ToC: Israel Studies Review 30.2 (2015)

Israel Studies Review 30.2 (2015)

Editors’ Note

Editors’ Note
pp. v-vi(2)

 

Articles

Labor Zionism, the State, and Beyond: An Interpretation of Changing Realities and Changing Histories
pp. 1-27(27)
Author: Cohen, Mitchell

Does Israel Have a Navel? Anthony Smith and Zionism
pp. 28-49(22)
Author: Berent, Moshe

The Women of the Wall: A Metaphor for National and Religious Identity
pp. 50-70(21)
Author: Lahav, Pnina

Yiddish, Israel, and the Palestinians: Yosl Birshteyn’s “Between the Olive Trees”
pp. 71-91(21)
Author: Mahalel, Adi

Beyond the Religious-Secular Dichotomy: Looking at Five Israeli Dystopias
pp. 92-112(21)
Author: Katz, Gideon

The Politics of Emotion: A Case Study of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
pp. 113-129(17)
Author: Gold, Dana

 

Book Reviews

Book Reviews
pp. 130-155(26)

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 Article: Monterescu & Schickler, Jews, Palestinians and the Alternative Cultural Scene in Tel Aviv-Jaffa

Monterescu, Daniel, and Miriam Schickler. “Creative Marginality. Jews, Palestinians and the Alternative Cultural Scene in Tel Aviv-Jaffa.” Ethnologie française 45.2 (2015): 293-308.

 

URL: http://www.cairn-int.info/article-E_ETHN_152_0293–creative-marginality-jews.htm    [click here for PDF]

 

Abstract

Traditionally viewed as the “back yard” of Israel’s urban landscape, ethnically mixed towns have been predominantly studied in light of the marginality paradigm, which neglects to recognize these spaces as social places, namely as life worlds in and of themselves. Drawing on archival and ethnographic fieldwork in Jaffa, we propose a relational anthropological approach to the problématique of marginality and pluralism in Jewish-Arab cities. These are seen not as unidimensional sites of hyper-segregation but rather as spaces of creative marginality, which paradoxically challenge the nationalist spatial hegemony (both Palestinian and Zionist). Examining the everyday enactment of alterity we show how marginality and exclusion become precisely the driving force behind one of Israel’s most creative back stages.

 

Published in English and French, with abstracts in English, French, German, Spanish, Hebrew, and Arabic.

 

New Article: Fischer, Religion and Education in Israel

Fischer, Shlomo. “The Crises of Liberal Citizenship: Religion and Education in Israel.” In Religious Education and the Challenge of Pluralism (ed. Adam B. Seligman; Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014): 119-49.

 

 

Excerpt

The religious Zionist community is starting to understand the place of civics and citizenship within the new Israeli public discourse, and it wishes to be part of that discourse. It understand, too, that it can make its own unique communitarian or republican contribution to that discourse, but it understands two further things as well: it understands that if it entirely disregards the liberal citizenship discourse of individual human and civil rights, of tolerance and of pluralism, it will lose its ability to communicate with the larger Israeli public. Much to its chagrin, it has all ready experienced such a break in communication during the Disengagement from Gaza in 2005. It discovered then that it had no allies in the Israeli public sphere to help it prevent the evacuation of seventeen settlements in the Gaza strip. It wishes very much to reestablish lines of communication in order to prevent a reoccurrence of that event. Secondly, it understands that it cannot seriously offer a citizenship discourse for the entire community if it offers no modicum of inclusion, of membership, and of tolerance to the non-Jewish minorities of the country. Alongside its communitarian and republican orientation, and alongside its integral nationalist demands that Israel remain a Jewish country, it must find room for the other non-Jews, even the Palestinians. Hence, it seeks from within the Jewish tradition resources of tolerance and inclusion. Only time will tell whether it actually achieves a new synthesis of nationalism and democracy, and of republicanism and inclusiveness.

 

 

New Article: Kaplan & Werczberger, Jewish New Age and the Middle Class

Kaplan, Dana, and Rachel Werczberger. “Jewish New Age and the Middle Class: Jewish Identity Politics in Israel under Neoliberalism.” Sociology (early view; online first).

 

URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0038038515595953

 

Abstract
This article asks why middle-class Israeli seculars have recently begun to engage with Jewish religiosity. We use the case of the Jewish New Age (JNA) as an example of the middle class’s turn from a nationalised to a spiritualised version of Judaism. We show, by bringing together the sociology of religion’s interest in emerging spiritualities and cultural sociology’s interest in social class, how after Judaism was deemed socially significant in identity-based struggles for recognition, Israeli New Agers started culturalising and individualising Jewish religiosity by constructing it in a spiritual, eclectic, emotional and experiential manner. We thus propose that what may be seen as cultural and religious pluralism is, in fact, part of a broader system of class reproduction.

 

 

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.

Reminder: How Jewish is the Jewish State? Conference at American University, Oct 28, 2014

See more here: https://israbib.wordpress.com/2014/08/28/conference-program-how-jewish-is-the-jewish-state-religion-and-society-in-israel-american-university-oct-28-2014/

“How Jewish Is the Jewish State?  Religion and Society in Israel” – Academic Conference at American University 

Tuesday, October 28, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM

Free with RSVP: http://www.american.edu/cas/israelstudies/rsvp  

This all day conference examines the separation of state and religion in Israel, looks into the treatment and the internal structure of non-Jews in the Jewish state, and asks about Jewish religious pluralism and Orthodox dominance. Leading experts from Israel, Europe, and the United States will speak on these questions, drawing upon their own scholarship, teaching, and variant experiences at several different institutions.   A complete conference program is available here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lc_F_g00uhs58ZayyBfJudXkF2rhiWUVoLuanaIa7Mg/edit?usp=sharing  Location: SIS Building Abramson Family Founders Room. Pre-paid parking is available in the School for International Service garage and Katzen Arts Center garage (campus map here).

“Israel at the Crossroads of Democracy, Nationalism and Religion”- Free lecture at American University

Tuesday, October 28, 7:30 PM 

Free with RSVP: http://www.american.edu/cas/israelstudies/rsvp  

Lecture by Moshe Halbertal, Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, Professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy at Hebrew University, and a faculty member at the Mandel Leadership Institute in Jerusalem, Israel.  Location: Mary Graydon Center (MGC) Rooms 4-5.  Free parking is available in the Katzen Arts Center garage and the Sports Center garage (campus map here).

Opinions: Lehman, Establishing an Integrated Community and School in Israel

What is the mission and vision for a Jewish day school that can unite a population with a wide variety of Jewish beliefs, affiliations and practices? Ayelet Lehman provides perspective by describing how this challenge has played out at an intentionally pluralistic school in Israel.

URL: http://www.ravsak.org/news/882/279/Establishing-an-Integrated-Community-and-School-in-Israel-A-Continuing-Challenge/

 

Excerpt

It is important to understand that unlike other schools in Israel, which are established through the education system and the local authority, the Keshet School in Mazkeret Batya was established by a group of parents in order to realize their social-educational goals. Even so, some of the teachers who joined the school were not familiar with the vision of Keshet, its teaching philosophy and educational practices. For this reason, two years after the establishment of the school, various stakeholders undertook a structured process of forming a school vision. The process was led by the school administration, with staff and parents participating.

The implementation of the Keshet School vision was led by staff members together with the parents. The challenge now was to translate the vision into a practical program for all ages. For example, the meeting group (secular) discussed the definition of secular identity that is a mix of Jewish, Israeli and universal components. If so, what is the ratio we expect between those components? To what cultural legacy do we want to expose our children? To what extent will the school focus on Jewish laws and customs? What principles will guide the teaching and learning in this group? During the discussion diverse voices emerged, some focusing on social values, others putting emphasis on experiential learning, some emphasizing critical thinking, learning through asking questions, and examining dilemmas.

Who will teach the complex subjects? It became necessary to find teachers who are familiar with the material, whose worldview is pluralistic, who consider the two identity groups as equals, who are able to accept feelings, attitudes and behaviors different from their own, and who will protect every child’s right to express his or her opinion, even if it contradicts the worldview of another.

Conference Program: How Jewish is the Jewish State? Religion and Society in Israel, American University, Oct 28, 2014

“How Jewish is the Jewish State? Religion and Society in Israel”

October 28, 2014

American University, Washington, DC

Scholars are invited to attend “How Jewish is the Jewish State? Religion and Society in Israel,” a day-long academic conference on October 28, 2014 at American University in Washington, DC.  The conference is sponsored by American University’s Center for Israel Studies and Jewish Studies Program.  A limited number of travel subsidies are available for junior faculty and advanced graduate students.  Applications for travel subsidies are due September 15, 2014.  Notification will be made by October 1, 2014.

This conference examines the separation of state and religion in Israel, looks into the treatment and the internal structure of non-Jews in the Jewish state, and asks about Jewish religious pluralism and Orthodox dominance. Leading experts from Israel, Europe, and the United States will speak on these questions, drawing upon their own scholarship, teaching, and variant experiences at several different institutions.

Conference Chairs:
Michael Brenner, Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies, American University and Chair of Jewish History and Culture, Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich
Pamela Nadell, Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender Studies, American University

Location: The conference will take place at American University in the School of International Service Abramson Family Founder’s Room.  The address of the university is 4400 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC.

Preliminary Program:

8:00-9:00 AM        Registration, Networking, and Coffee/Continental Breakfast

9:00-10:30 AM      Separation between State and Religion
Yedidia Stern ( Bar Ilan University/Israel Democracy Institute)  New Frontiers in the Struggle Between Religion and State
Eli Salzberger (Haifa University): Religion and State: Law in the Books versus Law in Action
Kimmy Caplan (Bar Ilan University): Orthodox Monopolies: A Trojan Horse?
Chair: Pamela Nadell, Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender Studies, American University (AU)

10:30 AM        Coffee Break

11:00-1:00 PM     Non-Jews in the Jewish State
Ahmad Natour (Hebrew University, Jerusalem): Islam and Muslims in the State of the Jews
Amal el-Sana Alh’jooj (McGill University, Montreal): Between Sharia Law, Israeli Law and Traditions: The Case of Bedouin Women in Israel
Ya’akov Ariel (University of North Carolina): Evangelical Christians in Israel
Nurit Novis Deutsch (Hebrew University, Jerusalem): Attitudes among Religious Jews in Israel Towards Non-Jews
Moderator: Calvin Goldscheider, Scholar in Residence (AU)

1:00-2:30 PM     Lunch

2:30-4:30 PM         Jewish Pluralism
Michael A. Meyer (Hebrew Union College Cincinnati): Progressive Judaism, Israeli Style
Fania Oz-Salzberger (Haifa University): Secular Israel: Where from and where to?
Sara Hirschhorn (Oxford University): Religion among American Settlers
Gershon Greenberg (AU): Haredi Attitudes Towards Israeli Statehood
Chair: Michael Brenner, Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies, American University and Chair of Jewish History and Culture, Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich

4:30-5:30 PM        Reception

7:30 PM    Keynote: “Israel at the Crossroads of Democracy, Nationalism and Religion” Moshe Halbertal (Hebrew University, Jerusalem)

This conference is generously supported by the Knapp Family Foundation.

 

A limited number of travel subsidies are available for junior faculty and advanced graduate students to attend the conference. Click here for details.

Cite: Marom and Yacobi, Cultural Diversity Policy in Tel Aviv

Marom, Nathan & Haim Yacobi. “‘Culture Capital for All’? Cultural Diversity Policy in Tel Aviv and its Limits.” Mediterranean Politics 18.1 (2013): 60-77.

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13629395.2012.745709

Abstract

This article critically analyses cultural diversity policy in Tel Aviv–Jaffa in relation to non-Jewish labour migrant communities and to Palestinian citizens of Israel residing in Jaffa. It focuses on recent incorporation of cultural diversity into city policy in its ‘City Vision’ and ‘Global City’ initiatives and in three specific areas (festivities, libraries and museum of city history). The article argues that despite the introduction and initial institutionalization of cultural diversity in Tel Aviv, there are unresolved contradictions when city policies encounter the ethnocratic boundaries set by Israel’s policies.

Cite: Titzmann et al., Change in Friendship Homophily. A German Israeli Comparison of Adolescent Immigrants

Titzmann, Peter F., Rainer K. Silbereisen and Gustavo S. Mesch. “Change in Friendship Homophily. A German Israeli Comparison of Adolescent Immigrants.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 43.3 (2012): 410-28.

—

URL: http://jcc.sagepub.com/content/43/3/410.abstract

—

Abstract

This longitudinal study investigated friendship homophily (i.e., the preference for intra-ethnic over inter-ethnic friends) among immigrant adolescents in Israel and Germany. Based on acculturation theories and known differences between Israel and Germany in the establishment of Russian-speaking immigrant communities in these countries, it was hypothesized that levels and rates of change in friendship homophily would differ. Associations between context- and acculturation-related variables and levels and rates of change in adolescent friendship homophily were also tested. The sample consisted of 877 Russian Jewish and 358 ethnic German Diaspora migrant adolescents (i.e., migrants returning to the country of their ancestors from the former Soviet Union). Results confirmed higher levels and a less pronounced decrease of friendship homophily in Israel as compared to Germany. Especially acculturation-related variables were found to be best at predicting intercept and slope of friendship homophily. Findings also showed that differences in levels and rates of change in adolescent friendship homophily between both countries could be explained by language use; thus, using the new host language more often appeared to be a crucial variable for lower levels of friendship homophily. Overall, results suggest very similar adaptation processes toward lower friendship homophily in the two countries but at a different pace over time.

Cite: Grant, Pluralistic Approaches to Israel Education

Grant, Lisa D. “Pluralistic Approaches to Israel Education.” Journal of Jewish Education 77.1 (2011): 4-21.

 

URL: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a934408186

 

Abstract

Teaching Israel is a complex endeavor in today’s world where the founding myths of Israel no longer appear to capture the hearts and minds of American Jews as they did a generation ago. As a result, a new way of speaking about and conceptualizing Israel education is evolving among researchers, program providers, policy makers, and many teachers. Through an in-depth case study, this paper explores whether and how this new way of thinking and speaking about Israel actually plays out in a community Jewish day high school that espouses a commitment to critical thinking and pluralistic education. The analysis is informed by a conceptual framework that argues that a meaningful and holistic approach to Israel education demands critical engagement with both the sacred vision and complex realities of Israel, past, present, and future as well as the literature on pluralism in Jewish educational settings. The key question threaded throughout the article is: How does a pluralistic Jewish curriculum navigate between fostering open inquiry and supporting a commitment to Israel and the Jewish people?

Cite: Golinkin and Eisen, Remarks at the 2008 Rabbinical Assembly Convention

David Golinkin, “Israel at Sixty: Remarks at the 2008 Rabbinical Assembly Convention,” Conservative Judaism 61,3 (2010): 26-34

and

Arnold Eisen, “Israel at Sixty: Remarks at the 2008 Rabbinical Assembly Convention,” Conservative Judaism 61,3 (2010): 35-39

URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/conservative_judaism/summary/v061/61.3.golinkin.html

Cite: Pianko, Horace Kallen and Jewish Nationalism

Pianko, Noam. "’The True Liberalism of Zionism’: Horace Kallen, Jewish Nationalism, and the Limits of American Pluralism." American Jewish History 94,4 (2008): 299-329.

URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american_jewish_history/summary/v094/94.4.pianko.html

Keywords: Zionism, Israel: World Jewry relations, USA: Jewry, Nationalism / Patriotism, Americanization, Multiculturalism, Pluralism, Horace Meyer Kallen