Critical Essays on Israeli Social Issues and Scholarship


Book Description

Critical Essays on Israeli Social Issues and Scholarship is part of a series of review volumes sponsored by the Association for Israel Studies and published by SUNY Press that provides a framework for discussion of research and scholarship on all aspects of Israeli society. This book brings together review essays commenting on issues in Israeli culture, literature, politics, scholarship, and society. The authors identify a series of recently published books and provide critical commentary. In their examination, they go beyond the works themselves to comment on the state of scholarship and social conditions. Topics covered include Israeli writers' reactions to the Holocaust, critical analyses of the popular Israeli poet and novelist Amnon Shamosh, the linguistic relations between Yiddish and Modern Hebrew, ethnic relations, the emerging "mainstream" of Israeli culture, politics, Israeli historical revisionism, and social, psychological, and political aspects of the continuing Israel-Palestine conflict.




Critical Essays on Israeli Social Issues and Scholarship


Book Description

Critical Essays on Israeli Social Issues and Scholarship is part of a series of review volumes sponsored by the Association for Israel Studies and published by SUNY Press that provides a framework for discussion of research and scholarship on all aspects of Israeli society. This book brings together review essays commenting on issues in Israeli culture, literature, politics, scholarship, and society. The authors identify a series of recently published books and provide critical commentary. In their examination, they go beyond the works themselves to comment on the state of scholarship and social conditions. Topics covered include Israeli writers' reactions to the Holocaust, critical analyses of the popular Israeli poet and novelist Amnon Shamosh, the linguistic relations between Yiddish and Modern Hebrew, ethnic relations, the emerging "mainstream" of Israeli culture, politics, Israeli historical revisionism, and social, psychological, and political aspects of the continuing Israel-Palestine conflict.




Critical Essays on Israeli Society, Religion, and Government


Book Description

This book is part of a series of review volumes sponsored by the Association for Israel Studies that provides a framework for discussion of research and scholarship on all aspects of Israeli society. It brings together original review essays commenting on issues in Israeli society, culture, politics, religion, literature, and film. The authors' evaluations of recently published books go beyond critical commentary on the works themselves to include the state of scholarship and social conditions. Among the issues addressed are the conflict over water resources, the human dimensions of the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, local governance, and the court system. The book provides reviews and commentary, not only on scholarly works but also on memoirs of military leaders at the time of the Yom Kippur war, Sephardi novels on the shock of immigration and on Israeli orthodox Judaism, and politically oriented cinema and literature of the 1980s and 1990s.




Writing the Arab-Israeli Conflict


Book Description

Nearly all empirical work in political science is fundamentally historical, yet very little attention has been given to the problem of grounding claims to historical knowledge. In Writing the Arab-Israeli Conflict Jonathan B. Isacoff constructs the nature of historical knowledge by deftly examining the multiple histories of the Arab-Israeli conflict written by generations of Israeli scholars. He also undertakes briefer analysis of literature, drawn from both historians and political scientists of the Vietnam War, demonstrating that historical revisionism is not unique to the study of the Middle East. Focusing on different schools of historical interpretation Writing the Arab-Israeli Conflict argues for a pragmatist approach in the tradition of John Dewey. Most importantly, this exceptional work suggests a number of practical methodological measures that can be taken to produce more sophisticated and nuanced political science scholarship.




The Jewishness of Israelis


Book Description

In December 1993, the Louis Guttman Israel Institute of Applied Social Research released the results of the most comprehensive study ever undertaken of the religious beliefs and behavior of Israeli Jews. The study revealed that Israeli Jews were far more traditional in their religious beliefs and behavior than previously thought, resulting in an intense public debate within Israeli society. This book summarizes the Guttman Report and describes how the media and Israeli intellectuals responded to it and imposed their own interpretations. It then analyzes the report in greater detail and puts in global perspective Israeli Jews' ritual behavior, religious beliefs, and attitudes toward religion in public life. The editors conclude that the religious traditionalism of Israeli Jews is unique among advanced industrial societies. They seek to explain this uniqueness in terms of the particular nature of Israeli society, focusing on Israel's security problems and suggesting the impact that a new security situation would have on Israeli Jews and how it would reshape the Israeli political map.







The Contradictions of Israeli Citizenship


Book Description

This book examines the nature of citizenship in Israel as pertaining to particular group demands and to the dynamics of political life in the public arena. Focusing on a wide range of social groups from the military, through ethnic minorities, religious groupings, and the gay and lesbian community, contributors explore different aspects of citizenship through the needs, demands and struggles of minority groups to provide a comprehensive picture of the dynamics of Israeli citizenship and the dilemmas that emerge at the collective, group and individual levels.




A Global Community


Book Description

An interpretation of the historical experience of the Jewish community in Syria and in the other places to which Aleppan Jewry have immigrated.




Through the Lens of Israel


Book Description

Through the Lens of Israel illuminates Israeli history through the use of the author's unique state-in-society approach, and, at the same time, refines, develops, and expands that approach. The book provides a window for the formation of Israeli state and society during the twentieth century, while using the Israeli experience to ask how social scientists can better investigate and understand other societies as well. Three central themes of Israeli history are at the core of the analysis—state formation, society formation, and the mutually constitutive roles of state and society. By analyzing how Israel's state and society continually reconstruct one another, Migdal addresses larger questions with resonance far beyond Israel: How do particular societies and states end up with their distinctive character? How are the rules that shape everyday behavior determined? Who gains from these rules and who loses? And how and when do these rules and patterns of privilege change?




The Government And Politics Of Israel


Book Description

This book offers a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the dynamics of Israeli politics. It aims to familiarize those interested in Israel's government with that country's origins; the way its political institutions, practices, and traditions have evolved; and the way the government works.