Bulletin: Americans Jews and Israel

Books

• Lawrence J. Epstein, Americans and the Birth of Israel

Articles

• Yehonatan Abramson, Making a Homeland, Constructing a Diaspora: The Case of Taglit-Birthright Israel
• Mordechai Inbari, Jewish and Israeli Pilgrimage Experience: Constructing National Identity
• Shaul Kelner, Israel, the Sociology of American Judaism and the Problematics of Sovereignty
• Stephen W. Litvin and Jill Alison Schancupp, American Jewish Youth’s Attachment to Israel: Implications for Israeli Tourism

Reviews

• Zev Eleff, on Emily Alice Katz’s Bringing Zion Home
• Ari Y. Kelman, on Dov Waxman’s Trouble in the Tribe
• Eli Lederhendler, on Jonathan Rynhold’s The Arab Israeli Conflict in American Political Culture, Theodore Sasson’s The New American Zionism, and Dov Waxman’s Trouble in the Tribe
• Michael Rubner, on Dov Waxman’s Trouble in the Tribe
• Sarah M. Tauber, on Emily Alice Katz’s Bringing Zion Home

Bulletin: Aliyah, Immigration, Refugees and Trafficking

Articles

• Ofir Abu, Fany Yuval, and Guy Ben-Porat, Responses of Ethiopian Jews in Israel to Stigmatization by the Police
• Debora Pricila Birgier et al, Self-Selection and Host Country Context in the Economic Assimilation of Political Refugees in the United States, Sweden, and Israel
• Jonah B. Cohen, Ethiopian-Israeli Community
• Ravit Talmi Cohn, Time Making and Place Making: A Journey of Immigration from Ethiopia to Israel
• David Dose et al, Comparing Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union to Israel and Germany
• Netanel Fisher and Avi Shilon, Integrating Non-Jewish Immigrants and the Formation of Israel’s Ethnic–Civic Nationhood
• Eti Gilad and Shosh Millet, The Identity of Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel
• Keith Goldstein and Pnina Golan-Cook, The Dilemma of Deviant Subcultures for Immigrant Youth Integration: An Analysis of Popularity Attainment in Israeli Schools
• Nelly Kfir and Adriana Kemp, The Legalization of Migrants and Human Rights Activism in Israel
• Michal Lev-Keren, Bias Factors in Mathematics Achievement Tests among Israeli Students from the Former Soviet Union
• Malka Muchnik et al, The Status of the Four Languages in Israel
• Larissa Remennick, Generation 1.5 of Russian-speaking immigrants in Israel and in Germany
• C. Zbenovich, Cross-Cultural Communication in Russian-Speaking Immigrant Families in Israel

Reviews

• Maina Chawla Singh, on Joseph Hodes’ From India to Israel: Identity, Immigration, and the Struggle for Religious Equality

Report

• Barry R. Chiswick, Linguistic and Economic Adjustment among Immigrants in Israel

Theses

• Noam Perry, The Promise and Pitfalls of Unilateral Pressure to Combat Human Trafficking: U.S. Pressure on Israel, the Philippines, and Thailand (PhD, Northeastern)

Bulletin: Religion in Israel

Books

• Benjamin Brown and Nissim Leon, eds. The Gdoilim: Leaders who Shaped the Israeli Haredi Jewry (in Hebrew)
• Shai Feraro and James R. Lewis, eds. Contemporary Alternative Spiritualities in Israel
• Yaacov Yadgar, Sovereign Jews: Israel, Zionism, and Judaism

Articles

• Nadia Beider, Religious Practices and Beliefs among Religious Stayers and Religious Switchers in Israeli Judaism
• Arye Edrei, Judaism, Jewish Law, and the Jewish State in Israel
• Yulia Egorova, Lost Tribe Communities, Israel, and Notions of Jewishness
• Shai Feraro, Canaanite Reconstructionism Among Contemporary Israeli Pagans

Report

• Leonard Saxe et al, Under the Chuppah: Rabbinic Officiation and Intermarriage

Event

• Yuval Jobani, Women of the Wall: Negotiating Religion in the Public Sphere, NYU, April 6, 2017

 

 

Bulletin: Peacemaking, Peace Building and the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process

Books

• Ilan Alon and Daniel Bar-Tal, eds. The Role of Trust in Conflict Resolution
• Carmel Borg and Michael Grech, eds. Pedagogy, Politics and Philosophy of Peace
• Herbert C. Kelman and Ronald J. Fisher, eds. Herbert C. Kelman: A Pioneer in the Social Psychology of Conflict Analysis and Resolution

Articles

• Bashir Bashir, The Strengths and Weaknesses of Integrative Solutions for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Susan S. Lanser & Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Israeli–Palestinian Narratives and the Politics of Form: Reading Side by Side
• Rotem Nagar and Ifat Maoz, Predicting Jewish-Israeli Recognition of Palestinian Pain and Suffering
• Padraig O’Malley, Israel and Palestine: The Demise of the Two-State Solution
• Tina Kempin Reuter, Simulating Peace Negotiations: A Case Study of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
• Karen Ross, Untangling the Intervention-Context Dyad through Horizontal Comparison: Examples from Israeli Peacebuilding Organizations
• Mohammed Samhouri, Israeli-Palestinian Economic Relations, 1994–2014
• Mandy Turner, The Peacebuilding–Counterinsurgency Nexus in the Occupied Palestinian Territory
  

Reviews

• Michael Shulz, on Jacob Eriksson’s Small-State Mediation in International Conflicts: Diplomacy and Negotiations in Israel-Palestine

Theses

• Rebecca Katherine Buchanan, Analysis of Strides for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict with the Application of Theories by Butler and Buber (BA, Wofford)
• Andrew Rizzo Naudi, Track-Two Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution: A Case Study of Israel-Palestine Negotiations in the Run-Up to the Oslo Accord (MA, Malta)

Bulletin: Israeli literature and Israel in Literature

Books

• Anna Bernard, Rhetorics of Belonging: Nation, Narration, and Israel/Palestine
• Hila Shlomit Kinel-Limoni, Female Fiction in the Hebrew ‘Revival’ Literature (in Hebrew)
• Joseph Lowin, Art and the Artist in the Contemporary Israeli Novel

 

  Articles

• Nitza Ben-Dov, The Tragic Dilemma in Hanoch Bartov’s The Brigade
• Natasha Gordinsky, Reflective Nostalgia in Lea Goldberg’s Wartime Poetry
• Danielle Gurevitch, The Israeli Reader’s Attitude towards Fantastic Literature
• Anat Koplowitz-Breier, The Mean Streets of Beersheba: The Place of the City in Shulamit Lapid’s Lizzie Badiḥi Series
• Gideon Nevo, The Race For Symbolic Capital in Ephraim Kishon’s Social Satire
• Oded Nir, Zionist Literary Realism between utopia and ‘Khirbet Khizeh’
• Ari Ofengenden, Minoritarian Interventions and National Identity: Reading Oz With Kashua
• Dana Olmert, Mothers of Soldiers in Israeli Literature
• Avital Pilpel, Why Are There No Israeli Utopias in Israeli Science Fiction?
• Giddon Ticotsky, A German Island in Israel: Lea Goldberg and Tuvia Rübner’s Republicof Letters
• Melissa Weininger, Language Politics: The Boundaries of Homeland and Translingual Israeli Literature

Reviews

• Robert J. Watson, on Lucille Cairns’ Francophone Jewish Writers: Imagining Israel

Bulletin: Media coverage of/in Israel

Books

• Margret Müller: The World According To Israeli Newspapers:Representations of International Involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Articles

• Christian Baden and Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt, Convergent News? A Longitudinal Study of Similarity and Dissimilarity in the Domestic and Global Coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Yair Galily, Moran Yarchi, Tal Samuel-Azran, and Rona Cohen, Friend or Foe? Perceptions of Qatar in the Israeli Online General and Sports Press
• Giora Goodman and Sandrine Boudana, The Language of Objectivity: Reuters’ Internal Editorial Discussions on Terminology in the Arab–Israeli Conflict, 1967-1982
• Dávid Kaposi, On the Possibility of Critiquing Israel: The Times’ Engagement with Israel’s Deployment of White Phosphorous during the First Gaza War
• Esther Lopatin, Tal Samuel-Azran, and Yair Galily, A Clash-of-Civilizations Prism in German Media? Documenting a Shift from Political to Religious Framing of the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict
• Noam Tirosh, Alone in Berlin? Israeli Media and the German Resistance to Nazism
• Shixin Ivy Zhang, Covering the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

 

Book Reviews

• Catherine Cassara, on James Rodgers’ Headlines From the Holy Land

 

Theses

• Aida Homayoun Nikou, Depicting the Other: Iranian and American Media Coverage of the 2014 Gaza War (MA, University of Houston)

Bulletin: Cyberworlds – Cybersecurity and Social Media

Articles

• Gil Baram, Israeli Defense in the Age of Cyber War
• Tamar Lahav and Osnat Roth-Cohen, The Changing Blogosphere and Its Impact on Public Relations Practice and Professional Ethics
• Amit M. Schejter and Noam Tirosh, The Digital Divide in Israel
• Revital Sela-Shayovitz, David C. Pyrooz, and Scott H. Decker, Israeli and US Gangs in the Virtual World
• Efrat Shoham, Perceptions among Israeli Talkbackers Regarding Female Violence
• Lior Tabansky, Cyber Security Challenges: The Israeli Water Sector Example
• Moran Yarchi et al, Invest, Engage, and Win: Online Campaigns and Their Outcomes in an Israeli Election
• Thomas Zeitzoff, Does Social Media Influence Conflict? Evidence from the 2012 Gaza Conflict
• Gadi Zerach, Pathological Narcissism, Cyberbullying Victimization and Offending among Homosexual and Heterosexual Participants in Online Dating Websites

 

Reviews

• Rikke Bjerg Jensen, on Adi Kuntsman and Rebecca L. Stein’s Digital Militarism: Israel’s Occupation in the Social Media Age

Theses

• Shahirah Elaiza Wan Hassan, Hashtag Wars: Twitter as a Discursive Space in the ‘Battle of Narratives’ between pro-Israelis and pro-Palestinians (MA, Victoria University of Wellington)

Events

• “Cybersecurity in an Age of Uncertainty: U.S.-Israel Perspectives” Conference; American University Center for Israel Studies, March 20-21, 2017

 

Bulletin: Israel and the United States

Articles

• Ellen Fleishman, Hillary Clinton and Israel
• Philip Gordon, The Crisis in US-Israeli Relations
• Josh Ruebner, Obama’s Legacy on Israel/Palestine
  
• Rouhollah Shahabi & Alireza Mashoori, George W. Bush and Israeli Government
• Zaki Shalom, The Obama Administration and the Peace Process

 

Reviews

• Nancy Murray, on Irene L. Gendzier, Dying to Forget
• Philip C. Wilcox, Jr., on Dennis Ross, Doomed to Succeed

Bulletin: On political history

Books

• Michael Brecher, Political Leadership and Charisma: Nehru, Ben-Gurion, and Other 20th Century Political Leaders

Articles

• Meir Chazan, Israel Goes to the Polls, 1948-1949
• Asaf Siniver. Anti-Intellectualism and Israeli Politics
• Dror Zeigerman, A Liberal Upheaval. Israeli Politics from the General Zionists to the Liberal Party

Reviews

• Donna Robinson Divine, on Sasley and Waller, Politics in Israel: Governing a Complex Society
• Jonathan Rynhold, on Ziv, Why Hawks Become Doves: Shimon Peres and Foreign Policy Change in Israel
• Brent E. Sasley, on Shindler, The Rise of the Israeli Right: From Odessa to Hebron

Interviews

• Anger and Hope: A Conversation with Tzipi Livni

 

Bulletin: Military and Soldiers

Articles

• Ben-Shalom, Uzi, and Yizhaq Benbenisty. “Coping Styles and Combat Motivation During Operations. An IDF Case Study.” Armed Forces and Society 42.4 (2016): 655-74.
• Lebel, Udi. “The ‘Immunized Integration’ of Religious-Zionists within Israeli Society: The Pre-Military Academy as an Institutional Model.” Social Identities 22.6 (2016): 642-60.
• Lomsky-Feder, Edna, and Orna Sasson-Levy. “The Effects of Military Service on Women’s Lives from the Narrative Perspective.” In Researching the Military (Cass Military Studies; ed. Helena Carrieras, Celso Castro, and Sabina Frederic; Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2016): 94ff.
• Rosman, Elisheva. “Toward a Classification of Managing Religious Diversity in the Ranks. The Case of the Turkish and Israeli Armed Forces.” Armed Forces and Society 42.4 (2016): 675-95.
• Shelef, Leah, Evyatar Ayzen, Nirit Yavnai, Eyal Fruchter, and Orly Sarid. “The Contribution of the Socio-Demographic Characteristics on Suicidal Ideation among Israeli Soldiers.” Disaster and Military Medicine 2.5 (2016).
• Simonetti, Ilaria. “Women’s Violence and Gender Relations in the Israeli Defence Forces.” In Gender and Conflict: Embodiments, Discourses and Symbolic Practices (ed. Georg Frerks, Annelou Ypeij, and Reinhilde Sotiria König; London and New York: Routledge, 2016): 67-90.

Bulletin: Religion in Israel

Books:

• Sharaby, Rachel. The Revival of a Tradition. Seharane Celebrations in Israel (Tel Aviv: Resling, 2016; in Hebrew).
• Hakak, Yohai. Haredi Masculinities between the Yeshiva, the Army, Work and Politics: The Sage, the Warrior and the Entrepreneur (Leiden: Brill, 2016).

Articles:

• Engelberg, Ari. “Religious Zionist Singles: Caught Between ‘Family Values’ and ‘Young Adulthood’.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 55.2 (2016): 349-64.
• Shoham, Hizky. “‘He had a Ceremony—I had a Party’: Bar Mitzvah Ceremonies vs. Bat Mitzvah Parties in Israeli Culture.” Modern Judaism 36.3 (2016): 335-356.
• Levy, John. “Freedom and Authority in Israel.” In Freedom and Authority in Religions and Religious Education (ed. Brian Gates; London and New York: Bloomsbury, 1996, reprinted 2016), 86-94.
• Uzan, Elad. “From Social Norm to Legal Claim: How American Orthodox Feminism Changed Orthodoxy in Israel.” Modern Judaism 36.2 (2016): 144-62.
• Shilon, Avi. “Menachem Begin’s Attitude toward the Jewish Religion.” Middle East Journal 70.2 (2016): 249-74.
• Levy, Yagil. “Religious Authorities in the Military and Civilian Control. The Case of the Israeli Defense Forces.” Politics & Society 44.2 (2016): 305-32.

Reviews:

• Waldron, Mary Ann. Review of: René Provost, ed. Mapping the Legal Boundaries of Belonging: Religion and Multiculturalism from Israel to Canada (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). Journal of Church and State, 2016 (online first).
• Ward, Ian. Review of: Jacques Berlinerblau, Sarah Fainberg, and Aurora Nou, eds. Secularism on the Edge: Rethinking Church-State Relations in the United States, France, and Israel (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Journal of Church and State, 2016 (online first).
• Greenberg, Yoel. Review of: Raffi Ben-Moshe, Experiencing Devekut: The Contemplative Niggun of Habad in Israel (trans. Jonathan Chipman; Jeursalem: Jewish Music Research Center, 2015). Notes 73.1 (2016): 120-122.

 

New Article: Violi, A Peace-Building Experience in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Violi, Patrizia. “Just Words under the Wall: A Peace-Building Experience in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” In Gender and Conflict: Embodiments, Discourses and Symbolic Practices (ed. Georg Frerks, Annelou Ypeij, and Reinhilde Sotiria König; London and New York: Routledge, 2016): 217ff.

 

 

Extract

This experience, in which I was personally involved, was a three-year EU-financed project initiated in late 2005 entitled ‘Building Constituencies for Women’s Alternative Ways for Peace’. Its primary objective was to promote encounters between Palestinian and Israeli women and support peacemaking efforts by The Jerusalem Link, an organisation involving two Women’s Centres: Bat Shalom and Jerusalem Center for Women.’ The Jerusalem Link involving these two women’s organisations was established in 1994 to bring about a just, comprehensive and lasting peace between the two peoples of Palestine and Israel, and its feminist grounding is explicitly emphasised in the declaration of intent.

 

 

New Article: Azaryahu, Battle Remains and the Formation of a Battlescape, Sha’ar HaGai

Azaryahu, Maoz. “Wrecks to Relics: Battle Remains and the Formation of a Battlescape, Sha’ar HaGai, Israel.” In Memory, Place and Identity: Commemoration and Remembrance of War and Conflict (ed. Danielle Drozdzewski, Sarah De Nardi, and Emma Waterton; Abingdon, UK and New York: Routledge, 2016).

 

 

Absract

Beyond prior knowledge about the association of the relics with history, their interpretation and evaluation in terms of memory and legacy is a matter of perspective based on particular ideological premises. Writing about his bus ride from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 1994, the travel writer Paul Theroux mentioned these relics: ‘Old-fashioned armored cars and rusty trucks had been left by the roadside as memorials to the men who had died in what the Israelis call the War of Liberation. The vehicles, so old, so clumsy, roused pity.’ To Theroux the relics ‘roused pity’. In Israeli patriotic culture they have been associated with heroic sacrifice, evoking veneration and respect. Despite their repeated relocations in the local landscape, the authenticity they exude substantially augments their symbolic capacity to conflate the historical battlefield at Bab el Wad and the contemporary battlescape at Sha’ar HaGai.

 

 

New Article: Gilboa and Magen, Crisis Communication Research in Israel

Gilboa, Eytan, and Clila Magen. “Crisis Communication Research in Israel. Growth and Gaps.” In The Handbook of International Crisis Communication Research (ed. Andreas Schwarz, Matthew W. Seeger, and Claudia Auer; Malden, Mass. and Oxford, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2016): 327-36.

 

Extract

Gesser-Edelsburg and Zemach (2012) explored CC strategies used by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to deal with the December 2010 Carmel forest fire disaster. Ostensibly, this crisis belongs to the national type, but the focus on the prime minister moves it to the individual crisis category… They concluded that Netanyahu made effective use of CC principles including inclusion, clarity, and addressing the public’s values and norms. They claimed, however, that those strategies were used to produce what they labeled “cover-up risk communication,” because the end result was a cover-up of a failure rather than an admission of malfunction and willingness to correct defects. The analysis is interesting but the conclusion ignored important measures applied by the government in the post-crisis era. While the government refused to admit guilt, it took immediate and bold measure to correct the defects.

 

 

Book Chapter: Diab, al-Sādāt’s Knesset Address, Ṣulḥ, and Diplomacy

Diab, Rasha. “From the Egyptian People’s Assembly to the Israeli Knesset: al-Sādāt’s Knesset Address, Ṣulḥ, and Diplomacy.” In Shades of Ṣulḥ. The Rhetorics of Arab-Islamic Reconciliation (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016): 112-60.

 

Extract

In late November 1977, Muḥammad Anwar al-Sādāt undertook a risky and highly visible trip across the Egyptian-Israeli border to visit with the Knesset . The epigraph above comes from his Knesset address (hereafter KA) and sums up its overall goal, which sought to enable deliberation commensurate with the gravity of a series of wars and to attain peace. al-Sādāt’s KA interrupted and transformed a prolonged diplomatic stalemate, resuscitated peace talks, and eventually led to the Camp David Treaty. The KA and texts it deliberates with and against are the focal point of this chapter.

This chapter offers a bidimensional reading of ṣulḥ discourse, underlining how al-Sādāt’s diplomatic deliberations resuscitated Egyptian-Israeli peace talks in 1977 by drawing on a long tradition of public, formal ṣulḥ in addition to the three main features of ṣulḥ, namely initiating peace through commitment; mobilizing witnesses; and creating a community, political structure included, of peace pursuers. As such, this chapter provides yet another case where the three main features of ṣulḥ are conspicuous. I contend that these features of ṣulḥ are crucial to understanding al-Sādāt’s 1977 peace initiative and that they are the backbone of the address. However, ṣulḥ continues to be invisible in scholarship on al-Sādāt’s initiative. It is important to note that in this case ṣulḥ expresses itself in relation to other discourses that also seek to create transformative encounters, namely diplomatic discourse, border crossing, war/peace epideictic rhetoric, and policy articulations at moments of crises. In this mix, ṣulḥ can be forgotten unless we deliberately tease out its manifestation in both the symbolic and procedural dimensions of peacemaking.

 

 

New Article: Dalsheim, Other Sovereignties in Israel/Palestine

Dalsheim, Joyce. “Other Sovereignties in Israel/Palestine: The Limited Imaginings of a Secular Age.” In Working with A Secular Age: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Charles Taylor’s Master Narrative (ed. Florian Zemmin, Colin Jager, and Guido Vanheeswijck; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016): 159-74.

 

Extract

Some people on the ground in Israel/Palestine have begun thinking and acting in ways that pose challenges to the “sovereignty” component of the episteme of people/territory/sovereignty that underlies the modern nation-state. These challenges are sometimes considered unconventional, sometimes crazy. Sometimes these kinds of actions are called visionary, but other times they are categorized as criminal or treasonous. I will focus on just three examples – each of which poses a different challenge to what is generally thought of as popular sovereignty. Those who pose these challenges fall outside the norms of the modern social imaginary Taylor represents, and outside the boundaries of conventional peacemaking. They pose threats to the moder order of nation-states in which peace is expected to take place and may therefore be considered “spoilers” of peace.

 

 

New Article: Wolfson, Animal Protection under Israeli Law

Wolfson, Yossi. “Animal Protection Under Israeli Law.” In Animal Law and Welfare. International Perspectives (ed. Deborah Cao and Steven White; Cham: Springer, 2016): 157-79.

 

 

URL: dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26818-7_8

 

Abstract

Israeli law, in some aspects, is rather progressive as to the protection of non-human animals. While “animal abuse” is interpreted as causing animals “unnecessary suffering”, the content given to this phrase defeats some characteristics attributed by Gary Francione to “legal welfarism”. In some instances the interests of nonhuman animals override substantive human interests, anchored in institutionalized forms of exploitation. An example is the ban on force-feeding of geese and ducks. Animal protection organizations were granted a broad mandate by the Israeli legislature and courts to represent the interests of animals in civil, administrative and criminal procedures. This solves the problem of standing which undermines animal protection in other jurisdictions. While Israeli law protects the interests of animals for the sake of the animals and gives them some weight, social power relations are still based on the cruel exploitation of nonhumans by humans. This chapter describes the principles of animal protection in Israeli law, discusses aspects that may inspire animal protection in other countries, and goes into some detail regarding the specific provisions of Israeli laws that are difficult to access without the knowledge of Hebrew.

 

 

New Article: Seeman, Jewish Ethiopian Israelis

Seeman, Don. “Jewish Ethiopian Israelis.” The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism Chichester: Wiley, 2016.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781118663202.wberen321
 

Abstract

Ethiopian Jews are the descendants of an ethnic and religious community known as Beta Israel or Falasha. Historically concentrated in the highlands of northern Ethiopia (Gondar and Tigre) they were in some cases denied the right to hold land unless they converted to Christianity. In modern times, intense Christian missionary efforts paradoxically helped to bring Ethiopian Jews into closer contact with foreign Jewish communities. In the past half-century nearly the whole Ethiopian Jewish community has migrated to Israel, where they have faced significant challenges and opportunities. Questions about their status under Jewish law have led to political conflicts of various kinds. In addition, the most recent groups of immigrants includes many whose ancestors converted to Christianity but have sought to return to Judaism in the context of migrating to Israel. The community has integrated into Israeli life but has also simultaneously taken its place as part of the global Ethiopian cultural diaspora.

 

 

 

New Article: Benski and Katz, Women’s Peace Activism and the Holocaust

Benski, Tova, and Ruth Katz. “Women’s Peace Activism and the Holocaust: Reversing the Hegemonic Holocaust Discourse in Israel.” In The Holocaust as Active Memory: The Past in the Present (ed. Marie Louise Seeberg, Irene Levine, and Claudia Lenz; Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2013, reprinted 2016): 93-112.

 

 

Extract

The present chapter focuses on Holocaust discourse among activists of the Coalition of Women for Peace, and is an unexpected outcome of a longitudinal study of women’s peace movements in Israel since the late 1980s. The chapter is divided into four parts: First, we present theoretical perspectives of collective memory and trauma. We then turn to the construction of cultural memory of the Holocaust in Israel. The third section examines the socio-political space of the Coalition of Women for Peace, offering a rich description of its constituent groups, their value orientations, and activities. The fourth part, which forms the core of the chapter, centers on the CWP and the Holocaust, and presents the somewhat ambivalent analogies made by the women activists between the Holocaust and the current phase of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while identifying the various themes that dominate the specific Holocaust discourse that has evolved among these women.

 

 

 

New Article: Felson and Silk, National Affairs

Felson, Ethan, Mark Silk. “National Affairs.” American Jewish Year Book 115 (2015):89-106.

 

URL: dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24505-8_3

 

Abstract

This chapter details the major events of the past year, international and domestic, and how they impacted the American Jewish community. Tensions between the Israeli prime minister and the American president, the threat of a nuclear Iran, a war in Gaza, rising Islamic radicalism, and the growth of the boycott, divestment and sanction movement consumed the attention of much of the organized Jewish community. Closer to home, racial unrest in several major cities roiled during the year – and the country awaited a Supreme Court decision requiring recognition of same sex marriage nationwide, a move that liberal Jews sought but which raised concerns among more traditional Jews, particularly those who might be called upon to recognize such unions in their businesses and communities.