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South African Jews in Israel: Assimilation in Multigenerational Perspective

South African Jews in Israel: Assimilation in Multigenerational Perspective contains detailed quantitative and qualitative analyses of the migration patterns and processes of assimilation into Israel of South African Jews who migrated there primarily between 1968 and 2013. Where most similar studies have focused on the immigrants themselves, their motives for migrating to Israel and, perhaps, their absorption experiences, Rebeca Raijman contributes a valuable multigenerational perspective by studying three groups: immigrants who arrived in Israel as adults, those who arrived as children, and Israeliborn children of immigrants. In contrast to theories of migration that focus on economic motives, Raijman finds that South African Jewish migration to Israel has been motivated by both push—unstable socioeconomic and political—and pull— Jewish and Zionist identity—factors. Indeed, realization of the desire to migrate was enabled by intense social networks and institutional frameworks between the organized South African Jewish community and Israel. These networks and frameworks became even more significant with development of the Internet, through which the most current and most extensive information is available. Raijman does not mention it, but one additional significant aspect of the role of the Internet and of telecommunications in Israeli immigration patterns from some countries is that they enable new arrivals to retain employment in their native countries. For example, there are immigrants in fields such as accounting, radiology, and technology, among others, who are able to continue working in their previous positions because their work does not require them to be physically present at their offices and all of the information they need for their work is readily transmitted on the Internet. They can also have a telephone number that is based in their previous country but which is relayed to where they are in Israel. In many ways, though Raijman does not explore this extensively, the immigration patterns of South African Jews are similar to those of American Jews who immigrated to Israel. One major difference is the relative absence in the United States of the types of socioeconomic and political instability that were push factors for South African Jews, and it is probably for that precise reason that the rate of Jews migrating to Israel from the United States is so much lower than that of South Africa. Analyzing linguistic assimilation, Raijman found Hebrew proficiency to be higher for migrants with more extensive contacts with Israelis and with higher education. Although the first generation arrives with a good knowledge of Hebrew, its members typically prefer to communicate in English, and they live in ethnic neighborhoods that allow them to do so comfortably. Their Israeliborn children as well as those who arrived in Israel as children are typically bilingual. Though this generation prefers to use Hebrew with friends and family, they have good command of English and use it as well. By the next generation, Hebrew was found to have replaced English as the primary language. However, the international prominence of English renders knowledge of it a valuable asset, and in this generation as well it is desirable to retain Englishlanguage skills. The education rates for South African men and women in Israel are very similar to those of their counterparts from North America. Further, they are the highest among all groups in Israel, with both men and women having more than 16 years of education and 70 percent or more having academic degrees. Not surprisingly, given their educational status and their facility with both Hebrew and English, South African immigrants have very high labor-force participation rates. What is not clear is why their rates are even higher than those of immigrants from North and South America, Europe, and the former Soviet Union. Perhaps, with 466 Reviews