ToC: Israel Studies 21.2 (2016)

Israel Studies, 21.2 (2016)

Table of Contents

 

 Front Matter (pp. i-v)

Special Section—Dislocations of Immigration

The Politics of Defining Jews from Arab Countries (pp. 1-26)

Shayna Zamkanei 

Challenges and Psychological Adjustment of Religious American Adolescent Immigrants to Israel (pp. 27-49)

Avidan Milevsky

“Marginal Immigrants”: Jewish-Argentine Immigration to the State of Israel, 1948–1967 (pp. 50-76)

Sebastian Klor

Articles

Annexation or Separation? The Municipal Status of the Jewish Neighborhoods of Jaffa 1940–1944 (pp. 77-101)

Tamir Goren

Reasoning from History: Israel’s “Peace Law” and Resettlement of the Tel Malhata Bedouin (pp. 102-132)

Havatzelet Yahel and Ruth Kark

The Israeli Names Law: National Integration and Military Rule (pp. 133-154)

Moshe Naor

 Khilul Hashem: Blasphemy in Past and Present Israel (pp. 155-181)

Gideon Aran

The Construction and De-construction of the Ashkenazi vs. Sephardic/Mizrahi Dichotomy in Israeli Culture: Rabbi Eliyahou Zini vs. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef (pp. 182-205)

Joseph Ringel

Back Matter

 

 

New Book: Sasley and Waller, Politics in Israel: Governing a Complex Society

Sasley, Brent E., and Harold M. Waller. Politics in Israel: Governing a Complex Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

 

 

This is the first textbook on Israel to utilize a historical-sociological approach, telling the story of Israeli politics rather than simply presenting a series of dry facts and figures. The book emphasizes six specific dimensions of the conduct of Israeli politics: the weight of historical processes, the struggle between different groups over how to define the country’s identity, changing understandings of Zionism, a changing political culture, the influence of the external threat environment, and the inclusive nature of the democratic process. These themes offer students a framework to use for understanding contemporary political events within the country. Politics in Israel also includes several chapters on topics not previously addressed in competing texts, including historical conditions that led to the emergence of Zionism in Israel, the politics of the Arab minority, and interest groups and political protest.

 

Table of Contents

Abbreviations
Preface
Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1: Israel in Historical and Comparative Perspective
Studying Israel
Israel in a Comparative Framework
Major Themes of the Book
A Note on Terminology
 
PART I: HISTORICAL PROCESSES
Chronology of Key Events
Chapter 2: Zionism and the Origins of Israel
Jewish History before Zionism
The Jewish Predicament in the 19th Century
The Founding of the Zionist Movement
Implications of Zionism
Herzl’s Path to Zionism
Organizing the Zionist Movement
Zionist Ideologies
The Palestine Mandate
Summary
 
Chapter 3: Yishuv Politics during the Mandate Period
Constructing a Jewish Society
Development of a Party System
Conflict between Arabs and Jews in Mandatory Palestine
Deteriorating Zionist-British Relations
The End of the Mandate
The Mandate Period in Perspective
Summary
 
Chapter 4: State Building After 1948
Mamlachtiut
The Political Arena
Defense
Education
Economy
Personal Status Issues
Other State-Building Efforts
Summary
 
PART II: ISRAELI SOCIETY
Chapter 5: Political Culture and Demography
The Pre-State Period
Foundational Values of the State
Changes since 1967
From Collectivism to Individualism
Political Culture in the Arab Community
Demography
Summary
 
Chapter 6: Religion and Politics
Religion and the Idea of a Jewish State
Setting the Parameters of the Religion-State Relationship
Growing Involvement in Politics
Issues in Religion-State Relations after 2000
Religious Parties and Coalition Politics
Summary
 
Chapter 7: The Politics of the Arab Minority
What’s in a Name?
Changing Politics of the Community
Jewish Attitudes toward the Arab Minority
Arab Leaders and the Arab Public
Voter turnout
Sayed Kashua as Barometer?
Summary
 
PART III: THE POLITICAL PROCESS
Chapter 8: The Electoral System
The Development of an Electoral System
Election Laws
Parties and Lists
Electoral Reforms
Summary
 
Chapter 9: Political Parties and the Party System
Party Clusters
Leftist Parties
Rightist Parties
Religious Parties
Arab Parties
Center or “Third” Parties
Ethnic or Special Issues Parties
Party Organization
Summary
 
Chapter 10: Voting Patterns
Four Main Issues
Demographic Factors
Voter Turnout
Electoral Trends
Summary
 
Chapter 11: Interest Groups and Political Protest
Changing Access in the Israeli Political System
Interest Groups
Political Protest
Summary
 
PART IV: INSTITUTIONS
Chapter 12: The Knesset
Structure of the Knesset
Legal Aspects
Knesset Members
Functions and Powers of the Knesset
Relationship to the Government
Summary
 
Chapter 13: The Government
The Government at the Center of the System
Powers of the Government
Forming a Government
Maintaining and Running a Government
Relations with the Knesset
The President of the State
Summary
 
Chapter 14: The Judiciary and the Development of Constitutional Law
The Judicial System
Structure of the Court System
The Religious Court System
The Attorney General
Basic Laws: A Constitution in the Making?
Interpreting the Constitution
Summary
 

PART V: POLITICS AND POLICYMAKING
Chapter 15: Political Economy
Ideas about Economic Development in the Yishuv
A State(ist) Economy
Likud and the Free Market
Structural Weaknesses
Summary
 
Chapter 16: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Three Levels of Threat Perception
Israel’s Threat Environment
Hawks and Doves in the Political System
The Defense Establishment
Public Opinion
Summary
 
PART VI: THE TRANSFORMATiON OF ISRAELI POLITICS
Chapter 17: The Changing Political Arena
A More Complex Society
An Economic Transformation
Transformation of the Security Situation
The Israeli-Palestinian Relationship
Dampening of Ideology
Political Culture and the Party System
The Passing of a Heroic Generation
A More Consequential Arab Sector
The Transformation of the Judiciary
Change versus Continuity
 
Chapter 18: Confronting the Meaning of a Jewish State
The Political Question: What is Jewish and Democratic?
The Social Question: Who Belongs?
The Academic Question: Whose Historiography?
Conclusion
 
Appendices
Glossary
Bibliography

 

BRENT E. SASLEY is Associate Professor of Political Science at The University of Texas at Arlington.
HAROLD M. WALLER is Professor of Political Science at McGill University.

New Article: Hakak, Undesirable Relationships’ between Jewish Women and Arab Men

Hakak, Yohai. “Undesirable Relationships’ between Jewish Women and Arab Men: Representation and Discourse in Contemporary Israel.” Ethnic and Racial Studies (early view; online first).

 

URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2015.1103877

 

Abstract

Demography has been broadly considered as a key aspect of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. On the Jewish side, State intervention to encourage Jewish immigration and Jewish births is well known. Much less known are the efforts to discourage inter-faith relations. These ‘problematic relationships’ between Arab men and Jewish women from low socio-economic backgrounds have become a high priority item in public discussions over the last decade. In this article I will explore the main discursive practices used in this heated debate by those opposing these relationships. ‘Moral panic’ as a theoretical framework will help me analyse the ways in which Jewish women and Arab men who engage in such relations are presented. As I will show, attempts to criminalize and vilify Arab men meet with strong opposition. Presenting Jewish women as weak and passive victims seems as a more successful strategy, especially when done by professionals from the psych-professions.

 

 

 

New Book: Goldscheider, Israeli Society in the Twenty-First Century

Goldscheider, Calvin. Israeli Society in the Twenty-First Century. Immigration, Inequality, and Religious Conflict, Schusterman Series in Israel Studies. Lebanon, NH: Brandeis University Press (imprint of University Press of New England), 2015.

This volume illuminates changes in Israeli society over the past generation. Goldscheider identifies three key social changes that have led to the transformation of Israeli society in the twenty-first century: the massive immigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union, the economic shift to a high-tech economy, and the growth of socioeconomic inequalities inside Israel. To deepen his analysis of these developments, Goldscheider focuses on ethnicity, religion, and gender, including the growth of ethnic pluralism in Israel, the strengthening of the Ultra-Orthodox community, the changing nature of religious Zionism and secularism, shifts in family patterns, and new issues and challenges between Palestinians and Arab Israelis given the stalemate in the peace process and the expansions of Jewish settlements.

Combining demography and social structural analysis, the author draws on the most recent data available from the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics and other sources to offer scholars and students an innovative guide to thinking about the Israel of the future.

This book will be of interest to scholars and students of contemporary Israel, the Middle East, sociology, demography and economic development, as well as policy specialists in these fields. It will serve as a textbook for courses in Israeli history and in the modern Middle East.

Table of Contents

• List of Tables and Figure
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Nation-Building, Population, and Development
• Ethnic Diversity Jewish and Arab Populations of Israel
• Immigration, Nation-Building, and Ethnic-Group Formation
• Arab Israelis Demography, Dependency, and Distinctiveness
• Urbanization, Residential Integration, and Communities
• Religiosity, Religious Institutions, and Israeli Culture
• Inequality and Changing Gender Roles
• Education, Stratification, and Inequality
• Inequality and Mortality Decline
• Family Formation and Generational Continuities
• Emergent Israeli Society Nation-Building, Inequalities, and Continuities
• Appendix: Data Sources and Reliability
• Bibliography
• Index

Thesis: Wilson, African Asylum Seekers in Israeli Political Discourse

Wilson, Ben R. African Asylum Seekers in Israeli Political Discourse and the Contestation over Zionist Ideology, MA Thesis, Temple University, 2015.

URL: http://gradworks.umi.com/15/97/1597134.html

 

Abstract

Since the time of their arrival beginning around 2005, there remain approximately 46,000 African asylum seekers in Israel. The following paper reviews the foundations and implications of Israel’s political discourse in reference to the presence of this community. I situate the treatment of the asylum seekers in their relationship to the Jewish State, Zionist ideology, international refugee law, and Israel’s human rights community. I argue: 1) that the discourse surrounding the asylum seekers reflects larger changes within the ethos of the Jewish State and models of Israeli personhood; 2) that notions of “security” and “threat” in relation to the asylum seekers take on new meanings shaped by Israel’s ongoing demographic concerns; and 3) that the political response to the African asylum seekers sheds light on irreconcilable goals of the Zionist nation-building project seeking to both maintain a Jewish majority and liberate world Jewry from life segregated and isolated in the Diaspora.

 

 

New Article: Jabareen, Co-Production of ‘Creative Destruction’ in Israel

Jabareen, Yosef. “Territoriality of Negation: Co-Production of ‘Creative Destruction’ in Israel.” Geoforum 66 (2015): 11-25.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.09.003

 

Abstract

Based on an examination of Israel’s territorial conceptions, strategies, and achievements since the establishment of the state, this article shows how state territoriality subsumes ideology and political agendas and may, under certain circumstances, lead the state to negate its very self-conceptions and harm its own perceived interests. Its analysis pays special attention to the state’s inadvertently produced territories of negation, which run counter to its own conception of territoriality, and considers the kind of social–spatial entities produced by the state. It also considers Israeli territoriality’s more recently asserted goal of shaping Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, in addition to the goals of controlling Jerusalem and Judaizing the Galilee and the Negev. To illustrate the theoretical assertion that discriminatory and marginalizing state territoriality has the distinct potential to bring about its own negation, the article concludes with two prominent expressions of this phenomenon. The first is manifested in green-line Israel, where the state’s territorial policies and the resulting marginalization of the Palestinian minority has resulted in collective resistance against the state and its policies, basic Jewish-Israeli symbols such as the anthem and the flag, and Israel’s very definition as a Jewish State. The second is manifested in Israel’s inadvertent creation of bi-national spaces both within Israel proper and in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, indirectly promoting the solution of a single bi-national state and posing a serious challenge to the very goals that Israeli territoriality has consistently strived to achieve.

 

 

New Article: Rosenberg-Friedman | Ben-Gurion and the ‘Demographic Threat’

Rosenberg-Friedman, Lilach. “David Ben-Gurion and the ‘Demographic Threat’: His Dualistic Approach to Natalism, 1936–63.” Middle Eastern Studies 51.5 (2015): 742-66.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2014.979803

 

Abstract

This article illuminates one of the many facet of Ben-Gurion’s leadership that had an impact on his public image – his stance on fertility and childbirth, during the years 1936–63. The article outlining Ben-Gurion’s thoughts on the birthrate in Mandatory Palestine and the State of Israel, analyse the developments in his views over the years and the reasons for it. His perception of the Jewish national importance of boosting the birthrate grew over time in keeping with historical developments and the soaring natural increase of the Arabs. In the first stage, births were important to him due to the need to create a Jewish majority that would pave the way for a Jewish state. In the second stage, once this goal had been achieved, it was out of concern for the security and stability of the state – in this stage, however, he built his leadership as a prime minister of all Israel citizens, including the Arabs. The analysis demonstrates, therefore, that Ben-Gurion’s approach was characterized by dualism. The reasons for this dualism as well as Ben-Gurion’s image as a ‘godfather of fertility’ are the focal point of this article.

ToC: Israel Studies 20.2 (2015); Special Section: Bodies In Question

Israel Studies 20.2 (2015) Table of Contents:

 

Special Section: Bodies In Question

Wars of the Wombs: Struggles Over Abortion Policies in Israel (pp. 1-26)

Rebecca Steinfeld

Halutzah or Beauty Queen? National Images of Women in Early Israeli Society (pp. 27-52)

Julie Grimmeisen

‘Re-orient-ation’: Sport and the Transformation of the Jewish Body and Identity (pp. 53-75)

Yotam Hotam

‘Uniting the Nation’s Various Limbs into a National Body’ the Jerusalem People’s House (pp. 76-109)

Esther Grabiner

 

Articles

The Test of Maritime Sovereignty: The Establishment of the Zim National Shipping Company and the Purchase of the Kedmah, 1945–1952 (pp. 110-134)

Kobi Cohen-Hattab

Budgeting for Ultra-Orthodox Education—The Failure of Ultra-Orthodox Politics, 1996–2006 (pp. 135-162)

Hadar Lipshits

The Mizrahi Sociolect in Israel: Origins and Development (pp. 163-182)

Yehudit Henshke

Review Essay: The Theoretical Normalization of Israel in International Relations(pp. 183-189)

[Reviews  of: The Political Psychology of Israeli Prime Ministers: When Hard-Liners Opt for Peace, by Yael S. Aronoff; Why Hawks Become Doves: Shimon Peres and Foreign Policy Change in Israel by Guy Ziv]

Brent E. Sasley

 

Notes on Contributors (pp. 190-191)

Guidelines for Contributors (pp. 192-194)

Lecture: Steinfeld, Struggles over Abortion Policies in Israel

War of the Wombs: Struggles over Abortion Policies in Israel

Dr Rebecca Steinfeld (Stanford)  

4pm on Thu 19 March in A113, Samuel Alexander Building (Building 67 on the campus map, see directions).

 

ABSTRACT: This presentation examines the historical and contemporary struggles that have led to the gap between the restrictions on, and availability of, abortion in Israel. It attributes this gap to the compromise necessitated by conflicts amongst competing policymakers, motivated by opposing viewpoints and interests, over the objectives and substance of abortion policies. Opposition to abortion stems primarily from demographic anxiety relating to both the Holocaust and the Muslim Arab-Jewish fertility differential in Israel/Palestine. Support for access to abortion stems from countervailing concerns about the implications of unrestrained fertility for women’s health, family welfare and social stability, as well as ‘qualitative’ interests in reproducing healthy children. Some feminists have also resisted attempts to render women’s wombs national vessels. This presentation explores the evolution of these struggles over four distinct historical periods, and assesses their impact on women’s reproductive experiences and rights.

SPEAKER: Dr Rebecca Steinfeld is a political scientist researching the politics of reproduction and genital alteration. She completed her PhD in Politics at the University of Oxford, and is now writing her first book, Wars of the Wombs: Struggles over Reproduction in Israel (Stanford University Press, forthcoming). She is also a BBC and Arts and Humanities Research Council ‘New Generation Thinker’ and Haaretz ‘Jewish Thinker.’ She has broadcast on BBC Radio 3, 4 and 5, regularly writes in Haaretz, and has published in The Guardian, The Independent, The Jewish Chronicle, The Jewish Quarterly, and Tablet Magazine.

Further information about the CJS research seminar programme and other Jewish Studies events at the University.

New Article: Burton, Israeli Marriage Law and Identity in the Jewish State

Burton, Elise K. “An Assimilating Majority?: Israeli Marriage Law and Identity in the Jewish State.” Journal of Jewish Identities 8.1 (2015): 73-94.

 

URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_jewish_identities/v008/8.1.burton.html

 

Excerpt

The concept of assimilation in Israel, and its discursive attachment to intermarriage, is haunted by its origins in a historical context pre-dating the Israeli state, in which many Jews could hardly imagine a society in which they represented the majority culture. Israeli Jews are still inundated with collective memories of being a persecuted minority, most prominently during the Holocaust. Eli Ben Dahan, the deputy minister of Religious Affairs, explained his reference to the Malka-Mansour wedding as part of the “silent Holocaust” by claiming that Israel is the only country in the world in which “ha-peruzah ha-yehudit” (the Jewish diaspora) is increasing rather than decreasing, because in Israel there are no mixed (read: civil) marriages. Echoing the assumptions of early Zionist intellectuals such as Ruppin and Zollschan, Ben Dahan prophesied, “if we allow mixed marriages [here], we would cause the Jewish people to become diminished in Israel as well.”

But the “diaspora” logic favoring the religious marriage system is clearly counterproductive for the preservation of the Jewish people if one considers op-ed headlines like “Israel Forced Morel to Convert to Islam.” Kamir, author of this op-ed, rebukes her fellow Israelis: “The conversion of Morel to Islam is a reminder to all that have not understood: the connection between religion and state in Israel… is the same thing that pushes Jews to renounce their Jewish identity.”  In terms of the Zionist ethno-religious nationalism that underpins the social infrastructure of the Israeli state, Malka and Mansour “are not two citizens permitted to enter a marriage agreement, but [like] a bird and a fish—two species that do not intermingle.” In order to marry, Malka was thus compelled to change her identity and join her husband’s religious community. The solution, Kamir suggests, is “a little more freedom and trust in humanity, and a little less existential Holocaust anxiety,” which would allow Israeli Jews of both sexes to make decisions according to their individual conscience.

Put more bluntly, the Israeli state’s embrace of halakha to adjudicate both an individual’s “authentic” Jewish status with regard to their eligible marriage partners is, in actuality, the force that “diminishes the Jewish people” within Israel. Despite the fearmongering and racialized discourses of assimilation and intermarriage that demonize attempts to introduce civil marriage in Israel, the absence of civil marriage primarily inhibits the integration of self-identified Jews who do not satisfy the Chief Rabbinate’s definition of Jewish identity. Ultimately, Israeli discourse against intermarriage is marshaled to defend and promote the interests of small constituencies of practicing Orthodox and right-wing ethnic nationalists, whose political influence is already completely out of proportion to their representation in the Israeli population. But its effects are more far-reaching and damaging than its immediate political implications because its claims offer such a narrow reading of what it means to be authentically Jewish. As a result, Israeli citizens are compelled to interpret their Jewish identity in terms of whether they are descendants of a “truly” Jewish matriline. Jewish women additionally carry the burden of sacrificing not only their own, but also their children’s, legal Jewish identity if they choose to marry a non-Jew, thus engaging in “assimilation,” regardless of their individual relationships to Judaism and Jewishness. Zionism’s call for a Jewish nation-state, which in turn requires discrete definitions of Jewishness to implement and enforce a national legal system, has therefore precluded the possibility and acceptance of more diverse conceptualizations of authentically Jewish marriages and lives.

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.

 

 

ToC: Israel Affairs 18,2 (2012)

Israel Affairs, Vol. 18, No. 2, 01 Apr 2012 is now available on Taylor & Francis Online. This new issue contains the following articles: Original Articles ‘Why are they shooting?’: Washington’s view of the onset of the War of Attrition Yehuda U. Blanga Pages: 155-176 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2012.659074 Demography, social prosperity, and the future of sovereign Israel Uzi Rebhun & Gilad Malach Pages: 177-200 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2012.659075 Israel’s foreign policy: military–economic aid and assisting Jewish communities in distress – can the two coexist? Yitzhak Mualem Pages: 201-218 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2012.659076 Expectations for peace in Israel and the value of the Israeli shekel, 1999–2008 Andrew Schein Pages: 219-233 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2012.659077 Conflict and strife on the way to Gethsemane Jonathan Ventura Pages: 234-249 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2012.659078 Traditional healing, higher education, autonomy and hardship: coping paths of Palestinian women in Israel Ariela Popper-Giveon & Naomi Weiner-Levy Pages: 250-267 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2012.659080 The influences of global news messages on national governability: an environmental case study David Mekelberg Pages: 268-285 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2012.659081 The Office of the Chief Scientist and the financing of high tech research and development, 2000–2010 Erez Cohen, Joseph Gabbay & Daniel Schiffman Pages: 286-306 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2012.659082 Book Reviews Book Reviews David Rodman Pages: 307-317 DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2012.659083

CFP: AIS, Brandeis, June 13-15, 2011 (deadline 12/30/11)

Brandeis University
June 13-15 2011

Call for Papers

“Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State”
The Zionist ideal of a Jewish and democratic society has been a central issue since early settlements through the present.  It continues to elicit celebration, criticism and debate in the arts, academic disciplines and the public sphere.  The challenge of defining Israel also involves diplomatic relations, interactions between Jews and Arabs inside Israel and the region, among Jews in Israel and with the Diaspora, gender issues, the legal culture, the political system, and perceptions of a collective past and future.

Deadline for Submission of all Proposals:
December 30, 2010

The Program Committee of the 27th Annual Conference of the Association for Israel Studies invites scholars conducting research on any aspect of Israel Studies and in particular on the declared theme of this conference, “Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State”.

· Individual paper and panel submissions should be submitted using the online submission form.

· Paper proposals should not exceed 250 words.

· Panel proposals should include information on the panel theme and on each individual paper. Proposals should not exceed 750 words.

· All presenters will be required to register for the conference and be current AIS members.

· Registration can be done directly on the AIS website.

· PhD students who have completed their course work are encouraged to apply and should provide the email of their advisor for approval.

· Students who wish to apply for travel grants should send a request along with a copy of their proposal and a letter from their advisor to Ilan Ben-Ami: Ilanbe@openu.ac.il

• Junior faculty without university travel support wishing to apply for travel grants should send their name, email address, institution and department affiliation, abstract of the proposed paper and a current CV (all in one attached document in Word format) to Ilan Ben-Ami: Ilanbe@openu.ac.il

· Deadline for all travel grants applications – December 30, 2010.

· Late proposals will not be accepted.

PAPER/PANEL SUBMISSION
Program Committee
Ilan Troen, Chair

Gannit Ankori, Visual Arts

Maoz Azaryahu, Historical Geography/Commemoration
Eliezer Don-Yehiya, Political Sociology/Jewish Thought

As’ad Ghanem, Political Science

Nili Gold, Hebrew Literature

Pnina Lahav, Law
Joel Migdal, International Relations

Benyamin Neuberger, Comparative Politics
Shulamit Reinharz, Gender Studies
Orit Rozin, Social History

Leonard Saxe, Demography/Social Research

Naama Sheffi, Communication Studies

Colin Shindler, Political History
Sammy Smooha, Ethnicity
Russell Stone, Sociology

[From: http://www.aisisraelstudies.org/brandeis2011.ehtml]

Cite: Schellekens and Eisenbach, Religiosity and Marital Fertility

Schellekens, Jona and Zvi Eisenbach. "Religiosity and Marital Fertility: Israeli Arab Muslims, 1955—1972." Journal of Family History 35,2 (2010): 147-163.

——–

Abstract: This study examines the relationship between religiosity and marital fertility in a Muslim society around the onset of the transition using the 1973—74 Israeli Fertility Survey. In rural areas, where no decline was discernable, there was a negative relationship between religiosity and marital fertility, while in urban areas there was no relationship. The results of this study suggest that the negative relationship in rural areas is because of differences in breast-feeding. Following Quranic recommendations, the more religious seem to breast-feed longer. Demographic, social, and economic characteristics of the more and less religious do not account for the negative relationship. Demographic, social, and economic characteristics and the use of contraceptive methods, however, do explain, in part, the absence of a negative relationship in urban areas.

———-

URL: http://jfh.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/35/2/147

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KeyWords: breast-feeding • marital fertility • Muslim • religiosity • repeated events duration model, Israeli Palestinians, Israel: Religion, Islam and Muslims, Gender, Family Life and Culture, Israel: Demographics, Israel: Economy, Israel: Society

New Publication: Teman, Birthing a Mother

————

Elly Teman. Birthing a Mother. The Surrogate Body and the Pregnant Self. Berkeley / Los Angeles / London: University of California Press, 2010.

————

Birthing a Mother is the first ethnography to probe the intimate experience of gestational surrogate motherhood. In this beautifully written and insightful book, Elly Teman shows how surrogates and intended mothers carefully negotiate their cooperative endeavor. Drawing on anthropological fieldwork among Jewish Israeli women, interspersed with cross-cultural perspectives of surrogacy in the global context, Teman traces the processes by which surrogates relinquish any maternal claim to the baby even as intended mothers accomplish a complicated transition to motherhood. Teman’s groundbreaking analysis reveals that as surrogates psychologically and emotionally disengage from the fetus they carry, they develop a profound and lasting bond with the intended mother.

———

URL: http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/11401.php

——–

Keywords: Israel: Society, Anthropology, Ethnography, Gender, Family Life and Culture, Femininity, Motherhood, Psychology, Israel: Demographics

Cite: DellaPergola, Family Size Among Jews in Israel

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DellaPergola, Sergio. "Actual, Intended, and Appropriate Family Size Among Jews in Israel." Contemporary Jewry 29,2 (2009): 127-152.

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Abstract: Israel’s population reflects a unique combination of large-scale immigration and comparatively high fertility. Demographic trends impact on Israel’s regional and global relations. With a current measure of 3.9 children for Muslims and 2.8 for Jews in 2007, Israel’s fertility stands much above European, American, and some Mid-Eastern countries. This article examines fertility patterns and attitudes among Jews (79% of Israel’s total population) based on a 2005 national survey of women and men at reproductive ages, married or in stable unions. Different demographic, socioeconomic and cultural contexts affect Jewish fertility levels in Israel. The impact of countries of origin and socioeconomic differences greatly diminished over time. Cultural factors, primarily religiosity, continue to be important determinants of a relatively high and stable quest for children. We compare actual, intended, and appropriate (according to the self-perception of respondents) family sizes. Diffuse gaps exist between ideal perceptions (focusing on 3–4 children) and actual performances (2–3 children). Significant gaps also exist between intended and appropriate family size, in both directions—the intended being either higher or lower than the perceived appropriate. Analysis of these discrepancies may provide important clues on the determinants of fertility norms and decisions, and on future family policies.

——-

URL: http://www.springerlink.com/content/43r666463110r226/

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Keywords: Israel: Society, Family Life and Culture, Israel: Demographics, Family Planning, Jewish population, Fertility, Religion, סרג’ו דלה-פרגולה