Cultural change in an Israeli immigrant village: the twist in Even Yosef

Abstract

A common criticism of field studies of culture change is that they depend on a great deal of reconstruction after the fact. Even in instances where one community has been studied at two different points in time, these studies often do not reveal the intervening processes of change. Van Velsen (1967) has suggested the method of 'extended case analysis' for studying these processes. The present paper will utilize this approach in analysing a case of trait adoption in an immigrant village in Israel.' The community under discussion is a group of Tripolitanian Jews who migrated from North Africa to Israel in 1949-50. Originally they lived in two villages of the Gharian Mountain district of Tripolitania, Libya. There they worked primarily as merchants, peddlers and artisans who serviced the needs of the majority Moslem-peasant population. This Jewish community was at least four centuries old (Goldberg 1971), and its social structure and traditions were not greatly affected by the Italian occupation and colonization in the present century. The move to Israel abruptly took the members of the community from a traditional MiddleEastern setting to the predominantly European-influenced setting of modern Israel.2 In 1951, after spending some time in immigration camps, the Gharian Jews settled a moshav (small-holders' cooperative) named (fictitiously) Even Yosef. During the next 14 years the villagers learned the skills of modern farming which is the main source of income in the village today. Most members of the community enjoy a comfortable standard of living based on the marketing of citrus fruit, vegetables and poultry. Socially, too, the community has fitted well into Israeli society. The workers of the Land Settlement Department3 consider the moshav to be economically successful and socially stable. The villagers elect a moshav committee about once every 18 months and the moshav is managed by a secretary, selected from among the villagers, who works constructively in conjunction with the employees of the Department. The economic development of Even Yosef, and its integration into the wider society, thus has been relatively rapid. This does not mean, however, that Gharian Jews' former beliefs, attitudes and customs have already disappeared. On the contrary, any outsider familiar with Even Yosef knows that it is one of the more 'traditional' villages in the region, and one can observe there many old customs that have not survived elsewhere. It could be argued, in fact, that the quickness with which the villagers learned new techno-economic skills enabled them to preserve their traditional ways in areas that are not directly concerned with economics. The tenacity of these traditions, and the complex ways in which they