Chen Bram
Circassian Re-Immigration To The Caucasus, "Routes and Roots: Emigration in a global perspective", ed. by S. Weil, Magnes, Jerusalem, 1999. Pp. 205-222
This study, which is based on anthropological field work in the Galilee between 1990- 1994 and on field trips to Northern Caucuses in 1990 and 1993, deals with questions concerning the re-emigration of the Circassians to their homeland up to the beginning of 1994. This chapter will examine this process and the changing attitude of the Israeli Circassians towards their relations with their homeland, namely, the transformation from an aspiration and vision of returning to their homeland sometime in the future, to a claim that the relation of the Circassians to the Caucuses and their brothers who live there should be like the connection between the American Jews and the State of Israel. In other words, the chapter examines the definition of a community in exile who are in the process of re-defining a more complicated definition of Diaspora-Center connections. This new definition influences group identity and patterns of accommodation in Israel.
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