Bulletin: Aliyah, Immigration, Refugees and Trafficking

Articles

• Ofir Abu, Fany Yuval, and Guy Ben-Porat, Responses of Ethiopian Jews in Israel to Stigmatization by the Police
• Debora Pricila Birgier et al, Self-Selection and Host Country Context in the Economic Assimilation of Political Refugees in the United States, Sweden, and Israel
• Jonah B. Cohen, Ethiopian-Israeli Community
• Ravit Talmi Cohn, Time Making and Place Making: A Journey of Immigration from Ethiopia to Israel
• David Dose et al, Comparing Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union to Israel and Germany
• Netanel Fisher and Avi Shilon, Integrating Non-Jewish Immigrants and the Formation of Israel’s Ethnic–Civic Nationhood
• Eti Gilad and Shosh Millet, The Identity of Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel
• Keith Goldstein and Pnina Golan-Cook, The Dilemma of Deviant Subcultures for Immigrant Youth Integration: An Analysis of Popularity Attainment in Israeli Schools
• Nelly Kfir and Adriana Kemp, The Legalization of Migrants and Human Rights Activism in Israel
• Michal Lev-Keren, Bias Factors in Mathematics Achievement Tests among Israeli Students from the Former Soviet Union
• Malka Muchnik et al, The Status of the Four Languages in Israel
• Larissa Remennick, Generation 1.5 of Russian-speaking immigrants in Israel and in Germany
• C. Zbenovich, Cross-Cultural Communication in Russian-Speaking Immigrant Families in Israel

Reviews

• Maina Chawla Singh, on Joseph Hodes’ From India to Israel: Identity, Immigration, and the Struggle for Religious Equality

Report

• Barry R. Chiswick, Linguistic and Economic Adjustment among Immigrants in Israel

Theses

• Noam Perry, The Promise and Pitfalls of Unilateral Pressure to Combat Human Trafficking: U.S. Pressure on Israel, the Philippines, and Thailand (PhD, Northeastern)

New Article: Walfish & Brody, How Religious Teachers View Problems in Bible Teaching

Walfish, Ruth A., and David L. Brody. “‘Students get bogged down’: How Religious Israeli Elementary Teachers View Problems and Solutions in Bible Teaching.” British Journal of Religious Education (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01416200.2015.1134442

 
Abstract

Bible teachers in contemporary society confront serious problems related to the nature of the biblical text and the socio-cultural context of their teaching. This study, based on semi-structured interviews, examines the problems that five expert religious Israeli elementary school teachers encounter in their teaching and the solutions they employ. Our findings show two major domains of pedagogic issues: unfamiliar biblical linguistics and problematic content. Teachers reported student difficulties in understanding biblical Hebrew. Problematic content includes irrelevant topics, emotionally laden material, and age inappropriate issues. Linguistic solutions relied on reading comprehension techniques and use of features specific to Bible reading such as diacritical marks. Regarding content issues, teachers were motivated by faith in the sanctity of the text to find effective solutions. These include selectivity, reinterpretation using homiletic tools, a holistic understanding and contextualising the narrative. Though teachers felt ill-prepared by their pre-service training in dealing with these challenges, they demonstrated resilience in their solution-oriented pedagogy. These findings suggest attention to mentoring and professional development, and to the creation of a community of practice to support teachers’ dealing with the ongoing challenges in their teaching.

 

 

New Article: Weiss, The Politics of Yiddish in Israeli Popular Culture

Weiss, Shayna. “Shtisel’s Ghosts: The Politics of Yiddish in Israeli Popular Culture.” In Geveb, March 6, 2016.

 

URL: http://ingeveb.org/blog/shtisel-s-ghosts-the-politics-of-yiddish-in-israeli-popular-culture

 

Extract

The popular embrace, in newspapers and talkbacks, of Shtisel’s Yiddish stands in contrast to the unease with which Arabic is received in Israeli society, even on television; Yiddish is a softer, safer other for mainstream Jewish Israeli viewers. Yet Yiddish is not feminized and defanged, because Shtisel succeeds in challenging those stereotypes by displaying the breadth of Yiddish in the Israeli Hasidic context. Shtisel also humanizes Israeli Haredim, whose reputation among secular Israelis is often stereotyped to the point of invoking anti-Semitic tropes. Not all non-Hebrew languages in Israel are created equal.

New Article: Shoshana, Ethnicity without Ethnicity

Shoshana, Avihu. “Ethnicity without Ethnicity: ‘I’m beyond that story’ State Arrangements, Re-Education and (New) Ethnicity in Israel.” Social Identities (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2016.1166939

 

Abstract

This article examines the connection between state ethnic classifications and the way they are perceived by individuals in everyday life. Using the case of the Boarding School for the Gifted Disadvantaged in Israel which is open to immigrants, an attempt was made to reach an understanding of how individuals who have experienced deliberate state intervention in the ethnic component of their selfhood, experience this intervention years after the (re)construction. The main findings illuminate how boarding school graduates transformed the governmental intervention into a unique ethnic identity for everyday life: ‘ethnicity without ethnicity’. This identity rejects any overt engagement with the ethnic component of the concept of self. This identity even relies on the subject’s constant reminders to himself that ‘he is beyond the ethnic story’ and that meritocratic identity (devoid of ethnic consciousness) is preferable to ascriptive identity. The findings also show that ethnic identity is not necessarily expressed in everyday practices (language, food consumption, music, festivals) but rather in ongoing cognitive engagement of the agent distanced from the available official ethnic classifications. The discussion section tracks the state-organizational sources of this ethnic identity and its relation to the unmarked ethnicity amongst the upper-middle classes.

 

 

 

Resources: New Website for the Corpus of Spoken Israeli Hebrew (CoSIH)

The site of The Corpus of Spoken Israeli Hebrew (CoSIH) has changed its location. The new address is http://cosih.com (Hebrew main page) or click here for English: http://cosih.com/english/index.html

Plans for The Corpus of Spoken Israeli Hebrew (CoSIH) started to take shape in 1998. CoSIH aimed at compiling a large database of recordings of spoken Israeli Hebrew in order to facilitate research in a range of disciplines. A corpus is a preliminary desideratum for larger projects that cannot otherwise be accomplished. The research potential of such a corpus is extremely large, including, inter alia, applications in the following areas: general and theoretical linguistics, Hebrew language and linguistics, applied linguistics, language engineering, education, and cultural and sociological studies.

CoSIH was designed with the intention to include a representative sample of both demographically and contextually defined varieties. The model according to which CoSIH would be compiled was to consist of a thousand sets of recordings (“cells”) with 5000 words each, i.e., a corpus of five million words. We have taken a culture-dependent approach for the compilation of CoSIH. CoSIH aspires to bridge between the infinite number of varieties used by the Israeli Hebrew speech community and their representation in the corpus, by characterizing their diversity in both demographic and contextual terms. CoSIH seems to be a first and singular attempt to establish a representative corpus using the axes of both demographic and contextual variables, based on statistical and analytic criteria.

The selection of informants for the recordings of CoSIH would be made by a random sample of the Israeli population, in order to reflect the social structure of the Israeli Hebrew speech community. The segmentation of the corpus for analytic purposes would be done using well-defined criteria, notwithstanding the fact that all sociolinguistic data of the recorded informants will be made available for CoSIH’s endusers. The working hypothesis of CoSIH is based on demographic criteria that seem to be most significant for the representation of the linguistic diversity in Israel: (1) place of birth, familial land of origin, ethnic group or religion; (2) age; (3) education; and (4) sex.¹

For the analysis of the contextual variables for each discourse, CoSIH’s working hypothesis is based on five variables. There are three primary variables: interpersonal relationships, discourse structure and discourse topic; and two secondary variables: number of participants and medium (i.e. face-to-face conversation and telephone conversation).

A comprehensive study of the demographic and circumstantial variables in Hebrew discourse in Israel remains a desideratum. Therefore, in order to design a proper model for CoSIH, the setting of the corpus would be done in phases, during which a research program would be taken in order to verifty the wortking hypothesis suggested above.

This model was first published online, in both Hebrew and English. The English version eventually found its place in Hary & Izre’el 2003. A more sophisticated model has been published in English in Izre’el, Hary & Rahav 2001.

CoSIH was initiated, designed and operated by a team of Israeli and international scholars:

Core team: Shlomo Izre’el, Tel-Aviv University (director); Benjamin Hary, Emory University (principal investigator); John Du Bois, University of California at Santa arbara (corpus analyst); Mira Ariel, Tel-Aviv University (discourse analysis and pragmatics); Giora Rahav, Tel-Aviv University (statistics and sociology). Esther Borochovsky-Bar Aba, Tel Aviv University (syntax) joined the team at a later stage.

Advisory board: Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Tel Aviv University (sociolinguistics – sociological aspects); Yaakov Bentolila, Ben Gurion University (sociolinguistics – linguistic aspects); Otto Jastrow, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (transcription, phonology, dialectology); Shmuel Bolozky, University of Massachusetts at Amherst (phonology, morphology); Geoffrey Khan, Cambridge University (syntax); Elana Shohamy, Tel Aviv University (language education).

The Present State of CoSIH

As of 2012, this ambitious project still awaits its realization. The limited financial support that was at our disposal enabled us to compile two sets of recordings, the first of which was made during the initial preparatory phase, while the second was done as a pilot study. The initial preparatory phase produced 11 recordings spanning at least 6 hours each, with some being much longer. Although we initially designed a pilot of 20 sets of 3-hour recordings, we have eventually ended up with 42 sets, each including between 8 to 16 hours of uninterrupted recording of everyday speech. Taken together, we now possess 6 to 18 hour recordings by 53 volunteers, which we believe to be a reasonable source of data for the study of Spoken Hebrew. The recordings, which were all made between August 2000 and October 2002, are all real life conversations of CoSIH’s informants. As such, they naturally include both the speech of the volunteers who recorded them and their interlocutors.

 

New Article: Shoshana, The Language of Everyday Racism and Microaggression in the Workplace

Shoshana, Avihu. “The Language of Everyday Racism and Microaggression in the Workplace: Palestinian Professionals in Israel.” Ethnic and Racial Studies (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2015.1081965

 

Abstract

Based on interviews with Palestinian professionals in Jewish organizations in Israel, this article discloses a distinctive practice of ‘everyday racism’ and microaggression – a language of everyday racism. This ‘language of everyday racism’ refers to Hebrew words and expressions that are routinely used by Jews in their mundane conversations and that include the word ‘Arab’ when describing a deficiency or defect, some sort of unsightliness, filth, or general negativity (as in the expression ‘You’re dressed like an Arab woman’). This article not only describes the language of everyday racism as a specific form of everyday racism and microaggression (national microaggression), it also illustrates how this language activates the Palestinian professionals in a reflexive manner. The discussion section describes how the internal dialectic between structure and agency is critical to understanding the language of everyday racism, which in turn acts as a mechanism of the inequality that underlies face-to-face interactions.

 

 

Reviews: Levy, Poetic Trespass

Levy, Lital. Poetic Trespass: Writing between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

 

Reviews

• Irving, Sarah. “Can literature disrupt Israel’s identity?” Electronic Intifada, May 19, 2015.
• Stern, Ramon. “Review.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47.3 (2015): 605-607.

New Article: Awayed-Bishara, Cultural Content of Materials Used for Teaching English to High School Speakers of Arabic

Awayed-Bishara, Muzna. “Analyzing the Cultural Content of Materials Used for Teaching English to High School Speakers of Arabic in Israel.” Discourse & Society (early view; online first).

 
 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957926515581154

 

Abstract

This article analyzes English textbooks used in Israel to examine whether their cultural content is appropriate for the Palestinian Arab learner. This topic is significant, as the English curriculum in Israel is uniform in all sectors. The article presents a critical discourse analysis of six English textbooks used in Israeli high schools to examine the recurrence of seven discursive devices that might possibly serve as a means for shaping or (re)producing ideological values: (1) culturally distinctive names, (2) pronouns, (3) the passive/active voice when relating to the Other, (4) explicit statements defining the target audience, (5) narratives involving faraway cultures that perpetuate Western stereotypes and exclude the Other, (6) a demand for culturally specific prior knowledge, and (7) discourse constructing identities and collective memories. These devices serve to foster English learners imbued with Western oriented Jewish-Zionist ideology, while reproducing and perpetuating hegemonic ideology. Thus, English textbooks in Israel marginalize the Palestinian Arab minority, its culture and common traditions, thereby engendering a learning environment that creates a negative learning experience for students of this sector.

 
 
 

New Article: Isleem, Druze Linguistic Landscape in Israel

Isleem, Martin. “Druze Linguistic Landscape in Israel: Indexicality of New Ethnolinguistic Identity Boundaries.” International Journal of Multilingualism 12.1 (2015): 13-30.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2013.868467

 

Abstract

The Druze community in Israel is a distinct religious community currently undergoing important ethnolinguistic shifts. The government’s implementation of an official policy has led to the deconstruction and reshaping of the Druze political and national identity to one that differs substantially from that of the Palestinian minority in Israel. In this study, I argue that the visibility, vitality and appreciation of Hebrew in the Druze linguistic landscape are indicative of new ethnolinguistic boundaries of the Druze identity in Israel. The fact that the Druze in Israel are dispersed throughout the Galilee and Mount Carmel area and experience varying levels of language contact as well as divergent economic relations with their Palestinian–Israeli and Jewish–Israeli neighbours, suggests that one cannot expect uniformity in the Druze linguistic markets or the processes of social, cultural and linguistic identification. This study will show that Hebrew has become a dominant component of the linguistic repertoire and social identity of the Druze in the Mount Carmel area since it has become the first choice of communication as the linguistic landscape indicates.

New Article: Yemini and Bar-Netz, Arabic and French in Israeli Education

Yemini, Miri and Natali Bar-Netz. “Between Arabic and French in the Israeli Education System.” Journal of Language Identity and Education 14.3 (2015).

 

URL: http://jlie.cal.org/ojs/index.php/jlie/article/view/587

 

Abstract

In the era of globalization, educational systems are forced to react and globalize through schools’ content and context. Among other 21st century capabilities such as information technology use, team work and entrepreneurship, multilingual competence has been placed among the objectives of education systems worldwide. We analyzed the pattern of students’ choice for advanced studies in English, Arabic and French languages in Israeli schools over the last twenty years (1995, 2000, 2005 and 2010) together with mothers’ education years. Our results revealed a change in the pattern of language learning over the years, with English and French advanced studies highly correlated with mothers’ education (hence associated with a certain perceived status), while Arabic became increasingly correlated with mothers’ education over the years. In addition, we performed semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 20 parents of children studying either French or Arabic in junior high schools. All interviewed parents were selected from schools where pupils can choose between French and Arabic and parents were asked about the motivation for choosing earthier French or Arabic. We found that parents mostly see foreign languages as part of cultural and cosmopolitan capital that their children need to acquire, in order to benefit from it later in their career. While French was found to be perceived in terms of pragmatic and instrumental cosmopolitan capital, Arabic was perceived as a pragmatic but also as an ideological asset. We discuss our findings in the context of Israeli society and the conflict-ridden situation that its education system is functioning within.

New Article: Yekes in Palestine/Israel Struggling between Language and Gender (in German)

Farges, Patrick. “‘Diese meine Sprache, die so männlich geworden ist.’ Jeckes in Palästina/Israel im Spannungsverhältnis zwischen Sprachen und Geschlecht.” L’Homme 26.1 (2015): 63-78.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.7767/lhomme-2015-0106

 

 

 

New Book: Snir, Who Needs Arab-Jewish Identity?

Snir, Reuven. Who Needs Arab-Jewish Identity? Interpellation, Exclusion, and Inessential Solidarities. Leiden: Brill, 2015.

 

In Who Needs Arab-Jewish Identity?: Interpellation, Exclusion, and Inessential Solidarities, Professor Reuven Snir, Dean of Humanities at Haifa University, presents a new approach to the study of Arab-Jewish identity and the subjectivities of Arabized Jews. Against the historical background of Arab-Jewish culture and in light of identity theory, Snir shows how the exclusion that the Arabized Jews had experienced, both in their mother countries and then in Israel, led to the fragmentation of their original identities and encouraged them to find refuge in inessential solidarities. Following double exclusion, intense globalization, and contemporary fluidity of identities, singularity, not identity, has become the major war cry among Arabized Jews during the last decade in our present liquid society.

Table of contents

Preface
Introduction
Chapter One: Identity: Between Creation and Recycling
Chapter Two: Arabized Jews: Historical Background
Chapter Three: Arabized Jews in Modern Times between Interpellation and Exclusion
Chapter Four: Globalization and the Search for Inessential Solidarities
Chapter Five: White Jews, Black Jews
Conclusion
Appendices
I. Iraqi-Jewish Intellectuals, Writers, and Artists
II. Sami Michael, “The Artist and the Falafel” (short story)
References
Index

Reuven Snir is a Professor of Arabic Literature and Dean of Humanities at Haifa University. He has published many books, articles, translations, and encyclopedia entries. His latest book is Baghdad – The City in Verse (Harvard University Press, 2013).

New Article: Lemberger, Changing Aspects in Shimon Adaf’s Work

Lemberger, Dorit. “Contacts and Discontinuities: Changing Aspects in Shimon Adaf’s Work.” Hebrew Studies 55 (2014): 330-354.

 

URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/hebrew_studies/v055/55.lemberger01.html

 

Abstract

The writings of Shimon Adaf construct a hybrid, multicultural quasi-dialect that is unusual in Israeli literature in general and in the genre known as “Oriental Jewish literature” in particular. While Israeli Hebrew is hybrid by its very nature, there is a difference between hybridity deriving from instinctive use of the spoken language and that arising from an intentional, self-aware act designed to flout literary, and especially sociopolitical, conventions. In this article I shall demonstrate how Adaf’s use of imagery leads to unique, fresh literary and political positions. All Adaf’s protagonists are of Moroccan origin, from a small town on the periphery; they observe Israeli reality “from the outside.” They do not represent the “Oriental” voice that prevails in both fiction and scholarly writing by Jewish authors of non-European origin who delve into issues of discrimination, disenfranchisement, and other socioeconomic tensions. Adaf’s characters “cut loose” from acute current problems and via hybridity re-connect to bygone times. These characters raise universal, existential questions that do not stem from their belonging to a specific time and place, for example, those of relations obtaining between language and reality and of the possibility to change the latter by means of poetic language. Such problems are evoked by quotations from various literatures (Greek, English, German) and by the use of different strands of Hebrew: biblical, rabbinic, and Israeli. By employing metaphoric language, Adaf examines how the cultural norms in which language is steeped dictate modes of behavior and how we can influence the reformulation of these norms by the use of that very language.

New Book: Levy, Poetic Trespass. Writing between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine

Levy, Lital. Poetic Trespass: Writing between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

 

URL: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10389.html

 

 –

A Palestinian-Israeli poet declares a new state whose language, “Homelandic,” is a combination of Arabic and Hebrew. A Jewish-Israeli author imagines a “language plague” that infects young Hebrew speakers with old world accents, and sends the narrator in search of his Arabic heritage. In Poetic Trespass, Lital Levy brings together such startling visions to offer the first in-depth study of the relationship between Hebrew and Arabic in the literature and culture of Israel/Palestine.

 –

Table of Contents

Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Note on Transliteration and Translation xv

Introduction: The No-Man’s-Land of Language 1

PART I. HISTORICAL VISIONS AND ELISIONS
Chapter 1. From the “Hebrew Bedouin” to “Israeli Arabic”: Arabic, Hebrew, and the Creation of Israeli Culture 21
Chapter 2. Bialik and the Sephardim: The Ethnic Encoding of Modern Hebrew Literature 60

PART II. BILINGUAL ENTANGLEMENTS
Chapter 3. Exchanging Words: Arabic Writing in Israel and the Poetics of Misunderstanding 105
Chapter 4. Palestinian Midrash: Toward a Postnational Poetics of Hebrew Verse 141

PART III. AFTERLIVES OF LANGUAGE
Chapter 5. “Along Came the Knife of Hebrew and Cut Us in Two”: Language in Mizrahi Fiction, 1964-2010 189
Chapter 6. “So You Won’t Understand a Word”: Secret Languages, Pseudo-languages, and the Presence of Absence 238
Conclusion. Bloody Hope: The Intertextual Afterword of Salman Masalha and Saul Tchernichowsky 285

Bibliography 299
Index 329

 

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Dissertation: McCLure, ELL Parent Involvement of Recent Immigrants from Israel, Russia, and Uzbekistan

McClure, Noel M. ELL Parent Involvement of Recent Immigrants from Israel, Russia, and Uzbekistan. Jones International University, 2011.

 

URL: http://udini.proquest.com/view/ell-parent-involvement-of-recent-pqid:2336119021/

Abstract

Abstract: The purpose of this research is to determine successful ways schools, teachers, and classrooms can effectively foster partnerships with parents of English language learners who are recent immigrants from Russia, Uzbekistan, and Israel. As schools struggle to overcome institutional bias and lack of understanding of how to accommodate the needs of the growing population of immigrant students from diverse countries, immigrant parents also struggle to fit into a new cultural environment and to secure the best education for their children. This qualitative study was conducted in one school in Phoenix, Arizona. Through interviews with ten parents of English language learners and nine teachers of ELL students, this research provides information about the barriers and opportunities that teachers and parents of English language learners faced in improving academic success for English language students who were children of immigrants. The findings and conclusions consist of the following: (a) schools and parents must communicate well in order to develop into a team that supports the students, (b) schools may need to provide additional resources to ELL teachers and parents in order to support the students, and (c) school cultures may need to change through cultural trainings and signage in order to become more welcoming toward ELL parents. This work is limited by the fact that it was completed in only one school with a narrow population. The information gathered here informs the discussion in schools regarding ways that school leaders and teachers can work more effectively with immigrant parents to support in the home the academic goals of English language students. Key search terms: English Language Learners, immigrant parents, school-parent communication, school-family connection, Bukharian students.

Subject: English as a Second Language; Multicultural Education; Judaic studies

Classification: 0441: English as a Second Language; 0455: Multicultural Education; 0751: Judaic studies

Identifier / keyword: Education, Social sciences, Bukharian, ELL, ESL, Parent involvement, Recent immigrants, School-parent communication, English as a second language, Israeli, Russian, Uzbek

Number of pages: 297

Publication year: 2011

Degree date: 2011

School code: 1590

Source: DAI-A 72/06, Dec 2011

Place of publication: Ann Arbor

Country of publication: United States

ISBN: 9781124591469

Advisor: Hargiss, Kathleen

Committee member: Howard, Caroline, Orth, Judith

University/institution: Jones International University

Department: School of Education

University location: United States — Colorado

Degree: Ed.D.

Source type: Dissertations & Theses

Language: English

Document type: Dissertation/Thesis

Dissertation/thesis number: 3450476

ProQuest document ID: 864579837

Job: Lecturer in Modern Hebrew, Ohio State University

The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the Ohio State University invites applicants for a renewable, non-tenure track position in modern Hebrew language. Responsibilities will include teaching six courses per academic year, curriculum development, language placement, and supervising graduate teaching assistants and other instructors. Salary and benefits are competitive.

Requirements: Native or near-native fluency in Hebrew and English; demonstrated excellence in the teaching of Hebrew language at all levels and in the effective application of current technologies to foreign language learning. M.A or Ph.D. in Hebrew or related field, preferred.

Complete applications must include: letter of interest; statement of teaching philosophy; C.V.; three recent letters of recommendation; and recent teaching evaluations. All letters of reference must be submitted independently by their authors. At least one of the letters should address the candidate’s teaching qualifications. Inquiries may be directed to Prof. Daniel Frank at frank.152@osu.edu. Review of applications will begin on January 15, 2014. Applications will continue to be accepted until the position is filled. Please apply online through Academic Jobs Online at: https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/3718.

To build a diverse workforce Ohio State encourages applications from individuals with disabilities, minorities, veterans, and women.  EEO/AA employer.

New Article: Maher, Journeys into the Western Galilee, in Khouri and Yehoshua

Maher, John. “Blue, Half-Forgotten Hills: Journeys into the Western Galilee, in Ilyas Khouri’s Gate of the Sun and A.B. Yehoshua’s The Liberated Bride.” Comparative Critical Studies 10, supplement (2013): 107-121.

URL: http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/ccs.2013.0116

Excerpt

At the end of the day, Rivlin will come no closer to finding the so-called ‘secret’ of the Algerian civil war than he will to finding the ‘secret’ of his son’s failed marriage, a tale, literally and metaphorically, of subterranean incest which mirrors his own ignorance of the lives of the minority in Haifa and Acre and Jerusalem and the Galilee. As with Naim, the young Palestinian boy in The Lover, the servant always know more about the master than the master knows about the servant.

Cite: Mendel, On the Creation of the Israeli Accelerated Arabic Language Studies Programme

 Mendel, Yonatan. “A Sentiment-Free Arabic: On the Creation of the Israeli Accelerated Arabic Language Studies Programme.” Middle Eastern Studies 49.3 (2013): 383-401.
URL: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/mes/2013/00000049/00000003/art00003

 

Abstract

This article analyses the creation of the accelerated Arabic language
studies programme in the Israeli-Jewish school system, `The Oriental
Classes’, over the years 1950-67. The article investigates the networks
that enabled and controlled the `Oriental Classes’, the main actors
involved in its operation, the aims of this programme as well as the
ways to achieve them. It argues that this flagship programme serves as
an example of the dominant orientation with which Arabic studies have
been associated in Israeli-Jewish society, that of political and
military intelligence needs, and that this can add a new angle to our
understanding of the way Israel perceives the Arab world, vis-à-vis its
relations with the Arab `other’ and the Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Dissertation: Katan, Language Socialization and Linguistic Ideologies among Israeli Emissaries in the United States

Language socialization and linguistic ideologies among Israeli emissaries in the United States

 

Author: Kattan, Shlomy

 

Publication info: University of California, Berkeley, ProQuest, UMI Dissertations Publishing, 2010. 3413403.

 

http://pitt.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/749359605?accountid=14709

 

Abstract: Research in both the anthropology and sociology of education has increasingly come to consider the institutional effects of migration, globalization, and transnationalism on learning environments. Yet, most studies examining transmigration and education have only looked at migrant children in schools rather than at the transitions they undergo as transnationals across settings. We know little of the linguistic and socializing practices that occur during migrants’ transitions from place to place and how they come to define the migratory and educational experience for transnational children. This multi-sited, global ethnography examines language socialization practices and linguistic ideologies among families of Israeli emissaries ( shlichim ) employed by the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI). The study documented the transitions undergone by families with school-age children in the months of their preparation for their move from Israel to the United States and during the first year and-a-half in the U.S.. Data collection for this project took place in both Israel and New York at the homes of the families, the children’s schools, peer group activities, extracurricular programs, play, and summer camp. The focus of this dissertation project is on routine home and school practices which orient children to attitudes towards their identities as Israelis, as Zionists, as transnationals, and as temporary residents of the United States. The study approaches this question through the lens of the language socialization paradigm, a subfield of linguistic anthropology which understands socialization to occur both through the use of language and to the use of language. I argue that through attention to language use and form children are taught to attend to symbolic boundaries between Israeli, Jewish Diasporan, and U.S. American identities. The simultaneous reinforcement and transcendence of these symbolic boundaries is a defining characteristic of living transnationally. I find that transnational identities: (1) Are constructed through an explicit recognition of the boundaries between the linguistic and cultural practices of the homeland and the host country; (2) are negotiated through attention to the authenticity of members of the homeland, the host country, and the transnational community; that is, through attention to the extent to which individuals stay within the symbolic boundaries that separate the homeland and the host-land; and (3) Display an ambivalence toward affiliation with the host country by accentuating and emphasizing the linguistic and cultural practices of the homeland. Based on these findings, I call for a language socialization approach to studying transnationalism which recognizes the role of the local and the global, the contemporary and the historical, and the orthodox and heterodox in everyday transnational practices. By focusing on the shlichim ‘s transition from Israel to the United States, the dissertation obtains a view of migration often unavailable to researchers: the preparation for departure and initial arrival to the country of destination. This period of transition is formative in the emissaries’ experiences and as they define themselves vis-à-vis their country of origin and their host country. In this sense, this dissertation contributes to an understanding of the role of language in transnational practices, thus supplementing the growing field of research around questions of transnationalism, diaspora, and identity.

 

 

Subject: Linguistics; Cultural anthropology; Educational sociology

Classification: 0290: Linguistics; 0326: Cultural anthropology; 0340: Educational sociology

Identifier / keyword: Education, Social sciences, Language, literature and linguistics, Language socialization, Ideologies, Israeli, Emissaries, Diaspora, Identity, Israel, Shlichut, Symbolic boundaries,; Transnationalism

Title: Language socialization and linguistic ideologies among Israeli emissaries in the United States

Number of pages: 144

Publication year: 2010

Degree date: 2010

School code: 0028

Source: DAI-A 71/09, Mar 2011

Place of publication: Ann Arbor

Country of publication: United States

ISBN: 9781124140995

Advisor: Baquedano-Lopez, Patricia

Committee member: Kramsch, Claire J., Boyarin, Daniel

University/institution: University of California, Berkeley

Department: Education

University location: United States — California

Degree: Ph.D.

Source type: Dissertations & Theses

Language: English

Document type: Dissertation/Thesis

Dissertation/thesis number: 3413403

ProQuest document ID: 749359605

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

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• 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

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• 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

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• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2013.768031

 

The P6 Group and critical landscape photography in Israel

Jochai Rosen
pages 75-85

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• 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

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• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2013.768035

 

Soft power: The meaning of home for Gush Emunim settlers

Michael Feige

pages 109-126

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• 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

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• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2013.768042

House and home: A semantic stroll through metaphors and symbols

Tamar Sovran
pages 141-156

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• DOI:10.1080/13531042.2013.768044