ISRAEL: DILEMMAS OF IDENTITY NEJS 154b – Fall Semester 2014 Yehudah Mirsky [email protected] Mandel 318 Office hours: Th 11-12 or by appointment

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?

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 in our time, and certainly of Jewish identity, are woven into the very fabric of the State. We will explore, thorough readings in history, philosophy, law, sociology and literature just how it's all worked out, if indeed it has.

Your grade will be determined as follows: 30% - Class participation – this includes posing questions and comments on the readings in the Forum of our course’s Latte site, at least 15 times per semester. 30% - A mid-term, 800-1000 reflection paper which will be distributed in class on October 24, and due back on November 7. 40% - A final take home exam essay (1500-2000 words) or term paper

I would like to have the opportunity to meet with each of you, one on one, at some point in the course of the semester.

The syllabus may undergo modification in response to the nature and flow of interest and classroom discussion.

Required Texts: David Engel, Zionism (Pearson, 2009) Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader (New York, Atheneum, 1976) [1969]

1 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) Menachem Mautner, Law & the Culture of Israel (Oxford University Press, 2011) Aviezer Ravtizky, Messianism, Zionism and Jewish Religious Radicalism (University of Chicago Press, 1996) Alexander Yakobson and Amnon Rubinstein, Israel and the Family of Nations: The Jewish Nation-State and Human Rights (London: Routledge, 2008) 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)

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” 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, Mohilever, Kook Kook, “Eulogy for Theodor Herzl”

2 Ravitzky, chapter 1 Abigal Jacobson, “Alternative Voices in Late Ottoman Palestine,” Jerusalem Quarterly File 21 (August 2004), pp. 41-48

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” 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 Hillel Cohen, Good Arabs: The Israeli Security Agencies and the Israeli Arabs, 1948-1967 (University of California Press, 2010), chapter 6 (“Dilemmas of Identity”) Udi Lebel, “Exile from National Identity: Memory Exclusion as Political,” National Identities 11:3 (2009), pp. 241-262

3 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 Ben-Gurion'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) Shlomo 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 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)

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)

4 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. Epharim Yuchtman-Yaar and Ze’Ev Shavi, “The cleavage Between Jewish and Arab Citizens,” in Rebhun and Waxman, eds. Jews in Israel (Brandeis University Press, 2004), chapter15 Anton Shammas, “Arab Walls, Reflecting Change,” Marzuq al-Halaq (Check my Latte files) 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 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 Steven Kaplan and Hagar Salomon, “Ethiopian Jews in Israel: A Part of the People or Apart from the People?”, in Rebhun and Waxman, eds. Jews in Israel (Brandeis University Press, 2004), chapter 5 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

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.

5 Ehud Luz, Wrestling with an Angel: Power Morality and Jewish Identity (Yale University Press, 2003), chapter 13, "Challenging the Zionist Ethos"

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