Converting to belong: immigration, education and nationalisation among young ‘Russian’ immigrant women

The paper examines religious conversion to Judaism among young ‘Russian’ immigrant girls in Israel. Looking into the process of conversion in religious boarding schools for girls only (Ulpana) and in the broader context of the Israeli nation‐state, we examine the strategies the educators contrive in inculcating religiosity among the girls, how they legitimise and facilitate their self‐transformation, and mobilise them to desire a religious subjectivity. At the same time, we study the experiences of the Russian girls in the Ulpana, and the meanings they assign to their conversion as depicted in the personal stories they narrated to us. The paper reveals how the Ulpana operates as a major nationalisation agent that cultivates a path for the girls to belong to the national religious camp, thus assuring their affiliation to Israeli‐Jewish society at large.