A national cautionary tale: Russian women newcomers to Israel portrayed*

This article focuses on portrayals of recent women migrants from the (former) Soviet Union in Israel, as these found expression in jokes and in articles in the press. Analysis of these portrayals suggests that the ubiquitous association of the newcomer women with prostitution served to construct them as morally and socially fragmented. Loosened from the moral bounds of familial and, by implication, national ties, the newcomer women were located beyond the boundary of the Israeli Jewish collective. As the mirror image of the ‘loose’ newcomer women, mother-like, Israeli Jewish women were seen as eminently suited to the task of ‘domesticating’ the newcomers – bringing them in from the street into the familial, and national, home. The discussion suggests that the portrayals of the women as prostitutes served as ‘national cautionary tales’, which not only instructed their audience (newcomers and oldtimers alike) in fundamental tenets of Israeli Jewish national identity, but also warned those who might seek to undermine the ethno-national attachments and loyalties that lie at the heart of the Israeli polity.     

Diaspora, kinship and loyalty: the renewal of Jewish national security

This article assesses the new thinking on Jewish security, both inside and outside the state of Israel, since the collapse of the Oslo peace process and in the aftermath of 11 September 2001. To what extent are Jewish diaspora voices and concerns being heeded in Israel, and how are new manifestations of anti‐Semitism being addressed in this context? What is the new role that Israel ascribes to the diaspora in its redefinition of itself and its security environment? In addition, how is the diaspora responding to these new challenges and how is it defining its own role? All of these elements are examined by the authors in the different contexts of Israel, western Europe and the United States.     

“六日战争”对美国犹太人族群认同的影响

20世纪60年代,"大屠杀"话语的传播引发了美国犹太人对族群命运的担忧。在"六日战争"前,面对阿拉伯国家的反犹宣传及其对以色列的重重围困,美国犹太人担心"再次大屠杀"会发生,从而促使美国犹太人对以色列的生存产生深度忧虑。美国犹太社团逐渐把维护以色列的特殊利益和争取美国社会对以色列的同情与支持,作为游说活动的主要目标。美国犹太游说组织通过舆论引导、公开呼吁、经济动员等方式积极进行游说。"六日战争"后,美国与以色列之间的特殊关系迅速发展。美国犹太人的民族自信心和自豪感显著提升,并自觉地将以色列与自身的命运紧密相连。他们在归属意愿、宗教情感、对以色列的文化兴趣、青年群体族群意识等层面表达对以色列的认同,以色列在美国犹太人族群认同中发挥的作用凸显。     

Exile at home: A matter of being out of place

This article employs Hannah Arendt's theorizing about assimilation to consider how sovereign citizens of a nation state might nevertheless experience a sense of exile. It builds on Aziza Khazzoom's notion of a ‘chain of Orientalism’ to suggest that the assimilation of Europe's Jews to Enlightenment ideals has had ongoing repercussions among Jews in the modern state of Israel. The article focuses on what it means to be Jewish in terms of religious observance, and who feels at home in the Jewish state. Employing vignettes from recent ethnographic fieldwork, it raises questions about the modern nation state's capacity to create conditions in which its own ‘people’ can flourish. In this case, Israel has claimed to make it possible for the Jews to flourish, in Arendt's terms, ‘as Jews’, but it is far from clear what ‘as Jews’ would, could or should mean. This leads the author to suggest that Israel has a Jewish problem.     

Helping the enemy? Why transnational Jewish philanthropic foundations donate to Palestinian NGOs in Israel

ABSTRACT. This article asks why transnational Jewish donor organisations have been increasingly providing financial support to Palestinian social movements and NGOs in Israel when many of the main recipients are strong critics of the Jewish character of the state and act to promote Palestinian national claims within Israel. The article evaluates a number of plausible explanations, some generated by interest‐centric theories while others are driven by ideational underpinnings. The study concludes that the donors do not view the interests of the Jewish state and the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel (PAI) in zero‐sum terms. Having internalised liberal values of minority rights and pluralism in their countries of residence (mainly the United States), donating foundations believe that the development of the PAI is both normatively desirable and strengthens Israel as a whole because it facilitates the minority's integration into Israel's society and bolsters its civic culture, and therefore, it also contributes to the country's security. These findings are theoretically significant because they demonstrate how the interpretation of communal interest is strongly related to the normative social environment in which transnational activists operate.     

Nigeria's Igbo Jews: Jewish identity and practice in Abuja

The now widespread Igbo belief in a Jewish ancestry goes back to the 18th century. However, it was during and after the Nigerian civil war (1967–1970), in which at least one million Igbo died in the failed bid for Biafran independence, that Igbo identification with and as Jews concretized. Igbo saw themselves as sufferers of genocide, like the Jews of World War II in Europe, and as inhabitants of a beleaguered plot of land surrounded by hostile forces, similar to the state of Israel. The civil war and its disastrous consequences initiated a still ongoing period of intense questioning among the Igbo concerning their history, present predicaments, and future prospects. A small number of Igbo began to question why, if they were in fact Jews, they should continue practising Christianity. Their community now numbers between 2,000 and 5,000 people throughout Nigeria. There are three established Nigerian synagogues in Abuja, the federal capital, most of whose members are Igbo. The significance of Biafra, the centrality of the state of Israel, pride in Jewish ancestry and practice, and questions surrounding the range of Jewish skin colour, predominate in Igbo Jews' discussions of their identity. In contrast to the vast majority of Igbo who, if they maintain a sense of Jewish identity, do so while practising Christianity, Igbo Jews have severed themselves from the now dominant religion. Understanding themselves to be part of the global Jewish community of the diaspora and the state of Israel, the Igbo practising Judaism in Nigeria are eager for religious and political recognition from world Jewry and the Jewish state. However, self‐identifying Jewish groups without documented historical connections to more established Jewish communities face considerable challenges in gaining such recognition, particularly as genealogical Jews.     

Malagasy Judaism: The ‘who is a Jew?’ conundrum comes to Madagascar

With the virtual disappearance of the centuries‐old Jewish community in Ethiopia through wholescale emigration to Israel, African Jewry is in the process of reconstituting itself into new Jewish movements (NJMs). One of these NJMs is emerging in Madagascar. However, the number of Malagasy adherents to normative (i.e. rabbinic) Judaism is eclipsed by those within the larger society who affirm genealogical descent from ancient Israel – and therefore the mantle of ‘Jew’. They do so while practising Christianity. Thus, the longstanding, sensitive question ‘who is a Jew?’ has migrated from Israel, America and Europe to Africa and Madagascar. This article introduces an array of Malagasy ‘Judaizing’ communities – believers in an Israelite Lost Tribe origin, descendants of a Jewish convert to Islam, Leviticus‐like ‘Aaronites’ – before focusing on Malagasies practising normative Judaism. The new Jews of Madagascar extend the cultural and geographic scope of new religious movements literature to greater Africa and, by extension, to societies in the developing world.     

A transnational millet in the Jewish state: A Judeo-Spanish diaspora between Israel and Turkey, 1948–1958

Between 1948 and 1956, 36,302 Jews migrated from Turkey to Israel, forming the largest Turkish diaspora hub at that time. Drawing on the nine newspapers published by Turkish Jews in Israel in their vernacular, Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), this article sheds light on the complex nature of the migrants' transnational affinity to the Turkish Republic and on how it coexisted with their Jewish nationalism. In addition to situating this development within the broader context of post-WWII Turkish transnationalism, we also delineate their unique historic status as ethnic Jewish communities or millet. Examining the post-Ottoman era, we show how they leveraged their political, commercial and leisure-related ties with Turkey—deemed more developed in those terms than Israel—to empower themselves as an ethnic community and to facilitate their integration into the Jewish state. In so doing, this study bridges some of the gaps in the analyses of Muslim and non-Muslim migrations, and it suggests that we rethink the languages used to explore Turkish transnationalism as well as its geographical borders and underlying characteristics.     

“They Will Take the Country from Us”: Labor Zionism,the Origins and Legacy of the “Other” in Israeli Mass Media,and Hegemonic Narratives

After 1948, Israel's governing elites embarked on a rigorous program of state building and settling hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants. In the process, the elites, primarily from the leading Mapai party, developed a process of othering Jewish immigrants from Arab countries, Arab citizens, and Orthodox Jews. They were physically segregated in their own schools and communities, and the elite culture described them as a threat against the European culture of Jewish immigrants from central Europe. The process targeted Mizrahi Jews before moving on to deplore the “demographic threat” of Orthodox Jews and resulted in the current normative hegemonic discourse in Israel that paints numerous groups as threatening the state. This article proposes a four‐part model for understanding “the other” in Israel: contemporary denial and nostalgia for a homogenous past, the view of Zionism as a civilizing mission, the application of separation of ethnic groups in planning, and demographic fear of the other. Altogether, they paint a picture of an Israel that has not come to grips with its past, and therefore continues the process of “othering” in its contemporary ethnocratic framework. Combining the analysis of geographic separation, and planning and media, it presents an innovative understanding of Israeli society.     

Laurence Oliphant: Financial Sources for his Activities in Palestine in the 1880s

Abstract

Laurence Oliphant's interest in the development of Jewish settlement in Ottoman Palestine preceded his interest in the plight of Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. While his intensive involvement in these matters is well known, especially in modern Israel, the fact that the funds for his largesse were contributed by the Christadelphian Brotherhood has not previously been published. The present article brings to light material from the archives of this sect, and thus, too, the motivation behind these efforts.     

From the particularistic to the universalistic: national narratives in Israel’s mainstream press, 1967–97

The aim of this article is to study the development of the Jewish‐Zionist national idea as expressed in the national narrative as it appeared in Israel’s mainstream press during the years 1967–97, against the background of five critical events in the Israeli collective experience as well as in the wake of the Holocaust Memorial Days. This development is studied as a case of the immanent tension between nationalism’s universalistic message and its particularistic application. The Jewish‐Zionist narrative in Israel is found to be ‘shifting’ from its particularistic towards its more universalistic pole. This development is discussed as a transition from a ‘purely national’ to a ‘post‐national’ narrative, and is positioned in its local and global contexts.     

从犹太复国主义到后犹太复国主义

犹太复国主义作为一种社会思潮和政治思潮,同早期的犹太宗教文化存在各种内在联系。现代犹太复国主义容纳了不同的犹太思想流派,并赋予犹太教中的返乡复国以时代内涵,借此实现了古老弥赛亚观念的现代复活。以色列建国后,犹太多数派中的强硬思潮长期制约着以色列和犹太复国主义的走向。后犹太复国主义是后冷战时代以色列犹太社会中出现的一种新思潮。它对以色列的犹太种族特征和发展方向及其对阿拉伯人的政策等提出了一系列批判性新观点。尽管后犹太复国主义思潮尚未摇撼传统和极端犹太复国主义在以色列政府决策中的话语权,但它却对未来以色列政治的发展构成了不容忽视的潜在影响。     

Between nation and land in Zionist teaching of Jewish history, 1920–1954

The article discusses the representation of Jewish history in the Zionist school system of the Yishuv and the early State of Israel (1920–1954). In the Yishuv period the history curriculum was centered on “shifting Jewish centers” in the spirit of historian Simon Dubnow, an approach that also integrated Jewish and non-Jewish history. From the 1930s, Ben Zion Dinur and the Teachers' Council of the Keren Kayemet le-Yisrael (Jewish National Fund) attempted to make the Land of Israel the central axis uniting Jewish history, a focus that downplayed non-Jewish history. Because of the opposition to this approach within the education system, this change, which Dinur regarded as essential for the integration of the new immigrants from the Muslim countries into Israeli society, was implemented only after he was appointed minister of education in the early 1950s.     

Nationalism,Reform Judaism and the Hebrew Prayer Book

ABSTRACT. The Hebrew prayer book (siddur), the oldest of which dates from the ninth century, frequently expresses Jewish chosenness and hopes for the gathering of the exiles and the return to the Land of Israel. In nineteenth‐century German Reform prayer books, such references to Jewish nationalism were altered or eliminated. In an age of growing European nationalism, this attempt to ‘de‐nationalise’ Jewish identity was virtually unique. Responding to accusations that Jewish citizenship in the modern nation‐state was incompatible with Judaism, Reform rabbis, who were engaged in the struggle for Jewish emancipation, claimed that patriotic loyalty to the German fatherland must supersede Jewish national identity. This article discusses the offending nationalist content of the siddur and the historical context in which it was suppressed. It concludes that the German reformers, by drawing attention to the nationalist potential of traditional Judaism, indirectly prepared the way for the rise of Jewish nationalism in reaction to racial anti‐Semitism in the late nineteenth century.     

以色列城市化进程中的移民因素

以色列城市化先后经历了自发发展与政府推进两个阶段,在国际移民助推下城市化进程持续推进,城市化水平显著提高,城市布局不断优化。以色列作为世界上典型的移民国家,外来犹太移民不仅是国家建构的基石,也成为以色列城市化持续、快速发展的不竭动力。     

Mosaic art in modern Israel and the construction of a sense of place

The article deals with the construction of a narrative and sense of place among the Jewish immigrant‐settler society in 20th century Israel in the context of its efforts to establish a national collective identity on indigenous (i.e. authentic) foundations and with the symbolic struggle with the Palestinian national movement as its backdrop. The case study under discussion is the instalment in public spaces of mosaic decorations inspired by ancient Jewish mosaics unearthed in archaeological excavations. I argue that intentionally or unintentionally, these decorations functioned as agents in the construction of an authentic narrative and a sense of place by producing a link between the current and the ancient Jewish presence in the place. This practice went hand‐in‐hand with the hegemonic national dogma about the link between an ancient, allegedly glorious era of the Jewish people in Palestine, and the modern Zionist project.     

Unfastening Israel's Future from the Occupation: Israeli Plans for Partial Annexation of West Bank Territory

Israeli plans to partially annex West Bank territory have mainly been perceived as frustrating the two-state solution, and as putting Palestine/Israel on a path leading to the one-state alternative. This paper analyses partial annexation plans without assuming that the future of Palestine/Israel would necessarily abide by either statist resolution. It argues that by ostensibly distancing Israel's hold of the West Bank from an identifiable configuration of a belligerent occupation, partial annexation is offered to Jewish Israelis as a path for detaching the futurity of the two nations, and as a trajectory for normalising the Israeli state, without having to make what much of this public would see as painful concessions. It further explores settlers’ objections to such plans, claiming that even a partial incorporation of West Bank territory into formal Israel is expected to erode the exclusivity of Jewish domination which Israel has been upholding in its settler-colonial frontier.     

Dynamics and patterns of the shrinking of Arab lands in Palestine

This paper seeks to sketch a number of geographical patterns pertaining to the ongoing process of confiscation of Palestinian-Arab land in Israel and the 1967 occupied territories. It points out a geographical pattern and process of “enclaving” and “exclaving”, a form of spatial apartheid and exclusionary zoning which was adopted during the pre-state period of Jewish settlement and has continued down to the present day. The centrality of land possession and its transfer to Jewish national and state ownership is shared by almost all political classes in Israel. Even during key points in peace negotiations over the past several years, land confiscation never ceased nor was interrupted. The present paper employs the term “shrinking” to underscore that land confiscation is a continuous process in Palestine/Israel. This of course has both political and social ramifications for the type of state Israel seeks to be, declaring its desire to live in peace and harmony with its own Palestinian citizens and Palestinians elsewhere once a peace deal has been reached. Seen from the perspective of land, its control and use, this paper argues that there is no other alternative in achieving peaceful resolution between Jews in Israel and Palestinians except a return to square one: redefining a new geography for Palestinian villages and towns in Israel and for those many hundreds of villages which were demolished and have since been obliterated.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 33, Number 6. December 2017

Cover caption, volume 33 issue 6 Front Cover Rescuing tradition from the rubbish, a Jewish man in Israel recovers discarded sacred books. This scene serves as a metaphor for the struggle to hold on to tradition in the modern nation state of Israel. The achievement of political sovereignty is thought to be a form of liberation. It is supposed to bring freedom to the subaltern nations who attain it. But can the modern state create the conditions in which a once persecuted minority can finally flourish? Ethnonational states are always exclusionary. Israel inflicts the conditions that European Jews once suffered onto Palestinians, who have been displaced, disinherited, walled off; and even when they are citizens, they are always second class. But what about those at the center of sovereign citizenship: ‘the people’ themselves? Hannah Arendt reminded us that Jews were never quite at home in Europe. They had to be exceptional to be accepted. They had to be Jews, but not be like Jews, relegating their identity to the private sphere: ‘men in the street and Jews in the synagogue’. But these forces of ‘emancipation’ did not make them citizens like all others. The story of modernity and secularism in Europe is also foundational to nationalism and claims of self‐determination elsewhere. The question is whether or not emancipation has been achieved through political self‐determination, and if so, what such emancipation looks like. Do the forces of assimilation end with political self‐determination? Can a once persecuted people finally be liberated? Who feels free to be Jewish in the modern state of Israel? Whose cultures flourish and whose Jewish traditions can be practised freely? Who finally feels at home? And who, among the sovereign citizens of the ethnonational state, still experience a sense of exile, reflected in the need to rescue traditional texts from being tossed out with the rubbish? Back Cover: MALAGASY JUDAISM Through a warren of alleys in densely packed Antananarivo, capital of the island nation of Madagascar, there is a gated compound. Beyond the gate is a metal door to the entrance of the house within the compound. Emblazoned on it are a seven‐branched menorah and the Hebrew letter ? (shin, for Shaddai, God). Down the corridor, to the left, is a door with Hebrew writing affixed to it; behind it is a prayer room. Instead of pews or chairs, there are rugs, as one might expect to see in a mosque. This is Madagascar's synagogue, in the home of Tubiyya, the self‐taught Malagasy hazzan (Hebrew: cantor). Tubiyya stands next to his wife Miriam and their children. As with the man pictured on the front cover of this issue, Tubiyya sports payos – long strands of hair, sidelocks, that ultra‐Orthodox Jewish men grow on the sides of their faces, to obey the Old Testament commandment from the book of Leviticus 19: 7: ‘Ye shall not round off the edge‐growth of your heads, neither shalt thou diminish the corner edge‐growth of thy beard’. Most observant Jewish men do not follow this particular commandment. In this sense, the Malagasy Tubiyya and the Ashkenazi Haredim in Jerusalem (see front cover) represent small but visible minorities within the greater Jewish world. But they are outliers – both globally and locally – in a deeper, theopolitical sense: both are anti‐Zionist Haredim, rejecting the legitimacy of the Jewish State on religious grounds. The Messiah has not yet come to ‘ingather the exiles’. In the meantime, Israeli society is too secular for them. And yet, would the hawker on the front cover accept Tubiyya as a fellow Jew? Race and Jewish genealogy set them apart. This issue of ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY bookends antipodes of Jewry, where inclusion and exclusion are in constant tension.     

Judaism and communism: Hanukkah,Passover, and the Jewish Communists in Mandate Palestine and Israel, 1919–1965

This article explores the mythological, ritualistic, and symbolic aspects of the ways in which the festivals of Hanukkah and Passover were celebrated by the Jewish Communists in Mandate Palestine and the State of Israel. It illustrates how elements of Zionist-socialist culture were adopted by Jewish Communists and integrated in their cultural activities. In a gradual process starting in the1920s and culminating in the mid-1960s, the Jewish Communists created a combination of Marxist ideology and Zionist-socialist cultural practices. However, when a group of young Sabra activists reinforced the Zionist-socialist elements, the balance was undermined, contributing to the rift within Israeli communism.