Instructive Ritual: The Arab Student Union and the Communitas of the Palestinian Israeli Educated

Abstract

In spite of state efforts to limit public nationalist ritual of the Palestinian Israeli community, one ritual system, as this article details, is kept intact by the Arab Student Union (ASU). Based on an ethnographic study of the Hebrew University ASU, I show how this ritual system is instructive in a specific, educated Palestinian Israeli identity. Instruction revolves around the root paradigms of a specifically Israeli Palestinian ness and of the national responsibility of the educated. The instructive ritual system arouses communitas of the educated Palestinian commu nity through instruction carried out in the context of sacralized space and time and by means of the use of ritual art and events, the recruit ment of ritual commentators, and the intermeshing of ethos and world view. This ritual system can be understood as an indigenous Palestinian Israeli pedagogy for liberation.