New Article: Cohen, Competing Conceptions of Civic Education

Cohen, Aviv. “Navigating Competing Conceptions of Civic Education: Lessons from Three Israeli Civics Classrooms.” Oxford Review of Education (early view, online first).
 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2016.1194262
 
Abstract

The concentration of this study was the documentation and analysis of ways in which competing conceptions of citizenship play out in actual classroom settings. Examining three cases in the context of the Israeli education system, its findings show that civics teachers’ views and beliefs influenced ways in which they interpreted the curriculum standards and reacted to schools policies and atmosphere, even in cases where these views contradicted. Nevertheless, when confronted with competing conceptions of citizenship as presented by their students, the teachers were less willing to open true democratic conversations, resulting in lessons that did not necessarily create a true democratic atmosphere.

 

 

 

New Article: Siani & Assaraf, Genetic Dilemmas Amongst Jewish Israeli Undergraduate Students

Siani, Merav, and Orit Ben-Zvi Assaraf. “The Moral Reasoning of Genetic Dilemmas Amongst Jewish Israeli Undergraduate Students with Different Religious Affiliations and Scientific Backgrounds.” Journal of Genetic Counseling (early view; online first).

 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10897-015-9918-5
 
Abstract

The main objective of this study was to shed light on the moral reasoning of undergraduate Israeli students towards genetic dilemmas, and on how these are affected by their religious affiliation, by the field they study and by their gender. An open ended questionnaire was distributed among 449 undergraduate students in institutions of higher education in Israel, and their answers were analyzed according to the framework described by Sadler and Zeidler (Science Education, 88(1), 4–27, 2004). They were divided into two major categories: those whose reasoning was based on the consideration of moral consequences (MC), and those who supported their opinion by citing non-consequentialist moral principles (MP). Students’ elaborations to questions dealing with values towards genetic testing showed a correlation between the students’ religious affiliation and their reasoning, with religious students’ elaborations tending to be more principle based than those of secular ones. Overall, the students’ elaborations indicate that their main concern is the possibility that their personal genetic information will be exposed, and that their body’s personal rights will be violated. We conclude the paper by offering several practical recommendations based on our findings for genetic counseling that is specifically tailored to fit different patients according to their background.

 

 

 

New Article: Grassiani, Moral Othering at the Checkpoint

Grassiani, Erella. “Moral Othering at the Checkpoint: The Case of Israeli Soldiers and Palestinian Civilians.” Critique of Anthropology 35.4 (2015): 373-88.

 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0308275X15597307
 
Abstract

In many ways the Palestinian civilian is the ultimate or significant ‘other’ for the Israeli soldier serving in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). (S)he is the one who will be stopped, checked, controlled and at times arrested. (S)he is the one who negotiates, pleads, begs and sometimes curses the soldier. This other represents, amongst other things, disorder for the soldiers. (S)he becomes the ‘face’ of the hardship, the frustration, anger, doubt and boredom the soldiers associate with their work within a military occupation. To regain a sense of order, control and normalcy soldiers construct the military checkpoint as a ‘moral geography’ where the Palestinian is actively ‘othered’. In this paper I will explore how moral boundaries are drawn along these physical borders in a landscape of conflict, while not losing sight of the symbolic meaning of this border. I will do this by exploring the way Palestinians are made into a moral other by Israeli soldiers, in an effort to create a certain sense of order, at the checkpoint. I will first discuss the checkpoint as a site of ‘moral geography’ that enhances and legitimizes these processes of othering that I will explore next. Finally, I will discuss the way Palestinians are made into a moral other, while tracing this back to a moral discourse that is geared to establish a ‘normalized’ self.

 

 

 

ToC: Jewish Film & Media 3.1 (2015); special issue: Israeli film & television

Jewish Film & Media, 3.1, Spring 2015

 

Israeli Film and Television
pp. 1-2
Yaron Peleg

Articles

Secularity and Its Discontents: Religiosity in Contemporary Israeli Culture
pp. 3-24
Yaron Peleg

“Lifting the Veil”: Judaic-Themed Israeli Cinema and Spiritual Aesthetics
pp. 25-47
Dan Chyutin

Jewish Revenge: Haredi Action in the Zionist Sphere
pp. 48-76
Yael Friedman, Yohai Hakak

Televised Agendas: How Global Funders Make Israeli TV More “Jewish”
pp. 77-103
Galeet Dardashti

POPU

Reviews

On Hasamba 3G: Newer Kinds of Jews
pp. 104-112
Tali Artman Partock

On Shtisel (or the Haredi as Bourgeois)
pp. 113-117
Yaron Peleg

 

New Article: Sharabi, Social Changes and Their Impact on Work Outcomes

Sharabi, Moshe. “Social Changes in Israeli Society and Their Impact on the Importance of Work Outcomes.” Social Change 45.1 (2015): 81-94.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0049085714561842

 

Abstract

Over the last 30 years, Israeli society has undergone dramatic social, political and economic changes, and this study examines changes in the importance of the valued work outcomes between 1981 and 2006. Results are reported for cross-sectional studies conducted in 1981 (n = 973) and 2006 (n = 909), which were drawn from representative samples of the Israeli workforce. The samples allow us to examine the cohort effect/generational differences and the ageing effect. The findings reveal substantial differences in work outcome importance over the course of time. Between 1981 and 2006, there was a decrease in the importance of the intrinsic outcome of interest and the social outcome of serving society while the importance of the extrinsic outcomes of income, status and prestige increased. This trend reflects the transformation from a collectivist and altruistic society to an individualist and materialistic society, and can be explained by the generational/cohort effect and ageing effect. The changes in work outcomes over the course of time are explained by political, social and economic factors.

New Article: Halabi, Druze Women in Israel

Halabi, Rabah. “The Faith, the Honor of Women, the Land: The Druze Women in Israel.” Journal of Asian and African Studies 50.4 (2015): 427-44.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0021909614533094

 

Abstract

This study investigates the status of the Druze women in Israel, focusing on the effects of the frequent interactions between the Druze and the more permissive Jewish-Western society. The main question posed is why Druze women accept the double standards of freedom, especially on sexual morality, that expect them to be chaste but allow sexual freedom to men. I argue that this is a patriarchal deal, in which women trade their sexual freedom in exchange for access to higher education, and to the prestigious status of moral guardians from western temptations. The paper is based on narrative analysis of in-depth interviews conducted with 50 Druze students, half of them male and half female, enrolled in Israeli universities.

Reviews: Weiss, Conscientious Objectors in Israel

Weiss, Erica. Conscientious Objectors in Israel. Citizenship, Sacrifice, Trials of Fealty. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.

 

Reviews

• Singeisen, David. “Review.” LSE Review of Books, August 2014.
• Shammas, Victor L. “Review.” Social Anthropology 22.4 (2014): 518-519.
• Stern, Nehemia. “Review.” American Ethnologist 42.1 (2015): 181-183.
• Aviram, Hadar. “Review.” Perspectives on Politics 13.2 (2015): 526-8.
• Linn, Ruth, and Renana Gal. “Review.” Israel Studies Review 30.1 (2015): 149-152.

 

 

ToC: Tikkun 30.3 (2015)

Table of Contents for Tikkun 30.3 (2015):

 

Letters

• Readers Respond

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 3

Editorials

• RABBI MICHAEL LERNER

Repenting for What Israel Did to Gaza—Without Condoning the Wrongs Committed by Hamas

Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 5-7

• A Spiritual Practice of Forgiveness and Repentance: You Don’t Have to be Jewish to Benefit from the Spiritual Wisdom of Jewish High Holidays!

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 8-9

• War with Iran: The Disastrous Aim of Israel and the Republicans

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 10-12

Politics & Society

SAM ROSS-BROWN

• Net Neutrality and the Fight for Social Justice

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 13-14

• JESSICA BENJAMIN

Acknowledging the Other’s Suffering: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Trauma in Israel/Palestine

Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 15-16

• PETER GABEL

The Spiritual Dimension of Social Justice: Transforming the Legal Arena

Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 17-23

 

VANDANA SHIVA

• Rethinking Agriculture: Protecting Biodiversity Amid Climate Chaos

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 24-26

Special Section: Nonviolence in Foreign Policy

• NONVIOLENCE IN FOREIGN POLICY

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 27

  MICHAEL N. NAGLER

• Nonviolence Writ Large

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 28

  STEPHEN ZUNES

• Alternatives to War from the Bottom Up

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 29-30

  MATT MEYER

• Revolutionary Nonviolence: Statecraft Lessons from the Global South

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 31-33

  HELENA NORBERG-HODGE

Strengthening Local Economies: The Path to Peace?

Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 34-38

Rethinking Religion

JOY LADIN

• The Genesis of Gender

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 39-43

  ANA LEVY-LYONS

• Lessons from the Shadow Side of Football: Building the Religious Counterculture

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 44-45

  JOSEPH LUMBARD

• Love for the Prophet Muhammad: A Key to Countering Islamism and Islamophobia

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 46-48

Culture

Books

RAMI SHAPIRO

• A Scientific View of God

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 49-51

  A God That Could Be Real: Spirituality, Science, and the Future of Our Planet, by Nancy Abrams, Beacon Press, 2015

  AL HUNTER

• What Can Replace Prison?

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 51-53

  MARTHA SONNENBERG

• Jacob Chose Hospice: A Critique of Invasive End-of-Life Care

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 54-55; doi:10.1215/08879982-3140224

PHILIP TERMAN

The Poetry of a Jewish Humanist

Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 56-58; doi:10.1215/08879982-3140236

Poetry

Chana Bloch

• Babel

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 58-58

• Do You See Me

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 72

Tikkun Recommends

• Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places / Human Nature & Jewish Thought / Jews and Genes: The Genetic Future in Contemporary Jewish Thought / Balancing on a Planet: The Future of Food and Agriculture / The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible / Capitalism: A Ghost Story/Restoring the Soul of the World: Our Living Bond with Nature’s Intelligence / Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places / Human Nature & Jewish Thought / Jews and Genes: The Genetic Future in Contemporary Jewish Thought / Balancing on a Planet: The Future of Food and Agriculture / The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible / Capitalism: A Ghost Story/Restoring the Soul of the World: Our Living Bond with Nature’s Intelligence / Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places / Human Nature & Jewish Thought / Jews and Genes: The Genetic Future in Contemporary Jewish Thought / Balancing on a Planet: The Future of Food and Agriculture / The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible / Capitalism: A Ghost Story/Restoring the Soul of the World: Our Living Bond with Nature’s Intelligence / Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places / Human Nature & Jewish Thought / Jews and Genes: The Genetic Future in Contemporary Jewish Thought / Balancing on a Planet: The Future of Food and Agriculture / The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible / Capitalism: A Ghost Story/Restoring the Soul of the World: Our Living Bond with Nature’s Intelligence

  Tikkun (2015) 30(3): 2

New Article: Nagar & Maoz, Jewish-Israeli Recognition of Palestinian Suffering

Nagar, Rotem and Ifat Maoz. “Predicting Jewish-Israeli Recognition of Palestinian Pain and Suffering.” Journal of Conflict Resolution (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022002715590875

 

Abstract

Recognition is vital for conflict resolution. This study was designed to learn more about the factors underlying the willingness to recognize the pain and suffering of the opponent in the asymmetrical protracted conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Data were collected through a public opinion survey conducted with a representative sample of Israeli-Jewish adults (N = 511). Perceptions of threat/distrust toward Palestinians and dehumanization of Palestinians each made a significant contribution to explaining Jewish-Israeli (un)willingness to recognize Palestinian pain and suffering (R² = .36). Hawkishness made an added significant contribution to the overall explanatory power of the model (R² = .38). Higher scores on the threat/distrust scale and the dehumanization scale, as well as higher hawkishness predicted decreased willingness to recognize Palestinian pain and suffering. The implications of our findings for understanding the role of recognition and of moral concern in conflict resolution are discussed.

New Article: Kalir, Moral Obligation and Fearism in the Treatment of African Asylum Seekers in Israel

Kalir, Barak. “The Jewish State of Anxiety: Between Moral Obligation and Fearism in the Treatment of African Asylum Seekers in Israel.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies [early view online, prior to printed version]

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369183X.2014.960819

 

Abstract

Since 2005 around 60,000 asylum seekers, mostly from Eritrea and Sudan, have entered Israel by crossing the border from Egypt. Notwithstanding the Jewish history of persecution, and Israel being a signatory to the UN Convention for the protection of refugees, modern Israel systematically refuses to grant a refugee status to asylum seekers. Since 2012, the tenacious hostile approach of Israeli policy-makers and state-agents towards asylum seekers has resulted in an outburst of racist verbal and physical attacks against them. This article analyses the socio-legal location of asylum seekers in Israel by examining how their position is articulated by different parties, deploying competing discourses of human rights, citizenship, security and sovereignty. The article advances that appeals—mostly made by critical non-governmental organisations (NGOs), journalists and academics—to human rights, Jewish morals and historic sensitivities are beguiling; while they arouse hopes for compassion and moral obligation, they are also used by mainstream Israeli politicians to justify the exclusion and deportation of so-called ‘African infiltrators’. A hegemonic ideology of ‘fearism’—which brands the Israeli national narrative and informs the notion of citizenship among Jewish Israelis—leads to the construction of asylum seekers as abject Others, who pose a threat to the Jewish state and to Jews’ own right for secured citizenship.

New Article: Willen, Debating Unauthorized Migrants’ Deservingness in Israel

Willen, Sarah S. “Lightning Rods in the Local Moral Economy: Debating Unauthorized Migrants’ Deservingness in Israel.” International Migration (early view).

 

URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/imig.12173/abstract

 

 

Abstract

Localized debates about who unauthorized migrants are and what they do, or do not, deserve unfold in a culturally specific register that is deeply charged with emotion and moral valuation. Structuring such debates are vernacular discursive frames that emerge from, and reflect, a common “local moral economy.” Taking Israel as case study, this article examines six elements of the country’s local moral economy – biopolitical logic, historical memory, political emotion, popularized religion, an ideology of “fruitful multiplication,” and hasbara (“public diplomacy”/propaganda) – and explores their impact on public debates about unauthorized and irregular forms of migration. Here, as elsewhere, conventionalized distinctions that frame much migration scholarship – e.g. “economic” vs. “political” migrants, “migrant workers” vs. “refugees,” even the terms “authorized” and “unauthorized” themselves – bear but limited salience. Migration researchers who hope to influence local policy debates must recognize the weight and influence of local moral economies, and the chasms that divide vernacular from conventionalized frames. Achieving this sort of nuanced understanding is, at root, an ethnographic challenge.

 

 

New Book: Weiss, Conscientious Objectors in Israel

Weiss, Erica. Conscientious Objectors in Israel. Citizenship, Sacrifice, Trials of Fealty. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.

 
URL: http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15212.html

 

In Conscientious Objectors in Israel, Erica Weiss examines the lives of Israelis who have refused to perform military service for reasons of conscience. Based on long-term fieldwork, this ethnography chronicles the personal experiences of two generations of Jewish conscientious objectors as they grapple with the pressure of justifying their actions to the Israeli state and society—often suffering severe social and legal consequences, including imprisonment.

While most scholarly work has considered the causes of animosity and violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Conscientious Objectors in Israel examines how and under what circumstances one is able to refuse to commit acts of violence in the midst of that conflict. By exploring the social life of conscientious dissent, Weiss exposes the tension within liberal citizenship between the protection of individual rights and obligations of self-sacrifice. While conscience is a strong cultural claim, military refusal directly challenges Israeli state sovereignty. Weiss explores conscience as a political entity that sits precariously outside the jurisdictional bounds of state power. Through the lens of Israeli conscientious objection, Weiss looks at the nature of contemporary citizenship, examining how the expectations of sacrifice shape the politics of both consent and dissent. In doing so, she exposes the sacrificial logic of the modern nation-state and demonstrates how personal crises of conscience can play out on the geopolitical stage.

Erica Weiss teaches anthropology at Tel Aviv University.

 

Cite: Shlaim, Rabbi John Rayner, Ethical Zionism and Israel

Shlaim, Avi. “Rabbi John Rayner, Ethical Zionism and Israel.” European Judaism 45.1 (2012): 28-35.

 

URL: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/berghahn/ejud/2012/00000045/00000001/art00005

 

Abstract

Rabbi John Rayner was an eminent proponent of ethical Zionism. His views about Israel are related in this article to his views about Judaism and Jewish ethics. The three pillars of Judaism are: truth, justice and peace. Rabbi Rayner personified these values to a remarkable degree. The common thread that runs through his countless sermons and articles was the emphasis on the gentler and more outward-looking values of Judaism. It is by cultivating and exemplifying these values, he believed, that Jews could best help humanity find signposts to justice and peace, not only in the Middle East but everywhere. Ethical Zionism, as understood by Rabbi Rayner, is based on Jewish values. The State of Israel is the main political progeny of the Zionist movement. It follows that the State of Israel ought to reflect Jewish values in its external relations. In the event of a clash between Israeli behaviour and Jewish ethics, Rabbi Rayner invariably came down on the side of Jewish ethics. He consistently placed principle above pragmatism and morality above expediency. He was an honest and courageous man who always spoke truth to power.

ToC: Israel Affairs 16,4 (Benedict XVI, Israel and the Jews)

 

 

Israel Affairs: Volume 16 Issue 4 is now available online at informaworld^TM.
Special Issue: Benedict XVI, Israel and the Jews
This new issue contains the following articles:

Original Articles

Pope Benedict XVI: a cautious approach to Middle East peace
Pages 467 – 480

Author: J. T. Pawlikowski

DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2010.511798

Benedict and Israel: the possibilities of friendship
Pages 481 – 495

Author: Christophe F. Potworowski

DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2010.511799

Back to the Ice Age? The Roman Catholic Church and Judaism
Pages 496 – 509

Author: Walter Homolka

DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2010.511800

Spiritual infrastructure: memory and moral resources
Pages 510 – 534

Author: Clemens Sedmak

DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2010.511801

Pope Benedict XVI and the Jews: a relationship under suspicion?
Pages 535 – 561

Author: Hans Hermann Henrix

DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2010.511803

Pope Benedict XVI within the context of Israel and Holy See relations
Pages 562 – 578

Author: Mordechay Lewy

DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2010.511804

The Court of the Gentiles
Pages 579 – 598

Author: Daniel Blackman

DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2010.511807

Letter From Israel

Benedict XVI, the Jewish people and the State of Israel
Pages 599 – 605

Author: David Rosen

DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2010.511808

Miscellany

Editorial Board
Pages ebi – 1

DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2010.513824