In Israel, where over one million immigrants from the former Soviet Union (FSU) arrived during the past decade, compulsory military service provides young immigrants with an opportunity for acculturation. These youth are regarded as a population at risk, as they both face the trials of adjustment to a newsociety and are in the midst of their identity formation, at decision-making crossroads regarding future life goals. The purpose of this phenomenological studywas to examine howa group of young immigrants from the FSU use their military conscription in the context of their acculturation, investigating its actual effect on their coping in the host society.
R. A. Eisikovits, “‘I'll Tell You What School Should Do for Us’: How Immigrant Youths from the Former USSR View Their High School Experience in Israel,”Youth and Society27, no. 2 (1995): 230-255.
2.
R. A. Eisikovits, “Gender Differences in Cross-cultural Adaptation Styles of Immigrant Youths from the Former USSR in Israel,”Youth and Society31, no. 3 (2000): 330-331.
3.
Eisikovits, “Gender Differences”, 314-314.
4.
O. Shield, “On the Meaning of Military Service in Israel”, in Israel: Social Structure and Change, ed. M. Curtis and M. S. Chertoff (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1973), 419-433.
5.
Currently, three years for young men and twenty months for young women.
6.
V. Azarya and B. Kimmerling, “New Immigrants in the Israeli Armed Forces”, Armed Forces & Society-6 (1983): 455-482.
7.
S. A. Cohen, “Towards a New Portrait of a (New) Israeli Soldier”, Israel Affairs3 (Spring/Summer 1997): 77-117.
8.
State of Israel, The Security System, “Absorption of Immigrant Soldiers in the Israeli Defense Forces.” From the 50th Report of the State Auditor [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Government Publications1999).
9.
Exemptions are granted to various groups: young women on grounds of the family of origin's traditional lifestyle or an early marriage, orthodox young men studying in religious institutions of higher learning, and certain categories of new immigrants. See S. A. Cohen, “The Israel Defense Forces (IDF): From a ‘People's Army’ to a ‘Professional Military’—Causes and Implications,”Armed Forces & Society21, no. 2 (Winter 1995): 237-254.
10.
In this study, I report about a group of immigrants who arrived from the former Soviet Union during the nineties. These participants have been selected because they were believed to have high chances to adjust given their intellectual abilities. They were assumed to possess good verbal skills, whichwould enable them to provide vivid reports about their service. This is a phenomenological study seeking to gain an understanding of the subjective meaning of experiences for the persons who took part in and are able to provide comprehensive descriptions of these experiences. For a fuller treatment of this research style, see E. Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans. D. Carr (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1931); M. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. C. Smith (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1962); and D. E. Polkinghorne, “Phenomenological Research Methods,” in Existential-Phenomenological Perspectives in Psychology, ed. R. S. Valle and S. Halling (New York: Plenum, 1989). From these individual descriptions, the researcher attempts to derive basic structural patterns characteristic of the phenomena studied; see C. Moustakas, Phenomenological Research Methods(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994). The focus is on in-depth subjective analysis of personal experiences rather than on generalizations. However, such an analysis at the same time provides solid exploratory ground for heuristic model building upon which studies aimed at rigorous generalizations can be based; see E. Babbie, The Practice of Social Research, 10th ed. (Belmont, CA: Thomson-Wadsworth, 2004), 87-90.
11.
The interviews were performed by a research team, which, in addition to me as principal investigator, comprised eight female graduate students trained in qualitative research methods. Six of them had served in the army, two as officers. The students—Y. Assoulin, N. Ben-Rachamim, Y. Chen, L. Erez, Z. Goldstein, O. Gur-Arieh, Y. Hadar, and E. Shai—participated in a research seminar that I offered on the topic “Education in a Multicultural Society.” Their contribution to data collection is acknowledged. I amsolely responsible for data analysis and reporting.
12.
J. Perti Pelto, Anthropological Research: The Structure of Inquiry(New York: Harper & Row, 1970); Harry F. Wolcott, Ethnography: A Way of Seeing(Thousand Oaks, CA: Altamira, 1999).
13.
D. Bertraux, ed., Biography and Society: The Life History Approach in the Social Sciences(Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1981); P. Bourdieu, “L'Illusion Biographique,” Acts de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 62, no. 3 (1986): 69-72.
14.
Eisikovits, “I'll Tell You.”
15.
U. Bronfenbrenner, Two Worlds of Childhood(New York: Basic Books, 1970); and F. Markowitz, “Family Dynamics and the Teenage Immigrant: Creating the Self through the Parents'Image,” Adolescence 29, no. 113 (Spring 1994): 151-61.
16.
M. Azaryahu, “The Independence Day Military Parade: A Political History of a Patriotic Ritual”, in The Military and Militarism in Israeli Society, ed. E. Lomsky-Feder and E. Ben-Ari (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 89-116.
17.
As noted earlier, there are grounds on which females can be released, but the informants ignore many of the service conditions.
18.
Cohen, “The Israel Defense Forces”.
19.
A. Lieblich and M. Perlow, “Transition to Adulthood during Military Service,”The Jerusalem Quarterly47 (Summer 1988): 40-78.
20.
Cohen, “Towards a New Portrait”; and E. Lomsky-Feder, As if There Was No War: Life Histories of Israeli Men[in Hebrew] (Jerusalem, Israel: Magnes1998).
21.
Cohen, “Towards a New Portrait”.
22.
Eisikovits, “I'll Tell You.”
23.
Cohen, “Israel Defense Forces”; and S. Helman, “Militarism and the Construction of the Life-World of Israeli Males: The Case of the Reserves System”, in The Military and Militarism in Israeli Society, ed. E. Lomsky-Feder and E. Ben-Ari (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999).
24.
N. Ben-Yehuda, “The Masada Mythical Narrative and the Israeli Army”, in The Military and Militarism in Israeli Society, ed. E. Lomsky-Feder and E. Ben-Ari (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999).
25.
Lieblich and Perlow, “Transition to Adulthood”.
26.
E. Ben-Ari, Mastering Soldiers: Conflict, Emotions and the Enemy in an Israeli Military Unit(Oxford, UK: Berghahn, 1998); and K. O'Dunivin, “Military Culture: Change and Continuity,” Armed Forces & Society 20, no. 4 (1994): 531-47.
27.
Helman, “Militarism”.
28.
Israeli males perform army-reserve duty up to thirty days per year, usually until the age of fifty.
29.
For a comparison, see D. R. Segal and M. Kestenbaum, “Professional Closure in the Military Labor Market: A Critique of Pure Cohesion”, in The Future of the Army Profession, ed. D. M. Snider, G. L. Watkins, and L. J. Matthews (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2002), 441-458.
30.
Eisikovits, “I'll Tell You”.
31.
Azarya and Kimmerling, “New Immigrants”.
32.
See Eisikovits, “I'll Tell You”; and Eisikovits, “Gender Differences.”
33.
R. A. Eisikovits and M. Karnieli, “Acquiring Conflict Resolution Skills as Cultural Learning: An Israeli Example,”Higher Education23 (1992): 183-194.
34.
State of Israel, The Security System, “Absorption of Immigrant Soldiers”.
