Israel Studies Review

From time to time we are reminded that Israel is a paradise for scholars, particularly in the social sciences. It serves, not just as a laboratory with easy access to virtually any research field, but also as a sort of societal particle accelerator within which processes are speeded up and lengthy periods of incubation are not required for researchers to study their development.

Introduction Yoram Peri

More Jewish than Israeli (and Democratic)? Tamar Hermann

Yes, Israel Is Becoming More Religious Shlomo Fischer

Religious Pressure Will Increase in the Future Asher Cohen and Bernard Susser

Secular Jews: From Proactive Agents to Defensive Players Nissim Leon

The Need for an Epistemological Turn Yaacov Yadgar

While national government elections are perceived as first order institutions that result in relatively high turnout rates, local elections are viewed as second-order institutions and are usually characterized by low turnout rates. We claim that this behavior is conditioned by the stakes that voters associate with elections as well as the voters' relative position in the socio-ethnic stratification structure. In this article we show that such conditions may yield an inversion in voters' perspectives. In other words, voters who are alienated from national government institutions and who are effectively mobilized by leaders of their socio-ethnic groups, which have high stakes in second-order institutions, tend to invert their preference with regard to the significance of elections. In such instances, national elections become second-order elections, and local elections become first-order elections. We use ballot-box level data from two national and two local elections in Israel to test this theory.

Most former Soviet immigrants who arrived in Israel had a secular or atheistic outlook, with only a small minority leaning toward Orthodox Judaism or Christianity. To understand how 20 years of life in the ethno-religious polity of Israel have influenced their religious beliefs and practices, we conducted a survey of a national sample of post-1990 immigrants. The findings suggest that most immigrants have adopted the signs and symbols of the Jewish lifestyle. They celebrate the major religious holidays in some form, and many are interested in learning more about Jewish culture and history. We interpret these changes mainly as an adaptive response aiming at social inclusion in the Israeli Jewish mainstream rather than actually emerging religiosity. Few immigrants observe the demanding laws of kashrut and Shabbat, and even fewer attend synagogues and belong to religious communities. Their expressed attitudes toward state-religion matters reflect their ethno-nationalist stance, which is more typical for ethnic Jews than for partial or non-Jews.

This study examines the use of the derogatory term mishtamtim (literally, 'shirkers') for Israeli citizens who do not serve in the military, as employed in a variety of widely circulating cultural texts and in several focus group discussions. I suggest that in addition to revealing and reflecting Israeli society's dominant views and opinions on military service and its relation to civil society, the inherent ambiguity of the mishtamtim label enables interlocutors to construct different notions of the Israeli collective, which are then translated into different patterns of inclusion and exclusion, hierarchies of citizenship, and disciplinary meas ures. In addition, the discursive construction of non-service as avoidance of participation in a symbolic, non-violent, civilianized, and benevolent contribution to the collective conceals the military's own tendency to discharge conscripts, as well as its inherently violent nature and the role that violence plays in providing the glue that keeps society together.

The complex approach of the Yishuv to religion and tradition was articulated in the matter of marriage rites. On the one hand, wedding ceremonies were seen as an expression of Diaspora social values that the Yishuv wished to renounce, while, on the other hand, such occasions were viewed as having national and collective significance. The decision made by Ada Shertok and Eliyahu Golomb not to have a wedding ceremony in May 1922 aroused a fierce debate within one of the most prominent families of the Yishuv. The family dispute surrounding the issue of the marriage ceremony and the diverse opinions presented in it are the focus of the article. This debate is a starting point for a broader discussion on the question of the complex attitude of the Yishuv to religion and tradition in the early 1920s.

The most notable indication that research and discussion regarding gender and feminism are flourishing is the increase in the number of books in these fields and the fact that bookstores are allocating a separate section for them. For years, publishing in Hebrew on the issue of gender was very limited, but around the end of the 1980s it began to expand. In fact, from the turn of the century it has become difficult to keep up with all the literature being published in Hebrew.

Hillel Cohen, The Rise and Fall of Arab Jerusalem: Palestinian Politics and the City since 1967 (New York: Routledge, 2011), 162 pp.

Oded Haklai, Palestinian Ethnonationalism in Israel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 243 pp.

Amal Jamal, Arab Minority Nationalism in Israel: The Politics of Indigeneity (New York: Routledge, 2011), 324 pp.

Ilan Pappé, The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 336 pp.

Ilan Peleg and Dov Waxman, Israel’s Palestinians: The Conflict Within (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 262 pp.

Yitzhak Reiter, National Minority, Regional Majority: Palestinian Arabs versus Jews in Israel (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2009), 403 pp.

Jacob Shamir and Khalil Shikaki, Palestinian and Israeli Public Opinion: The Public Imperative in the Second Intifada Review by Murad Idris

Eytan Gilboa and Efraim Inbar, eds., US-Israeli Relations in a New Era: Issues and Challenges after 9/11 Review by David Albert

Uri Cohen and Nissim Leon, The Herut Movement’s Central Committee and the Mizrahim, 1965–1977: From Patronizing Partnership to Competitive Partnership Review by Yitzhak Dahan

Sharon Aronson-Lehavi, ed., Wanderers and Other Israeli Plays Review by Nancy E. Berg

Shalom Goldman, Zeal for Zion: Christians, Jews, and the Idea of the Promised Land Review by Barbara U. Meyer

Index of Previous Issues: Fall 1985 to Winter 2011