New Book: Bar, Reinternment of Renowned Men in the Land of Israel, 1904-1967 (in Hebrew)

Bar, Doron. Ideology and Symbolic Landscape. The Reinternment of Renowned Men in the Land of Israel, 1904-1967. Jerusalem: Magnes, 2015 (in Hebrew).

 

 

Why was Theodor Herzl buried on a desolate mountaintop in West Jerusalem and why did his resting place remain many years with no tombstone?

What is the reason that Judah Leib Pinsker was buried in an ancient burial cave of the Second Temple period?

How was Ramat Hanadiv designed as a burial ground for Edmond Benjamin James de Rothschild?

Why was Otto Warburg buried in Degania?

Doron Bar’s new book examines these issues. Through detailed documentation and accompanying photographs, it delineates the journeys of these figures and other prominent leaders – visionaries of Zionism, political leaders, heroes, intellectuals and pioneers – from the diaspora to their reinternment in the Land of Israel. It examines the question regarding the reasons for the great efforts to bring their remains to burial in Israel, as well as the conduct of the necessary procedures in Israel and abroad. It discusses what made the graves of these prominent men – in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Zikhron Ya’akov and Kinneret – a pilgrimage site, that contributed to the design of the symbolic and civic landscape of the State of Israel
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New Article: Girsh, Israeli Adolescents’ Views of Heroes and Celebrities

Girsh, Yaron. “Between My Mother and the Big Brother: Israeli Adolescents’ Views of Heroes and Celebrities.” Journal of Youth Studies 17.7 (2014): 916-929.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13676261.2014.881984

 

 

Abstract

Sociological interest in popular culture has contributed much to our understanding of heroes and celebrities as promoted by the media in a macro-cultural sense. However, knowledge of how individuals interpret these processes and the characters promoted thereby is lacking. Based on 44 group interviews with Jewish adolescents in 12 Israeli high schools, this study explores youth attitudes toward heroes and celebrities, including how they are differentiated from one another, and the cultural, social, and personal meanings associated with them. In contrast to prevalent social conceptions, and offering a differing focus from that of previous research, this article argues that the characters promoted by the media have little meaning for adolescents. Moreover, adolescents view celebrity worship as a phenomenon that threatens one’s identity. A few celebrities do gain the title of hero, however, thus shifting the traditional dichotomy between hero and celebrity toward a more nuanced position on the continuum. These findings undermine the moral panic accompanying celebrity worship and the place of celebrities in adolescents’ lives, and challenge the analytical hero-celebrity dichotomy.