Educational success and long‐term adaptation of immigrant students in Israel

The paper examines patterns of longitudinal cultural adaptation demonstrated by a group of professionally successful immigrants who moved from Transylvania, Romania, to Israel. On a continuum of attitudes towards immigrants ranging from resistance to active solicitation as a function of underlying ideologies, Israel's emphasis on nation‐building represents the positive pole. Its educational expression is a professed interest in immigrant children as the citizens of the future. Nevertheless, the data indicate that these immigrants, though not regarded as culturally remote from Israel's Western‐oriented mainstream ethos, perceived initial educational encounters as oppressive, alienating, and antagonistic. They used these encounters as levers to achieve educational success. Several conditions for favorable cross‐cultural adaptation of populations on scholastic and social levels are identified.