Special to WJW

Israel's attempt to use assimilation to create national unity threatened by ethnic diversity has only partly succeeded.

So said Calvin Goldscheider, American University's Polinger scholar-in-residence and professor emeritus of sociology and Jewish studies at Brown University, last week at the A.U. Center for Israel Studies 2006 Abensohn Lecture on "Ethnic Diversity in Israel: Immigration, Assimilation, and Israel's Future."

Goldscheider said that Israelis recognized from the beginning that their state would rely upon immigration from diverse Jewish communities "as a solution to small demographic size."

"I have been puzzled by the role Jewish ethnic diversity plays in the formation of the Israel nation-state," he told the audience. "How was it to forge a nation-state, and national identity, when ethnic diversity was so conspicuous?"

The answer, Goldscheider found, was state-endorsed assimilation, "integrating and assimilating the immigrants and their children into becoming Israelis."

That assimilation did not work as planned, since "integration of groups has at times led to increased ethnic distinctiveness rather than to total assimilation." Three factors remained distinct: culture, social class and networks.

Though cultural and social class differences tend to fade over time as second- and third-generation immigrants assimilate, Goldscheider found that networks, be they families or ethnic neighborhoods, often do the opposite.

"The point is that not all immigrants lost their ethnic identity," Goldscheider said in an interview.

Last week's event also honored Howard Wachtel, the Center for Israel Studies founding director, and Rhea Schwartz, its former deputy director. Both left the center earlier this year.

Wachtel said that when he presented his idea for such a center to the Israeli Embassy, Ambassador Eliahu Ben-Elissar called him "courageous."

"I blinked, because that adjective at the time would not have occurred to me," Wachtel told the assembled audience of about 80 people.

In his introduction, Cornelius Kerwin, A.U.'s interim president, credited Wachtel with the vision and energy to create the Israel Studies center in 1998, which "if it wasn't unprecedented, it was certainly unequaled."

Kerwin lauded "our newly launched minor" in Israel studies.

Schwartz said she hoped that Israel studies would become the rage on campus, like Russian studies used to be.

"Now it's time for Israel studies to take its place," she said, worrying aloud that today's students see the Holocaust as they see the Revolutionary or Civil wars, "of which they know very little."

To Schwartz, students take Israel for granted as they do cell phones. "All students need to be educated about Israel, not just Jewish ones. Today's grungy students will all too soon be working at the State Department."

Students at the lecture expressed interest in the subject, but offered different perspectives on Israel and Middle East studies on campus.

Sienna Girgenti, a sophomore in the School of International Relations who is registered for Goldscheider's course next semester, called the lecture "very eloquent." She has found "there is a very strong bias on our campus" from the Arab studies departments.

Bob Burian, a sophomore majoring in international relations who is considering Goldscheider's course, disagrees with that take on Arab studies at A.U.

"People are fairly open about the Middle East," he said, "Overall, there are balanced points of view."

International services major Cheryl Saferstein said she might consider the Israel studies minor. But she claims to avoid propaganda of all sorts, including the "propaganda of my Jewish high school" in Akron, Ohio.