Israel Studies Review

We are gravely concerned about the perils of regime change in Israel. Academic freedom is premised on liberal democratic institutions and values. Absent checks and balances on the power of the executive, civil liberties, including the right to pursue and disseminate knowledge, are in jeopardy. The journal Israel Studies Review is wholly committed to enabling the free exchange of ideas without fear of punitive repercussions. We will continue to encourage diverse perspectives and voices of scholars from all backgrounds.

This article examines gender separation at Jewish holy sites in the State of Israel. From a rare and sporadic phenomenon just a few decades ago, gender serparation at sacred sites has become normative. Segregation is in part directed ‘from above’ by the State of Israel's various religious arms, which fund, organize, and oversee the practice. But it also arises ‘from below’ as a result of the activity of individuals and Haredi groups—both Ashkenazi and Mizrahi—leading to the imposition of increasingly stringent modesty demands on Jewish Israeli women. Gender separation is presented as a religious obligation, and state authorities accept this extreme interpretation as if it represented a monolithic, unchanging religious position.

This article deals with the intersection between bereavement, gender, and art in the context of the cult of the fallen in Israel, focusing on the life story and artwork of two women artists, Asnat Austerlitz (b. 1969) and Michal Shachnai Yaakobi (b. 1967) who experienced orphanhood in a military context. Adopting the two-track model of bereavement suggested by Simon Rubin in 1981, the article offers an analytical, interdisciplinary examination of their artworks as adult women artists who are aware of the fragility of life and its finite character but also understand the importance and significance of continuing emotional bonds after death. Both have developed in diverse medium gender-based artistic creations related to the cult of the fallen creating models of alternative and counter-hegemonic memory that are manifested through personal languages full of irony, fantasy, and pain.

In societies experiencing intractable conflicts, civil society may seek conflict-management solutions that are not necessarily political or institutional. Israel, with a century-old conflict between Jews and Palestinian Arabs, has various NGOs trying to bring both sides together in different ways. The present study focuses on four such NGOs: Merchavim, Hand in Hand, Abraham Initiatives, and Sikkuy-Aufoq. Drawing on their websites and publications as well as interviews with their Jewish and Palestinian directors, it offers a comparative analysis of their goals, strategies, collaborations, evaluation methods, difficulties, and aspirations. The findings point to similarities and differences between the organizations’ agendas, painting a picture of the key issues confronting efforts to build a shared society in Israel.

Financial, work-based contributions underly entitlement to pension benefits in Israel. This article examines the historical development of the pension system in Israel, including the pensions of long-term military veterans and Jewish immigrants, expanding the notion of ‘contribution’ beyond its initial meaning of work-based financial accumulation. Specifically, it shows that both before and after the erosion of the union-protected contributory rationale in the 1990s, an alternative path to pension entitlement has operated through non-financial, political-symbolic contributions. The analysis emphasizes the importance of sectoral organizations for the broader analysis of social policy, and for understanding the structure of “social citizenship” and its discriminatory implications in Israel.

The shape of Israel's settlement map in the first two decades of independence was the outcome of formative political, economic, and social mechanisms. This article focuses on settlement in the mountain region through an examination of the failed settlement efforts in Biranit. We address settlement programs for the mountain region as a reflection of the contest to control the state's bureaucratic character and shape the character of its institutions. From this perspective, efforts to settle the mountain region represent the political contest between state and Zionist bodies over their roles in the transition from Yishuv to state. Special attention is drawn to the use of the terms ‘frontier’ and ‘periphery’ to mobilize political and economic resources both in and outside Israel.

Social solidarity is the conscious and voluntary affinity between human beings that instills in them a sense of guaranteed mutual assistance. Israeli society has long been characterized as having a high level of national solidarity, especially in times of crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 put this notion to the test. The lack of agreement about fundamental norms of civil society in general and the nature of Israeli democracy in particular questioned the interdependence of its communities. This study examines the pandemic's effect on the sense of social solidarity in Israel. Using a quantitative approach and a representative sample of the adult population, the results show that the pandemic did affect the sense of solidarity. Moreover, taking into account long-standing religious and ideological cleavages in Israel, the pandemic exacerbated existing divisions among different groups.

Yossi Shain, The Israeli Century: How the Zionist Revolution Changed History and Reinvented Judaism (New York: Wicked Son/Post Hill Press, 2021), 455 pp., $30.00 (hardback).