New Article: Levin, Meanings of House Materiality for Moroccan Migrants in Israel

Levin, Iris. “Meanings of House Materiality for Moroccan Migrants in Israel.” In Ethno-Architecture and the Politics of Migration (ed. Mirjana Lozanovska; Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2016): 115-30.

 

 

Extract

The chapter has discussed two case studies which were chosen because they are very from one another: one migrant house has a Moroccan room which is the epitome of Moroccan design, while the other has barely anything to indicate the ethnic identity of its owner. Yet, the migrants who live in these houses have created, each in their own way through the use of material cultures, the means to tell the story of Moroccan migration to Israel and gain the long-desired recognition of Moroccan culture in Israeli society. Through the understanding of these material cultures in the migrant house, it is possible to understand the ethno-architecture of the migrant experience at the scale of the house. The analysis of house materiality of these two Moroccan migrant homes in Israel has shown that, for them, there is a collective aesthetic and sense of belonging that situates them in a role of representing their culture and explaining it to others.

 

 

 

Report: Cohen & Mimran, A Reexamination of Israel’s Home Demolition Policy (Hebrew)

Cohen, Amichai, and Tal Mimran. Cost without Benefit: A Reexamination of Israel’s Home Demolition Policy, Policy Studies 112. Jerusalem: Israel Democracy Institute, 2015 (in Hebrew).

URL: http://www.idi.org.il/cost_with_no_benefit/

 

Abstract

Under a policy that was in force from 1967 until 2005, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) demolished the homes of the perpetrators of terrorist acts and various security offenses, as well as their accomplices. In 2005, a commission of experts, headed by Maj. Gen. Ehud Shani, expressed its doubts as to the policy’s legality and efficacy and recommended that it be abandoned. Notwithstanding, the home demolition policy was revived three years later, in 2008.

The demolition of homes is an extreme measure. The arguments against it include that it is a disproportional infringement of private property rights, constitutes collective punishment, and that there are no evident gains that can justify its use. Nevertheless, over the years, decision-makers in the IDF insisted that the deterrent effect outweighs other considerations and justifies the infringement of rights. The Supreme Court of Israel, almost without exception, has given its full backing to that position. The underlying assumption about the deterrent effect of home demolition is based on the intensity of the sanction against the terrorist and his family as well as the rapidity with which it is implemented.

This study is a three-part examination of how the IDF reached the conclusion that home demolition is an effective policy and employed it for so many years without ever conducting an empirical study. We also consider what caused the decision-makers to revive the policy only three years after it was decided to abandon it.

 

 

 

ToC: Jewish Social Studies 21,1 (2015)

Jewish Social Studies 21.1 (2015)

Table of Contents

 Front Matter

•  A Modern (Jewish) Woman in a Café: Leah Goldberg and the Poetic Space of the Coffeehouse (pp. 1-48)

  Shachar Pinsker
• The Missing Beat Generation: Coming of Age and Nostalgism in Arik Einstein’s Music (pp. 49-88)

  Arie M. Dubnov
• Shame as an Existential Emotion in Modern Kabbalah (pp. 89-122)

  Jonathan Garb
• Yad Vashem and the State of Holocaust Education in Israeli Schools in the 1960s (pp. 123-150)

  Jeffrey C. Blutinger
• Jewish Liberal, Russian Conservative: Daniel Pasmanik between Zionism and the Anti-Bolshevik White Movement (pp. 151-180)

  Taro Tsurumi

New Article: Bernstein, Russian Food Stores and Their Meaning in Germany and Israel

Bernstein, Julia. “Russian Food Stores and Their Meaning for Jewish Migrants in Germany and Israel. Honor and ‘Nostalgia’.” In Being Jewish in 21st-Century Germany (ed. Olaf Glöckner and Haim Fireberg; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015): 81-102.

 

Abstract

This article deals with the process of integration into a new society through preservation of food habits from the former ‘home-land.’ The text is based on a comparative study that was conducted in Germany and Israel. Sticking to food habit, concludes Bernstein “in the migration process obviously contribute to ‘living memories,’ yet they do much more: They also ‘make a place’ for a virtual home that preserves social status and stabilizes the self-esteem of customers. Food consumption in the migration process seems to promote contouring collective ‘we’-identities.”

 

 

Conference: AJS Program Book now online (Boston, Dec 13-15, 2015)

The 47th Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies will take place in Boston, December 13-15, 2015.

The full program is now available on the AJS website: http://www.ajsnet.org/conference-menu.htm

You may also download the program here: PDF

 

 

New Article: Hirsch et al, Home Attachment and Coherence in Times of War: Perspectives of Jewish Israeli Mothers

Hirsch, Tal Litvak, Orna Braun-Lewensohn, and Alon Lazar. “Does Home Attachment Contribute to Strengthen Sense of Coherence in Times of War? Perspectives of Jewish Israeli Mothers.” Women & Health 55.4 (2015): 467-83.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03630242.2015.1022688

 

Abtract

The perceptions of home, the significance attached to the home, and the reasons for the decision to continue living at home despite past and potentially future threats were investigated among Jewish Israeli mothers whose homes were exposed to long-term rocket attacks. Findings showed that the mothers expressed a firm attachment to their homes and to their physical and social surroundings and indicated that home attachment, in terms of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors connected to home, contributed to the strengthening of their sense of coherence due to the comprehension, management, and the meaning that they accorded the situation. These components of sense of coherence served as assets and coping resources that helped the women handle their stressful situations.

New Book: Fuchs, Israeli Feminist Scholarship

Fuchs, Esther, ed. Israeli Feminist Scholarship. Gender, Zionism, and Difference. Austin, TX : University of Texas Press, 2014.

More than a dozen scholars give voice to cutting-edge postcolonial trends (from ecofeminism to gender identity in family life) that question traditional approaches to Zionism while highlighting nationalism as the core issue of Israeli feminist scholarship today.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction. Israeli Feminist Scholarship: Gender, Zionism, and Difference

Esther Fuchs

Chapter One. The Evolution of Critical Paradigms in Israeli Feminist Scholarship: A Theoretical Model

Esther Fuchs

Chapter Two. Politicizing Masculinities: Shahada and Haganah

Sheila H. Katz

Chapter Three. The Double or Multiple Image of the New Hebrew Woman

Margalit Shilo

Chapter Four. The Heroism of Hannah Senesz: An Exercise in Creating Collective National Memory in the State of Israel

Judith T. Baumel

Chapter Five. The Feminisation of Stigma in the Relationship Between Israelis and Shoah Survivors

Ronit Lentin

Chapter Six. Gendering Military Service in the Israel Defense Forces

Dafna N. Izraeli

Chapter Seven. The Halachic Trap: Marriage and Family Life

Ruth Halperin-Kaddari

Chapter Eight. Motherhood as a National Mission: The Construction of Womanhood in the Legal Discourse in Israel

Nitza Berkovitch

Chapter Nine. No Home at Home: Women’s Fiction vs. Zionist Practice

Yaffah Berlovitz

Chapter Ten. Wasteland Revisited: An Ecofeminist Strategy

Hannah Naveh

Chapter Eleven. Tensions in Israeli Feminism: The Mizrahi-Ashkenazi Rift

Henriette Dahan-Kalev

Chapter Twelve. Scholarship, Identity, and Power: Mizrahi Women in Israel

Pnina Motzafi-Haller

Chapter Thirteen. Reexamining Femicide: Breaking the Silence and Crossing “Scientific” Borders

Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian

Chapter Fourteen. The Construction of Lesbianism as Nonissue in Israel

Erella Shadmi

Chapter Fifteen. From Gender to Genders: Feminists Read Women’s Locations in Israeli Society

Hanna Herzog

Acknowledgments

Contributors

Index

 

Purchase from publisher: https://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/fucisr

Cite: Mendelson-Maoz, Israel and Africa in Beta Israel’s Hebrew Literature and Culture.

Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. “Diaspora and Homeland—: Israel and Africa in Beta Israel’s Hebrew Literature and Culture.” Research in African Literatures 44.4 (2013): 35-50.

 

URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/research_in_african_literatures/v044/44.4.mendelson-maoz.html

 

Abstract

Diaspora and homeland, seemingly opposite concepts, constitute the foundation of a historical narrative in which immigrant groups are forced to leave their homeland and live in a foreign country, while continuing to dream of returning to their old home. In the case of Zionism, specifically the Beta Israel community in Ethiopia, the conditions were set to fulfill the dream of returning “home”—to Jerusalem. Yet, the realization of this collective dream uncovered a complex relation between the concept of “diaspora” and “homeland.” This article discusses the relationship between diaspora and homeland—Africa and Israel—in Hebrew Ethiopian-Israeli literature. It focuses on two major biblical narratives, the Exodus from Egypt and the Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and explores the transition from the representation of Israel as “home” and Africa as “diaspora” to its invert picture in which Africa is the “home” and Israel is the “diaspora.”

Reviews: Gvion, Beyond Hummus and Falafel

Gvion, Liora. Beyond Hummus and Falafel. Social and Political Aspects of Palestinian Food in Israel. Translated by David Wesley and Elana Wesley. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.

Reviews

• Spicer-Jacobson, Ellen Sue. “Review.” Menupause, March 10, 2013.
• [N/A]. “Review.” Contemporary Sociology 42.3 (2013): 449.
• Diner, Hasia R. “Review.” Ethnic and Racial Studies [online preview, 2013]

ToC: Journal of Israeli History 32,1 (2013)

 

 

Special Issue: House as Home in Israeli Culture

Articles

Introduction

Orit Rozin
pages 1-5

View full textDownload full text

Free access

• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2013.768026

 

Separate spheres, intertwined spheres: Home, work, and family among Jewish women business owners in the Yishuv

Talia Pfefferman
pages 7-28

Access options

• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2013.768028

 

Just ring twice: Law and society under the rent control regime in Israel, 1948–1954

Maya Mark
pages 29-50

Access options

• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2013.768029

 

The evolution of the inner courtyard in Israel: A reflection of the relationship between the Western modernist hegemony and the Mediterranean environment

Hadas Shadar
pages 51-74

Access options

• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2013.768031

 

The P6 Group and critical landscape photography in Israel

Jochai Rosen
pages 75-85

Access options

• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2013.768033

 

Visions of identity: Pictures of rabbis in Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) private homes in Israel

Nissim Leon
pages 87-108

Access options

• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2013.768035

 

Soft power: The meaning of home for Gush Emunim settlers

Michael Feige

pages 109-126

Access options

• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2013.768041

 

Heading home: The domestication of Israeli children’s literature in the 1960s as reflected in Am Oved’s Shafan ha-sofer series

Yael Darr
pages 127-139

Access options

• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2013.768042

House and home: A semantic stroll through metaphors and symbols

Tamar Sovran
pages 141-156

Access options

• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2013.768044

Cite: Barromi Perlman, Public & Private Photographs of Children on Kibbutzim

Barromi Perlman, Edna. “Public and Private Photographs of Children on Kibbutzim in Israel: Observation and Analysis.” Photography and Culture 5.2 (2012): 149-166.

 

URL: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/berg/pgcj/2012/00000005/00000002/art00003

 

Abstract

This article analyzes the private and public practices and conventions of photographing children on kibbutzim between 1948 and 1967. It examines the effects of kibbutz egalitarian socialist ideology and lifestyle on the practices of creating photographs of children and the role of the photographers on kibbutzim. Photographs of children in children’s homes and communal child rearing, created on kibbutzim in Israel, were viewed as a representation of the epitome of kibbutz life. The photographs were created to serve the needs of the community and its ideology and eventually developed into a genre of their own. The analysis relates to the process of creation of private photographs of children, found in photo albums of individual families on kibbutzim. The article relates to the role of the kibbutz archive and the practices of archiving and their effect in consolidating collective memory. The research employs a semiotic approach to the analysis of the photographs and relates to social communications that developed and their contribution to the construction of meaning in the images.

Cite: Elias & Lemish, Russian Immigrant Families in Israel and Germany

Elias, Nelly and Dafna Lemish. “Between Three Worlds. Host, Homeland, and Global Media in the Lives of Russian Immigrant Families in Israel and Germany.” Journal of Family Issues 32.9 (2011): 1245-1274.

URL: http://jfi.sagepub.com/content/32/9/1245

 

Abstract

This study investigated various roles played by host, homeland, and global media in the lives of immigrant families from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS, former USSR) to Israel and Germany, as well as the place of different media in family conflicts, consolidation, and parenting strategies. The study was based on focus group interviews with 60 families of Russian-speaking immigrants in Israel and Germany and 73 semistructured, in-depth interviews with immigrant youngsters. The findings of this study demonstrate that the mass media fulfill diverse roles for immigrant families, assisting them face two main relocation challenges: integration “inward” (i.e., cultural transmission and family consolidation) and “outward” integration into their new surroundings.

Lecture: Eshkol Nevo at the CJH

Homesick: Eshkol Nevo in Conversation with Michael Orthofer

 

April 29th, 2010; 7pm – Center for Jewish History, New York

The PEN World Voices Festival, Center for Jewish History and the Consulate General of Israel present Eshkol Nevo, one of Israel’s most exciting new voices. Like many other successful writers before him, he studied copywriting, but then went on to psychology and both disciplines inform his work. He writes short stories, has also penned a non-fiction book called The Breaking Up Manual, and two novels, Homesick and World Cup Wishes. He has been the chosen artist of Israel’s Cultural Excellence Foundation–one of Israel’s highest recognitions for excellence in the arts–since 2008. He will be joined by Michael Orthofer, managing editor at the Complete Review and its Literary Saloon for a discussion about art, home, living under threat, and, of course, the art of breaking up.

Tickets: $15 general, $10 PEN, CJH members. Order at http://www.smarttix.com or 212-868-4444.

PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature: A week-long celebration of books and writing from around the globe, featuring 50+ events, 150 writers, and 40 countries. This cross-cultural literary exchange includes conversations, panel discussions, readings, a translation slam, and an all-star Cabaret. New York City, April 26-May 2, 2010. http://www.pen.org/festival

Julie Kaplan
Center for Jewish History
15 W. 16th St.
New York, NY 10011
Email: jkaplan@cjh.org
Visit the website at http://programs.cjh.org