Homeland Run: Israeli Baseball and American Transmigrants

Abstract

This paper addresses an aspect of cultural transfer and transformation by immigrants, focusing on the case of Israeli baseball, brought to Israel by Jewish migrants from the USA. As such, it examines cultural transfer as part of the transnational activities of transnational migrants. The analysis is based on interviews with 20 Jewish migrants from the USA to Israel who are engaged In Israeli baseball – as players, coaches, administrators, etc. – as well as five Israeli-born players who are also engaged in the sport. This study contributes to our understanding of transnational migration by drawing attention to the ways in which the experiences of transnational migrants are shaped by recreational activity and how transnational migrants’ activities affect their host county. This occurs via transnational cultural diffusion, mediated in this case by a “critical community” of American Jews. Israeli baseball provides Jewish migrants from the USA with a means to identify with Israel as well as a sense of transnational belonging and, counter-intuitively, eases their acculturation to Israeli society.