November 2008
Cultural assimilation enforced by the majority leads to a much lower rate of objective and
subjective adjustment of the immigrant and may even cause mental distress. (Hornshik as cited
in Bendes-Ya’akov & Friedman, 2000, p. 14)
Absorbing personnel: from ideological identification to emotional skill and cultural proximity
Conceptualizing immigration as a pathogenic factor in the immigrant’s wellbeing carves
out the role of absorbing personnel. The skills required to absorb teenagers, within the
framework of Na’aleh, are not merely ‘functional’; they are first and foremost ‘emotional’.
According to the director of Therapy Unit.
The educational staff has an important, valuable role. This role is not only limited to the
functional sphere. It has an additional facet of inestimable importance; that of emotional
accessibility to the children’s needs. (Yermer, 2001)
This ‘emotional accessibility’ to the children’s needs, also formulated as the ‘ability of
the staff to serve as an address for the emotional needs of the children’ or ‘the ability to be
emotionally prepared to cope with the problem’, symbolizes or ‘indicates’ to the children
that the staff feels ‘able and competent’ (Yermer, 2001). The professional competence of the
Na’aleh pupils’ absorbers is emotional competence, expressed in their ability to organize
mental space to suit the pupils’ needs, i.e. to serve as containers for their difficult feelings.
If we use the image of educational staff (as well as parents, psychologists, etc.) as a container, it
would be better to find a way to enlarge the container so that emerging difficulties do not flood
it and spill out, before we deal with transferring the leak into another container i.e. the
psychologist. (Yermer, 2001)
The containment faculty is imposed not only on educational team members; it also applies
to the accompanying psychologists and to their supervisors, who are meant to contain the
psychological counselors.
The containment ability of each of us is not endless. I need guidance in my work. Sometimes I
need the guidance just to formulate and clarify things. I need someone to watch it from the
outside. (Personal communication with a psychologist employed by Na’aleh, April, 2001)
Hence, what we see is the creation of a ‘chain of containers’, or, more precisely, a
‘pyramid of containers’ that encompasses nearly all those occupied in the craft of
absorption, beginning with personnel in direct contact with the pupils and reaching those
with only indirect acquaintance. The ‘pyramid of containment’ is organized on the basis of
one of the guiding principles of therapeutic discourse the principle of reflectivity, which
implies preoccupation with the self as a tool of absorbers’ professional self-mastery. The
pyramid structure of guidance enables them the practice of their own mental skills,
perceived as a necessary condition for the successful execution of their roles. In other
words, the reflective principle turns the absorbing personnel into consumers of therapeutic
practices and also further empowers the role of therapeutic professionals in Na’aleh.
The perception of Aliyah absorbers’ professional competence as emotional competence
distinguishes the Na’aleh of nowadays from Youth Aliyah during its beginning years, as far
as the consumption of therapeutic services. According to Gottesman (1987), the
assumption of Youth Aliyah founders at its outset was that ‘education is the shortest
and most promising path to rehabilitation of children who have experienced many
traumas’ (Gottesman, 1987, p. 119).
This assumption explains, according to Gottesman (1987), why psychologists,
psychological services and social work services were not mentioned at all in one of the
750 G. Plotkin-Amrami
Downloaded By: [Tel Aviv University] At: 20:45 20 November 2008
first books on Youth Aliyah, published in 1953,
19
or why the first social worker thought
that her services met all the needs of Youth Aliyah. It also explains, according to the
author, why, during its first twenty years, not one psychologist was employed by Youth
Aliyah. The major requirements of therapeutic personnel, first employed by Youth Aliyah,
were involvement in the current Israeli reality and identification with the aims of the
enterprise. These characteristics were specified as necessary for providing efficient
professional aid:
... professionals who are not involved in Israel’s social realities or do not identify with the
educational goals of Youth Aliyah cannot offer efficient professional help or educational
counseling to the educators of Youth Aliyah. (Gottesman, 1987, p. 121)
In the Na’aleh era, efficient professional aid is provided by professionals who prefer ‘to
deal with the emotional processes the children are undergoing’ (personal communication
with a psychologist employed by Na’aleh, February, 2001). They are enlisted as new
immigrants themselves, well acquainted with the cultural world of the pupils, and not
necessarily heavily involved with Israeli reality. Similar to the perception of absorbed pupils
as a population in need of mental aid, perceptions of the absorbers involve their emotional
containment abilities and cultural proximity to the absorbed pupils. This negates
traditional perceptions characterizing the beginnings of Youth Aliyah and can be
interpreted as a symptom of a post-Zionist orientation in Israeli society. However, it
seems important to address the other side of the coin and inquire into how pluralistic-
mental absorption ideologies function within a framework of state-led absorption practices
of an assimilative nature and how therapeutic absorbers thus turn into the new agents of
Israeli socialization.
The internalization of the therapeutic habitus by Russian pupils who originate from a ‘pre-
therapeutic’ culture
National identity is ‘purely a discursive construct’ (Wodak, de Cillia, Reisigl & Liebhart,
1999, p. 25). It is manifested, inter alia, in social practices, one of which is discursive
practice. Discursive practice, as a special form of social practice, plays a central part both
in the formation and in the expression of national identity (Wodak et al., 1999). Applying
this conceptualization to the case under the study, it seems reasonable to consider
therapeutic practices employed at Na’aleh as playing an important part in the expression
and formation of ‘Israeliness’ for the ‘Russian’ pupils educated at Na’aleh. This is due to
the inherent attributes of psychological knowledge as knowledge of the self or identity-
forming knowledge (Berger & Luckmann, 1966).
20
It is also due to the ideological context
in which therapeutic practices are implemented the national project of absorption and
integration of newcomers ‘returning’ to their ‘historical homeland’.
Based on interviews conducted with psychological and educational counselors
employed by Na’aleh, in the following pages I would like to characterize the socializing
effect of group sessions and individual sessions in Na’aleh, and to sketch out the
transformative continuum on which the ‘Russian’ pupil moves during his/her therapeutic
process of ‘becoming Israeli’.
Therapeutic interventions allow ‘Russian’ pupils to acquire a new ability to execute
linguistic operations within the category of ‘emotions’ i.e. they become able to talk about,
describe, identify, name, break them down into components, understand and recognize
them.
Social Identities 751
Downloaded By: [Tel Aviv University] At: 20:45 20 November 2008
Talking about emotions is part of treatment ... it emerges during treatment and we address its
importance ... it takes time to reach the emotions ... in this sense, what perhaps characterizes
the population from the FSU, is that emotions are not given any importance. What they do
instead is acting out and more acting out ... without awareness of what motivates them to do
things, to behave in one way or another. (Personal communication with a psychologist
employed by Na’aleh, January, 2001)
The process of developing awareness of hidden motives is often accompanied by the
necessity of coping with things ‘they didn’t want to look at’. This engenders a broader
perspective of the person about his/her inner self, conceived of as vital for coping with
difficult situations:
People will feel better, at least eventually. Maybe they’ll have to go through some difficulty,
because they’ll be forced to cope with things they didn’t want to look at, but eventually, it will
make them feel better. They’ll recognize reality, both external and their own, and it will be
easier to cope with situations, encounters, interactions and life choices. (Personal commu-
nication with an educational counselor employed by Na’aleh, February, 2001)
Verbalizing difficult emotions in the therapeutic setting is considered vital in an
immigration situation, by virtue of the legitimacy that therapeutic intervention grants to
these emotions in the immigrant’s undermined mental state:
One thing that can happen is that you’re depressed by the fact that you’re depressed ... Yo u
don’t feel that it’s legitimate; you feel like you have to function and succeed, and it doesn’t
happen and you’re angry at yourself. The minute it’s legitimate to be depressed and it’s seen as
natural, then it’s one less thing to worry about. (Personal communication with an educational
counselor employed by Na’aleh, February, 2001)
Acquiring the ability to address their own emotions is accompanied by an internalization
of a new idea that this process is vital in their adjustment as immigrants:
... It’s good to talk about feelings and to think about things that are happening to me during
immigration, which is basically ... a crisis. (Personal communication with an educational
counselor employed by Na’aleh, February, 2001)
Therefore, it would seem that therapeutic interventions grant Na’aleh pupils new
norms for interpersonal interaction, based on ‘authentic’ emotional sharing. Speaking
about the inner/emotional self is promoted as a normative value. The learned response for
sharing in a group setting is termed ‘non-critical acceptance’, which allows the participants
to be ‘him/herself’. The ‘authentic self’, fashioned in a long gradual process, has not only
the ability to identify his/her feelings and recognize them (instead of ‘projecting’
21
them on
others), but also the ability to interpret them in ways acceptable to the canon of therapeutic
discourse.
The girl I am now seeing in therapy finished the project a year and a half ago. Then, our
sessions were on a different level. Now, that it’s already been two and a half years of
therapy ...I hardly have to prompt her to tell me ‘what did you feel’ or ‘why did you react that
way’ (Personal communication with a psychologist employed by Na’aleh, January, 2001)
This situation contrasts with the point of departure, in which the same girl is described as
‘projecting her feelings on others’:
Now she can identify her feelings and those of others; can accept and understand them ... she
has learned to say what she feels ...and what other people feel ... what she says and does,
what it does to others, and why she does it to herself. (Personal communication with a
psychologist employed by Na’aleh, January, 2001)
752 G. Plotkin-Amrami
Downloaded By: [Tel Aviv University] At: 20:45 20 November 2008
Besides learning to express emotions and to be emotionally aware, therapy helps the
‘Russian’ pupil interpret the meaning of his/her encounter with Israeli society and navigate
his/her thoughts and behavior in new social situations. This interpretation guides the
immigrant to adopt non-judgmental terms and ‘coping strategies’ meant to lead to
‘positive interaction’ with ‘others’.
... as far as the encounter with others, you transfer from a mechanism of judging to one of
familiarity with others and the ability to choose how you want to cope. It’s not a question of
them or me not being OK. It’s just the way the world is built they behave in a certain fashion,
I behave another way, and let’s see where we can meet; ways we choose in order to have positive
interaction. (Personal communication with an educational counselor employed by Na’aleh,
February, 2001)
Therapeutic intervention also normalizes the social functioning of the absorbed pupil
and helps him/her acquire the social skills required to adjust successfully in social
frameworks. The psychologist tells us about a Na’aleh pupil who was referred to therapy
because ‘she was rejected by the group, had extreme mood shifts and even a suicide
attempt’ (personal communication with an educational counselor employed by Na’aleh,
January, 2001). Normalizing her social functioning helped her go from being ‘rejected’ by
the group to being one of the ‘group leaders’. This is parallel to her socialization as an
Israeli, reflected in her transition from a state of ‘sitting on the fence’ regarding Israel, to a
state of ‘landing’. When she first arrived for therapy, she
... sat more on the fence as far as where she was and to what she belonged ... little by little she
came down from the fence and ‘landed’ here ...she’s still deliberating on her identity. Right
now she has almost no contact with Russians, other than those in the Na’aleh group; most of
her connections are with Israelis. Sometimes this puts her in a conflict ... about the question of
who she is. (Personal communication with a psychologist employed by Na’aleh, January, 2001)
The identity conflict of this pupil is resolved within the therapeutic setting ...
First of all by understanding that she has both parts inside ... also, since she’s not Jewish that
is also a part of the equation. So what she needs to work on is the understanding of which part
of her identity she’s feeling and reacting with. She has decided that she doesn’t want to be only
this part or that part ...only Russian or only Jewish or only Israeli ... She has to combine all
three things. (Personal communication with a psychologist employed by Na’aleh n, January,
2001)
It seems that, from a therapeutic viewpoint, connecting with ‘Israeliness’ does not
assume that the pupil will be successful in adopting a clear monolithic Israeli identity. The
self-preoccupation afforded by the therapeutic setting, actually aims at allowing movement
between different facets of identity and grants legitimacy to the ambivalence she feels as a
new immigrant, in the process of becoming Israeli.
Despite the therapeutic paradigm’s recognition of a multi-faceted ambivalent identity,
psycho-therapeutic practices employed by Na’aleh can nevertheless be considered as
inducing an identity transformation for the ‘Russian’ pupils. I would like to suggest that
this transformative process implies the internalization of symbolic codes anchored in
therapeutic culture and interpretation of these codes as local codes. If we accept Illouz’s
(1997) proposition that therapeutic discourse constructs and defines such symbolic goods
as ‘intimacy’ and ‘well-being’ and provides the symbolic competency needed to acquire
them, we can also assume that the encounter with therapeutic discourse enables the
‘Russian’ teenagers to internalize a new kind of habitus the ‘therapeutic habitus’. The
‘therapeutic habitus’ is defined by Illouz (1997) as a ‘type of historically situated habitus
that may grant access to forms of well-being that are always historically situated and
Social Identities 753
Downloaded By: [Tel Aviv University] At: 20:45 20 November 2008
socially constructed’ (p. 54). In reference to the ‘Russian’ teenager, I’d like to suggest a
schematic distinction between two main components of Illouz’s term ‘therapeutic habitus’:
the first is the linguistic component, reflected in the development of the ability to ‘talk
feelings’. The second is the consciousness component, reflected in the immigrant’s
awareness of the significance of reflective processes. Therapeutic interventions equip the
Russian immigrant to perform linguistically, while language is perceived as the medium of
the self viewed as containing ‘inner’ thoughts and feelings accessible to exposure,
expression and sharing (Illouz, 1997). In addition, therapeutic interventions also cultivate
the immigrant’s identification with the new ‘language’, with a new personal identity
narrative, and with values inherent in the new therapeutic ethos. These values are directed
towards the immigrant’s adaptation, i.e. his/her normative functioning in social frame-
works, accepting the absorbing society without judgment, positive interactions with others
and successful social adjustment. In other words, the acquired therapeutic habitus grants
the immigrant the ability and competency to become a ‘local’ and to attain symbolic goods
believed to be significant in his new social environment. It serves, therefore, as a resource
for constituting and performing his/her new social identity an identity based on
individuality, reflective thought and authentic self-expression. Fran Markowitz (1996),
22
however, claims that individualistic tendencies are not the version of ‘Israeliness’ that
pupils were prepared for before their immigration:
What they were not prepared for, however, is that Jewishness takes different forms throughout
Israel ... and that in their school to be Jewish (which also means Israeli) is to cultivate and
express one’s individuality. (Markowitz, 1996, p. 362)
Nevertheless, cultivating and expressing authentic, inner individuality is experienced by the
‘Russian’ pupils during their therapeutic absorption as one of the possible versions of being
an Israeli. If we adopt the theoretical assumption that national identity is a ‘mental
construct’ comprised of ‘common or similar beliefs and opinions, emotional attitudes, and
behavioral and linguistic dispositions’, internalized in the process of socialization (Wodak
et al, 1999, p. 28), we can probably link the term ‘national identity’ with Bourdieu’s term
‘habitus’, which refers to mental, emotional and behavioral dispositions we use to ascertain
our social identity.
23
Thus, we can consider the therapeutic habitus as one of the cultural
representations of Israeli ‘imagined community’ (Anderson, 1983). It would seem that the
autonomous, adaptive, reflective self, constructed through the practices of Na’aleh,
resounds with the individualistic, civilian post-national identities in Israeli society of the
era of globalization (Ram & Yiftakhel, 1999). These identities symbolize the declining
status of the Sabra archetype
an ideal personification of the patriotic collectivist and altruistic indigenously Israeli ethos ...
this icon combines the warrior with the ‘son of the land’, endowed with physical virtues and
moral integrity, in opposition to the frail, cunning urban figure of the Diaspora Jew. (Sela-
Sheffy, 2004, p. 480)
In an era in which identity is losing its community-oriented and historic anchors,
therapeutic absorption creates for the Russian pupil an image of the national collective that
he/she can identify with on a content level and express on a procedural level.
Conceptualizing the transformation of the Russian immigrant’s identity in terms of an
internalization of the therapeutic habitus, implies his/her lack of proficiency with
therapeutic culture at the beginning of the process of absorption in Israel. The Russian
immigrant is, indeed, portrayed by psychological literature, as someone unaccustomed to
consuming therapeutic services. Researchers state ‘the lowered image of mental health
754 G. Plotkin-Amrami
Downloaded By: [Tel Aviv University] At: 20:45 20 November 2008
services, particularly psychiatry, that existed in the FSU’ (Ben-Shalom & Hornshik, 2000,
p. 206) and point to ‘the lack of knowledge and understanding about educational-
psychological services in Israel that characterizes teenagers from the FSU’ (Kozulin &
Venger, 1999, p. 195).
The cultural background of ‘Russian’ pupils is described in psychological literature by
the term ‘the Soviet person’ (Sokolov, 1996), who forgoes spontaneity, hides his/her inner
world and develops an external ‘fac
¸
ade’ to present in society (Mirsky as cited in Sokolov,
1996). Soviet culture promoted values of ‘conformist collectivism’ that erased the authentic
individual established by therapeutic discourse:
Western values such as individual freedom, equal opportunity, and individualism were alien in
the society in which our immigrant teenagers were raised ... Individuals were expected to
attune themselves to the collective, to accept the social norms, and to forget their individualism
and uniqueness. (Mirsky & Prawer, 1999, p. 114)
Therefore, therapists must adopt special strategies in order to cope with the ‘therapeutic
ignorance’ of ‘Russian’ patients and make therapeutic discourse less foreign for them:
In planning psycho-therapy for the entrapped ‘Russian’ youth, the therapist must take into
account that the patient is not familiar with psycho-therapeutic principles. Therefore s/he will
need explanations and guidelines. The therapist must assume that the patient will seek quick
relief from his/her suffering and is unlikely to show interest in drawn-out amorphic therapeutic
processes ... For these reasons and others, the therapist must decide ... to take an active,
focused therapeutic approach, based on maximal verbal clarification of the basic personality
problem, factors involved in the current depressive crisis and the way to escape it. (Dreznin &
Springman, 2000, p. 135)
The project of transforming a ‘Russian’ teenager, unacquainted with therapeutic
discourse, into a ‘patient’ establishes him/her as person with a psychological orientation
and cancels the ‘otherness’ fashioned by Soviet culture. The pre-therapeutic Soviet
‘otherness’ of the ‘Russian’ teenager can be compared to what Hazan (2003) defines as the
‘otherness’ of the ‘primitive’, who may be able, in conditions of proper education and
cultivation, ‘to find himself in a suit and jacket’ (p. 222). Imparting a therapeutic habitus to
the ‘Russian’ pupil is actually a project of acculturating the primitive and turning him/her
into a cultural partner who can ‘talk emotions’. In this sense, the acquired therapeutic
habitus does not automatically turn the ‘Russian’ teenager into an autonomous individual
without connection to the Israeli collective. Rather, it actually equips him/her with
strategies necessary to becoming a local. Therapeutic practices, employed in the process of
immigrant absorption within Na’aleh, create both an autonomous self and an adaptive
self: the first appears as the antithesis of his/her Soviet roots, whereas the second masters
the skills and competencies needed to become a local.
Therapeutic absorption personnel as new agents of socialization: a biographical profile
Having examined the socializing effect of therapeutic absorption practices, allowing us to
dismantle the sharp dichotomy between Zionist socialization and therapeutic intervention,
the last section focuses on the unique biographical profile of ‘Russian’ absorption
personnel employed by Na’aleh. By observing the course of their personal absorption in
Israel, identical to that of the researcher, I will try to dismantle an additional dichotomy
created by the comparison of Na’aleh and Youth Aliyah: the dichotomy between today’s
therapeutic absorption personnel and the ideological absorption personnel at the
beginning of the immigrant absorption endeavor.
Social Identities 755
Downloaded By: [Tel Aviv University] At: 20:45 20 November 2008
The majority of educational and psychological counselors currently handling the
absorption of teenagers at Na’aleh are themselves new immigrants from FSU countries,
who have received or are still receiving therapeutic training in Israel. Others, who arrived
with professional certification from the FSU, have used local therapeutic codes to decipher
their own absorption. According to one of the educational counselors employed at
Na’aleh, the encounter of ‘Russian’ professionals with psychological knowledge during
their process of personal and professional absorption in Israel was perceived as a
meaningful for them:
On principle, I know what happened to me personally. The first four years were very hard,
because I didn’t know how to frame the experiences I underwent; I didn’t know how to
understand them; I didn’t know that it was a natural process; I didn’t know about inter-
cultural processes or the psychology of transition. Then, when I entered a group dealing with
these topics, I found it most helpful. It was a turning point in my life in Israel. (Personal
communication with an educational counselor employed by Na’aleh, February, 2001)
The grounding effect of psychological knowledge for the person interviewed stems from its
ability to serve as a ‘cognitive framework’ that provides conceptualization and new terms
to portray the experience of immigration:
As a thinking person, who likes to understand things, the cognitive framework helped me
understand my experiences ...framing implies the ability to name the terms .. . For example,
‘a process of adaptation’, ‘inter-cultural encounter’, ‘post-immigration depression’. Even the
whole concept of ‘talking about feelings’ was kind of a new idea. (Personal communication
with an educational counselor employed by Na’aleh, February, 2001)
The innovation of local psychological concepts for ‘Russian’ therapists stems not only from
the ideational aspect of understanding and conceptualizing the processes of immigration.
It is also derived from the ‘experiential’ side of local (Israeli) professional socialization,
which considers the personal experience of the therapist as a patient or supervisee an
inherent component of his/her professional training as a therapist:
Even though I had studied psychology in the FSU, this was the first time I participated in a
group. ‘Group work’ was a new mechanism for me. (Personal communication with an
educational counselor employed by Na’aleh, February, 2001)
It would seem that psychological knowledge, acquired during the process of professional
absorption/training becomes a type of ‘new cultural knowledge’ (Lerner, 1999)
24
for
‘Russian’ professionals; an inherent part of their professional self-perception that is
eventually taken for granted:
It feels almost like a religion, it’s something you believe in and you practice. I do deliberate and
think about it, but even as I am pondering, my belief is that groups are a good thing, that the
psychological approach of ‘talking about feelings’ is a good thing. There’s something very basic
and absolute about it ... (Personal communication with an educational counselor employed by
Na’aleh, February, 2001)
‘Therapeutic knowledge’ merges the professional self with the personal and cultural self
and serves as the basis of a new combined local and global identity for ‘Russian’ therapy
personnel. Its acquisition occurs in the context of immigrant absorption practices, through
the encounter with the local professional community, responsible for infusing organiza-
tions with a therapeutic absorption narrative. According to the logic of the Zionist ethos,
construction of the absorption narrative for newcomers is merely identity-work on the part
of absorbing society. The concept of ‘homecoming’ embodies the assumption of a
756 G. Plotkin-Amrami
Downloaded By: [Tel Aviv University] At: 20:45 20 November 2008
territorially bounded collective entity and inherently creates an affinity between the
absorbers and those being absorbed, or, even more so, between ‘how we absorb’ and ‘how
we see ourselves’. A therapeutic absorption narrative, containing a perception of the self,
based on values of the therapeutic ethos, is internalized by ‘Russian’ therapists, in more
than just the narrow professional sense. It is also grasped in its wider, cultural implications.
Therefore, the efficacy of therapeutic absorption personnel can be found not only in their
cultural proximity to the absorbed, but also, perhaps paradoxically, in their cultural
proximity to the absorbing Israeli society. Due to their professional socialization and the
context in which it is formed, they become simultaneous representatives of ‘Russianness’
in their understanding of the cultural world of the absorbed and of ‘Israeliness’ in their
bearing of the values of an autonomous/individual/adaptive/reflective self equipped as new
‘cultural knowledge’. I believe that therapeutic absorption personnel, of the Na’aleh era,
function as cultural liaisons introducing images of the local collective to ‘Russian’
teenagers, in a way that is both nonthreatening and accessible. Within the social conditions
typified by erosion of the nation-state and the questioning of the moral status of its
constitutive ethos, the therapeutic intervention functions as no less an effective means of
Israeli socialization, than assimilative education. Thus, we probably can see the
therapeutically-minded absorbers not as an antithesis of their predecessors from the
Youth Aliyah, who were ideologically committed to the Zionist project, but as an updated
version of the traditional absorbers, adapted to match the current Israeli moral climate.
Summary
This article is based on observation of the national absorption mechanism that exceeds the
limits of its adopted paradigm. This has been accomplished with the help of the Israeli
autobiography of the researcher, as a reflective tool used to formulate ethnographic
knowledge. This tool links the autobiographical past of the researcher, as someone who
was absorbed when she made Aliyah from the FSU, and as a therapeutic professional
working in absorption, with the ethnographic present of the research subjects therapeutic
absorption personnel and absorbed teenagers from the FSU. The article suggests a
cultural-historical reading of the unique trend that characterizes the contemporary
mechanism of absorbing new immigrants from the FSU in Israel an intensive, broad-
based adoption of therapeutic knowledge and practices. Such a reading is based on
identifying the basic assumptions of therapeutic discourse that establishes the Russian
immigrant as an object of therapeutic intervention, and absorption personnel as bearers of
emotional competence. It is also based on a historical view of the phenomenon that
compares the present-day Na’aleh organization and Youth Aliyah, at its inception. In
addition, the article examines the socializing effect of psychological knowledge and its
implementation in processes of ‘Israelifying’ both Na’aleh pupils and the professionals
absorbing them.
At first glance, it seemed that psychologizing the practices of Aliyah absorption in
Israel was likely to challenge Zionist foundations of ‘becoming Israeli’: the therapeutic
ethos, as individualistic and universal, undermines the hierarchy of absorber and absorbed
embodied in the Zionist idea and ‘empties’ the process of socialization to ‘Israeliness’ of its
local and collective content. Nevertheless, the main claim that this article has developed is
that the encounter of the Zionist ethos and the therapeutic ethos within the practice of
immigrant absorption, both challenges and fortifies its traditional functions. Therapeutic
absorption is, indeed, based on the perception of immigration via mental indicators, and
the immigrant as requiring therapeutic intervention rather than assimilative education.
Social Identities 757
Downloaded By: [Tel Aviv University] At: 20:45 20 November 2008
However, therapeutic practices simultaneously fashion the Russian immigrant’s identity in
accord with certain versions of contemporary Israeli cultural identities. They construct
both an autonomous and an adaptive self: the former appears as the antithesis of the
immigrant’s Soviet roots, and the latter as possessing the skill and competency to become a
local. Therapeutic personnel, characterized by emotional skills and cultural proximity to
the absorbed, prefer to handle emotional processes that the children undergo. However,
they also serve as agents of Israeli socialization, relevant both to the absorbed pupils and
to the absorption mechanism, by virtue of their own unique course of absorption in Israel
that blends the process of ‘becoming Israeli’ with socialization into a professional/
therapeutic culture.
Hence, it would seem doubtful, contrary to what might have been logically assumed,
that the adoption of therapeutic discourse, by the state-led absorption apparatus, poses a
threat to the ‘ideological continuity’ between Youth Aliyah of the past and Na’aleh of the
present; between the era of budding national Zionism and the era of questioning its moral
status. Psychologizing practices of immigrant absorption sketches out the immigrant’s
‘return to an historical homeland’ through the landscape of the soul, so that the
therapeutic ideal is revealed as a legitimate language adopted by the nation-state, to
implement its traditional roles utilizing new postmodern-global tendencies. Naturally, this
does not imply that the ‘Russian’ immigrant must ‘talk feelings’ in order to become a local.
Rather, the imparting of a ‘therapeutic habitus’, with its linguistic and consciousness-
provoking components, currently constitutes a strategy probably no less adaptive than the
fifty-year-old demand from absorbed teenagers for ‘re-education, rooting in the new
culture and participation in the building of a new life for him/herself and his/her nation’
(Gottesman, 1987, p. 29).
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Haim Hazan, Julia Lerner, Emanuel Amrami, Inna Leykin, Allan Young and
the anonymous reviewer for their constructive, challenging and enlightening remarks that helped me
in the preparation of this article.
Notes
1. ‘In the Israeli rhetoric, the ideologically loaded concept ‘‘immigrant’’ is defined as a person
returning to their historic homeland and ‘‘fatherland’’, where their identity is tied to a
territorially bounded collective entity, thought of as an ascriptive, legitimate connectedness’
(Pilkington as cited in Shuval & Leshem, 1998, pp. 1213).
2. The contradictory nature of fieldwork relationship is widely acknowledged in anthropological
literature. As Hume and Mulcock (2004) argue, the practice of ethnography assumes the
researcher’s ability to reflect upon some of the taken for granted rules and expectations of the
social world they are studying. Researchers should be able, on the one hand, to suspend any
disbelief to informants’ narratives, and on the other hand, to maintain intellectual distance
enough from the field (Hume & Mulcock, 2004).
3. The most powerful example of this phenomenon is the immigration policy of Oriental Jews who
arrived from Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Libya, Tunis, and Morocco during the 1950s and 1960s.
According to Mizrachi (2004), ‘the social and the psychological sciences provided the theoretical
foundation and played a considerable role in shaping the institutional procedures by which the
new immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa were theorized and managed’
(Mizrachi, 2004, p. 224).
4. I use the term ‘ethos’ to indicate the basic character or spirit of culture, as in a specific social
framework that includes thought patterns, behaviors and accepted customs, on the one hand,
and, the overall moral values and criteria for determining good and bad, desirable and rejected,
on the other.
758 G. Plotkin-Amrami
Downloaded By: [Tel Aviv University] At: 20:45 20 November 2008
5. In Hinsky’s discussion of Israeli art, the term ‘universal’ implies ‘everything that is perceived as
belonging to the West’, thus becoming legitimate as a ‘part of the modernization of the West’
(Hinsky, 1993, p. 115).
6. From a Na’aleh document ‘Guidelines and principles for incorporating Na’aleh students into
pedagogical institutions’ (July 1999) (translated from Hebrew).
7. As stated in the organization’s Internet site: ‘In 2002 the Ministerial Committee for Immigration,
Naturalization and the Diaspora decided to expand the Na’aleh project to all Jewish
communities throughout the world. As a result of that decision, students from 32 countries
were brought to Israel. Countries from the FSU included: Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Azerbaijan,
Estonia, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Latvia, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan,
and Russia. Rest of the world included: Uruguay, Argentina, The United States, Bolivia, Brazil,
The United Kingdom, Germany, South Africa, Holland, Hungary, Zimbabwe, Mexico,
Paraguay, Peru, Chili, France, Columbia, and Romania’ (Na’aleh Program, 2008).
8. The immigrants from FSU are characterized as highly educated and representing an array of
academic and white-collar professions (Ben-Rafael, Olshtainm, & Geijst, 1998).
9. The ‘Russian-speaking immigrants’ (Kimmerling, 2004) have managed to maintain their
distinction as a group linguistically, by establishing telecommunication channels and newspapers
that are unconnected to either those in Russia and Israel, and politically, through the creation of
separate and distinct ethnic parties (Kimmerling, 2004).
10. The project offered a ‘prestigious three-year learning program for youths, carefully selected for
their academic and mental ‘qualifications’ (Bendes-Ya’akov & Friedman, 2000, p. 5).
11. From a Na’aleh document ‘Meeting of the educational and psychological counselors to
coordinate actions’ (2000) (translated from Hebrew).
12. According to the director of Therapy Unit, the Na’aleh directorate is defined as ‘responsible for
the nature and quality of the care for absorbed pupils’ (Yermer, 2001).
13. I adopt the division of Israeli history used by Ram & Yiftakhel (1999) into an era of
modernization (until the seventies) and an era of globalization (from the 1970s till the present).
14. The project of Youth Aliyah was a rescue initiative aimed to bring children from Nazi Europe,
who could not return to their countries of origin, to mandatory Palestine, while the Na’aleh
project, by comparison, is defined as an educational program that aims to supply an Israeli high
school education to the children in the hopes that they will become naturalized.
15. According to Swidler and Arditi, ‘historical eras differ not only in what people think, but in what
is thinkable’ (Swidler & Arditi, 1994, p. 314).
16. Shlomo Itzchaki (1987) in his review of Gottesman’s book wrote: ‘There is a distinct advantage in
writing of an insider, one who knows the materials (the authors worked as a counselor, educator
and inspector for many years in the Youth Aliyah program and later headed the program), but
also uses sources to verify and backup his claims ... behind his cold-scientific writing the love,
passion and caring for the project as a whole, which was his life’s work, shines through’ (Itzchaki,
1987, p. 112).
17. As Chanoch Reinhold states: ‘The Youth Aliyah demanded that the pupil be mentally and
physically compatible ... they were also contractually obligated towards the place of absorption
to send only those youths that are known to be mentally and physically healthy and
developmentally normal’ (Reinhold, 1953, p. 38).
18. As Phyllis Palgi, the first anthropologist appointed to the Mental Health Department of the
Health Ministry, wrote: ‘The aims of psycho-therapy which focus on individual needs and self-
realization conflicted with the national ideals that one must sacrifice, in the most intimate and
personal sense, individual needs and aspirations. Above all, people were expected to be tough,
fearless, and ready to risk their lives for the defense and upbuilding of the country ...’ (Palgi,
1962, unpublished).
19. Gottesman (1987) refers to ‘Youth Builds its Home’ by Chanoch Reinhold (1953).
20. According to Berger and Luckmann (1966), ‘internalization (of psychological knowledge) is
accelerated by the fact that it pertains to internal reality ... since a psychology by definition
pertains to identity, hence it is ipso facto likely to be identity-forming. In this close nexus between
internalization and identification, psychological theories differ considerably from other types of
theories’ (Berger & Luckmann, 1966, p. 199).
21. ‘Projection’ is a psycho-analytical term referring to mental mechanism in which the individual
attributes a certain quality of his/her own, usually undesirable, to others, i.e. it is ‘projected’ on to
others.
Social Identities 759
Downloaded By: [Tel Aviv University] At: 20:45 20 November 2008
22. In her anthropological study, Markowitz (1996) accompanied the absorption processes of
Na’aleh pupils in 1993, at an arts school in Mitzpe Ramon.
23. Wodak et al. (1999) indicates an increasing use of the concept of habitus in recent studies of
national identities.
24. Lerner (1999) defines ‘academic knowledge’ acquired in a university setting as ‘new cultural
knowledge’ for ‘Russian’ students.
References
Aloni, N. (1997). The rise and fall of humanistic education: From classical to post-modern. In I. Gur-
Ze’ev (Ed.), Education in the era of post-modern discourse (pp. 1343). Jerusalem: The Magnes
Press (in Hebrew).
Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism.
London: Verso.
Aviram, R. (1997). The educational system in post modern society: Anomalous organization in a
chaotic world. In I. Gur-Ze’ev (Ed.), Education in the era of post-modern discourse (pp. 103120).
Jerusalem: The Magnes Press (in Hebrew).
Bendes-Ya’akov, O., & Friedman, I. (1996) Na’aleh: Immigrant youth without parents. Jerusalem:
Szold Institute (in Hebrew).
Bendes-Ya’akov, O., & Friedman, I. (2000). Na’aleh: Immigrant youth without parents. Continuing
research Class of 98. Jerusalem: Szold Institute (in Hebrew).
Ben-Rafael, E., Olshtain, E., & Geijst, I. (1998). Identity and language: The social insertion of Soviet
Jews in Israel. In J.T. Shuval & E. Leshem (Eds.), Immigration to Israel: Sociological perspectives
(pp. 333356). New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.
Ben-Shalom, U., & Hornchik, G. (2000). Cultural identity and adaptation among immigrant
adolescents in Na’aleh project 16. Megamot, 40(2), 199217 (in Hebrew).
Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality. London: Penguin Books.
Dreznin, A., & Springman, R. (2000). The entrapped Russian youth: Depressive dynamics and
psychotherapy in young immigrants from the FSU. Part II. Sichot, 14, 135139 (in Hebrew).
Educational supervision and informal education. (n.d.). Retrieved 10 November 2001, from http://
www.naale.org.il/
Fabian, J. (1983). Time and the other. New York: Columbia University Press.
Foucault, M. (1972). The archeology of knowledge and discourse on language. New York: Pantheon
Books.
Furedi, F. (2004). Therapy culture. Cultivating vulnerability in an uncertain age. London and New
York: Routledge.
Gottesman, M. (1987). Youth Aliyah: Continuation and change. Tel Aviv: Cherikover Publications. (In
Hebrew)
Gouldner, A.W. (1979). The future of intellectuals and the rise of the new class. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Gurevitch, D. (1998). Postmodernism Culture and literature at the end of the 20th century. Tel Aviv:
Dvir Publications (In Hebrew).
Gurevitch, Z., & Eran, G. (1991). On the place: Israeli anthropology. Alpaim, 3,944 (in Hebrew).
Hazan, H. (2003). The body of sociology: On the representative status of the body. Israeli Sociology,
5(1), 219230 (in Hebrew).
Hinsky, S. (1993). The silence of fishes: Local and universal in the discourse of Israeli art. Theory and
Criticism, 4, 105122 (in Hebrew).
Hume, L., & Mulcock, J. (2004). Introduction: Awkward spaces, productive places. In L. Hume & J.
Mulcock (Eds.), Anthropologists in the field: Cases in participant observation (pp. xixxvii). New
York: Columbia University Press.
Illouz, E. (1997). Who will care for the caretaker’s daughter? Toward sociology of happiness in the
era of reflexive modernity. Theory, Culture & Society, 14(4), 3166.
Itzhaki, S. (1987). On M. Gottesman’s book. Youth Aliyah: Continuation and change. The Communal
Education, 126, 112116 (in Hebrew).
Kimmerling, B. (2004) Immigrants, settlers, natives: The Israeli state and society between cultural
pluralism and cultural wars. Tel-Aviv: Am Oved Published Ltd (in Hebrew).
Kozulin, A., & Venger, A. (1999). Psychological and learning problems. In T. Horowitz (Ed.),
Children of Perestroika in Israel (pp. 190204). Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
760 G. Plotkin-Amrami
Downloaded By: [Tel Aviv University] At: 20:45 20 November 2008
Lerner, J. (1999). By the way of knowledge: Russian immigrants at university. Jerusalem: Shain Center,
Hebrew University (in Hebrew).
Lomsky-Feder, E., & Rapoport, T. (2001). Homecoming, immigration, and the national ethos:
Russian-Jewish homecomers reading Zionism. Anthropological Quarterly, 74(1), 114.
Markowitz, F. (1996). Shopping for the future: Culture change, border crossing, and identity options
of Jewish teenagers from the C.I.S. Ethos, 24, 350373.
Mirsky, J., & Prawer, L. (1992). To immigrate as a teenager To mature as an immigrant: Immigrant
youths from the FSU in Israel. Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute (in Hebrew).
Mirsky, J., & Prawer, L. (1999). Immigrating as an adolescent. In T. Horowitz (Ed.), Children of
Perestroika in Israel (pp. 72118). Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Mizrachi, N. (2004). ‘From badness to sickness’: The role of ethnopsychology in shaping ethnic
hierarchies in Israel. Social Identities, 10(2), 219243.
Na’aleh Program. (n.d.). Retrieved 6 July 2008, from http://www.naale.org.il/ (in Hebrew).
Palgi, P. (1962) Mental health in Israel: Socio-cultural trends. Unpublished manuscript.
Pedagogical supervision at Na’aleh. (n.d.). Retrieved 6 July 2008, from http://www.naale.org.il/
Rabinow, P. (1977). Reflections on fieldwork in Morocco. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ram, U., & Yiftakhel, O. (1999). ‘Ethnocratia and Olamkomiut’: New approaches to studying society
and space in Israel. Be’er Sheva: Center for the Development of the Negev, Ben Gurion University
(in Hebrew).
Reinhold, C. (1953). Youth builds its home: Youth Aliyah as educational movement. Jerusalem:
Jerusalem Post Press (in Hebrew).
Rieff, P. (1966). The triumph of the therapeutic: Uses of faith after Freud. New York: Harper & Row.
Scott, W.A., & Scott, R. (1989). Adaptation of immigrants: Individual differences and determinants.
Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Searle, W., & Ward, C. (1990). The perception of psychological and sociocultural adjustment during
cross-cultural transitions. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 14, 449464.
Sela-Sheffy, R. (2004). What makes one an Israeli? Negotiating identities in everyday representations
of Israeliness. Nations and Nationalism, 10(4), 479497.
Shapiro, S. (1942). The health development of the Youth Aliyah pupils 19341941. Jerusalem: The
Youth Aliyah Bureau (in Hebrew).
Shapiro, S., & Noak, P. (1941). The medical summary. In B. Habes (Ed.), Youth Aliyah book (pp.
327331). Jerusalem: Central Office for Settling German Jews in the Land of Israel, Youth Aliyah
office in the Jewish Agency for the Land of Israel (in Hebrew).
Shuval, J.T., & Leshem, E. (1998). The sociology of migration in Israel: A critical view. In J.T. Shuval
& E. Leshem (Eds.), Immigration to Israel: Sociological perspectives (pp. 350). New Brunswick:
Transaction Publishers.
Sokolov, M. (1996). Culturization strategies and socio-cultural adaptation of teenagers from the FSU
arriving to Israel through the Na’aleh project. M.A. Dissertation, Haifa University (in Hebrew).
Straus-Vigert, D. (1941). Isolated cases. In B. Habes (Ed.), Youth Aliyah book (pp. 331336).
Jerusalem: Central Office for Settling German Jews in the Land of Israel, Youth Aliyah office in
the Jewish Agency for the Land of Israel (in Hebrew).
Swidler, A., & Arditi, J. (1994). The new sociology of knowledge. Annual Review of Sociology, 20,
30529.
Therapy Unit. (n.d.). Retrieved 6 July 2008, from http://www.naale.org.il/
Wodak, R., de Cillia, R., Reisigl, M., & Liebhart, K. (1999). The discursive construction of national
identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Wolins, M. (1971). Youth Aliyah: Cause and function. In M. Wolins & M. Gottesmann (Eds.), Group
care: An Israeli approach. The educational path of Youth Aliyah (pp. 326). New York: Gordon and
Breach.
Yermer, R. (2001, July). The role of psychologist in Na’aleh and his connection to the educational staff.
Paper presented at the Na’aleh Educational Staff Meeting, Aloney Yitzchak, Israel (in Hebrew).
Yogev, A. (2001). Approaches to value education in a pluralistic society. In Y. Iram (Ed.),
Junctions: Values and education in a pluralistic society (pp. 355379). Jerusalem: The Ministry of
Education (in Hebrew).
Social Identities 761
Downloaded By: [Tel Aviv University] At: 20:45 20 November 2008
