Abstract
Educational programmes for Jewish youth in Israel entered into the landscape of Czech Jewish youth life with the reinstalation of democratic regime in former Czechoslovakia after 1989. Designed with an aim to strengthen diaspora-Israel relations and rooted in the identity politics of both diaspora communities and the Israeli state, they inspired some of its participants to immigrate to Israel.
The youth programmes are among young Jewish respondents notorious for their ‘hyper-sexuality’, the decision to migrate to the country torn by political conflict as nonsensical driven by a desire in young Jewish women to find a Jewish partner. This analysis based on ethnographic research done on educational programmes in Israel and among young Jewish youth in Prague focuses on how sexuality, gender, and identity politics of both diaspora and Israel, including a particular gendered construction of nation, intertwine in various ways in young Jewish migrants' decision to migrate and stay in Israel.