New Article: Fuchs, The Study of Emunah in the Har Hamor Yeshiva

Fuchs, Ilan.”The Construction of an Ideological Curriculum: The Study of Emunah in the Har Hamor Yeshiva.” Journal of Israeli History (early view; online first).
 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13531042.2016.1140925
 
Abstract

Beginning in 1997, the Har Hamor Yeshiva, a leading Jerusalem-based institute for Torah learning, has become the center of a unique stream of thought in religious Zionist philosophy. This article examines how religious Zionist yeshivas have developed an educational curriculum that translates theological beliefs and values into political action. The article seeks to evaluate to what extent this ideology and curriculum will be able to survive in a political reality in which the rift between religious and secular Zionism is constantly increasing.

 

 

 

Thesis: Chyutin, Judaism, Contemporary Israeli Film, and the Cinematic Experience

Chyutin, Dan. A Hidden Light: Judaism, Contemporary Israeli Film, and the Cinematic Experience, PhD dissertation. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 2015.
 
URL: http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/26366/
 
Abstract

Throughout its brief history, Israeli cinema largely ignored Jewish religious identity, aligning itself with Zionism’s rejection of Judaism as a marker of diasporic existence. Yet over the past two decades, as traditional Zionism slowly declined, and religion’s presence became more pronounced in the public sphere, Israeli filmmakers began to treat Judaism as a legitimate cinematic concern. The result has been a growth in the number of Israeli films dealing with the realities of devoutly religious Jews, amounting to a veritable “Judaic turn” in Israel’s cinematic landscape. As of now, this “turn” has received meager attention within Israeli film scholarship. The following, then, addresses this scholarly lack by offering an extensive investigation of contemporary Judaic-themed Israeli cinema.

This intervention pursues two interconnected lines of inquiry. The first seeks to analyze the corpus in question for what it says on the Judaic dimension of present-day Israeli society. In this context, this study argues that while a dialectic of secular vs. religious serves as the overall framework in which these films operate, it is habitually countermanded by gestures that bring these binary categories together into mutual recognition. Accordingly, what one finds in such filmic representations is a profound sense of ambivalence, which is indicative of a general equivocation within Israeli public discourse surrounding the rise in Israeli Judaism’s stature and its effects on a national ethos once so committed to secularism.

The second inquiry follows the lead of Judaic-themed Israeli cinema’s interest in Jewish mysticism, and extends it to a film-theoretical consideration of how Jewish mystical thought may help illuminate particular constituents of the cinematic experience. Here emphasis is placed on two related mystical elements to which certain Israeli films appeal—an enlightened vision that unravels form and a state of unity that ensues. The dissertation argues that these elements not only appear in the Israeli filmic context, but are also present in broader cinematic engagements, even when those are not necessarily organized through the theosophic coordinates of mysticism. Furthermore, it suggests that this cycle’s evocation of such elements is aimed to help its national audience transcend the ambivalences of Israel’s “Judaic imagination.”

 

 

 

New Article: Shalev et al, Change in the Religious Identity of Young Religious Jewish Newlyweds in Israel

Shalev, Ofra, Nehami Baum, and Haya Itzhaky. “Religious Identity in Transition. Processes of Change in the Religious Identity of Young Religious Jewish Newlyweds in Israel.” The Family Journal 24.2 (2015): 132-9.

 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1066480716628598
 
Abstract

When researchers started to explore the cultural context of marriage, studies about how religious beliefs act within the marriage context have emerged. Most studies focused on Christian population, exploring how religiosity shape the nature of the marital relationship. The present study, however, examined the religious dynamics in one’s religious identity as a result of the transition to matrimony. Using qualitative tools, we interviewed 18 young Israeli Jewish Orthodox couples during their first year of marriage. The study exposes that although both partners come from the same religious group, the transition to marriage creates significant changes in their self-religious identity.

 

 

 

New Article: Golan & Stadler, The Dual Use of the Internet by Chabad

Golan, Oren, and Nurit Stadler. “Building the Sacred Community Online: The Dual Use of the Internet by Chabad.” Media, Culture & Society (early view; online first).

 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0163443715615415
 
Abstract

Religious communities have ongoing concerns about Internet use, as it intensifies the clash between tradition and modernity, a clash often found in traditionally inclined societies. Nevertheless, as websites become more useful and widely accessible, religious and communal stakeholders have continuously worked at building and promoting them. This study focuses on Chabad, a Jewish ultra-Orthodox movement, and follows webmasters of three key websites to uncover how they distribute religious knowledge over the Internet. Through an ethnographic approach that included interviews with over 30 webmasters, discussions with key informants, and observations of the websites themselves, the study uncovered webmaster’s strategies to foster solidarity within their community, on one hand, while also proselytizing their outlook on Judaism, on the other. Hence, the study sheds light on how a fundamentalist society has strengthened its association with new media, thus facilitating negotiation between modernity and religious piety.

 

 

 

New Book: Campbell, Digital Judaism

Campbell, Heidi A., ed. Digital Judaism: Jewish Negotiations with Digital Media and Culture. New York: Routledge, 2015.

 

In this volume, contributors consider the ways that Jewish communities and users of new media negotiate their uses of digital technologies in light of issues related to religious identity, community and authority. Digital Judaism presents a broad analysis of how and why various Jewish groups negotiate with digital culture in particular ways, situating such observations within a wider discourse of how Jewish groups throughout history have utilized communication technologies to maintain their Jewish identities across time and space. Chapters address issues related to the negotiation of authority between online users and offline religious leaders and institutions not only within ultra-Orthodox communities, but also within the broader Jewish religious culture, taking into account how Jewish engagement with media in Israel and the diaspora raises a number of important issues related to Jewish community and identity. Featuring recent scholarship by leading and emerging scholars of Judaism and media, Digital Judaism is an invaluable resource for researchers in new media, religion and digital culture.

 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

• 1. Introduction: Studying Jewish Engagement with Digital Media and Culture Heidi A. Campbell
• 1. Ethnography and social movement studies
• 2. The Jewish Communication Tradition and its Encounters with (the) New Media Menahem Blondheim
• 3. Appropriation & Innovation: Pop-up Communities: Facebook, Grassroots Jews and Offline Post-Denominational Judaism Nathan Abrams
• 4. Yoatzot Halacha: Ruling the Internet, One Question at a Time Michal Raucher
• 5. Sanctifying the Internet: Aish HaTorah’s use of the Internet for Digital Outreach Heidi A. Campbell and Wendi Bellar
• 6. Jewish Games for Learning: Renewing Heritage Traditions in the Digital Age Owen Gottlieb
• 7. Communicating Identity through Religious Internet Memes on “Tweeting Orthodoxies” Facebook Page Aya Yadlin-Segal
• 8. Resistance & Reconstruction: Legitimation of New Media and Community Building amongst Jewish Denominations in the USA Oren Golan
• 9. On Pomegranates and Etrogs: Internet Filters as Practices of Media Ambivalence among National Religious Jews in Israel Michele Rosenthal and Rivki Ribak
• 10. Pashkevilim in Campaigns Against New Media: What Can Pashkevillim Accomplish that Newspapers Cannot? Hananel Rosenburg and Tsuriel Rashi
• 11. The Israeli Rabbi and the Internet Yoel Cohen

Contributors
Index

 

HEIDI A. CAMPBELL is Associate Professor of Communication at Texas A&M University and Director of the Network for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture Studies. She is author of Exploring Religious Community Online (2005) and When Religion Meets New Media (2010) and editor of Digital Religion: Understanding Religious Practice in New Media World (2013).

 

New Book: Burla and Lawrence, eds. Australia and Israel

Burla, Shahar, and Dashiel Lawrence. Australia and Israel. A Diasporic, Cultural and Political Relationship. Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2015.

 

 

Australia and the State of Israel have maintained a cordial if at times ambiguous relationship. The two countries are geographically isolated: strategic, economic and cultural interests lie increasingly with Asia for one, and with the US and the EU for the other. But for all that divides the two states, there is also much they share. Australia played an important role in the Jewish state’s establishment in 1948, and is home to the most Zionist centered Jewish diaspora globally. Jewishness for most Australian Jews has been shaped and defined by engagement with and support for Israel. At the heart of this engagement is a small but thriving Israeli community within the larger multicultural Australia.

Australia and Israel: A Diasporic, Cultural and Political Relationship draws attention to the important historical and contemporary nexus between this diaspora and its imagined homeland. The collection also considers the ways in which these two states mobilise national myths and share environmental challenges. In recent time relations between the two states have been tested by the illegal use of Australian passports in 2010, the mysterious death of dual national Ben Zygier, and growing disquiet within the ranks of the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Greens over Israel’s handling of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. One prominent world-wide issue is the Palestinian BDS (Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions) movement, which has attracted sympathy and support that has brought about substantive differences of opinion regarding its legitimacy within the Jewish Australian community. These issues demonstrate the multifaceted and complex picture of two very different nations, that nevertheless share an abiding connection.

 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction: Why the Book?
Shahar Burla and Dashiel Lawrence

Part One Australia and Israel – Diasporic Relationship

1 Rewriting the Rules of Engagement: New Australian Jewish
Connections with Israel
Dashiel Lawrence

2 The Personal, the Political and the Religious: Bnei Akiva
Australia and its Relationship with Israel
Ari Lander

3 Israeli Government and Diaspora Mobilisation: The Flotilla
to Gaza and the Australian Jewry as a Case Study
Shahar Burla

4 The Place of Hebrew and Israel Education in Australian
Jewish Schools
Suzanne Rutland and Zehavit Gross

5 The Ausraeli Approach: the Diasporic Identity of Israelis
in Australia
Ran Porat

Part Two Australia and Israel – Political and Cultural Relationship

6 Overcoming Water Scarcity and Inequity in Arid Lands:
Comparing Water Management in Australia and Israel
Dominic Skinner and Stephanie Galaitsi

7 Ben Zygier’s Story and Australia–Israel Relations
Ingrid Matthews

8 A Fight Worth Having: Rudd, Gillard, Israel and the
Australian Labor Party
Alex Benjamin Burston-Chorowicz

9 An Alliance of Forgetting: National Narratives of Legitimacy
on the Occasion of Israel–Australia’s Joint Stamp Issue
Commemorating the Battle of Beersheba
Micaela Sahhar

Part Three Australia, Israel and the Boycott Divestment and
Sanction Scheme

10 The Australian Greens and the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict
Philip Mendes

11 Academic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions: Implications
for Australian–Israeli Relations
Ingrid Matthews and James Arvanitakis

Conclusion: First Cousinhood, Political Unease, and the Limits
of Comparison
Fania Oz-Salzberger

The Editors and Contributors
Index

 

Shahar Burla is a research Associate at the Sydney Jewish Museum. He is the author of Political Imagination in the Diaspora: The Construction of a Pro-Israeli Narrative (2013). He has received several awards, including a President’s Fellowship for outstanding PhD student, Bar-Ilan University and the Menahem Begin Foundation academic award.

Dashiel Lawrence is a doctoral candidate at the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne. His research interests include Jewish diaspora–Israel contemporary relations, and Jewish critics of Israel.

 

 

New Article: Shalev et al, Mate Selection Patterns in Modern Orthodox Society

Shalev, Ofra, Nehami Baum, and Haya Itzhaky. “‘Whose Marriage is this?’ – Mate Selection Patterns in Modern Orthodox Society in Israel: A Dialogue between Two Cultural Systems.” Journal of Psychology and Psychotherapy 5.3 (2015).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.4172/2161-0487.1000181

 

Abstract

In modern societies, mate selection process has received extensive attention in the theoretical and research literature. Researchers were primarily concentrated in identifying the parameters that motivate and influence the choice of partner, as similarity, mutual benefits, and emotional aspects. Little attention, however, was given to the social and cultural context under which the selection process takes place. The present study attempted to explore this process among Modern Orthodox couples in Israel, as they combine two simultaneous cultural systems; modern and traditional. 36 in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with couples during their first year of marriage. The analysis revealed several mate selection styles, which were classified into two main groups: the “cognitive selectors” and the “emotional selectors”. Both groups relate to their social context as a main factor in their selection process and outcome. The study findings throw light on the cultural complexity and duality of parallel value systems.

 

 

New Article: Golan & Campbell, Strategic Management of Religious Websites

Golan, Oren, and Heidi M. Campbell. “Strategic Management of Religious Websites: The Case of Israel’s Orthodox Communities.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 20.4 (2015): 467-86.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12118

 

Abstract

This study investigates how webmasters of sites affiliated with bounded communities manage tensions created by the open social affordances of the internet. We examine how webmasters strategically manage their respective websites to accommodate their assumed target audiences. Through in-depth interviews with Orthodox webmasters in Israel, we uncover how they cultivate 3 unique strategies — control, layering, and guiding — to contain information flows. We thereby elucidate how web strategies reflect the relationships between community, religion and CMC.

New Article: Sharabi, Religious Revival Movement in Israel

Sharabi, Asaf. “Religion and Modernity. Religious Revival Movement in Israel.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 44.2 (2015): 223-48.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0891241614530159

 

 

Abstract

This article discusses the concept of zikui harabim (granting merit to the many) and attempts to show how it motivates and animates the religious renewal movements in Judaism (the teshuvah movements). I argue that zikui harabim is produced by “cycles of teshuva” in which the “repentant” person engages in facilitating the “return” of others to religious practice, even before he or she has undertaken the rigorous observance of religious commandments. I suggest that calculating rationality, often considered one of the hallmarks of modernity, is manifest in the teshuvah movement, as many teshuvah clients and entrepreneurs regard commandments, implicitly and explicitly, as a kind of currency they can amass for their own benefit. By so doing, I demonstrate how zikui harabim embeds a modern-capitalist logic, thereby showing how modernity manifests itself in religious revivalism.

 

New Article: Engelberg, Modern Orthodoxy in Post-Secular Times

Engelberg, Ari. “Modern Orthodoxy in Post-Secular Times: Jewish Identities on the Boundaries of Religious Zionism.” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 14.1 (2015): 126-39.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14725886.2015.1005876

 

Abstract

Post-secularism in Israel is expressed, among other ways, by the growing public acceptance of identities that are neither religious nor secular. This paper is predicated on research of individuals located on the boundaries of Orthodox Religious Zionism. It explores their attitudes on a range of issues and argues that they reflect their post-secularist identities. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with young men and women who chose to abandon the strictures of a Religious Zionist lifestyle as well as those who still remain within its bounds. Various late-modern and post-secular modes of thought and expression were identified in interviewees’ narratives. These included pluralism, relativism, egalitarianism, the personalization of relationships with God, and a disregard for theological arguments based upon scientific findings. It is argued that these attitudes are related to two late-modern social processes: (1) the rise of individual expressivism and (2) the belief in the liberal human-rights ethic. These tendencies cut across the social divide between interviewees who left Religious Zionism and those who chose to remain within the fold, traversing the previously dominant religious–secular social divide and thus serving as yet another indication for the blossoming of new post-secular spaces in Israeli Jewish society.

Reviews: Israel-Cohen, Between Feminism and Orthodox Judaism

Israel-Cohen, Yael. Between Feminism and Orthodox Judaism. Resistance, Identity, and Religious Change in Israel. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012.

 

 

 

Reviews

 

• Bahreini, Faezeh. “Review.” Gender and Society 27.4 (2013): 590-592.
• Bar-Ilan, Margalit Shilo. “Review.” Shofar 32.2 (2014): 144-146.
• Millen, Rochelle L. “Review.” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 13.2 (2014): 311-312.

New Book: Fuchs, Israeli Feminist Scholarship

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

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

Table of Contents

Preface

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

Esther Fuchs

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

Esther Fuchs

Chapter Two. Politicizing Masculinities: Shahada and Haganah

Sheila H. Katz

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

Margalit Shilo

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

Judith T. Baumel

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

Ronit Lentin

Chapter Six. Gendering Military Service in the Israel Defense Forces

Dafna N. Izraeli

Chapter Seven. The Halachic Trap: Marriage and Family Life

Ruth Halperin-Kaddari

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

Nitza Berkovitch

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

Yaffah Berlovitz

Chapter Ten. Wasteland Revisited: An Ecofeminist Strategy

Hannah Naveh

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

Henriette Dahan-Kalev

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

Pnina Motzafi-Haller

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

Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian

Chapter Fourteen. The Construction of Lesbianism as Nonissue in Israel

Erella Shadmi

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

Hanna Herzog

Acknowledgments

Contributors

Index

 

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

ToC: Israel Studies Review 28,2 (2013)

Guest Editors’ Introduction: Rethinking the Family in Israel

pp. vii-xii(6)
Authors: Fogiel-Bijaoui, Sylvie; Rutlinger-Reiner, Reina

Articles: The Transformation of Intimacies

Religious Zionist Singles and Late-Modern Youth Culture

pp. 1-17(17)
Author: Engelberg, Ari

Israeli-Palestinian Women and Their Reasons for Divorce: A Comparative Perspective

pp. 18-40(23)
Author: Meler, Tal

Midlife Women in Second Partnerships Choosing Living Apart Together: An Israeli Case Study

pp. 41-60(20)
Author: Or, Ofra

Articles: Families in Transition

‘The Art of the Deal’: Preferences in Spouse Selection among Parents in a Hasidic Community

pp. 61-82(22)
Author: Block, Sima Zalcberg

Crises in Orthodox Israeli Family Life Onstage

pp. 83-101(19)
Author: Rutlinger-Reiner, Reina

Aging, Family, and Preferences for Care among Older Jews and Arabs

pp. 102-121(20)
Author: Halperin, Dafna

Articles: The Boundaries of Family Life

Hybridization and Purification: The Experiences of Mizrachi Middle-Class Adolescents in Israel

pp. 122-139(18)
Author: Selinger, Guy Abutbul

Conceiving Judaism: The Challenges of Same-Sex Parenthood

pp. 140-156(17)
Author: Lustenberger, Sibylle

Israeli ‘Mixed Families’ with Members of Ethiopian Origin: Encounters in the Public Space

pp. 157-173(17)
Author: Benezer, Gadi

“I Earn, Therefore I Exist”: Impoverished Bedouin Mothers Who Become Entrepreneurs

pp. 174-191(18)
Author: Alhuzail, Nuzha Allassad

Migrant Care Workers in Israel: Between Family, Market, and State

pp. 192-209(18)
Author: Shamir, Hila

Articles: Legal Discourse, Private Life

The Spousal Covenant (Brit Hazugiut), or the Covenant with the Status Quo

pp. 210-227(18)
Author: Fogiel-Bijaoui, Sylvie

Articles: Articles: Legal Discourse, Private Life

The Legitimacy of Single Mothers in Israel Examined through Five Circles of Discourse

pp. 228-246(19)
Author: Herbst, Anat

The Anomaly of Custody in Israeli Family Law

pp. 247-263(17)
Author: Mazeh, Yoav

The Child’s Worst Interests: Socio-legal Taboos on Same-Sex Parenting and Their Impact on Children’s Well-Being

pp. 264-281(18)
Author: Triger, Zvi

Children’s Rights in Israeli Case Law: A Spiral Progression

pp. 282-299(18)
Author: Morag, Tamar

Succession Law in Israel: Individualism and the Family

pp. 300-313(14)
Author: Kreiczer-Levy, Shelly

Book Reviews

Book Reviews

pp. 314-324(11)

Cite: Irshai, Dignity, Honor,and Equality: Torah Reading by Women in Israeli Modern Orthodoxy

Irshai, Ronit. “Dignity, Honor, and Equality in Contemporary Halachic Thinking: The Case of Torah Reading by Women in Israeli Modern Orthodoxy.” Modern Judaism 33.3 (2013): 332-56.

URL: mj.oxfordjournals.org/content/33/3/332.extract.html

Extract

The past few years have witnessed the halachic discussion, in Modern Orthodox circles, of various suggestions for radical changes in the structure of prayer in the synagogue.According to these suggestions, women would be permitted to perform the reading of the Torah in synagogue in the framework of a standard orthodox congregation, and not in separate women’s prayer groups.

[…]

Can we honestly say, even in this case, that the dignity of women is not impinged upon as a result of their being deprived of honor? In other words, we can see that in situations in which one must set an order of precedence, women’s inferior religious status (their lower level of “holiness”) becomes more prominent, and a wealth of such examples exists throughout halachic literature.

As a result of all that has been said thus far I would like to challenge the claim that an attitude of “different but equal” does not, in practice, constitute an injury to women’s religious status or their level of holiness.

New Book: Cohen, God, Jews, and the Media

Cohen, Yoel. God, Jews and the Media. Religion and Israel’s Media, Routledge Jewish studies series. London and New York: Routledge, 2012.

Reviews

• Abrams, Nathan. “Review.” Journal of Religion, Media, and Digital Culture 2.1 (2013): 4 pp.
• Shapiro, Haim. “Review.” Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, August 12, 2013.
• Madmoni-Gerber, Shoshana. “Review.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 45.3 (2013): 626-8.
• Scotton, Jim. “Review.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 90.3 (2013): 610-611.
• Rosenthal, Michelle. “Review.” (in Hebrew).