New Article: Kaplan & Werczberger, Jewish New Age and the Middle Class

Kaplan, Dana, and Rachel Werczberger. “Jewish New Age and the Middle Class: Jewish Identity Politics in Israel under Neoliberalism.” Sociology (early view; online first).

 

URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0038038515595953

 

Abstract
This article asks why middle-class Israeli seculars have recently begun to engage with Jewish religiosity. We use the case of the Jewish New Age (JNA) as an example of the middle class’s turn from a nationalised to a spiritualised version of Judaism. We show, by bringing together the sociology of religion’s interest in emerging spiritualities and cultural sociology’s interest in social class, how after Judaism was deemed socially significant in identity-based struggles for recognition, Israeli New Agers started culturalising and individualising Jewish religiosity by constructing it in a spiritual, eclectic, emotional and experiential manner. We thus propose that what may be seen as cultural and religious pluralism is, in fact, part of a broader system of class reproduction.

 

 

New Article: Alush-Levron, Ethnic Melancholy in Israeli Cinema

Alush-Levron, Merav. “The Politics of Ethnic Melancholy in Israeli Cinema.” Social Identities 21.2 (2015): 169-83.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2015.1041015

Abstract

This paper deals with the way migrants’ children process the trans-generational trauma of immigration and examines its impact on the formation of their self-identity. It explores the manifestation of this trauma as present in two highly-notable works by Mizrahi cinematographers. The memory unfolding in these films is a penetrating audio-visual testimony to the immigration trauma with the mark it has left on the psyches and identities of migrants’ children. It argues that the split identity that is a product of both Israeli assimilationist and Mizrahi resistance inhabits the continuum between mourning and melancholy, grief and grievance. Along this continuum, immigrant subjects engage in intergenerational negotiations between mourning and melancholy, while their ethnic melancholy emerges as an alternative mental state to the Eurocentric hegemony.

Reviews: Shemer, Identity, Place, and Subversion in Contemporary Mizrahi Cinema

Shemer, Yaron. Identity, Place, and Subversion in Contemporary Mizrahi Cinema in Israel. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 2013.

 

 

Reviews

• Belinfante, Randall C. “Review.” Jewish Book Council, n.d.
• Sokoloff, Naomi. “Cinema Studies/Jewish Studies, 2011-2013.” AJS Review 38.1 (2014): 153-4.
• Bashkin, Orit. “Review.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47.2 (2015): 395-7.

 

 

 

New Book: Kizel, The New Mizrahi Narrative in Israel (in Hebrew)

קיזל, אריה. הנרטיב המזרחי החדש בישראל. תל אביב: רסלינג, 2014.

The hyphenated narrative – the new Mizrahi narrative that stands at the center of a radical Mizrahi discourse – goes against the Zionism’s negation of an Oriental and Arab identity and posits itself as an alternative of an inntellectual and assertive identity. Arie Kizel’s book examines the rise and consolidation of the Mizrahi narrative which serves as a milestone in the struggle of conflicting narratives as an expression of various identities to express themselves as independent and hybrid among locations of Israeliness.

The author carefully examines the postcolonial and anti-Zionist origins of the Mizrahi narritve and the intellectual assault it launches against the very legitimacy of Zionism, as well as the morality of the political solution it created. This new narrative stance acknowledges the historical difficulties of its subversion, which is presented as emancipatory and especially as ethical. Its foundations relate to the victimized Palestinian narrative, and in its radical version seeks to collaborate with it in order create a new space that will favor Arabism – culturally, linguistically and even politically. This framework is expected to dismantle Zionist colonialism in relation to the regime of truth, the discourse of knowledge and the dominant power, along with rising voices and other narratives as part of a meeting point between anti-Zionism and postmodernism.

Using a three-stage narrative model the author examines the Mizrahi narrative’s attempt to challenge the limits of Israeli discourse, to dissociate from the hegemonic Zionist program, and to present a narrative plan that would allow the construction of a multicultural, anti-colonial model, and rehabilitate the space of Mizrahi-Arab identity. The author lays out the voices of opposition to the proposed narrative and analyzes the causes of the victimization stage it has reached and in which it is trapped, in a capitalist social reality created by Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Israelis and their joint children.

 

New Book: Friedman-Peleg, A Nation on the Couch. The Politics of Trauma in Israel (in Hebrew)

פרידמן-פלג, קרן. העם על הספה. הפוליטיקה של הטראומה בישראל, ספריית אשכולות. ירושלים: מאגנס, 2014.

 

 

URL: http://www.magnespress.co.il/

 

Abstract

This book is an invitation to observe the practice of one of the most dominant communities in Israel, and yet one of its most closed ones: the therapeutic community. Through a four-year anthropological field work (2004-2008) among two of the most prominent associations in Israel – Natal (“Israel’s Trauma Center for Victims of Terror and War”) and the “Israel Trauma Coalition” – the chapters of this book trace the inevitable intersection between professional questions of clinical diagnosis, treatment and prevention of PTSD in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict with political question of group identity and power relations: what differences exist between therapists on the meaning of traumatic experiences and its moral boundaries? What consensus is reached regarding practices of aid and funds allocation, and what is the connection between it and the questions of group identity; including political, ethnic, and social class aspects?

This ethnographic journey will shed light on the development of politics around the therapeutic practice of trauma in two sequential instances: (1) the institutional instance will address the establishment of a new therapeutic home, through the extraordinary juncture of therapists, donors and advertisers; (2) the professional instance will present the branching of four circles of therapeutic occupation of trauma: the “clinical core” among soldiers; the practice of the tense relationship between “primary” trauma of a man and the “secondary” trauma of a woman, his spouse; the growing distance from the “clinical mothership,” for the sake of intervention among “risk groups” from Be’er-Sheva in the South to Daliyat al-Karmel in the north; and the emphasis on the prevention of trauma, through activities such as “strength and immunity” in Sderot. These examinations will demonstrate how the therapeutic practice is far from representing a single objective reality with a clear professional truth. Instead, it will reveal the existence of a polyphonic and multi-participant network of reciprocities surrounding the therapeutic practice of trauma, between various social locations and diverse worldviews.

New Book: Steir-Livny, Let the Memorial Hill Remember: Holocaust Representation in Israeli Popular Culture (Hebrew)

שטייר-לבני, ליאת. הר הזכרון יזכור במקומי. הזיכרון החדש של השואה בתרבות הפופולרית בישראל. תל אביב: רסלינג, 2014.

 

URL: http://www.resling.co.il/book.asp?book_id=793

 

Table of Contents

פתח דבר

מבוא: זיכרון ותודעת השואה בישראל – מושגים, היסטוריוגרפיה וכיווני חשיבה

1. עכשיו כבר מותר לצחוק? ייצוגים של הומור, סטירה ופרודיה בנושא השואה

2. הפוליטיזציה של השואה בתרבות הישראלית

3. אתניזציה של השואה

אחרית דבר

 

Abstract

Liat Steir-Livny’s book analyzes the representations of the Holocaust in Israeli popular culture from the 1980s onwards. Through a survey of film, television, journalism, literature, poetry, Facebook, blogs, and fringe theater it covers new and controversial representations that are nevertheless an integral part of contemporary Holocaust remembrance and commemoration. Steir-Livni argues that the second and third generation who carry the burden of national memory seek to keep away the trauma not because they disregard it, or because they are distant from it, but rather, because they are deeply immersed in and seek to find some peace. They do this, consciously and unconsciously, by using tools rhetorical and visual tools that leave behind the horrors of historical events, and convert them to create a series of foreign representations of horror of the traumatic events and exchange them for a series of representations that alienate and obscure the traumatic events in order to distance them. At the same time, however, these new representations indicate the extent to which the Holocaust is an integral part of their culture and of the identity of their creators.

 

ToC: Israel Studies Review 29.2 (2014): New Age Culture in Israel

Editors’ Note
pp. v-vi

Guest Editors’ Introduction: New Age Culture in Israel
pp. 1-16
Authors: Werczberger, Rachel; Huss, Boaz

Articles

Ethno-national Identity and the New Age World View in Israel
pp. 17-38
Author: Simchai, Dalit

This article focuses on the concept of identity by juxtaposing New Age philosophy and nationalism in the Israeli context. Based on my qualitative research, I deconstruct the Israeli New Age discourse on ethno-national identity and expose two approaches within this discourse. The more common one is the belief held by most Israelis, according to which ethno-national identity is a fundamental component of one’s self. A second and much less prevalent view resembles New Age ideology outside Israel and conceives of ethno-national identities as a false social concept that separate people rather than unite them. My findings highlight the limits of New Age ideology as an alternative to the hegemonic culture in Israel. The difficulty that Israeli New Agers find in divorcing hegemonic conceptualizations demonstrates the centrality and power of ethno-national identity in Israel.

The End Begins in Me: New Forms of Political Action in Israeli Channeling
pp. 39-56
Author: Klin-Oron, Adam

In this article I examine eschatological beliefs and practices among channels in Israel and abroad, and show that they demonstrate an avoidance of traditional, group-oriented political action, and an embrace of alternative, spiritual action performed individually. This is linked to Israel’s shift to a neo-liberal economy and culture in the last few decades, where self-accountability has become the norm. Channeling teaches an extreme version of self-divinity, claiming that a person creates all aspects of his or her life and objecting to outside authority and regulation. It believes in a coming of a New Age of light and that the means to achieve it are personal quests for individual empowerment, which are anticipated to affect the whole world via the “virtual aggregate group,” an energetic reservoir that replaces the traditional group. Channels are engaged in alternative political action, attempting to change the world by virtually pooling spiritual resources.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: The Shaping of a Community-Building Discourse among Israeli Pagans
pp. 57-77
Author: Feraro, Shai

This article charts the recent development of Modern Paganism in Israel (1999–2012) and analyzes the discourse maintained by Israeli modern-day Pagans when discussing questions of organization and of religious-political rights. As such it deals with the complexities of identifying oneself as a (Jewish-born) Pagan in Israel, the nation state of the Jewish people. I argue that although Israeli Pagans may employ a community-building discourse, they constantly fear the perceived negative consequences of public exposure. They see the bond between (Jewish) religion and the state in Israel as a main factor in the intolerance and even persecution that they expect from the government and from Haredim (“ultra-Orthodox” Jews). The result of this discourse during the first ten years or so of the presence of Modern Paganism in Israel can be seen through the metaphor of a dance, in which participants advance two steps, only to retreat one.

The Place of Politics: The Notion of Consciousness in Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh’s Political Thought
pp. 78-98
Author: Tamari, Assaf

The notion of consciousness change as a political concept has re-emerged as a central issue in recent Israeli political discourse in diverse and seemingly remote groups. The following is a study of some of the contexts and implications of according primacy to consciousness change in political thought, through the tensions between the highly individualistic character of this discourse and its collective language and aims. I focus on one study case, Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, a key figure in both extreme settler groups and current New Age Hasidic revival. Analyzing his political writings, I explore his notion of consciousness as the true place of politics. Finally, I return to the question of the context in which Rabbi Ginsburgh’s binding of the political to consciousness should be read, and propose liberal individualism, and the direct line it draws between the individual’s consciousness and that of the state, as an alternative hermeneutical perspective.

Hitbodedut for a New Age: Adaptation of Practices among the Followers of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav
pp. 99-117
Author: Persico, Tomer

The quest for personal and inner spiritual transformation and development is prevalent among spiritual seekers today and constitutes a major characteristic of contemporary spirituality and the New Age phenomenon. Religious leaders of the Bratslav community endeavor to satisfy this need by presenting adjusted versions of hitbodedut meditation, a practice that emphasizes solitary and personal connection with the divine. As is shown by two typical examples, popular Bratslav teachers today take full advantage of the opportunity to infuse the hitbodedut with elements not found in Rabbi Nachman’s teachings and to dispense with some elements that were. The article addresses the socio-political rationale at the root of these teachers’ novel interpretation of Bratslav hitbodedut and the ways they attempt to deal with the complications that arise out of their work.

Spirituality under the Shadow of the Conflict: Sufi Circles in Israel
pp. 118-139
Author: Bram, Chen

This article describes the new “field” of Sufi ideas and practices in Israeli Jewish society and analyzes the mutual relations between new Western Sufi influences and traditional Sufi orders of the Middle East. It focuses on the role of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in this evolving field. While the current rise of interest in spirituality is often described as emphasizing an apolitical approach, the evolving Sufi field in Israel is an example of a field that cannot detach itself from the overarching conflict. Moreover, efforts are made by some of the actors in this field to present Sufism as representing a different Islam and, hence, as a potential bridge between the rival parties. These approaches, as this article shows, have their own complexities and influences on the emerging Sufi field in Israel.

Review Essay

An Intellectual Journey through the Civil-Military Relationship in Israel
pp. 140-145
Author: Michael, Kobi

Author’s Response to Galia Golan’s Review Essay on 1973: The Road to War
pp. 146-152
Author: Kipnis, Yigal

Book Reviews

Book Reviews
pp. 153-170

Daniel Bar-Tal and Izhak Schnell, eds., The Impacts of Lasting Occupation: Lessons from Israeli Society

Review by Ned Lazarus

Alan Craig, International Legitimacy and the Politics of Security: The Strategic Deployment of Lawyers in the Israeli Military

Review by Ariel L. Bendor

Joel S. Migdal, Shifting Sands: The United States in the Middle East

Review by Aharon Klieman

Miriam Fendius Elman, Oded Haklai, and Hendrik Spruyt, eds., Democracy and Conflict Resolution: The Dilemmas of Israel’s Peacemaking

Review by Jay Rothman

Eyal Levin, Ethos Clash in Israeli Society

Review by Gabriel Ben-Dor

Danielle Gurevitch, Elana Gomel, and Rani Graff, eds., With Both Feet on the Clouds: Fantasy in Israeli Literature

Review by Ari Ofengenden

New Article: Weinblum, Religion in the Israeli Parliament

Weinblum, Sharon. “Religion in the Israeli Parliament: A Typology.” Religion, State and Society 42.2-3 (2014): 283-98.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09637494.2014.945727

 

Abstract

Because religion has been a constant source of social divisions and political conflicts, the role of Judaism in Israel is very often studied through the prism of a rigid religious–secular cleavage.Without denying the contentious character of religion in the political and social arenas, I suggest in this study that a closer look at the usages of religion in Israeli politics offers a more nuanced picture of the role of Judaism in Israel. In order to uphold this thesis, I identify the main usages of Judaism in the Israeli Parliament (the Knesset) and scrutinise the extent to which these different mobilisations overlap or crosscut the secular–religious cleavage. This analysis leads to a typology of three usages of religion: religion as a source of authority, religion as a marker of identity and nation, and religion as a source of values. On this basis, I demonstrate that the role of religion in Israel and especially in the Israeli Parliament cannot be reduced to the divide between religious and secular groups. If in its first usage, the religious–secular cleavage indeed predominates, the use of religion as an identity marker does not necessarily lead to a conflict with secular members, while in its final form, religion is mobilised as a resource by members of both groups.

New Article: Rosmer, Israel’s Middle Eastern Jewish Intellectuals

Rosmer, Tilde. “Israel’s Middle Eastern Jewish Intellectuals: Identity and Discourse.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 41.1 (2014): 62-78.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13530194.2014.878507

 

Abstract

The intellectual movement HaKeshet HaDemokratit HaMizrahit (The Eastern Democratic Rainbow) was established in 1996 by second and third generation Middle Eastern and North African Jewish immigrants who are faculty members, graduate students, actors, artists, educators, businessmen and women, and media workers. These self-identified Mizrahi Israeli intellectuals aimed to initiate new debates in Israeli society with their criticism of Zionist narrative and policies by applying post-colonial theory to expose the construction of social categorisation among Jewish Israelis. In their discursive contribution they addressed several issues of historical and contemporary inequality between groups of Israeli citizens. By examining the motivation behind this intellectual activism, the present article asks what the Mizrahi identity means to people labelled as Mizrahim and why it is important.

New Article: Cohen, Mizrahi Subalternity and the State of Israel

Cohen, Kfir. “Mizrahi Subalternity and the State of Israel. Towards a New Understanding of Mizrahi Literature.” Interventions 16.3 (2014): 380-404.

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369801X.2013.816075

Abstract

This essay proposes a new approach to Mizrahi literature by re-examining the socioconceptual relation between Mizrahi subalternity and the state of Israel. Examining the recent post-Zionist/postcolonial criticism, I argue that its literary categories and social analysis conceive of the Mizrahi only through the medium and form of the state and only in so far as its ‘culture’ procures it with an alternative content for Israeli Eurocentric nationalism. Such a ‘statist’ and national articulation of the Mizrahi, critical as it might be, confuses the conditions of Mizrahi cultural identity and legitimate speech whose site is civil society with the conditions of subalternity produced in the Israeli social formation as a whole, and thus ends up misconceiving the Mizrahi subaltern and its literary appearance. Since Mizrahi subalternity emerges in social and discursive fields that cannot be rendered in such a ‘statist’ language, it thus holds alternative knowledge and forms that both reveal the conceptual limits of the post-Zionist stance and allow for a new interpretive approach to Mizrahi literature. However, since canonical Mizrahi literature – as with most recent Mizrahi criticism – has always imagined the Mizrahi in statist terms, I argue that this alternative language and knowledge does not exist as such in Mizrahi literature, but only in a displaced form as its unconscious. To provide an example for such a new interpretation and approach, I offer a reading of Shimon Ballas’s The Transit Camp.

New Article: Acosta, The Dynamics of Israel’s Democratic Tribalism

Acosta, Benjamin. “The Dynamics of Israel’s Democratic Tribalism.” Middle East Journal 68.2 (2014): 268-86.

 

URL: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/mei/mei/2014/00000068/00000002/art00006

 

Abstract

This article evaluates Israeli national identity and its core founding tenets of Zionism, democracy, and Judaism. For decades, demographic changes and associated cultural and ideological fluctuations have gradually pushed Israel into a national identity conflict, as multiple ethnic and sectarian identity groups have come to promote competing interpretations of the state’s purpose, political nature, and connection to territory. Continued demographic shifts, situated amid the sociopolitical dynamics of what this article will define as Israel’s “democratic tribalism,” will further test the compatibility of the constituent parts of Israeli national identity: the respective roles of Zionist ideology, democratic institutions, and the territory of the historic Jewish homeland.

 

 

New Article: Ribke, Female Fashion Models’ Transition into Israeli Politics

Ribke, Nahuel. “Modeling Politics? Female Fashion Models’ Transition into Israeli Politics.” European Journal of Culturla Studies 17.2 (2014): 170-186.

 

URL: http://ecs.sagepub.com/content/17/2/170

 

Abstract

This article analyses the recent phenomenon of the passage of former models/television hosts into Israeli politics. The transition of these former models into politics can be seen as part of a wider phenomenon of Israeli media celebrities’ transition to professional politics. Despite the wide media coverage and the heated public debates around the fashion models’ candidacy, until now there has been no serious analysis of this phenomenon. Distancing itself from the popular derogatory approaches toward the participation of celebrities in politics, this study proposes to examine their entry into the political sphere seriously, incorporating a cultural and historical perspective along with an analysis of the dynamics of ethnic and gender relations in Israeli politics.

New Article: Sucharov and Sasley, Blogging Identities on Israel/Palestine

Sucharov, Mira and Brent E. Sasley. “Blogging Identities on Israel/Palestine: Public Intellectuals and Their Audiences.” PS: Political Science & Politics 47.1 (2014): 177-81.

 

URL: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9135928

 

Abstract

Drawing on our research and blogging on Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we make three claims about the role of scholar-bloggers in the social media age. First, as scholar-bloggers with some degree of ethno-national attachments related to our area of expertise, we contend that we are well positioned to issue the kinds of critiques that may resonate more deeply due to the very subjectivity that some perceive as a liability. Second, through the melding of scholarly arguments with popular writing forms, scholar-bloggers are uniquely poised to be at the forefront of public engagement and political literacy both with social media publics and with students. Third, the subjectivity hazard is an intrinsic part of any type of research and writing, whether that writing is aimed at a scholarly audience or any other, and should not be used as an argument against academic involvement in social media. Ultimately, subjectivities of both consumers and producers can evolve through these highly interactive media, a dynamic that deserves further examination.

Cite: Lavie, Writing against Identity Politics: An Essay on Gender, Race, and Bureaucratic Pain

Lavie, Smadar. “Writing against Identity Politics: An Essay on Gender, Race, and Bureaucratic Pain.” American Ethnologist 39.4 (2012): 779-803.

URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1548-1425.2012.01395.x/abstract

Abstract

Equating bureaucratic entanglements with pain—or what, arguably, can be seen as torture—might seem strange. But for single Mizrahi welfare mothers in Israel, somatization of bureaucratic logic as physical pain precludes the agency of identity politics. This essay elaborates on Don Handelman’s scholarship on bureaucratic logic as divine cosmology and posits that Israel’s bureaucracy is based on a theological essence that amalgamates gender and race. The essay employs a world anthropologies’ theoretical toolkit to represent bureaucratic torture in multiple narrative modes, including anger, irony, and humor, as a counterexample to dominant U.S.–U.K. formulae for writing and theorizing culture.