Israeli Reality Research Articles

A new bilingual education in the conflict-ridden Israeli reality: language practices

Under the Israeli language education policy, the mother tongue is learned first for several years, followed by a second language (English for Jews, Hebrew for Arabs) and then a third language (English for Arabs, Arabic/French for Jews). This type of limited bilingualism seems to suit the Israeli reality in the context of the Israeli–Arab conflict, the definition and perception of Israel as a Jewish–Zionist state and the complex Jewish–Arab relations within Israel. In 1997, the Hand in Hand Center for Jewish–Arab Education in Israel initiated a new model of Hebrew–Arabic bilingual education in Israel, assuming that direct contact between Arab and Jewish pupils would bring about far-reaching changes in the conflict-ridden Israeli society. Currently, three schools have adopted the new model. Several studies of the new model have provided rich information, mainly about educational, cultural and national issues. However, no systematic study has focused on the implementation of bilingual education in the schools; less emphasis has been placed on actual language practices in the classroom and the school environment in relation to ideology and policy. This article attempts to investigate and document the interaction between Hebrew and Arabic in a location which conceptually places both languages on equal footing.

Expanding the bounds of military psychiatry: three clinical encounters

This paper deals with clinical situations frequently encountered in military psychiatry. Using three narratives of soldiers assessed at the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) during a period of marked conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the author portrays ethical dilemmas generated during assessments for fitness to go to combat. When the focus of the assessment is the soldier's refusal to serve in the army, particularly during periods of increased conflict, the psychiatrist faces a dilemma because of double loyalties, to the army of which he is a part, and to the soldier and his right to live. Based on previous literature and experience, some cases of refusal to serve may be understood going beyond the boundaries imposed by the medical model. The author discusses these issues in the context of Israeli society. In Israel, conscription is universal, and the army is not professional. However, given the lack of social legitimacy in Israel for refusal to serve in the IDF due to conscientious objection, soldiers who are otherwise aware of the ethical dilemmas imposed upon them by the harsh Israeli reality are left with no option other than to get exempted from military duties on psychiatric grounds. The author discusses how social and historical factors contribute to the construction of psychiatric and psychological symptoms.

Do persons with intellectual disability have a social life?The Israeli reality

Living in the community does not, in and of itself, guarantee social integration and inclusion for persons with intellectual disability. Social life and leisure participation can indicate the beginning of such a process and its impact on the quality of life. The present study investigated the social life quality of persons with intellectual disability who live in community settings or with foster families and its impact on their quality of life. The sample consisted of 85 adults with intellectual disability, ranging in age from 18 to 55 years. Forty-five of them lived in community residential settings and 40 lived with foster families in Israel. Five questionnaires were used: 1) a demographic questionnaire; 2) Quality of Life Questionnaire; 3) the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale; 4) Social Relationships List; and 5) Leisure Activities List. The main findings showed no significant differences between the two groups in social life or feelings of loneliness. Foster residents were more involved and more independent in their leisure activities than were those who lived in community residences. An association between social life and quality of life was partly confirmed. The need for intervention programs and leisure education programs is discussed.

Sheinkin as a place in the globalizing city of Tel Aviv

Sheinkin is an example of a place constituted by global forces. Yet Sheinkin creatively responds to scalar jumps of global forces, drawing from the capitals of the global system like Soho and Greenwich village. These models are embedded in the Israeli reality with Sheinkin becoming an incubator of post-Zionist identity. Young people from all over Israel concentrate in the place on Fridays to participate in choreography of strolling along the street with its’ designers’ shops, mingling with celebrities and others who belong to the cult and around the ‘Hyde Park’ corner in which environmental, spiritual and other worldviews are promoted. The article suggests a model to investigate such places as the organic integration of a community whose participants do not live in the place but pilgrimage to the place, a landscape that appraises creativity, originality and individualism, a choreography of strollers who search for stimulations and a set of norms and values promote in the place.

Discours de deuil et de renaissance

Both Leah Goldberg’s play Lady of the Castle (1954) and Shulamith Hareven’s short story The Witness (1980) illustrate the failure of the Israeli to come to terms with the horror of the Holocaust. The play presents the story of Lena, a Holocaust orphan, who is rescued by members of the Israeli Yishuv from a Castle where she was kept hidden away during the war. The conflict that emerges runs counter the popular myth of the Holocaust victim embracing the hope of a new future in the heroically idealistic Israeli. Shlomek, the protagonist of the story is an orphaned Holocaust refugee, who gets to Israel in 1940. The practically unanimous denial of the victim’s testimony isolates him in his new home. The possibility of a direct dialogue does not materialize in either of the texts. These literary representations of post-Holocaust Israeli reality reflect the need to resume the interrupted discourse between the diasporic past and the Israel present.

Immigration and Ethnic Formation in a Deeply Divided Society: The Case of the 1990s Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in Israel (review)

Immigration and Ethnic Formation in a Deeply Divided Society: The Case of the 1990s Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in Israel, by Madj Al Haj. Leiden: Brill, 2004. 246 pp. $59.00. This work offers a comprehensive view of the absorption of the recent wave of former Soviet Union (FSU) immigrants in Israel. If enters rhis field with a theoretical discussion of the sociology of immigration and wide and convincing introductions to Israeli society and the country of origin of the immigrants. The description of the absorption process is persuasive-even though one may have reservations on some specific points. A major positive aspect of the book is that it discusses the background of the absorption process of FSU immigrants in Israel in the context of the various cleavages existing in this society, paying special attention to the development of the Arab minority and its relations with the Jewish majority. Moreover, the methodology of the research is solid and responds to accepted standards. My principal reservations concern the author's tendency-in spite of efforts here and there to open the discussion to different outlooks-to offer a picture of Israeli society that is biased by exaggerated emphasis on domination and plot strategies. To elaborate on the shortcomings, I regret that all through the book we learn about an Ashkenazi elite whose interests determine all arrangements in society. This assumption, which finds references in many works by revisionist sociologists and historians in Israel itself, is taken for granted-in many cases against obvious evidence. It serves as a basis for interpreting the relations of European and non-European Jews, Jews and Arabs, and, finally, veteran inhabitants and Russian immigrants. It is also fashionable in some Israeli milieus these days to interpret every aspect of the Israeli society in terms of or colonialism. This book, in final analysis, belongs to this trend - though it tries to remain somehow untainted by extremist attitudes. When one knows the immense resources and efforts invested in the integration of immigrants in Israel at all epochs, it is clear, in my view, that concepts like colonialism or post colonialism are completely out of place. My feeling is that the use of these terms is detrimental to the credibility of the author's analyses. It is in this context that this reviewer regrets that the author gives importance to conspiracy theory and uses additional inappropriate terms like ethnocracy in order to describe the Israeli reality. Even the good faith of the author can be doubted when one knows that the Israeli government and ruling coalition number more representatives of the various ethnocultural publics (non-European Jews, ultra-Orthodox, Russian immigrants, Judea and Samaria settlers) than bourgeois Ashkenazim. The same applies to the author's speculative consideration of the militaristic structures of the State or when he describes the treatment of the Palestinian citizens of Israel without mentioning the impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. …

"A Disgrace to the Map of Israel": The Wilderness Journey of the Citizen-Soldier in Amos Oz's A Perfect Peace

A Disgrace to the Map of Israel":The Wilderness Journey of the Citizen-Soldier in Amos Oz's A Perfect Peace Ranen Omer-Sherman (bio) The act of departure is the bravest and most beautiful of all. A selfish happiness perhaps, but it is happiness—for him who knows how to appreciate it. To be alone, to have no needs, to be unknown, a stranger and at home everywhere and to march, solitary and great, to the conquest of the world. —Isabelle Eberhardt When it comes to Israeli literature, even before the advent of "post-Zionist" discourse, the writer's encounter with the timeless desert disrupts certain polarities and essentializing gestures of mainstream Zionist conventions. The desert, with its sands and stark visual display of erosion, is the site that a surprising number of Israeli writers use to explore the difference between national loyalty and diasporic dreaming. In the novels of Amos Oz (b. 1939), who calls the small Negev town of Arad home, the desert serves potentially as a transformative space that lays bare the cracks in the individual's commitment to national identity. In the Hebraic imagination, long before the collective journey of the people under Moses, Abraham's self-exile from Ur into boundless desert space embodies the brave individuation of one [End Page 97] who transcends the concept of the tribal norms into which he was born. It is as if almost in spite of itself, by privileging anecdotal narratives of protest and spiritual restlessness alongside the law and ritual, the Bible credits the desert as the site of a supreme skepticism that unsettles all nationalist complacency. Given the powerful residual traces of this counter-narrative in the Jewish literary tradition, it seems worth addressing its role as a catalyst for the literary imagination of Oz.1 Relevant to this is critic Joseph Cohen's astute argument about Oz's delicate relation to serving both art and politics in the context of contemporary Israeli reality. Cohen notes Oz's powerful capacity for "bypassing polemicism to move upward to a substantially higher plateau of metapolitical writing. ... Oz is nothing less than a modern mythmaker who has been highly successful in taking the exoticism of Israel's location in the desert and Mediterranean Sea, a country already saturated with a biblical, mystical, apocalyptic and miraculous history, and combining it with the myriad realities of contemporary life" (179). In short, the desert is unrivalled as a formidable influence in the mythopoetic dimensions of Oz's imagination. Yet rather than being seduced by an escapist mystical vision, the novelist is drawn to the desert as a source for clarity in framing complex national realities. Oz, who has for many years lived close to the desert, embraces the biblical sense of the wilderness as a site of "translation" rather than a consolatory haven of inner mystical retreat. His characters often flee homogenous and complacent insularity—they question the classic kibbutz ideology that Zionism touted as one of its proudest achievements and hedonistically long for a distinct sense of independent selfhood. Thus Oz offers a highly complex response to Israel's existential difficulties. Consciously, he distances himself from an earlier generation's collectively sanctioned ideas.2 Nowhere is this more evident than in the novel A Perfect Peace,3 which bears witness to a significant cultural rupture. The solidarity with the collective that had characterized the Palmach generation of the late forties and early fifties is no longer a sacrosanct assumption of Israel's artists and intellectuals. In this novel, a young man, raised in the shadow of his father's deep faith in the socialist Zionist revolution, fully wakens to the reality that his comfort is centered on a community of dispossessed Arabs, and suffers a violent existential crisis. In Oz's apparent challenge to the colonialist dimension of the Zionist enterprise, he seems to anticipate boldly what has been identified as the post-Zionist spirit of Israel's youngest writers. Yet ultimately, the reader cannot be certain whether Oz is prepared to fully sanction the political implications of his character's angry questioning. [End Page 98] Perhaps the most widely read novelist among his generation, a formidable influence among the...

Developing Young Leadership Within the Ethiopian Immigrant Group in Israel

When over 8000 Ethiopian Jews fled to Israel in 1982 and 1994, whole communities were uprooted from a longstanding traditional way of life. Their abrupt introduction to a Western-style Israeli culture, different language and customs contradicted their almost mystical expectations of their religious homeland, resulted in a culture shock that threatened their entire way of life—especially the hierarchical leadership of elders that they were accustomed to. This article offers a glimpse into the Ethiopian Jews' life prior to the migration, as well as the Israeli reality they now face. Our project, initiated in 1996 and lasting one year, sought to locate and train young immigrant Ethiopian leaders to help bridge the gap between their communities and their new life-preserving Ethiopian values and traditions while promoting adaptation. This article outlines the development of the model, from the conception of the idea through the formation of the multidisciplinary team, the establishment of criteria for locating and selecting the target leadership population, the training process, and the final evaluations and conclusions during the year-long operation of the project.

Theater in Israel (review)

Hebrew Studies 38 (1997) 203 Reviews THEATER IN ISRAEL. Linda Ben-Zvi, ed. Theater: Theoryrrext/ Performance. Pp. xxi + 450. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1996. Cloth. Both as producers and consumers, Jews are remarkably well represented in the perfonnance arts of the last century. This is particularly true of "show business." No cultural history of American Jewry, for example, can ignore the flourishing Second Avenue Yiddish theater of the mass migration era, nor its subsequent influence on the motion picture industry. However, this enthusiastic diaspora participation can be dismissed as ultimately expressing an effort to assimilate to the larger society. What happens in Israel, where Jews constitute the majority? How effective is a theater language which derives both from biblical cadences and contemporary army slang? How are the sensibilities, moods, visions, and nightmares of its diverse, heterogeneous public reflected onstage? What unique themes and original strategies can Israeli theater claim? Professor Linda Ben-Zvi has assembled an impressive array of essays, articles, reports, and interviews which, with her own contributions, explore these questions and many other facets of Israel's theater world. As has long been apparent, whatever inhibitions remained stemming from ancient associations of the theater with Hellenism and hedonism have been overcome for the vast majority of Israelis. Theater in Israel is a very popular and significant feature of the cultural landscape. In proportion to its population, theater attendance is quite high and the socio-economic range of theater patrons is unusually broad. This seeming fervor for the stage may be due in part to the special context of theatrical activity in Israel. The reader learns that about 60% of the total is state-supported or municipally affiliated, and 70% of theater tickets are purchased at the workplace. Theater criticism figures notably in the reading habits and conversational topics of the cultural elite. The colorful background of Israel's present day theater is the first subject scrutinized. Its history and the unfolding of its dramatic traditions are traced from the earliest pre-state beginnings to the latest fringe theater components. In one professional sense, it has come full-circle, from the arrival of the Habima players schooled by Vakhtangov and Stanislavsky to the founding of the top-rated Gesher Theater, made up-like Habima in its day--of newcomers from Russia. Succeeding sections are devoted to characteristic trends in Israeli drama. Included are an examination of the image of the Arab in the country's plays Hebrew Studies 38 (1997) 204 Reviews and a symposium on independent Arab drama and theater. Important European influences interpreted by Israeli playwrights are analyzed as well as the persistent leiunotif materials of the Holocaust and the Akeda trauma, evoked directly or indirectly. For the most part, these sections are wellwritten and avoid the turgid prose and esoteric terminology of dramaturgical specialists. However, the prime feature of this book is its success in familiarizing the reader with Israel's best-known playwrights: Nissim Aloni, Hanoch Levin, and Yehoshua Sobol. The combined studies, comparative descriptions, and interviews highlight the messages inherent in their work and vividly clarify why their plays, as commentaries on the Israeli reality, provoke intense and painful controversy. Two shortcomings blunt the book's impact. One is easily corrected. Inadequate proofreading and copy editing left a trail of typos and inconsistent usages that confuse or jar the reader. The second involves content. As Ben-Zvi readily concedes, Israeli theater is strongly secular, leftist, and liberal. Yet it seems an excess of political correctness to deem specific Jewish attachment to the land "racist" whereas Arab attachment is depicted as romantic. The term "sexist" is reserved for the religious or conservative critic; the misogyny in Hanoch Levin's plays does not earn him this title. Thorough adoption of Arab perceptions in Arab-Israeli disputes is likened to recent Hollywood focus on the cause of the Native American. Butabsent any Native American threat to the continued existence of the United States-the parallel is certainly clumsy. Moreover, even a secularized Jewish culture would identify Hanukkah as an eight day holiday everywhere -not, as appendix 3 claims, "seven days in Israel." It would date Purim as the fourteenth of Adar rather than "the...

From Agnon to Oz: Studies in Modern Hebrew Literature [Hebrew] (review)

Hebrew Studies 38 (1997) 196 Reviews least useful, if not even loaded with cultural heritage, in the teaching of Hebrew literature to the non-fluent Hebrew student. The lack of a unifying statement or a conclusion seems to prompt the author's apology in his introduction. Neither the "reading below the surface ," nor the structuralist approach, nor the inclusion of children's literature "justifies" the group. Yet, I fmd these justifications superfluous, as Aristotelian unity is not a prerequisite for a volume of literary interpretations . There is no need to force a theoretical unity when the underlying principle is Mazor's style, his personal insights, his amiable verbosity. In that respect, this tenth book is not a deviation but rather a fortification of an interpretive approach which continues, in its own version, the traditional , albeit anachronistic, subjective detours of Klausner, Lachover, and even Sadan. Zvia Ginor Jewish Theological Seminary New York, NY 10027-4649 FROM AGNON TO OZ: STUDIES IN MODERN HEBREW LITERATURE [HEBREW]. By Warren Bargad. South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism 126. Pp. xii + 195; pp. 25. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996. Cloth, $79.95. I have a great deal of respect for American scholars such as Robert Alter, Abraham Holz, Alan Mintz, William Cutter, Stanley Nash, Arie Wineman, and Warren Bargad, to name just a few, who dedicated their professional lives to Hebrew language and literature and made distinctive contributions to the field on various levels. It is with this kind of respect that I read Bargad's book. This book is an anthology in which Bargad collects ten of his English articles and essays published in the 1970s and 1980s, seven reviews which were published during the same period, two Hebrew essays published in the early 1970s, and one in 1990. In general, articles which preserve a lasting literary insight remain of great interest many years after their publications, while other articles have short lives. The writing of "Exclamations, Manifestoes, and Other Literary Peripheries" was triggered by the 1972 appearance of the Hebrew journal Siman Kri'a: A Diversified Quarterly for Literature. Bargad translated, presented, and compared previous manifestoes of Hebrew journals such as Hedim, Moznayim, Likrat, Akhsanya, Akhshav, Masa (Davar), HasifrUl, Hebrew Studies 38 (1997) 197 Reviews and Siman Kri'a. He also made various comments about Siman Kri'a's manifesto and challenged some of its statements. For example, he found "ludicrous, even utterly specious" the editors' suggestion that Israeli literature prior to Siman Kri'a did not reflect an Israeli reality and did not arise out of its literary possibilities. Bargad published his article "Children and Lovers: On Yehuda Amichai's Poetic Works" in 1975. Bargad states that "the piece on Amichai's earlier volumes, the least •scholarly, item in this collection, has had the most citations and other feedback..." (p. ix). Not everyone has to agree with the author's rating of his own articles. Bargad relates some characteristics of Amichai's first four poetry volumes in terms of content and form as well as the disarming simplicity, charm and wit, relevance and insight, and aesthetic challenge and pleasure one finds in Amichai's work. Another article in the anthology is "The Image of the Arab in Israeli Literature." Bargad provides comments about the relevant works of authors such as Moshe Smilanski, Yitshak Shami, Yehuda Burla, S. Yizhar, Binyamin Tammuz, Moshe Shamir, Amos Oz, Amalya KahanaCarmon , and A. B. Yehoshua. The difficulties of providing an in-depth analysis of a certain theme in many literary works is obvious. Was it perhaps necessary or beneficial to update these articles? Would it not be beneficial to examine Siman Keri'a-not only its 24-year-old first issue-in light of its manifesto? How would Bargad rewrite his article about Amichai now, more than twenty years after its publication, in terms. of Amichai's subsequent publications, the research of Amichai's work, and Bargad's academic growth since? How would Bargad rewrite now his 20year -old article about the image of the Arab in Israeli literature in light of the voluminous applicable literature and research? In another one of his approximately 20-year-old articles, titled "The Poetic of Allusion and the Hebrew...