From Prejudice to Inclusion: The Fraught Encounter between Polish Jews and Local Jews in Palestine, 1924–26

The paper sheds light on how host societies and new immigration groups respond to each other culturally, socially and politically, especially in the first years of their encounter. It does so by focusing on the mass immigration of Polish Jews to Palestine in the mid 1920s and by tracing their response to a range of challenges from the local Jewish community. The history of Polish Jewish immigrants in Palestine illustrates a developing immigrant-host relationship, from mutual distrust and exclusion to eventual inclusion.

At the time when the newcomers emigrated from Poland to Palestine, many prejudices about them were already formed among Jews in Palestine. Shortly after their arrival in Palestine, the immigrants had to face not only cultural and linguistic diversity, but also hostility from the local Jewish society. While the old settlers accused Polish Jews of lacking Zionist convictions, the newcomers felt misunderstood and sought to create new social ties among themselves. By looking at debates in the contemporary press and personal memoirs, this paper follows the encounter between the two groups on multiple levels, ranging from the individual and private to the public and political spheres of life. This study shows that over the years, the group of immigrants became a full part of the Jewish Palestinian society. By the 1930s, when Jews fleeing Europe arrived in Palestine as refugees, the Polish Jews had themselves turned into ‘hosts’ and now criticized the newcomers.