Contemporary Israeli Research Articles

Secularity and Its Discontents: Religiosity in Contemporary Israeli Culture

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)One of the most profound changes Israeli society has been undergoing in the last two decades has been a slow but increasingly discernible ?religification.? If we take the animosity of early Zionism and the young Israeli state toward religious practices and rabbinic control as a point of departure, ?religification? refers to changes in those attitudes over time. Though hard to define, the process refers to an increase in the public visibility, acceptance, and sanction of religious symbols and practices in Israel in comparison to the attitudes of earlier decades. This includes the greater role of religion in the country?s official culture and politics, from politicians wearing yarmulkas during official state ceremonies and the adoption of quasi-religious rhetoric in politics;1 to the introduction of religious rituals and prayers in official military ceremonies;2 to the inclusion of religious texts and content in popular culture media, such as weekly newspaper columns and television programs that deal with Scripture or the use of religious texts for lyrics of popular songs;3 to gender separation on public transportation.4 Such public expressions of religious devotion and practice are the phenomena of recent decades: they did not exist thirty or even twenty years ago in Israeli public life.5One reason for this trend has to do with the steady growth of Israel's religious populations: the ultra-Orthodox and the settler communities. These demographic changes have obvious cultural consequences as well as political corollaries that play into the country's well-established traditions, which were set long before religious voters were a political force to be reckoned with. Indeed, this is precisely what Guy Ben-Porat has found in a study that actually claims the opposite-that Israeli society is not religifying but rather becoming more secular. In his 2013 book about the divisions between secular and religious people in Israel, Ben-Porat shows how large sections of the secular Israeli public are becoming increasingly alienated from the state religion, which has grown more beholden to radical elements. When one considers the growing influence the Orthodox and the settlers have had on government policies in the last few decades, Ben-Porat's analysis makes a lot of sense.6The gravamen of Ben-Porat's argument is that while the official representatives of Judaism in Israel are growing stricter and more politically powerful, the secular public is becoming more radically secular, abandoning the few remaining traditions it held and defying them through the consumption of pork, having civil weddings, shopping on Shabbat, and so forth. This article looks at the dynamics of this process, primarily by following the attempt of secular Israeli society to understand and contain the rising profile of religion in public life.Indeed, the changing Israeli demographics have seen an increase in the visibility of religious expressions in cultural mediums such as theater, popular music, film, and television. 7 These mediums, which in the past were the purview of secular Zionist culture-and fervently developed to establish and promote it as an alternative to traditional-religious expression-seem increasingly more attentive to the place and role of Judaism in Israeli society today, both religious practice (mrom mm or return to the faith) as well as contemporary Haskala: enlightenment as epitomized by the calls to return to the Jewish bookcase ('ΤiΓΡΠ onaon inx).s In this essay, I would like to examine these trends through a historical survey of Israeli films and television programs that process these developments and paint a picture of an Israel that is changing before our eyes.Early Zionism was animated by a strong antireligious spirit that was influenced by civic nationalism in Europe as well as by the maskilic critique of traditional Judaism. …

Divine Love: The Reception of Leda and the Swan Myth in Works by Jewish and Arab Israeli Artists - Contexts and Meanings

The motif of the abduction of a woman is one of the most frequent in Ancient Greek and Roman art. Abductions in mythology are generally portrayed as carried out by a god disguised as a human or an animal, such as Zeus who, in the form of a bull, golden rain or a swan, seduces a beautiful young maiden. These myths have been interpreted from different viewpoints, such as gender, social, political and philosophical. One of the most frequent myths of abduction is that of Leda and the Swan, which appears in both Greek and Roman painting and sculpture. This theme has found many echoes in contemporary Israeli art, and constitutes the case study for this discussion, which belongs to the field of Classical Reception studies. The interpretations of this myth are diverse, ranging from a socio-gender context, to post-colonialism and its relevance to the local situation; to subversives, concerning tradition versus contemporary culture; to emotionality and romantic suffering; and to love as phantasmagoria. These varied interpretations will be examined in the following analysis in light of both ancient concepts and contemporary outlooks, based on literary and philosophical sources.

Judaic Cinecorporeality: Fleshing Out the Haredi Male Body in Avishai Sivan's The Wanderer

This essay discusses the representation of the ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) male body in Avishai Sivan’s noted feature The Wanderer (2010) as representative of contemporary Israeli cinema’s attitude towards Judaic corporeality. Using both sociological and theological literature, it highlights the ways by which this film orchestrates the details of ultra-Orthodox reality to mount a damning critique of Judaic regimes of corporeal regulation. According to this critique, Judaic corporeality exists in a condition of continuous repression, whereby it seeks to absent bodily desires, and even its own material presence. Through the adolescent protagonist Yitzhak, The Wanderer charts a trajectory of transgression and release from this repressive framework. The journey, however, does not entail liberation but rather culminates in destructive violence, consequently allowing the film to define pathological bodily behavior as inescapable both inside and outside the Haredi ghetto. While foregrounding the relevance of this assertion, the essay’s conclusion also traces its limits, which derive from the film’s problematic attempt to reduce ultra-Orthodox corporeality to the contours of certain antisemitic stereotypes of Old World Jewry.

The Apocalyptic Sting and the Rise of Israeli Unrealism: Toward a Negative-Dialectical Critique

This paper explores Gershom Scholem's notion of an ‘apocalyptic sting’—a messianic political theology which, he feared, haunted Jewish and Israeli politics through the Hebrew language. The paper makes four key moves. First, I unpack Scholem's ‘sting’ in relation to contemporary Israeli religious radicalism. Second, I tie that notion of a sting to Frankfurt-School discussions of reification and its political effects. Third, I survey attempts to critique this notion of a sting, through the work of Israeli International Relations (IR) Realist Yehoshafat Harkabi. Drawing on the negative dialectics of Theodor Adorno, I then draw out and deepen Harkabi's reflexive stance, with an eye to setting out a vocation for critical IR-realism in the context of contemporary Israeli security discourse.

Borders, Territory, and Sovereignty in the Works of Contemporary Israeli Women Writers

Borders, Territory, and Sovereignty in the Works of Contemporary Israeli Women Writers

Arab integration in Jewish-Israeli social space: does commuting make a difference?

Urban research on segregation and integration has been dominated by an obsessive focus on ethno-racial residential patterns, obscuring the multidimensional facets of separation versus encounter that define contemporary urban experience. In this study, we develop an explicitly multidimensional theoretical perspective that relates segregation/integration not only to residential location, but also to daily activity spaces, social networks, transnational media and communications environments, and aspects of identity and sense of place. To disentangle residential location from other facets of segregation/integration, we use GPS and interview data to analyze the socio-spatial experiences of 60 Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel who live in ethnically homogenous Arab towns—divided equally between “localists” versus “commuters” who spend most of their daytime hours working in Jewish-Israeli spaces. While results highlight many important consequences of commuters’ long hours of daily exposure to Jewish urban mileux, daily activity spaces are only marginally associated with other dimensions of socio-spatial integration. Our analysis reveals evidence of complex relations amongst the multiple dimensions of segregation and integration. Partial integration on a few of these dimensions is insufficient to overcome the structural stratification of Arabs in contemporary Israeli society.

Genetic Considerations in Human Sex-Mate Selection: Partners Share Human Leukocyte Antigen but not Short-Tandem-Repeat Identity Markers

Previous studies support a role for MHC on mating preference, yet it remains unsettled as to whether mating occurs preferentially between individuals sharing human leukocyte antigen (HLA) determinants or not. Investigating sex-mate preferences in the contemporary Israeli population is of further curiosity being a population with distinct genetic characteristics, where multifaceted cultural considerations influence mate selection. Pairs of male-female sex partners were evaluated in three groups. Two groups represented unmarried (n=1002) or married (n=308) couples and a control group of fictitious male-female couples. HLA and short-tandem-repeat (STR) genetic identification markers were assessed for the frequency of shared antigens and alleles. Human leukocyte antigen results showed that Class I and/ or Class II single antigen as well as double antigen sharing was more common in sex partners than in control group couples (P<0.001). Married versus unmarried pairs were not distinguishable. In contrast, STR-DNA markers failed to differentiate between sex-mates and controls (P=0.78). Sex partnerships shared HLA determinants more frequently than randomly constituted male-female pairs. The observed phenomenon does not reflect a syngenetic background between sex-mates as STR markers were not selectively shared. Thus, sex-mate selection in man may contravene the evolutionary pressure for genetic diversity in regard to HLA.

The Architecture of Collective Intimacy: Masonic Friendships as a Model for Collective Attachments

ABSTRACTDespite a growing recognition that interpersonal friendship informs wider forms of solidarity, there is little systematic analysis as to how community members extend the logic of friendship and intimacy to broader organizational and societal context. Masonic organizational practices provide a useful model for this inquiry. Drawing on an ethnographic study of contemporary Israeli Freemasonry, I examine the intersections of interpersonal, public, and collective intimacy in members’ ritual activities and everyday life. The juxtaposition of mundane sociability and Masonic sacred rituals serves to rescale the distance between interpersonal friendship and communal solidarity. As members take on the roles of citizen, bureaucrat, priest, and president concomitantly, they partly collapse the distinctions between personal and collective ties, between the familiar and the revered. These intersections of intimacy are offered as a programmatic research strategy to study how institutionalized patterns of sociability inform civic and national attachments.

Gratitude, Israeli Spiritual Care and Contemporary Hassidic Teachers: The Theme of Thankfulness in the Works of Rabbis Brazofsky the Netivot Shalom), Rav Arush and Yemima Avital

In this paper I highlight the possible contribution of three contemporary Hassidic Israeli thinkers, largely unknown outside of Israel, to the shaping of the theological landscape of spiritual care in Israel. The Israeli spiritual care movement is still in its infancy, and scientific, quantitative studies concerning its theological direction have yet to be carried out. The possible influence of the three contemporary Israeli Hassidic thinkers in question, however, is evidenced by the fact that they are often mentioned and are quoted by leaders in the spiritual care-giving movement in Israel. 1 My argument here is therefore limited to pointing out that these thinkers ‐ emphasizing the idea of healing through the consciousness of gratitude, and active in Israel during the late 20 th and early 21 st Centuries ‐ may play a similar role to that of William James in relation to the North American chaplaincy movement. 2 These figures are the previous ultra-Orthodox Rebbe (spiritual leader) of the Hassidic group of Slonim, Reb Shalom Noach Brazovsky (Belarus 1911- Jerusalem 2000), author of the book Netivot Shalom [Paths of Peace]; Yemima Avital (1929, Casablanca - 1999, Jerusalem), a female mystic and student of psychology who developed a spiritual discipline titled “cognitive thinking”; and Rav Shalom Arush (Morocco, 1952 - Jerusalem), a Sephardic-Hassidic spiritual leader, and formerly a student of one of Yemima Avital’s own students. In their writings, all three develop a Hassidic approach to life in which gratitude is the essence of spiritual resilience. Gratitude expresses an appreciation of the goodness in God’s world, in oneself and in others.

Between Israel and Germany: Therapeutic Return to the Place of Trauma in Contemporary Israeli Cinema

Between Israel and Germany: Therapeutic Return to the Place of Trauma in Contemporary Israeli Cinema

The Non-Chosen Body: Poetics and Politics in Alona Kimhi’s Lily La Tigresse

Beginning with the female grotesque body in its midst, this study examines the bodies of key fictional characters from the center and margins of contemporary Israeli society that Alona Kimhi constructs in her novel Lily La Tigresse and considers their political implications. It asserts that the image of a well-built and almighty Jewish male body that the Zionist revolutionaries of the early twentieth century dreamt of remains, in Kimhi’s view, a beau ideal in present-day Israel. However, the idealization of a healthy Jewish male body has given rise not to a healthy Jewish nation that the Zionist forefathers desired, but to a self-appointed sociocultural elite that seeks to sustain its position on the top by violently excluding all others who are pushed to the margins and left to invent their own identities.

Nostalgic Zionist Soundscapes: The Future of the Israeli Nation's Sonic Past

In the course of the past 120 years of Zionist culture in Palestine/Eretz Israel and later in the State of Israel, institutional, journalistic, and academic narratives have attempted to outline the stylistic traits of the Zionist sonic capital. These attempts were sometimes based on delineating what lay beyond the boundaries of that capital. Thus, diasporic voices comprising the repository of Jewish sonic memories were left outside the confines of the Israeli soundtrack. The incorporation of those forgotten voices into recent Israeli popular music is at the core of this study. Mixing old recordings of dead family members by some major Israeli rockers in their recent productions is a growing trend reflecting a shift in the contemporary Israeli attitude towards the voices of the Diaspora. This trend is critically examined through the prism of the concepts of soundscape, technologies of the intermundane, and nostalgia.

Zionism and the Politics of Authenticity

Israel’s establishment as a Jewish state in 1948 confirmed the success of Zionism even as it raised questions about whether the movement dedicated to forging Jewish sovereignty was still relevant. But even as a cornerstone of Israel’s culture, Zionism triggers controversy not only about its meaning but also about its moral status, particularly with regard to the issues either never acknowledged or never fully addressed. The article examines how Zionism works in the contemporary Israeli political scene and how and why it has become a contested rather than a unifying element in the country’s public discourse.

Public Preferences for Redistributive Policies in Israel

This paper contributes to the literature on inequality and welfare policy by studying public support for redistributive policies in Israel, a society with an extreme level of socioeconomic inequality. Drawing on the relevant literature and taking into consideration the distinct demographic makeup of contemporary Israeli society, the study aims to describe public support for opportunity-enhancing and outcome-based redistributive policies and to explore the extent to which individual economic and demographic characteristics are associated with policy preferences. Analysis of data from a unique topical module of the 2008 Israel Social Survey reveals that support for opportunity-based programs is strong overall, but that the Israeli public is deeply divided along ethnic lines, religious affiliation, and immigration status. While results from multinomial regression analyses provide support for the self-interest theory, the findings also underscore the significance of various demographic and social indicators as determinants of policy preferences. These findings are discussed in light of the current debates on the sources of, and possible remedies for, the growing social and economic polarization within Israeli society.

The Contemporary Historiographical Debate in Israel on Government Policies on Arabs in Israel During the Military Administration Period (1948–1966)

The historiographical debate over Israel’s early statehood policy on its Arab minority intensified in the last two decades. A new wave of historiography emerged in the 1990s and joined the two traditional waves in this debate: supporters and critics. While the supporters sought to justify the policy in retrospect and the critics denounced it, members of the third wave strove to offer a more balanced analysis, taking into account both positive and negative aspects of the policy. Asking similar questions but applying different points of view and methodologies to their inquiry into the past, the members of these three historiographical streams reached different, often contradictory, conclusions. This contemporary historiographical debate is yet another illustration of the growing connection between contemporary Israeli society and its formative years of statehood. Then and now, the issue at stake was the extent to which the Jewish state was obligated to maintain its democratic character and treat all its citizens equally.

Between state and synagogue: the secularization of contemporary Israel

A thriving, yet small, liberal component in Israeli society has frequently taken issue with the constraints imposed by religious orthodoxy, largely with limited success. However, Guy Ben-Porat suggests, in recent years, in part because of demographic changes and in part because of the influence of an increasingly consumer-oriented society, dramatic changes have occurred in secularization of significant parts of public and private lives. Even though these fissures often have more to do with lifestyle choices and economics than with political or religious ideology, the demands and choices of a secular public and a burgeoning religious presence in the government are becoming ever more difficult to reconcile. The evidence, which the author has accrued from numerous interviews and a detailed survey, is nowhere more telling than in areas that demand religious sanction such as marriage, burial, the sale of pork, and the operation of businesses on the Sabbath.

“You Can’t Film Here”: Queer Political Fantasy and Thin Critique of Israeli Occupation in the Bubble

Cet article défend l’idée que The Bubble, film qu’Eytan Fox a réalisé en 2006, fait une critique diluée et décevante de la société israélienne. La fascination, perceptible dans la production, pour la médiation cinématique, pour la politique de la représen - tation, et pour la politique-fiction apparaît glisser subrepticement dans des invocations racistes habituelles à une culture palestinienne arriérée, dans une forme néolibérale de discours sur la politique identitaire gay appuyée par des tropes sur la représentation et la visibilité et dans une approche du conflit Israélo-palestinien qui perpétue un cycle de violence. Cette analyse fait naître un questionnement à propos de certains enjeux contemporains relatifs aux films politiques et à la critique médiatique, particulièrement en ce qui concerne la façon de réagir à un cinéma qui anticipe la critique d’un discours politique qu’il prétend lui même critiquer mais dont il reste malgré tout complice.

“I will bless those who bless you”: Christian Zionism, Fetishism, and Unleashing the Blessings of God

This article focuses on the concept of ‘blessing’ Israel that has become common among contemporary American Christian Zionists. After introducing a theological scheme that has dominated discussions of contemporary Christian Zionism, the article critically examines one of the emerging narratives concerning the (re)discovery of Christian Zionists’ Jewish roots and the way the Jewish contribution to Christianity is framed. Following this, the article considers the way Israel and Jews are understood to hold a distinct place in the network of world redemption and how contemporary Israel acts as a marker—what is referred to as a ‘signifier of stability’—that helps Christian Zionists locate God’s ongoing work in the world. Finally, the article discusses how Christian Zionists ‘bless’ Israel in practical ways as a form of submission to God, a reminder of their relationship with God, and a way to locate themselves in the redemptive process.

Exploring the reproduction of conflict through narrative: Israeli youth motivated to participate in a coexistence program.

Contemporary Israeli youth are socialized in the context of intractable nationalist conflict with Palestinians, characterized by a “master” historical narrative of Jewish Israeli identity that exacerbates the conflict. This exploratory study examines the relation between this master narrative and the personal narratives of youth motivated to participate in a coexistence program. Narratives of youth suggest points of both convergence and divergence with the master narrative in their form, thematic content, and ideological settings. Like the larger story of Jewish Israeli identity, the stories of youth assumed a redemptive form and integrated themes of existential insecurity, historical persecution, exceptionalism, and delegitimization of Palestinian identity. Divergence with the master narrative suggested the significance of local communities and the growing pluralism of Israeli society, as well as policy shifts in Israel regarding the legitimacy of Palestinian statehood. Despite motivation to participate ...

UNESCO, Palestine and Archaeology in Conflict

On 23 November 2011, Palestine became a member of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (“UNESCO”), and acceded to and ratified a number of UNESCO’s Conventions. Some observers view this membership as decisive, or at least significantly dispositive, in the debate on the international recognition of Palestinian statehood. UNESCO is characterized as a springboard by which Palestine can further recognition of its international sovereignty, which, at the present time, is inexorably stalled. However, this recognition is not without challenge – for example, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has not recognized Palestine’s acceptance of the Court’s jurisdiction. UNESCO has, in turn, descended into a budgetary crisis with the withdrawal of funding from the U.S. and other states, which represent twenty-two percent of its budget. In February 2012, UNESCO responded to this crisis with a plan to “re-engineer” the organization, implicitly confirming that it will not allow any revocation of the Palestinian membership vote, despite a campaign to “un-admit” Palestine. This paper analyzes the legal consequences of Palestine’s membership in UNESCO and its ratification of UNESCO conventions through an examination of the protections afforded by the UNESCO treaty framework governing cultural, amongst other forms of, heritage. This is particularly relevant as Palestine’s application for UNESCO membership took place in the context of what are termed the Palestinian U.N. initiatives, intended to further Palestine’s status and activate its rights as a state in the international legal order. The initiatives manifested in a resolution adopted by the U.N. General Assembly on 29 November 2012 “upgrading” Palestine’s observer status.For more than a century, Palestinian cultural heritage and property has been the subject of capture and destruction by other states. Palestine’s accession to various UNESCO conventions testifies to the effect that no other sovereign controls its cultural heritage and property. Palestinians have habitually asserted internationally-recognized principles as a point of departure in “final status” negotiations on what is termed the “archaeology file,” yet have been unable to maintain complete control of such property. Ahmad A. Rjoob of the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities describes Palestinian cultural heritage as “one of the most intensively abused, excavated and subsequently disturbed worldwide,” a result of more than a century of management from different administrations, each with its own methods of research and distinct political purpose. “The Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and Israeli sources estimate that between 1967 and 1992 about 200,000 artifacts were removed from the occupied Palestinian territory annually,” with approximately 120,000 removed each year since 1995. This hemorrhaging of Palestinian cultural property is occurring in a context where archaeology has been used by Israel “as a pretext to gain territorial control” and exercise sovereign rights “over Palestinian lands [in order] to further its settlement enterprise” and exploit natural resources.Section II traces the history of archaeological laws and practices in Palestine, from the Ottoman era to contemporary Israeli military orders. Section III examines the rules governing the protection of cultural property during military occupation under the aegis of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, and the consequences of future Palestinian ratification of the Convention and its 1999 Second Protocol. Section IV tracks the illicit trade in antiquities from Palestine, and the potential effects that ratification of two instruments would have on regulation and restitution – particularly, the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, and 1995 UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects. Section V focuses on the underwater cultural heritage off the coast of Gaza and the maritime zones of legal control granted by the 2001 Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, the first international treaty that Palestine has ratified. Finally, Section VI assesses the consequences of UNESCO membership, including whether membership of a U.N. agency means that Palestine can ratify instruments outside of UNESCO’s competence.