Bulletin: Theatre and Cinema

Books

• Michal Pick Hamou, Wounded Homeland: Evolving Representations of Trauma in Israel Cinema (in Hebrew)
• Tom Lewy, The German Jews and the Hebrew Theatre (in Hebrew)
• Shelly Zer-Zion, Dorit Yerushalmi, Gad Kaynar-Kissinger, eds. Habima. New Studies of the National Theatre (in Hebrew)
  

Articles

• Orit Kamir, Zionist and Palestinian Honor and Universal Dignity in Israeli Cinema
• Anat Zanger, City and Memory: Jerusalem in Israeli Cinema

Events

Asher Tlalim, “A History of Israeli Cinema: From National to Personal Films”; SOAS, March 20, 2017

 

Bulletin: Journal ToCs, Israel Studies, Israel Affairs, Constellations

Journal ToCs:

Israel Studies, 21.3 (2016): https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/34103

• Pnina Lahav, “Zivotofsky v. Kerry: The Supreme Court of the United States, the Politics of American Jewry and the Biblical Balaam“
• Michael Zank, “The Jerusalem Basic Law (1980) and the Jerusalem Embassy Act (1995): A Comparative Investigation of Israeli and US Legislation on the Status of Jerusalem“
• Arye Naor, “Menachem Begin and “Basic Law: Jerusalem, Capital of Israel”
• Ben Herzog, “The American Diaspora in Israel: Intersecting Identity, Ideology and Politics“
• Kobi Peled, ““Germany in Jerusalem” The Inauguration of the Augusta Victoria Church and Hospice on the Mount of Olives in 1910“
• Ofira Gruweis-Kovalsky, “Between Ideology and Reality: The Right Wing Organizations, the Jerusalem Question, and the Role of Menachem Begin 1948–1949“
• Kobi Cohen-Hattab, “Designing Holiness: Architectural Plans for the Design of the Western Wall Plaza After the Six-day War, 1967–1977“
• Hila Zaban, “In the Name of Pluralism: Fighting the (Perceived) Ultraorthodox Penetration in the Baka Neighborhood of Jerusalem“
• Lior Lehrs, “Jerusalem on the Negotiating Table: Analyzing the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks on Jerusalem (1993–2015)“
• Anat Zanger, “City and Memory: Jerusalem in Israeli Cinema“
• Miriam Fendius Elman, “Jerusalem Studies: The State of the Field“

 

Israel Affairs 22.3-4 (2016): http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/fisa20/22/3-4

• Eithan Orkibi, “Israel at the polls 2015: a moment of transformative stability“
• Manfred Gerstenfeld, “The run up to Israel’s 2015 elections: a political history“
• Nir Atmor & Chen Friedberg, “Who turned out at the polls? Socioeconomic and geographic perspectives on 2015 voter turnouts in Israel“
• Dganit Ofek & Assaf Meydani, “A new integrated model of the formation of coalitions: perspectives on the Twentieth Knesset“
• Doron Navot & Aviad Rubin, “Likud’s success in the 2015 elections: Netanyahu’s Hobbesian moment“
• Udi Lebel & Guy Hatuka, “De-militarization as political self-marginalization: Israeli Labor Party and the MISEs (members of Israeli security elite) 1977–2015“
• Nissim Leon, “The covert political ethnicity of the Kulanu party“
• Arik Rudnitzky, “Back to the Knesset? Israeli Arab vote in the 20th Knesset elections“
• Michal Alon-Tirosh & Dorit Hadar-Shoval, “Leadership and identity politics on the eve of the Israeli 2015 elections: children’s perspectives“
• Sharon Haleva-Amir, “Not all about that Facebook: political campaigns and civic engagement in the 2015 elections”
• Dana Weimann-Saks, Yaron Ariel, Vered Malka & Ruth Avidar, “Trends in public and media agenda-setting during the 2015 Israeli elections“
• Nili Steinfeld, “The F-campaign: a discourse network analysis of party leaders’ campaign statements on Facebook
• Mira Moshe, “The enemy within us: emotional politics in the 2015 Israeli elections“
• David Kleczewski & Ruth Amossy, “Pragmatic and value-based argumentation in the 2015 Israeli elections“
• Rafi Mann, “The Bibi Sitter and the Hipster: the new comical political discourse“
• Editorial Board

Constellations 23.3 (2016): Special Section: Israel and Palestine: Thinking the “One State Solution” onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8675.2016.23.issue-3/issuetoc

• Uri Ram and Andrew Arato, “Israel and Palestine: Thinking the “One State Solution” (pages 327–328)”
• As’ad Ghanem and Dan A. Bavly, “Seeking an Egalitarian State in Palestine/Israel: The Recent Debate about Binationalism (pages 329–339)”
• Honaida Ghanim, “Between Two “One-State” Solutions: The Dialectics of Liberation and Defeat in the Palestinian National Enterprise (pages 340–350)“
• Raef Zreik, “When Does a Settler Become a Native? (With Apologies to Mamdani) (pages 351–364)”
• Amal Jamal, “Conflict Theory, Temporality, and Transformative Temporariness: Lessons from Israel and Palestine (pages 365–377)”

 

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: Natanel, Militarisation and the Micro-Geographies of Violence in Israel–Palestine

Natanel, Katherine. “Border Collapse and Boundary Maintenance: Militarisation and the Micro-Geographies of Violence in Israel–Palestine.” Gender, Place & Culture 23.6 (2016): 897-911.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2015.1136807

 

Abstract

Drawing upon subaltern geopolitics and feminist geography, this article explores how militarisation shapes micro-geographies of violence and occupation in Israel–Palestine. While accounts of spectacular and large-scale political violence dominate popular imaginaries and academic analyses in/of the region, a shift to the micro-scale foregrounds the relationship between power, politics and space at the level of everyday life. In the context of Israel–Palestine, micro-geographies have revealed dynamic strategies for ‘getting by’ or ‘dealing with’ the occupation, as practiced by Palestinian populations in the face of spatialised violence. However, this article considers how Jewish Israelis actively shape the spatial micro-politics of power within and along the borders of the Israeli state. Based on 12 months of ethnographic research in Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem during 2010–2011, an analysis of everyday narratives illustrates how relations of violence, occupation and domination rely upon gendered dynamics of border collapse and boundary maintenance. Here, the borders between home front and battlefield break down at the same time as communal boundaries are reproduced, generating conditions of ‘total militarism’ wherein military interests and agendas are both actively and passively diffused. Through gendering the militarised micro-geographies of violence among Jewish Israelis, this article reveals how individuals construct, navigate and regulate the everyday spaces of occupation, detailing more precisely how macro political power endures.

 

 

 

New Article: Hercbergs, Storytelling and the Politics of Sephardi/Mizrahi Cultural Revival

Hercbergs, Dana. “Remembering ‘Old Jerusalem’: Storytelling and the Politics of Sephardi/Mizrahi Cultural Revival.” Journal of American Folklore 129 (2016): 146-70.

 

URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/619173

 

Abstract

This article interrogates the cultural politics of a series of storytelling performances in Jerusalem in light of an ongoing “revival” of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewish heritage in Israel. An examination of performers’ on-stage narratives and interactions reveals three discursive approaches to defining authentic Jerusalem culture through descriptions of “old-time” lifeways: emphasizing the city’s cosmopolitan past; challenging contemporary social hierarchies in Israel via jabs at “Ashkenazim” and idealization of Sephardi culture; and through claims of underlying Jewish unity.

 

 

 

New Article: Steinberg, EU Foreign Policy and the Role of NGOs

Steinberg, Gerald M. “EU Foreign Policy and the Role of NGOs: The Arab-Israeli Conflict as a Case Study.” European Foreign Affairs Review 21.2 (2016): 251–68.

 

URL: http://www.kluwerlawonline.com/abstract.php?id=EERR2016016

 

Abstract

The European Union’s structural weakness in foreign policy making, and the emphasis on soft power in promoting norms, contribute significantly to its close cooperation with civil society organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).The EU provides core funding to hundreds of NGOs and receives legitimacy, information, and analysis from them. In return, this interdependence allows NGOs to expand their impact in many areas, including foreign policy.

This study analyses the relationship between NGOs and EU decision-making in the foreign policy realm, particularly in the context of the Arab-Israel conflict. By examining EU documents on key issues, such as Jerusalem, settlements, Israeli-Arab citizens, and guidelines for cooperation with Israeli institutions, the article highlights the direct impact of selected NGOs. We argue that the close and mutual NGO-EU dependency has significant political and theoretical ramifications.

 

 

 

New Book: Randall, Sufism and Jewish-Muslim Relations

Randall, Yafiah Katherine. Sufism and Jewish-Muslim Relations. The Derekh Avraham Order in Israel. New York: Routledge, 2016.

 

 

In Israel there are Jews and Muslims who practice Sufism together. The Sufi’ activities that they take part in together create pathways of engagement between two faith traditions in a geographical area beset by conflict.

Sufism and Jewish Muslim Relationsinvestigates this practice of Sufism among Jews and Muslims in Israel and examines their potential to contribute to peace in the area. It is an original approach to the study of reconciliation, situating the activities of groups that are not explicitly acting for peace within the wider context of grass-roots peace initiatives. The author conducted in-depth interviews with those practicing Sufism in Israel, and these are both collected in an appendix and used throughout the work to analyse the approaches of individuals to Sufism and the challenges they face. It finds that participants understand encounters between Muslim and Jewish mystics in the medieval Middle East as a common heritage to Jews and Muslims practising Sufism together today, and it explores how those of different faiths see no dissonance in the adoption of Sufi practices to pursue a path of spiritual progression.

The first examination of the Derekh Avraham Jewish-Sufi Order, this is a valuable resource for students and scholars of Sufi studies, as well as those interested in Jewish-Muslim relations.

 

Table of Contents

• Part 1: Procedure and Contexts of the Research
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Contexts of the Investigation
• 3 Historical Encounters of Jewish and Islamic Mysticism: precedents of Contemporary Practice in Israel
• Part 2: Reading the Field Narratives
• 4 The Derekh Avraham/Tariqat Ibrahimiyya and its Contemporary Re-emergence in Israel
• 5 Beshara: Lovers of Ibn Arabi
• 6 Embracing the Sufi Path and the Dissemination of Knowledge
• 7 Jewish and Muslim Peacemakers
• Part 3: Conclusion
• 8 The Other Voice
• Appendices

 

YAFIAH KATHERINE RANDALL received her PhD at the University of Winchester. She combines academic research into Jewish-Muslim relations focusing on Sufism with grass-roots action for interreligious understanding and conflict transformation.

New Book: Natanel, Sustaining Conflict

Natanel, Katherine. Sustaining Conflict. Apathy and Domination in Israel-Palestine. Oakland: University of California Press, 2016.

 

 

Sustaining Conflict develops a groundbreaking theory of political apathy, using a combination of ethnographic material, narrative, and political, cultural, and feminist theory. It examines how the status quo is maintained in Israel-Palestine, even by the activities of Jewish Israelis who are working against the occupation of Palestinian territories. The book shows how hierarchies and fault lines in Israeli politics lead to fragmentation, and how even oppositional power becomes routine over time. Most importantly, the book exposes how the occupation is sustained through a carefully crafted system that allows sympathetic Israelis to “knowingly not know,” further disconnecting them from the plight of Palestinians. While focusing on Israel, this is a book that has lessons for how any authoritarian regime is sustained through apathy.

 

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 The Everyday of Occupation
• 2 Bordered Communities
• 3 Normalcy, Ruptured and Repaired
• 4 Embedded (In)action
• 5 Protesting Politics
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

 

KATHERINE NATANEL is a Lecturer in Gender Studies at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter.

New Article: Salmon, Akiva Yosef Schlesinger—A Forerunner of Zionism or of Ultra-Orthodoxy

Salmon, Yosef. “Akiva Yosef Schlesinger—A Forerunner of Zionism or a Forerunner of Ultra-Orthodoxy.” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 15.2 (2016): 171-87.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14725886.2015.1111549

 

Abstract

Rabbi Akiva Yosef Schlesinger (Pressburg 1838—Jerusalem 1922) is considered by some scholars to be a forerunner of ultra-Orthodoxy, but by others as a forerunner of Zionism. This article unravels this enigmatic personality, demonstrating that he was indeed a forerunner of ultra-Orthodoxy who was motivated by a complete rejection of modernity and promoted religious positions that were more radical than those of the Hatam Sofer. Those who associate Schlesinger with Zionism are misled by the fact that he encountered fierce opposition from his Hungarian colleagues and from the “Yishuv hayashan” in Jerusalem, advocated the use of the Hebrew language and promoted a “settlement” programme in Palestine. The article suggests that Schlesinger’s programme was in reality designed to create a sacred utopian society, and was motivated by his desire to isolate the traditional Jewish community from modernity, rather than by a nationalist ideology. Furthermore, the opposition of the Jerusalem rabbis to Schlesinger’s ideas was based largely on his unusual religious positions and his suggestion that the youth should be engaged in work. In analysing Schlesinger’s legacy, the article also clarifies the distinctions between ultra-Orthodoxy and Zionism, as well as some common elements that they share.

 

 

 

New Article: Weissman, An Historical Case Study in Jewish Women’s Education

Weissman, Debbie. “An Historical Case Study in Jewish Women’s Education: Chana Shpitzer and Maʿaleh.” Nashim 29 (2015): 21-38.
 
URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/nashim.29.21
 
Abstract

This article presents two pioneering religious Jewish schools that opened their doors to girls in Jerusalem in the first decade and a half after the end of World War I and the establishment of the British Mandate in Palestine. One of these schools, established by Chana Shpitzer, was exclusively for girls, while the other, Maʿaleh, was coeducational. Although both schools were Orthodox in outlook and identified with the growing Zionist movement, their approaches to Torah education for girls were quite different. I believe a comparison between these two schools offers some insights into the relative advantages and disadvantages of single-sex and mixed Jewish educational frameworks.

 

 

 

New Article: Natanel, Militarisation and the Micro-Geographies of Violence in Israel–Palestine

Natanel, Katherine. “Border Collapse and Boundary Maintenance: Militarisation and the Micro-Geographies of Violence in Israel–Palestine.” Gender, Place & Culture (early view; online first).

 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2015.1136807
 
Abstract

Drawing upon subaltern geopolitics and feminist geography, this article explores how militarisation shapes micro-geographies of violence and occupation in Israel–Palestine. While accounts of spectacular and large-scale political violence dominate popular imaginaries and academic analyses in/of the region, a shift to the micro-scale foregrounds the relationship between power, politics and space at the level of everyday life. In the context of Israel–Palestine, micro-geographies have revealed dynamic strategies for ‘getting by’ or ‘dealing with’ the occupation, as practiced by Palestinian populations in the face of spatialised violence. However, this article considers how Jewish Israelis actively shape the spatial micro-politics of power within and along the borders of the Israeli state. Based on 12 months of ethnographic research in Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem during 2010–2011, an analysis of everyday narratives illustrates how relations of violence, occupation and domination rely upon gendered dynamics of border collapse and boundary maintenance. Here, the borders between home front and battlefield break down at the same time as communal boundaries are reproduced, generating conditions of ‘total militarism’ wherein military interests and agendas are both actively and passively diffused. Through gendering the militarised micro-geographies of violence among Jewish Israelis, this article reveals how individuals construct, navigate and regulate the everyday spaces of occupation, detailing more precisely how macro political power endures.

 

 

 

New Article: Vyas et al, Differences in Travel Behavior Across Population Sectors in Jerusalem

Vyas, Gaurav, Christina Bernardo, Peter Vovsha, Danny Givon, Yehoshua Birotker, Eitan Bluer, and Amir Mossek. “Differences in Travel Behavior Across Population Sectors in Jerusalem, Israel.” Transportation Research Record 2495(2016).

 

URL: http://trrjournalonline.trb.org/doi/abs/10.3141/2495-07

 

Abstract

The population of Jerusalem, Israel, can be divided into three distinct ethnic sectors: secular Jewish, ultra-Orthodox Jewish, and Arab. Not only do these population sectors tend to inhabit and work in different areas of the city, but they each have unique household structures, activity patterns, mobility tendencies, and, ultimately, travel behavior. These substantial variations in behavior, largely driven by differences in culture and lifestyle that are not captured by other personal characteristics, are essential to representing travel behavior in the Jerusalem travel model. In this paper, sector differences were traced through the activity-based travel demand model framework by using the 2010 Jerusalem Household Travel Survey. Significant variations in behavior were seen both in direct relation to the population sector and in interactions with other socioeconomic and demographic characteristics such as income and gender. This is the first known travel demand model in practice to incorporate ethnic differences so extensively in its application.

 

 

 

New Article: Sherrard, American Biblical Archaeologists and Zionism

Sherrard, Brooke. “American Biblical Archaeologists and Zionism: How Differing Worldviews on the Interaction of Cultures Affected Scholarly Constructions of the Ancient Past.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 84.1 (2016): 234-59.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfv063

 

Abstract

A major critique of American biblical archaeologists has focused on biblical presuppositions they brought to their work, whereas Israeli archaeologists have been critiqued for promoting Jewish ethno-nationalism through their work. I maintain, however, that American archaeologists also participated in the debate over Zionism, implicitly (and not necessarily consciously) through writings about the ancient past, and explicitly through political activism. This article focuses on contemporaries William Foxwell Albright and Millar Burrows, who disagreed about Zionism. Burrows, who opposed Zionism, characterized the ancient world in terms of cultural interaction and fluidity, while Albright, who favored Zionism, characterized the ancient world in terms of rigid ethnic boundaries. Burrows published a book about Palestinian refugees; thus, his political involvement was no secret. Albright’s political involvement in favor of a Jewish state, which he later denied, is reconstructed here from archival materials. The terms of this debate still resonate, as demonstrated by the current controversy over archaeological theory at the City of David site in Jerusalem.

 

 

 

New Article: Gavrilă, Understanding Jerusalem in Delisle’s Graphic Novel

Gavrilă, Ana-Maria. “Understanding Jerusalem and its Cross-Cultural Dilemmas in Guy Delisle’s Jerusalem: Chronicles From the Holy City.” Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica 7.1 (2015): 133-44.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ausp-2015-0042

 

Abstract

Guy Delisle’s Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City (2011) is a nonfictional graphic novel which narrates the experiences during a year that the Canadian artist and his family spent living far from home, in the occasionally dangerous and perilous city of the ancient Middle East. Part humorous memoir filled with “the logistics of everyday life,” part an inquisitive and sharp-eyed travelogue, Jerusalem is interspersed with enthralling lessons on the history of the region, together with vignettes of brief strips of Delisle’s encounters with expatriates and locals, with Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities in and around the city, with Bedouins, Israeli and Palestinians. Since the comic strip is considered amongst the privileged genres able to disseminate stereotypes, Jerusalem tackles cultural as well as physical barriers, delimiting between domestic and foreign space, while revealing the historical context of the Israeli-Palestinian present conflict. Using this idea as a point of departure, I employ an imagological method of interpretation to address cross-cultural confusions in analysing the cartoonist’s travelogue as discourse of representation and ways of understanding cultural transmission, paying attention to the genre’s convention, where Delisle’s drawing style fits nicely the narrative techniques employed. Through an imagological perspective, I will also pay attention to the interaction between cultures and the dynamics between the images which characterise the Other (the nationalities represented or the spected) and those which characterise – not without a sense of irony – his own identity (self-portraits or auto-images). I shall take into account throughout my analysis that the source of this graphic memoir is inevitably a subjective one: even though Delisle professes an unbiased mind-set from the very beginning, the comic is at times coloured by his secular views. Delisle’s book is a dark, yet gentle comedy, and his wife’s job at the Doctors Without Borders paired with his personal experiences are paradoxically a gentle reminder that “There’ll always be borders.” In sum, the comic medium brings a sense of novelty to the imagological and hermeneutic conception of the interpretation of cultural and national stereotypes and/or otherness in artistic and literary works.

 

 

 

New Article: Fischer, Jerusalem in Jewish Women’s Comics

Fischer, Nina. “Facing the Arab ‘Other’?: Jerusalem in Jewish Women’s Comics.” Studies in Comics 6.2 (2015): 291-311.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/stic.6.2.291_1

 

Abstract

Jerusalem is the frontline and a microcosm of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In recent years, comic artists have turned their attention to the Middle East, including the ‘Holy City’. Scholars, however, have yet to study how comics engage with life in Jerusalem, in particular the relationships between Arabs and Jews. In this article, I will take on this critical oversight and explore how Mira Friedman’s ‘Independence Day’ (2008), Sarah Glidden’s How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less (2010) and Miriam Libicki’s Jobnik!: An American Girl’s Adventures in the Israeli Army (2008) engage with the complicated social situation. The philosopher, Emmanuel Lévinas, has argued that face-to-face encounters are the basis for recognizing the Other as human and for feeling responsibility towards him or her.1 In this article I show that we rarely see the Other’s face in the corpus of the Jewish comic artists I discuss here. Instead, the Arab presence is brought into the texts by way of urban elements such as the Dome of the Rock, media remediations or indistinct, distant figures. This highlights that comics are closely tied into the current situation between Israelis and Palestinians, where fear and separation rule to a level where the Arab Other – whether Christian or Muslim – of the Jews of Jerusalem is almost invisible.

 

 

 

Dissertation: Poppe, Constructions of the I in the German Poetry of Israeli Writers

Poppe, Judith. “I am writing into deserted times” – Constructions of the I in the German Poetry of the Israeli Writers Netti Boleslav and Jenny Aloni, PhD dissertation. Göttingen: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, 2015 (in German).

 

URL: https://ediss.uni-goettingen.de/handle/11858/00-1735-0000-0028-86AD-7

 

Abstract

This study examines a subject that has been disregarded in literary history, namely Israeli literature written in the German language. Two authors, Jenny Aloni and Netti Boleslav, as well as their poetry, are used as paradigmatic case studies to show the relevance of this literature that crosses political and cultural borders. In the late thirties Boleslav and Aloni emigrated from Nazi-Germany and Prague to Palestine/Israel where they found a new home. They wrote poetry and prose in German until their death in the 1980s and 1990s. Their lives and works are reconstructed on the basis of documents such as diaries, letters and unpublished manuscripts that are contained in their literary estates and made public partly for the first time. From a methodological perspective, the hermeneutical analysis of the poems in their poetic value is here complemented by poststructuralist approaches of the Cultural Studies. Focusing on the construction of the “I” (the “I” in the poetry as well as the “I” of the empirical authors), this study pursues the traces of different times and places, where the literature has left its mark. The oeuvres of Aloni and Boleslav emerges at the intersections of two worlds, the German and the Israeli, and they wander between various regions and political units such as Bohemia, Nazi and post-Nazi Germany, the State of Israel and Czechoslovakia. Their poems draw from “Jewish” and “Israeli” literature, German pop culture, bucolic poetry and Zionist historiography. Until now the unique position of German Literature in Israel has been almost completely neglected. The present study fills this scholarly gap. The research combines concepts by Deleuze/Guattari and Kühne in order to coin the notion of “Kleine Zwischenliteratur”, which describes the main features of this literature. One of the main goals of the present examination is to grant this literature a more prominent place in the history of literary. Based on the results of the present thesis’ analysis it becomes apparent that notions of transdisciplinary and transnationality need to be mobilised in order to challenge the accepted categories of the discipline, enabling us to close the blind spot of the Israeli literature written in German.

 

 

 

New Article: Shtern, Urban Neoliberalism vs. Ethno-National Division in Jerusalem’s Shopping Malls

Shtern, Marik. “Urban Neoliberalism vs. Ethno-National Division: The Case of West Jerusalem’s Shopping Malls.” Cities 52 (2016): 132-9.

ְְ 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2015.11.019

 

Abstract

Most research on ethnically and nationally contested cities posits that urban spatial segregation trends will remain decisive so long as the macro level national conflict persists, and assumes that the neoliberalization of urban space would only strengthen such trends. Over the last decade however, and despite the ever deepening national conflict, Jerusalem has seen the emergence of neoliberal spaces of consumption that serve as resilient spaces of intergroup encounter between Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian-Arab populations. In this article I will examine and compare two such neoliberal spaces in Jerusalem, and show how under certain conditions, privatized urban spaces can undermine processes of ethno-national segregation. I argue that interactions between members of the two rival groups are challenged and reshaped by neoliberal spaces and that the relocation of the ethno-national intergroup encounters to privatized spaces of consumption could represent a temporal shift to a class based encounters.

 

 

 

New Book: Bekerman, The Promise of Integrated Multicultural and Bilingual Education

Bekerman, Zvi. The Promise of Integrated Multicultural and Bilingual Education. Inclusive Palestinian-Arab and Jewish Schools in Israel. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

 

 

The Promise of Integrated and Multicultural Bilingual Education presents the results of a long-term ethnographic study of the integrated bilingual Palestinian-Jewish schools in Israel that offer a new educational option to two groups of Israelis–Palestinians and Jews–who have been in conflict for the last one hundred years. Their goal is to create egalitarian bilingual multicultural environments to facilitate the growth of youth who can acknowledge and respect “others” while maintaining loyalty to their respective cultural traditions. In this book, Bekerman reveals the complex school practices implemented while negotiating identity and culture in contexts of enduring conflict. Data gathered from interviews with teachers, students, parents, and state officials are presented and analyzed to explore the potential and limitations of peace education given the cultural resources, ethnic-religious affiliations, political beliefs, and historical narratives of the various interactants. The book concludes with critique of Western positivist paradigmatic perspectives that currently guide peace education, maintaining that one of the primary weaknesses of current bilingual and multicultural approaches to peace education is their failure to account for the primacy of the political framework of the nation state and the psychologized educational perspectives that guide their educational work. Change, it is argued, will only occur after these perspectives are abandoned, which entails critically reviewing present understandings of the individual, of identity and culture, and of the learning process.

 
Table of contents

• Introduction
• Part 1
• 1. Positioning the Author
• 2. Theoretical Perspectives
• 3. Methodology: From Theory to Implementation
• 4. Schools in Their Contexts
• Part 2
• 5. The Parents
• 6. Teachers at Their Work
• 7. The Children
• Part 3
• 8. School Routines: Culture, Religion, and Politics in the Classroom
• 9. Ceremonial Events
• 10. Conflicting National Narratives
• Part 4
• 11. The Graduates
• 12. Conclusions
• Author Index
• Subject Index

 

ZVI BEKERMAN teaches anthropology of education at the School of Education and The Melton Center, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His main interests are in the study of cultural, ethnic, and national identity, including identity processes and negotiation during intercultural encounters and in formal/informal learning contexts. He is particularly interested in how concepts such as culture and identity intersect with issues of social justice, intercultural and peace education, and citizenship education.

 

 

 

Report: National Library of Israel, 2015 activities

Click here for Hebrew version:

• David Grossman entrusts personal archive to National Library
• Prof. Jonathan Sarna, Scholar-in-Residence
• Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks: The Battle of the Book
• Piyut and Prayer Series (watch on YouTube)
• Documentary Film Festival
• Professional Training Courses for European Librarians and Archivists
• Summer Program for Children from East Jerusalem
• Launch of Young Curators Program Pilot
• Digitization of 670 pages from 56 Israeli journals (see database here)
• Archives of Jewish journalism online (click here for the archives)
• Collection of Israeli archives (see AZ website)
• Historic maps of Jerusalem on Wikipedia (see here)