“Now, like Real Israelis, Let's Stand Up and Sing”: Teaching the National Language to Russian Newcomers in Israel

Abstract

1982; Selwyn 1986) liken the ulpan to a rite of passage and focus on temporal ordering-the learning of routines, both personal and collective-as an essential element of the curriculum. These studies serve as the starting point for my own study and provide some evidence that what I describe in the following, in spite of the idiosyncratic leanings of the specific teacher on whom I focus-particularly her religious interpretations-represents some broader cultural understanding of the role of Hebrew language teaching in nurturing national sentiments. Indeed, the similarity of findings would lead me to suggest that encounters between newcomers and old-timers in Israel, like the Israeli settlement museums studied by Katriel (1997), serve as some sort of enclave-a shelter from a changing world-in which newcomers are instructed in an ideal, essentialized model of what it means to be an Israeli. Moreover, by seeking to uncover the rationale that underlies the Israeli state project of "moral regulation" (Corrigan and Sayer 1985:4), as this is articulated in the practice of teaching Hebrew to newcomers, I shall endeavor to take these studies further by integrating findings that may otherwise appear disparate.Accordingly, in the following section, I briefly discuss the links between nationalism and the nurturing of a national language, and I trace the implementation of these links in official policy and practice of Hebrew language teaching. After describing the specific ulpan I attended, I discuss the nature of the social knowledge that was being imparted to the newcomers, as this was articulated in both the ordering of the curriculum and the modes of instruction. Although the immigrants themselves and the impact (if any) of the teaching on the processes of remaking their selves do not constitute the prime focus of this article, their spirited responses to the teacher's endeavors cannot go unattended. Hence, I shall suggest that the encounter between the teacher and her newcomer students may reveal two different understandings of what it means to fully belong to Israeli society. Finally, as I shall show, the particular understanding of the role of teaching Hebrew to newcomers, revealed in the Israeli case, may be interestingly contrasted with teaching language to immigrants in other national contexts. The National LanguageNationalism, seeking correspondence between political and cultural boundaries, advocates that all members of the state share the same culture (Gellner 1983; Smith 1991). The formation and dissemination of a shared national culture entails a process of "departicularization" (Alonso 1988) whereby local allegiances, based on familiarity, become converted into loyalties to the state, based on anonymous ties (Anderson 1983). Just how this conversion from "social relativity to cultural unity" (Herzfeld 1992:107) takes place has become a prime focus of interest for an anthropology of nationalism that seeks to understand how nationalism, as a "form of culture-an ideology, a language, mythology, symbolism and "Now, l...

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