NOTE: THIS SYLLABUS MAY UNDERGO SOME – THOUGH NOT
MAJOR – MODIFICATION BETWEEN NOW AND BEGINNING OF THE
SEMESTER
ISRAEL: DILEMMAS OF IDENTITY
NEJS 154b – Spring Semester 2016
Yehudah Mirsky
Office hours: W 11-12 and by appointment
Mirsky@brandeis.edu
What do we mean by 'religion,' 'state' and 'society' and how do they constitute one
another? What are the relationships between a society's ethos, its institutions and the
people, groups and individuals, who live and make them? How do our primal, civic and
spiritual identities relate to one another? How to account for the stunning religious
resurgence in our world today? Is secularism dead? Is tradition? And what role do all
these questions play in the prosaic realities of people’s lives?
While we’re at it, what do we mean by identity? And how does thinking about ourselves
in this way help us understand how to live?
These are among the most pressing issues of our time and the State of Israel is, among
other things, a vast open-air laboratory for exploring them. As an avowedly secular
Jewish nation-state, the paradoxes and contradictions of religion, state, society and
culture in our time are woven into the very fabric of the State. A State created in no small
measure to resolve dilemmas of identity has managed to generate quite a few more of its
own.
We will explore, thorough readings in history, philosophy, law, sociology and literature
just how it's all worked out, if indeed it has. The readings are central to our work, and to
the growth of your own understanding and independent judgment. As a four credit
course, you can assume something on the order of nine hours or reading, writing and
other class preparation a week. (Rest assured that I will be preparing too.)
Your grade will be determined as follows:
40% Class participation – this includes brief written responses to the readings as well as
a brief class-room presentation on one of the readings
30% A mid-term, 800-1000 reflection paper
30% A final take home exam essay (1500-2000 words) or term paper
I expect to meet with you one-on-one at least once in the course of the semester.
Please be advised that as a rule, I generally do not allow the use of laptops in class. For a
helpful discussion of how this contributes to our fostering a shared sense of learning
together, I recommend this article.
1
https://medium.com/@cshirky/why-i-just-asked-my-students-to-put-their-laptopsaway-7f5f7c50f368#.sdupzweyg
At the same time, if you are in need of accommodations please feel free to speak with me
and we will figure something out per the guidelines of the Office of Academic Affairs.
This is a 4 credit hour course, and so you should assume roughly 9 hours of study time
per week in preparation for class (readings, papers, discussion sections, preparation for
exams, etc.)
A word about academic integrity: You must complete all assignments alone so that they
reflect your own work. In your writing, follow proper rules of attribution, meaning that
you must cite all sources consulted in preparing your papers, so that another reader or
researcher with a library or internet connection could access the same sources. As stated
in the Student Handbook, “Every member of the University community is expected to
maintain the highest standards of academic honesty. A student shall not receive credit
for work that is not the product of the student’s own effort.”
The syllabus may undergo modification in response to the nature and flow of interest
and classroom discussion.
Required Texts:
David Engel, Zionism (Pearson, 2009) [A brief, excellent overview]
Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader (New York, Atheneum,
1976) [1969] [A classic introduction and reader]
Yossi Klein Halevi, At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew's Search for Hope with
Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land (New York: Harper, 2002) [A beautiful, moving
exploration of Israel at its most hopeful, and most raw]
Menachem Mautner, Law & the Culture of Israel (Oxford University Press, 2011) [An
excellent volume not only Israeli law but on some of the most fundamental dynamics of
Israeli society in recent decades]
Aviezer Ravitzky, Messianism, Zionism and Jewish Religious Radicalism (University of Chicago
Press, 1996) [The finest study of Zionism’s relationship to Judaism at its most
fundamental levels]
Alexander Yakobson and Amnon Rubinstein, Israel and the Family of Nations: The Jewish
Nation-State and Human Rights (London: Routledge, 2008) [A spirited and thoughtprovoking discussion of Israel’s place in the constellation of democracy overall]
The other materials referred to here will be up on Latte. There may be some
modifications in response to students’ interests and the direction of class discussion.
Recommended:
Raymond Scheindlin, A Short History of the Jewish People (Oxford University Press, 1998)
Norman Solomon, Judaism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 1996)
2
Unit One: Introduction: The Problem of the Jews and of Judaism
These first weeks will present an overview of the political and spiritual crises of Jewish
modernity to which Zionism eventually offered one set of answers.
Readings:
Engel, Chapter 1
Charles Taylor, “Western Secularity”
Shmuel Noah Eienstadt and Berhnhard Giesen, ”The Construction of Collective
Identity,” Archives of European Sociology, 36 (1995), pp. 72-102
Readings in Benedict Spinoza’s Theological-Political Tractate and Moses Mendelssohn’s
Jerusalem
Jacob Katz, “Orthodoxy in Historical Perspective,”
Norman Stillman, Sephardi Religious Reponses to Modernity (Luxembourg, Harwood, 1995),
chapter 1.
Unit Two: The Emergence of Zionism
This unit will explore the emergence of the Zionist movement and the basic ideological
fault lines to emerge therein between those who saw it as a movement of rescue,
renaissance, revolution, or redemption – secular and/or religious. We will also look at the
emergence of religious anti-Zionism.
Engel, chapters 2-3
In Hertzberg, selections from Hess, Lilienblum, Herzl, Ahad Ha-Am, Berdichevsky,
Brenner, Gordon, Kook, Jabotinsky
Kook, “Eulogy for Theodor Herzl”
Ravitzky, chapter 1
Abigal Jacobson, “Alternative Voices in Late Ottoman Palestine,” Jerusalem Quarterly File
21 (August 2004), pp. 41-48
Jonathan Gribetz, “’Concerning our Arab Question?’: Competing Zionist Conceptions
of Palestine’s Natives,” in Idem, Defining Neighbors: Religion, Race and the Early Zionist
Encounter (Princeton University Press, 2014)
Unit Three – World Wars and Statehood
This unit will take note of the emergent institutions of the state, the legal and
constitutional dilemmas of Israeli statehood after 1948, the ‘status quo’ agreements on
religion and state in the absence of a constitution, This week will describe the emergence
of the 'status quo' in the first decades of statehood, the elaboration of the new state's
institutional structures, and the human side of the great dislocations of the early state's
huge influx of immigration.
Engel, Chapters 4-5
Rashid Khalidi, “Formation of a Palestinian Identity,” in Rethinking Nationalism in the
Arab Middle East, Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, editors (Columbia University
Press, 1997)
Yitzhak Gruenbaum, “Tel Aviv, 1933”
“The Status Quo Agreements of 1947”
3
Israel Kolatt, “Religion, Society and the State during the Period of the National Home,”
in Almog, Reinharz and Shapira, eds. Zionism and Religion (Waltham: Brandeis University
Press, 2008), pp. 273-301
S.Z. Abramov, “Legal and Constitutional Dilemmas,” in
Perpetual Dilemma: Jewish Religion in the Jewish State (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,
1976) chapter 4
Haim Sabato, Aleppo Tales (selections)
Unit 4–Visions of Statehood
This week will explore the range of theological and ideological positions on Jewish
statehood as they had crystallized in the pre-state years before 1967; Religious Zionism in
its various forms, Haredi anti-Zionism, the Sephardic middle position.
Engel, chapter 6
Ravitzky, Zionism, Messianism and Jewish Religious Radicalism,
Selections from Michael Walzer et al The Jewish Politcal Tradition
Menachem Friedman, "Haredim Confront the Modern City," in Studies in Contemporary
Jewry 2 (1986): 74-96
Nir Kedar, “Ben-Gurion’s Mamlakhtiyut: Etymological and Theoretical Roots”, Israel
Studies, 7:3 (2002), pp. 117-133
Eliezer Don-Yehiya & Charles S. Liebman, “The Symbol System of Zionist-Socialism:
An Aspect of Israeli Civil Religion,” Modern Judaism 1:2 (1981), pp. 121-148
Unit 5 – Who is a Jew? Who's asking?
This unit will explore in depth key controversies of the 1960s: the Brother Daniel case, in
which a Jewish-born monk applied for citizenship under the law of Return, and BenGurion's efforts to get Jewish intellectuals all over the world to tell him, "Who is a Jew?"
S.Z. Abramov, “Who is a Jew?” Perpetual Dilemma: Jewish Religion in the Jewish State
(Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1976) chapter 9
The Brother Daniel Case, from Jewish Political Tradition
Unit 6
This unit turns to the dramatic transformations of the 1970s and early 1980s – the
radicalization of religious Zionism, and the emergence of Shas.
Engel, Chapter 7
Ravitzky, Zionism, Messianism and Jewish Religious Radicalism, chapter 3
Haim Sabato, Adjusting Sights (selections)
Gershom Gorenberg, The Accidental Empire (selections)
Dov Indig, Letters to Talia (excerpts)
S. Fischer, "Excursus: Concerning the Rulings of R. Ovadiah Yosef Pertaining to the
Thanksgiving Prayer, The Settlement of the Land of Israel, and Middle East
Peace", Cardozo Law Review vol. 28(1) (2006): pp. 229-244
4
Sammy Smooha, “Jewish Ethnicity in Israel: Symbolic or Real?” in Waxman & Rebhun,
eds. Jews in Israel: Contemporary Social and Cultural Patterns (UPNE/Brandeis University
Press, 2003)
Udi Lebel, “Exile from National Identity: Memory Exclusion as Political,” National
Identities 11:3 (2009), pp. 241-262
Unit 7 - The Judicial revolution
This unit explores an equally significant transformation, the Supreme Court's shift to an
explicitly activist orientation and forum for American-style judicial review of statutes, the
absence of a constitution notwithstanding. At the same time, new laws urged the court
to make use of traditional Jewish law, to mixed results. We will also explore the
legislation in the 1990s that sought to enshrine the quasi-constitutional concept of “Israel
as a Jewish and Democratic State.”
The Basic Laws of 1980 and 1992
Menachem Mautner, Law and the Culture of Israel, (Oxford University Press, 2011)
Selections)
Yakobson and Rubinstein, chapters 4, 5, 6, (The Jewish State and Israeli Democracy,
Either Jewish or Democratic? and A Neutral State and a Democratic Nation-State)
Unit 8 – Non-Jews in the Jewish State
This unit will adopt a different angle of vision, that of Israel's non-Jewish minorities. We
will look at academic studies of their legal status and institutions, and read and discuss an
extraordinary spiritual memoir of attempts at inter-religious dialogue.
Anton Shammas, “Arab Walls, Reflecting Change,”
Michael Karayanni, “Two Concepts of Group Rights for the Palestinian-Arab Minority
under Israel’s Constitutional Definition as a ‘Jewish and Democratic’ State,” International
Journal of Constitutional Law 10:2 (2012), pp. 304-339
Hillel Cohen, Good Arabs, chapter 6 (“Dilemmas of Identity”)
Sayed Kashua, Dancing Arabs (Selections)
Unit 9 – Changes in the Status Quo and the Meaning of Secularism
This unit will explore recent controversies around marriage, divorce, racism, and religious
pluralism as well as the ways in which religious and secular Israeli society alike have
dramatically changed. We will also survey recent developments in Israeli culture as artists
break down familiar cultural barriers between ‘religious and ‘secular.’
Daphne Barak-Erez, "Religion and the Secular State – An Israeli Case Study," paper to
Int'l Academy of Comparative Law, 2010,
http://www.juridicas.unam.mx/wccl/ponencias/11/329.pdf
Yoel Finkelman, “The Ambivalent Haredi”, Israel Studies 19:2 (2014), pp. 264-293
Haredim – Annual Assessment of the Jewish People Policy Institute , 2014 (excerpts)
Yaacov Yadgar, “A Post Secular Look at Tradition: Traditionism” Telos 136 (Fall 2007)
Ben-Porat and Feniger, “Unpacking Secularization,” in Ethnicities, February 2014, 14:1,
pp. 91-112
5
Week 13 - What is a Jewish and Democratic State?
As we sum up, we will try to make sense of the fundamental issues that have run through
the course – what are the distinctive features of Israeli religion, state and society, and
does the Israeli experience make us look differently at what those very terms mean.
Ehud Luz, Wrestling with an Angel: Power Morality and Jewish Identity (Yale University
Press, 2003), chapter 13, "Challenging the Zionist Ethos"
Forum, “Defining Israel” Marginalia Review Online, Spring 2015
6