SHAS the Sephardi Torah Guardians and Their Construction of the New Jewish Israeli Identity

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SHAS the Sephardi Torah Guardians and Their Construction of the New Jewish Israeli Identity SHAS The Sephardi Torah Guardians and their Construction of the New Jewish Israeli Identity Tilde Rosmer Hovedoppgave i religionshistorie Institutt for kulturstudier Universitetet i Oslo Våren 2002 Initial Remarks and Acknowledgements My first visit to Israel was when I was 19 years old and worked as a volunteer in a kibbutz,1 and travelled in the Middle East. I did not go to Israel because of any ideological or other links with the country, or with the kibbutz as such. I became interested in the state and region and as a result I have focused on the Middle East and Israel in my studies for Cand.mag.2 Before I started my fieldwork for this dissertation I had spent about one year and three months in Israel, divided amongst my kibbutz experience and a summer studying Hebrew at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Consequently, I knew the language and the Israeli society from different angels and I was familiar with its infrastructure both geographically and socially. It was on this background my supervisor, Assistant Professor Bjørn Olav Utvik, suggested I should write about Shas in my dissertation for Cand.philol.3 I would like to thank both of my supervisors, Bjørn Olav Utvik and Bente Groth, for their academic guidance, their encouragement and the generous amount of time they have spent on my dissertation. I would also like to thank Anders Gustavsson for reading and commenting the chapter on qualitative method. This dissertation would not have been possible had it not been for my informants in Shas. I address very grateful thoughts to all my main informants and other who have positioned themselves at my availability during my fieldwork. Moreover, this fieldwork would have been impossible to conduct without the economic support from Unifor and Lise and Arnfinn Hejes foundation. I am very thankful to all the scholars and others who have shared their thoughts on Shas with me. I would like to especially thank Nissim Leon for the personal guided tours in the Haredi world and for our encouraging discussions. I also need to mention Baruch Kimmerling, Sami Shalom Chetrit, Menachem Friedman, Ezra Kopelowitz, Omar Kamil, Avirama Golan, Aryeh Dayan, Motti Cohen and last, but not least Neri Horowitz. To my dear friend Maayan, thank you for giving me a home in Jerusalem. To Michael and the Shirron’s, thank you for given me a family in Israel. Thank you Sergio, for being a friend and for teaching me about the Israeli society. Thanks to Mette, Camilla, Sissel, Tine and Vigdis who have read and made valuable comments for the development of this dissertation. And to my fellow students at the study hall: thanks for good companionship and for being ‘living’ English dictionaries! To Bård, thank you for all support. 1 A kibbutz is a Jewish collective settlement / cooperative community based on socialist ideas. 2 Consists of four years of studies at Undergraduate level, equivalent to BA 3 Equivalent to Master of Philosophy. i Synopsis The Israeli party-movement Shas is usually described by academics as Haredi, (Ultra Orthodox). Based on data collected during fieldwork in Israel this dissertation questions this academic categorisation of Shas, and argues that it does not take into consideration the historical, sociological or religious roots of Shas, nor its interaction in the Israeli society and state. Shas was established in 1983 and is now the third largest party in the Knesset after the elections in 1999. In addition to being a political party, Shas operates a variety of institutions and organisations focusing on religious and other education, and welfare. Both the leadership and the supporters of Shas are mainly Jews from North African and Middle Eastern countries who immigrated to Israel in the 1950s and 1960s. These Jews have experienced discrimination from the national Ashkenazi establishment and from the Ashkenazi Haredi institutions. Shas is a Sephardi party-movement, i.e. the leaders and supporters follow the Sephardi edition of the Halacha, the Jewish religious law, and the Sephardi religious customs. The Haredi identity refers to a particular Jewish relationship with modernisation formed in a European context in the 17th and 18th centuries, and developed further in Israel and other places. This identity and lifestyle is by academics characterised as anti-Zionist, segregated from the surrounding Israeli society, holding a passive attitude to historical development and aiming to duplicate a fixed type of observance of the religious law practiced in Europe before modernisation. The present study argues that Shas has a different relationship with modernisation than that described as Haredi. This is interpreted by investigating the relationship of Shas with individualisation, the party-movement’s understanding and use of past and future, its relationship with the traditional religious power institutions and with the central state. Furthermore, this study looks into the various strategies applied by Shas to recruit supporters, the relationship of Shas with technology and with the social and economic situation of the individual, the new model for Sephardi women created by Shas, and finally the practical politics of Shas. The “New Jewish Israeli” identity of Shas is Sephardi and Torahni, defined as following the Torah, which refers to religious and historical traditions that are reformed to the modern Israeli context of Shas. This identity opens up to all Jews who chooses to follow the Sephardi edition of the Halacha and to Jews with different levels of religious observance. The conclusion of this study is that Shas has an attitude of inclusiveness toward individuals and a future outlook, which reflects an active relationship with modernisation and history. iii Table of Contents INITIAL REMARKS AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .........................................................................................I SYNOPSIS .................................................................................................................................................................III TABLE OF CONTENTS........................................................................................................................................... V LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.................................................................................................................................. VII 1 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................. 1 1.1 STUDYING SHAS.......................................................................................................................................... 2 1.2 SEPHARDIM OBSERVING THE TORAH .......................................................................................................... 4 1.3 QUESTIONING RELIGIOUS CLASSIFICATION ................................................................................................ 6 1.4 DELIMITATIONS .......................................................................................................................................... 8 1.5 OUTLINE OF DISSERTATION ........................................................................................................................ 9 2 RESEARCH QUESTION ............................................................................................................................... 11 2.1 USE OF TERMS .......................................................................................................................................... 13 2.2 LEADERSHIP FOCUS .................................................................................................................................. 15 2.3 FORMER STUDIES OF SHAS ........................................................................................................................ 15 2.4 CATEGORISING SHAS AS HAREDI – REASONS FOR AND ARGUMENTS AGAINST ........................................ 16 3 FIELDWORK IN ISRAEL – QUALITATIVE METHOD.......................................................................... 19 3.1 THE POLITICAL SCENE IN ISRAEL.............................................................................................................. 20 3.2 MY MAIN INFORMANTS ............................................................................................................................ 21 3.3 INTERVIEW SITUATION.............................................................................................................................. 24 3.4 OBSERVATION OF INFORMANTS AND THE PARTY-MOVEMENT .................................................................. 27 3.5 ETHICAL QUESTIONS AND SOURCE RELIABILITY ...................................................................................... 30 3.6 CONCLUDING REMARK ............................................................................................................................. 31 4 PRESENTING SHAS AND RELIGIOUS PARTIES IN ISRAEL.............................................................. 33 4.1 RELIGIOUS PARTIES .................................................................................................................................. 33 4.2 ETHNIC DIVIDE IN ISRAEL ......................................................................................................................... 35 4.3 THE RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS IN THE STATE OF ISRAEL ........................................................................... 37 4.4 THE EMERGENCE AND HISTORY OF SHAS
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