Israel Studies Review

This issue of the Israel Studies Review is going to press after the new government in Jerusalem has settled in and is trying to practice what was referred to in the election campaign as “the new politics,” a concept that already calls for some serious analysis. However, one of the facts of life for those of us whose careers are subject to a stately academic rhythm is that we are always behind on the latest events, yet still too close to them to be able to provide a deeper perspective. This is by way of pointing out that our articles were all written in 2012, before the latest major political changes took place in Israel, including the latest election. However, we believe that their lasting value will transcend the immediate headlines.

The Council for Higher Education (CHE) Law passed in Israel in 1958. Its aim was to mediate between the state and the institutions for higher education, and to anchor these relations in legislation. The law stipulates that “a recognized institution is free to manage its own academic and administrative affairs as it sees fit, within the framework of its budget” (CHE Law 1958: 15).

Party membership is in decline in Israel. This article analyzes the main characteristics of party members in three of the largest parties in Israel: Kadima, Likud, and Labor. Party members in Israel share similar features with party members in other countries: they are older, economically better off than the average voter, they are more highly educated than an average voter, and they are more likely to be male than female. This comparison between the members population and the voters population also demonstrates that Arabs are over-represented in Kadima and Labor while religious people are over-represented in Kadima and especially Likud. Most party members claim that ideological motivations led them to join a particular party, yet they suspect that the other members are motivated by more instrumental reasons. They expect the party to act cohesively but at the same time clearly support deeper intraparty democratization. They are also rather passive, hardly engaging in party activities.

This article examines the unique character of conversion to Judaism in general and in Israel in particular. It is an act enmeshed with the very definition of Judaism and has implications for the future of Israel as a Jewish state as well as for Israel-Diaspora relations. The role of the Israeli government in conversion, from the very outset of the establishment of the State of Israel, is delineated and its history as a religio-political issue analyzed. Finally, the article discusses alternative approaches for dealing with what some perceive as a very serious Israeli religio-political issue.

This article investigates the function of book reading in a society consisting of a multiplicity of ethno-cultural communities, asking whether book reading functions as a unifying factor within each ethno-cultural community or as a dividing factor and as a signifier of boundaries between them. It is based on multiyear survey data among representative samples of Israeli urban adults (1970, 1990, 2001-2002, 2007, and 2011), focus groups, and analysis of bestseller lists (2001, 2002). The article demonstrates that book reading functions as a signifier of boundaries within Israeli society, namely between ethno-cultural co-cultures of veteran Jewish Israelis, Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and Israeli Arabs. This supports Morley and Robins's claim that cultural consumption may be a divisive factor between the co-cultures within nation-states.

This article examines how Yitzhak Rabin is remembered by Palestinian citizens of Israel by juxtaposing analysis of references to him in the Arabic press in Israel with analysis of three surveys among Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel from November 1995 until July 2008. The findings suggest the existence of a latent nostalgia for Rabin's second term as prime minister (1992-1995) as a period when being Israeli looked like a realistic option for Palestinian citizens of Israel. Paradoxically, the image of Rabin among the Arab citizens of Israel moved in opposing directions in each of the two spheres of memory examined. At the public level, the extensive and mostly sympathetic attention given by some Arab political actors before 2000 was transformed into silence in the post-2000 period. The individual-based surveys, however, showed that Rabin's image remained salient and the sympathy felt for him even increased.

The article investigates the symbolic construction of the Galilee as a rural place, as portrayed by the websites of leisure resorts seeking urban middle-class customers. The article argues that the Galilee is constructed as a symbolic, post-rural place by them, and that this process expresses a change in the construction of rural place and place in general as well as collective identity in Jewish Israeli society. Data was obtained from marketing websites of 50 leisure resorts in the Galilee. Findings indicate that the post-rural Galilee is composed mainly of four symbolic universes: rural style and atmosphere, agriculture and country gourmet, the experience of nature, and authenticity of place. This construction of rural place represents the voice of the urban middle class in the dynamics of place and collective identity in Jewish Israeli society.

This article discusses the role of teachers in the formation of Israeli society, from the First Aliyah until the 1968 integration reform. The period studied is comprised of four sub-periods, during each of which teachers filled different roles. These roles included a contribution to reviving and spreading the language, creating educational and establishment tools, ideological training, and integration of the new immigrants into Israeli society. The study is based on Mannheim's generation theory, and seeks to use it to demonstrate the formation of the group of teachers in the Land of Israel and their influence on the creation of an imagined community, while also making comparisons with the activities of teachers in other societies.

In 2010, more than two decades after the first post-Zionist studies rattled Israeli academe, Asaf Likhovsky (2010) suggested that several studies that were published in the first decade of the current century are perhaps pointing at a new direction in the field of Israel and Zionist studies. Likhovsky described these studies as a third wave in Israeli historiography and referred to the scholars who produced these studies as “post-post-Zionists.” While older historians of Israel and the Yishuv as well as their post-Zionist critics were primarily interested in the grand political themes of the Zionist era, Likhovsky (2010: 10) identified a series of studies that, as he put it, “are interested in mentalities, rituals, mannerisms, emotions; the trivial, private, mundane; the body and soul and their social construction; in disgust and desire; in attitudes to garbage and hair; in views of food and consumption; in statistics and vaccinations; in the ideas of housewives, but also lawyers, statisticians, psychoanalysts, and nurses (but not the politician, the soldier, the general).”

Itzhak Galnoor, Public Management in Israel: Development, Structure, Functions and Reforms Review by Assaf Meydani

Avi Raz, The Bride and the Dowry: Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians in the Aftermath of the June 1967 War Review by Paul L. Scham

Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Theocratic Democracy: The Social Construction of Religious and Secular Extremism Review by Benyamin Neuberger

Alan Dowty, Israel/Palestine, 3rd ed. Review by Myron J. Aronoff

Eyal Chowers, The Political Philosophy of Zionism: Trading Jewish Words for a Hebraic Land Review by Allan Arkush

Etan Bloom, Arthur Ruppin and the Production of Pre-Israeli Culture Review by Arieh Saposnik

Laura Zittrain Eisenberg and Neil Caplan, Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: Patterns, Problems, Possibilities, 2nd ed. Review by Jonathan Mendilow