Advanced Search
Print - Close Window
www.greenwood.com/catalog/C7660.aspx
All Greenwood Products
Israeli Identity in Transition
Anita Shapira
ISBN: 0-275-97660-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-275-97660-6
280 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 10/30/2004
List Price: $105.00 (UK Sterling Price: £72.95)
Availability: Print on demand
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects:
Description: The last 15 years have witnessed deep changes in Israeli society. The naive solidarity of the early years of statehood has given way to more sophisticated approaches, and the atmosphere of the 1990s was conducive towards critique and open discussion. It was the age of the Oslo Accords, of the large wave of immigrants from the Former Soviet Union, economic growth and prosperity, and a concurrent feeling of security and well-being. Israel was fast becoming a postcapitalist society, a junior member of the global village. This newly acquired self-assurance led to openness towards unorthodox views on basic questions of Israeli identity.

The new mood found expression in the cultural climate and in the public debates. The Zionist narrative in relation to the Palestinians; the early troubled absorption of immigrants from Islamic countries; the discrimination against the Arab Israeli minority; the delay in the 1950s in incorporating the memory of the Holocaust into collective memory; the Zionist attitude towards the Jewish Diaspora, all these were issues on the cultural and intellectual agenda, subjects of heated controversies. This book attempts to come to grips with these themes. The complex texture of Israeli society is drawn here by a number of hands, presenting up-to-date approaches, as viewed by experts.
Table of Contents:
  • Introduction by Anita Shapira
    New Historiography and National Identity: Reflections on Changes in the Self-Perception of Israelis and Recent Israeli Revisionist Historiography by Mordechai Bar-On
    Arab-Jewish Relations in Israel as a Deeply Divided Society by Sammy Smooha
    Whatever Became of "Negative Exile"? by Anita Shapira
    The Diaspora Factor in Israeli Life by Eli Lederhendler
    Fifty Years of Israeli Discourse on the Holocaust: Characteristics and Dilemmas by Dalia Ofer
    Israeli Indentity: The Jewish Component by Charles Liebman and Yaacov Yadgar
    Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU): Their Influence and Identity by Theodore Friedgut
    From Melting Pot to Multiculturalism or The Privatization of Israeli Identity by Daniel Gutwein
    The Globalization of Israel: Transformations by Nine Oz Almog
    About the Editor and Contributors
    Index
About the Author: ANITA SHAPIRA is Professor at Tel Aviv University. She specializes in modern and contemporary Jewish history, especially social and cultural history and questions of identity. She has published numerous books and articles on the history of Zionism and the Jewish community in Palestine. Her best known works are Berl Katznelson: A Biography of a Socialist Zionist and Land and Power: the Zionist Resort to Force, 1882-1948.
LCC Class: DS113
All rights reserved. Copyright © 1999-2009 ABC-CLIO
130 Cremona Dr., Santa Barbara, CA 93117 805-968-1911