Christian Identity in

Dissertation

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By

Evelyn Ann Gertz, M.A.

Graduate Program in Sociology

The Ohio State University

2019

Dissertation Committee:

Hollie Nyseth Brehm, Advisor

Ryan King

Reanne Frank

Copyright by

Evelyn Ann Gertz

2019

Abstract

In the United States, there is a strong disconnect between how scholars externally classify people’s identities (e.g., separating race, religion, and ethnicity for regression analyses and census collections) and capturing individual’s lived experiences. Guided by this idea that scholars have misidentified where individuals locate themselves along identity spectrums, my research explores how members of a religious minority in the

Middle East perceive the relationship between their religious and ethnic identities. Does one identity more adequately capture how they identify as individuals and experience boundaries between groups? What are the social factors that influence how they perceive the ethno-religious relationship? Finally, what factors explain the prevalence of religious minorities across the seeking ethnic distinction? Through interviews with 80

Christians in Israel, my research finds that that minority individuals in a Middle Eastern context view religion as the most salient source of difference between people. However, the presence of a bright religious or bright ethnic boundary influences how they perceive the relationship between ethnicity and religion. Finally, a religious minority will seek ethnic distinction when the organization of the political arena encourages this strategy.

ii

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to thank the National Science Foundation and the Global

Religion Research Initiative at the University of Notre Dame for funding this research.

Next, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the world’s most optimistic, supportive, and responsive PhD adviser, Hollie Nyseth Brehm. Thank you for answering an email at 1am on a Saturday morning during the first month of graduate school, thereby cementing our mentor/mentee relationship. I will never forgot my shock at that moment, of realizing how deeply you care about helping others, how constructive your feedback is, and how quickly you respond to emails! Thank you for your incisive intellectual feedback on all my projects, for writing letters of recommendation with only a few hours’ notice, and for always listening so acutely to my ideas. I am profoundly grateful for your support and cannot imagine what this experience would have been like without you as my biggest advocate.

I would like to deeply thank Ryan King as well for his intellectual mentorship these past few years. One of my absolute favorite parts of graduate school was discussing my research in your office. Thank you for always listening to my ideas and reading my work so thoughtfully and thoroughly, for challenging me to think deeper about the theoretical contributions, and for always offering a solution to a noted challenge. I cannot adequately iii express how much I will miss working with you, and the extent to which I believe I have developed as a researcher as a result of your mentorship. Your voice repeatedly telling me to “slow down and take readers step by step” will forever be in my head as I continue my research career!

I would also like to thank Reanne Frank for her invaluable intellectual support with my dissertation this past year and a half. Your deep knowledge of the field and familiarity with the literature are awe-inspiring! I am incredibly grateful for your close reading of my chapters, your keen intellectual insights, and your enthusiasm about my work.

Knowing that you were genuinely fascinated in my topic was a massive motivation to do the best research I could.

This entire dissertation would not have been possible without the incomparable Shadi

Khalloul. Shadi, it was such a JOY getting to know you and learning about the Aramean community in Israel these past few years. I am deeply, deeply grateful for both our professional collaboration and the friendship that has resulted! Your community is relentlessly fascinating, and I look forward to continuing to work together for years to come. Thank you for welcoming me into your village, for introducing me to so many wonderful , and for taking me with you to countless meetings, ceremonies, and delicious meals. I will always be grateful beyond words for your assistance!

iv

There are a few other folks who were instrumental for the completion of this research. I have a special place in my heart for Caroline Keller-Lynn, who is not only a dear and lifelong friend, but also the person who introduced me to the Aramean movement for recognition in Israel. Carrie, thanks to your initial curiosity about the Aramean community, I now have a doctorate, and I will always be deeply grateful for your role in helping me achieve this goal (However, I may never forgive you for making me sleep in that hostel in for two nights during fieldwork). I likewise owe enormous debts of gratitude to Gilah Kahn-Hoffmann and Chaim Motzen. Both of these individuals took considerable time out of their lives, merely out of the kindness of their hearts, to connect me to innumerable interviewees. As a researcher, and especially as a doctoral candidate trying to finish a dissertation, finding people in the field who will actually assist you with the pragmatic components of conducting research is both urgent and terrifying. Gilah, thank you so much for meeting with me and connecting me to your friends. Your involvement in so many organizations devoted to pluralism and peace continues to inspire me for how I want to live my life! Chaim, thank you first and foremost for your friendship, but also for hosting me in , connecting me to such a large number of folks, and for truly taking such concrete steps to assist me with my research. Your support was critical to the completion of this project and I will never forget your help.

Thank you to Jacob Caponi as well for his excellent research assistance. I am so grateful to have worked with someone so insightful and trustworthy!

v

I was also fortunate enough these past few years to work with some of the most amazing translators anyone could ask for. Both Aliza Green and Libby Weiss did incredible work translating and transcribing the interviews I conducted in Hebrew. Thank you both for being so speedy, thorough, and personable! I would also like to thank my translator in

Rwanda, my dear friend Eric Sibomana. Eric, you are one of the best people I know, and you made long, grueling hours of field work fun. That day someone told us that everything was a “secret’ will forever be one of my favorite memories! I cannot wait to visit you and your family again soon.

Finally, I would also like to thank my family and friends for their invaluable support these past few years. Graduate school is extraordinarily emotionally and mentally taxing, and I would have never made it through without these relationships. First and foremost, thank you to my family for always, without question, believing in my ability. Mom, Dad,

Molly, Aaron, Noy, Zach and Jessica, I am deeply grateful to have each and every one of you in my life. It is such a blessing to have people in your circle who truly only want the best for you. On that note, I want to publicly extend an extra “thank you” to my amazing mother, Sally Gertz, who answered between 1-4 phone calls a day these past few months, continually affirming that my intellectual ideas made sense, massively reducing my anxiety, and pushing me to stay focused.

vi

my amazing friends Shira Anderson, Liat ,שוות או לא להיות Thank you as well the rest of

Arad, and Shai Horovitz. The WhatsApps, the visits (including all the way to

Columbus!!), the trips, and the calls all mean more to me than I could possibly express in words. Thank you for being my emotional support system during this arduous time period and the best friends someone could ask for. I look forward to living next door to each other in one day soon. Thank you as well to Francine Bendat, Emily

Bernstein, Ruthie Edelstein, Zoe Jick, Dani Mahrer, Hannah Mormer and Michael

Schapira for your friendship over the years. I always think of all of you when I reflect on the years I lived in Israel and am so grateful for the Shabbat dinners together. Sara and

Matt Potter, thank you as well for always, always making me laugh, and to Sara especially for putting up with me these past 20 years. Suzanne Lipton, I am equally grateful that we have stayed in touch over the years, your friendship brightens my life!

Finally, a big thank you to Mary McKay, whose sense of humor guided me through all the trials and tribulations of graduate school.

There are two more people for whom I will always hold a special place in my heart,

Samantha Boch and Ophir Samson. Samantha, thank you for being my sister and support system in Columbus. I legitimately do not know where I would be without you (I might still be wandering the streets in Clintonville?). You and Simmy are the best things that happened to me in this city, even though Simmy’s been ignoring me lately. Finally,

vii

Ophir Samson, I saved you for last because I pretty much blame you, entirely, for all of this. Remember our conversations in Tel Aviv, when you refused to let me go to law school? Now look what’s happened. I guess what I’m trying to say is, thank you. As a result of your wisdom and your exceptionally supportive friendship over the past 5 years,

I have never been more excited about my future.

viii

Vita

May 2005...... Leon High School

December 2008………...... B.A. Art History, University of Michigan

May 2016………………………………………………...M.A., The Ohio State University

2015 to 2018……...... Graduate Research Assistant, Department

of Sociology, The Ohio State University

2016-2019………………………National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow

Fields of Study

Major Field: Sociology

ix

Table of Contents

Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………ii Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………iii Vita………………………………………………………………………………………..ix Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………….…....x List of Tables……………………………………………………………………………..xi Chapter 1: Introduction……………………………………………………………………1 Chapter 2: A Brief Background…………………………………………………………...8 Chapter 3: Research Approach……..………………………………………...……...…..10 Chapter 4: The Salience of Religious Identity...………………………………………...19 Chapter 5: Bright Boundaries……………….………………………………...... …….....44 Chapter 6: Official Ethnic Distinction…...………………………………………………80 Chapter 7: Conclusion…………………………………………………………………..108 References…………………………………………………………………………...….115 Appendix: Tables………………………………………………………………...……..120

x

List of Tables

Table 1. Interviewee Characteristics ……………………………………………...……120

Table 2. Summary Table of Differences in Perspectives on Ethno-Religious

Relationship…………………………………………………………………………….121

xi

Chapter 1: Introduction

For scholars of identity, there is a strong tension between the analytical power of distinguishing socially-structured categories of identity (e.g., race, ethnicity, religion) while properly conceptualizing the lived experiences of individuals. In recent years, scholars have drawn increasing attention to the complicated relationship between race and ethnicity in the United States. Essentially, the current convention to separate these identities on official counts such as the census often results in the misidentification of where individuals actually locate themselves along racial and ethnic spectrums (Flores-

González 2017; Maghbouleh 2017; Thompson 2014; Hitlin, Brown, and Elder 2007). A growing body of scholarship explores this point through investigating how individuals from Hispanic and Middle Eastern backgrounds conceive of the relationship between their racial and ethnic identifications in the United States.

For example, Flores-González (2017) explores the racial/ethnic relationship through 97 in-depth interviews with Latinx millennials in the Chicago . On official data, this group marks Latinx as their ethnicity and white as their race. However, Flores-

González finds that this group does not feel that a “white” racial identification appropriately captures their lived experiences in the United States, as they experience significant discrimination and exclusion in predominantly white public . In a similar vein, Maghbouleh (2017) describes the experiences of Iranian-American youth in the

United States. For Maghbouleh (2017), Iranian-Americans live in a racial paradox. They are counted as white by the Federal government, but their everyday experiences are

1 closer to those experienced by communities of color. Again, like Flores-González finds with the Latinx population, Maghbouleh also argues that for her population, separating race and ethnicity for official counts such as the census does not adequately reflect how individuals themselves actually identify.

Given this observed disconnect in the United States between external classification and individual lived experiences, I explore whether a similar disconnect presents itself in other parts of the world outside of the United States context. Much of the identity research has been conducted in the United States, but identity is, of course, a global phenomenon. Further, a body of work explores the complicated relationship between race and ethnicity, but there are many other salient identities in other regions of the world. Therefore, guided by the idea that identities are not always experienced as distinct social forces, my research explores how a religious minority in the Middle East perceives the relationship between their religious and ethnic identifications. Does one identity more adequately capture how they identify as individuals, the types of groups that they form, and their individual lived experiences?

The motivation to explore the Middle East, and in particular the relationship between religious and ethnic identities, arose from two observations of the social environment in this context. First, the Middle East is a setting that is rife with inter-group conflict. Often, such clashes seem to fall along both ethnic and religious cleavages, such as the violence committed by Arab Muslims against Coptic in , or the violence between Jews (an ethnic and religious group) and Arab Muslims in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Therefore, ethnicity and religion are clearly two

2 important sources of identity in a Middle Eastern setting, and further research is critical to understand how individuals themselves actually view these identities as bases for group association and formation. To my knowledge, no prior research has yet to systematically examine how individuals in a Middle Eastern setting both interpret the meanings attached to these identities as well as how each identity relates to one another.

The second motivation to explore the Middle East and the relationship between religious and ethnic identities is the fact that, over the past several years, there has been a conspicuous flowering of “non-Arab” ethnic identity movements among Christian and other Middle Eastern minorities. For example, the Copts in Egypt, practitioners of one of the world’s most ancient forms of Christianity, are increasingly vocal about the idea that an erroneous “Arab” identity has been forced upon them by the Egyptian government

(Tepper 2015). Likewise, the Kurds, perhaps the most well-known of all non-Arab

Middle Eastern minorities, have famously resisted for decades attempts by governments to “Arabize” their communities. In addition, the Iraqi Christian political party the Zowaa represents Christian Assyrians in who are fighting for territorial control in parts of the Iraqi region (Tepper 2015).

In light of these social realities, and with the literature on racial/ethnic identification in the United States as a guiding framework, my dissertation asks the following three questions:

1. How do minority individuals in the Middle East interpret the relative salience

of their religious identity versus their ethnic identity?

3

2. How does social context affect people’s understanding of the relationship

between their religious and ethnic identities? What are different ways that

ethnicity and religion relate to one another, and what are the social factors that

influence the form this relationship takes?

3. How are social and political conditions perceived such that a religious

minority desires to achieve increasing levels of distinction, including ethnic

distinction? In other words, why would a religious minority seek ethnic

distinction, and how do they actually accomplish such a feat?

To answer these questions, and advance knowledge on the relationship between ethnic and religious identities in the Middle East, I analyze 80 in-depth interviews with the -speaking Christian community in Israel. Interviews constitute a powerful method because of the need to elicit deep, in-depth responses from participants rather than rely on pre-conceived questions (such as a survey). Further, Israel constitutes a meaningful case study for my research on religious and ethnic identity in a Middle

Eastern setting for the following three reasons. First, religion is an especially heighted and meaningful category of identity in this country. Religion is a central feature of the one and only majority-Jewish state and plays an instrumental role in shaping Israeli culture and lifestyle. Second, ethnicity is likewise a heightened and salient category of identity. Over the past century, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a nationalist dispute between two ethnic groups vying for control over territory, has resulted in five wars, two

Palestinian intifadas (uprisings), and countless incidents of political violence and human rights violations (Tessler 2009). As a result of the conflict, individuals living in Israel

4 negotiate the social and political tension accompanying religion and ethnicity every day and must carefully make decisions about their own ascription to such identities. Third, within Israel, Christians are a pertinent group to study because of the heterogeneity, complexity, and confusion surrounding their ethnic identities. As one Christian resident lamented to an Israel newspaper, “We are not Arabs, and we are not Palestinians. We are not part of the conflict, but somehow, we have been pulled into it” (Maltz 2014). For all of the aforementioned reasons, interviews with Christians in Israel elicit meaningful answers to research questions one and two: how do individuals in Middle Eastern settings perceive the relative salience of their religious versus their ethnic identities, and how does social context affect people’s understanding of the relationship between ethnicity and religion?

Christians in Israel are likewise an ideal community through which to advance knowledge on research question three: why a religious community seeks ethnic distinction. This is because a subset of Christians in Israel did achieve official ethnic distinction as Aramean in 2014, after 10 years of petitioning the Israeli government. As such, they are reviving the ancient language in their neighborhoods and schools and seeking their own political representation in the Israeli government. Understanding why Christians in Israel are seeking increasing levels of ethnic distinction can advance knowledge as to why this is a trend occurring more broadly across the Middle East.

In this dissertation, after a brief background on the origins and demographics of the Christian community in Israel, I detail how I conducted 80 interviews, including 30 with Christian respondents identifying as ethnically Arab and 50 with Christian

5 respondents identifying as ethnically Aramean. I likewise detail the significance of interviewing Christians in the rural north of the country, where Christians typically live as minorities among Muslims, and the urban center cities, which are key points of contention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After explaining how I analyzed my interview data, I then present each research question, detail prior knowledge and literature on the topic, and present the empirical findings.

Throughout the dissertation, I argue three main points. First, that religion is a more salient identity than ethnicity in a Middle Eastern context – at least for minority groups. Individuals in a Middle Eastern setting view their religious identity as more adequately capturing the most important groups they belong to. Second, I examine what factors in a social environment affect how individuals view the relationship between their ethnicity and their religion. I ask this question because the issue of how religious identity impacts ethnic identities (and related national identities) has been significantly under- studied, yet initial explorations indicate serious consequences for attitudes toward out- groups (Martinovic and Verkuyten 2012). Therefore, it is critical to document the different types of relationships between ethnicity and religion that exist and the social factors that contribute to this variation. I find that Christians in Israel can view their ethnicity and religion as overlapping and reinforcing, or they can perceive these identities as entirely distinct. The form this relationship takes results in part from whether a religious identity or an ethnic identity feels more threatened in the immediate social environment.

6

Third and finally, I argue that a religious group in Israel is seeking increased distinction because a representative political environment encourages this strategy.

Christians have limited access to the central political arena in Israel. They are excluded from formal representation in the Israeli parliament because the country allots positions according to ethnicity rather than religion (e.g., there are spots reserved for “Arabs” in various government bodies but not for Christians versus Muslims). Christians who are unhappy with aspects of their social lives, such as those in the north whose children attend schools with Muslims and learn Islamic culture and history rather than Christian culture and history, have almost no power to induce change. Therefore, Christians are incentivized to officially renew the ancient Aramean ethnic identity to obtain access to the central political arena.

7

Chapter 2: A Brief Background on Christians In Israel and

The Rise of the Aramean Movement

According to the 2012 Israeli census, Christians constitute approximately two percent of the Israeli population. This includes non-Arabic speaking Christians, the majority of whom immigrated to Israel from post-Soviet states in the nineties (Mansour

2012). Approximately 132,000 Christians in Israel have historical ties to Iraq, , and

Lebanon; speak Arabic as their mother tongue; and have traditionally been categorized as

Arab Christians by the Israeli state for bureaucratic purposes (Mansour 2012).

Importantly, are a tiny minority among the approximately 1.65 million

Arab Muslim population of the country (Maltz 2014).

The movement to recognize a separate Aramean ethnicity began in 2007. A member of the from a tiny Israeli village on the border of – a man named Shadi Khalloul – met with a soon-to-be Israeli parliament member from the right-wing party, which is currently in power. He argued that Aramaic-speaking

Christians have lived in the Middle East since the dawn of Christianity itself, and as such deserve recognition (Maltz 2014). Indeed, Jesus himself was an Aramaic-speaking Jew, who, according to tradition, grew up in (Flamini 2012). Christianity was the dominant religion in the region from the fourth through (arguably) the eighth century.

However, when Arab Muslim armies conquered much of the Fertile Crescent and North

Africa, many Aramean Christians converted to the new Arab-Islamic order, though small

8 villages in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon maintained their faith, language, and identity (Penn

2015).

Small Aramean communities still exist in several Middle Eastern countries, as well as in the West, where many members still speak the ancient language of Aramaic.

As the Aramean movement has gained momentum in Israel, members of the community there are beginning to revive the language, using it in their prayers and teaching it in their schools (Maltz 2014). Leaders of the movement have faced backlash from Arab Muslims, many of whom perceive the Arameans as cooperating with alleged Israeli government efforts to drive a wedge between Christians and Muslims (as I detail in chapter 3).

Regardless, in 2014, the Arameans successfully won their petition to officially change their ethnicity on their Israeli identity cards from Arab to Aramean (Maltz 2014).

9

Chapter 3: Research Approach

For this research, I interviewed 80 Arabic-speaking Christians in Israel, including

30 Christians who identify as ethnically Arab and 50 Christians who identify as ethnically Aramean. Given the limited empirical engagement in the literature with my research questions involving the salience of religious identity in the Middle East, its relationship to ethnic identity, and its role in group formation processes (Seul 1999;

Martinovic and Verkuyten 2012), I utilized interviews to elicit in-depth knowledge rather than relying on pre-conceived ideas, such as one does with a survey. I likewise utilized semi-structured interviews that allowed me to direct the flow of the conversation and focus on subject areas relevant to my research while also allowing the participant to present ideas and information I had not yet considered. Finally, I stopped at the number

80 because I had achieved saturation of information – the state in which little to no new knowledge is introduced – and captured meaningful variation in participants’ personal backgrounds and location of residence (e.g., rural north/urban center) in order to make comparative judgements (Small 2009).

As noted in the introduction, from an ecological perspective Israel presents a compelling case site for my research questions because of the historical primacy and influence of ethnic and religious identities and the heterogeneity of ethnic identity among

Christians. The three major religious groups in Israel are Jews, Muslims, and Christians.

From an ethnic perspective, Jews and Muslims fall fairly easily into the respective ethnic

10 categories of Jew1 and Arab. Traditionally, before the emergence of the Aramean identity, a Christian was only afforded the ethnic option of Arab. Yet, from a national perspective, a Christian could identify as Israeli, Palestinian, or an Israeli of Palestinian descent. In other words, for minorities such as Christians who do not fall easily into either the “Jewish Israeli” or “Muslim, Arab and Palestinian” buckets, communicating one’s ethnic and national identities requires thoughtful self-reflection and a series of decisions about which group to align themselves with. Therefore, it is a compelling site to study how membership in a religious group, alongside other social factors such as access to political power, affects perceptions about ethnic identities (as well as related national identities).

As is likewise noted in the introduction, I interviewed Christians in the rural north and the urban center of the country. In the villages in the north, Christians often live as minorities among larger Arab Muslim communities. In contrast, Christians in the center cities such as Jerusalem and Jaffa either live in their own neighborhoods and attend their own schools, or at least harbor more power when living in mixed Christian-Muslim neighborhoods (e.g., have a larger influence over the design of school curriculums because many schools are funded by European churches in these settings) (Field Notes

May 2018). Of critical importance to this research, Jerusalem and Jaffa have been key points of contention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For example, there was extensive fighting in Jaffa between Arabs and Jews in 1948 during what Israel refers to as its war for Independence (Golan 2012). Jaffa was the largest metropolitan area at the time of the

1 The idea that Jews are both an ethnic and religious group has been extensively researched, though certainly there are scholars who continue to regard this as a contentious proposition (Connor 1978). 11 warn and a major economic center – the battles that took place in Jaffa were viewed by

Jews as the most important battles to establish Israel’s military and political status (Golan

2012).2 In a similar vein, there was extensive fighting in Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day war, and airstrikes resulted in the decimation of eastern parts of the city (Tessler 2009).3

Because of this political history, and the fact that many families in Israel have lived in the same city for generations (Field Notes May 2018), many Christian interviewees share emotional narratives about the trauma their families endured at the hands of the Israeli military as Arabs. Likewise, because Jerusalem remains a religious capital and Jaffa an industrial one, there are myriad instances of terrorist acts that occur in these settings in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a corresponding heightened presence of

Israeli security (Tessler 2009). I therefore explore these unique environments, the rural villages in the north and the politically contentious center cities, to investigate the social factors that contribute to how and why Christians invoke and express their ethnic identities in different ways (e.g., what sorts of ethnic identities are socially available to

Christians in the north versus Christians in the center? In what contexts might Christians be more consistently marked by other groups as Arab regardless of their internal perception of their ethnic identity?).

I conducted my interviews over the course of four months: December 2016,

January 2017, and April and May 2018. I located my sample of 50 Arameans through the assistance of the chair of the Aramean Heritage Association, Shadi Khalloul, who has become an increasingly prominent political figure in Israel as he is closely allied with

2 I have not yet been able to locate a reliable estimate of how many Arabs were killed in Jaffa. 3 Again, there are considerable disputes as to the number of deaths that occurred regarding both Arabs and Jews. 12

Avigdor Lieberman – the current right-wing Defense Minister of Israel. Mr. Khalloul has spent the past several years travelling to (literally) every locality in Israel meeting with

Aramean communities and, for the most part, my Aramean interviewees spoke of him with deep admiration for his commitment to improve the lives of the Christian minority in Israel. There is no national database to locate Arameans (or Christians in general), so I was reliant on the trust and rapport I developed with Mr. Khalloul to introduce me to members of the Aramean community. I first became connected to him when I lived in

Jaffa from 2011-2014 and worked as an editor for the English edition of the Israeli newspaper . The Arameans attracted an array of media coverage when they achieved official state recognition, and I reached out to Mr. Khalloul out of my own personal interest. He invited me to tour Gush Halav, his village in the north of Israel, where I visited his local church and a school he was organizing to teach local children the language of Aramaic.

For my “Arab Christian” sample I reached out to Christian community leaders, non-profit groups, and churches to locate willing participants from diverse backgrounds.

In Jerusalem, I found several participants through the Greek Community Center, an institute that celebrates all things Greek and attracts an older crowd of retirees, including a number of Arabic-speaking Christians. I likewise found several participants through the

Jerusalem YMCA, which hosts weekly interfaith activities that wealthier individuals attend. In contrast, I found younger participants through more radically-defined activist organizations whose mission statements involved trying to overturn a perceived culture of Israeli oppression.

13

While I typically tried to call or email beforehand to set up appointments, the nature of Israeli culture and its emphasis on spontaneity precluded such efforts. Instead, I was more successful simply showing up to these institutions, explaining who I was, and presenting IRB papers with Ohio State University letterhead clarifying the privacy of participants. At the Greek Community Center in Jerusalem, for example, I spent one

Saturday morning sitting in a three-hour Greek language class simply to get to know potential participants who were nervous that my intentions were politically nefarious.

I conducted the majority of interviews in English and Hebrew, two languages I am fluent in. I learned Hebrew from 2011-2014 through living and working in Israel and taking formal Hebrew classes at Hebrew University. Christians in Israel are the highest- educated of any demographic (Mansour 2012), which generally means they started learning English at an early age.4 However, the Arameans, who seem to occupy mostly blue-collar professions and live in modest homes in the rural north, typically do not speak fluent English. Their mother-tongue is Arabic, and they speak Hebrew as a result of navigating daily life in Israel. Therefore, I conducted interviews with Arameans in

Hebrew. It turned out that Arameans preferred this language over their native tongue as it presented a means to display their proud integration into Israeli society. However, for a handful of interviews with older individuals who were hard of hearing, Mr. Khalloul served as an Arabic translator, as that was the language of ease for the participant.5 I do not have any reason to believe that Mr. Khalloul’s presence at any interviews impacted the veracity of the findings, as I have thoroughly coded interviews in which he was and

4 I am not currently aware of official data on distinctions in education among different sub-groups.

14 was not present and have not noted any qualitative distinctions in the types of responses.

However, as I explain in chapter 3, I do believe that Mr. Khalloul is responsible for shaping the Aramean community’s general understanding of their identity, such as their lineage and connection to the Aramaic language, as he has spearheaded all the efforts to teach this community about their heritage.

Below, I present a chart of the characteristics of my interviewees ( see Table 1 page 120). The mean age of my respondents is 42, though ages range from 18 to 83. Over half of my respondents had at least a first degree from a university. While the gender imbalance is noticeable, as there are only 23 women and 57 men, I have not yet spotted any salient differences regarding how men and women interpret their religious and ethnic identities. Thirty respondents identify as Christian Arab and 50 identify as Aramean.

Likewise, 48 interviewees live in villages in the north whereas 32 live in center cities.

Interviews took place in respondents’ homes or in public locations, such as coffee shops, and ranged from 30 to 90 minutes while typically lasting one hour. In the north, due to Mr. Khalloul’s introduction, I was invited warmly into people’s homes and besieged with coffee and sweets, the traditional Middle Eastern markers of hospitality.

However, interviews with Arab Christians that I arranged on my own took place in public settings such as coffee shops or the Jerusalem YMCA. This did not seem to diminish people’s openness. I found that I could generally establish rapport with an interviewee through conversation beforehand, providing documentation of the confidentiality of the interview, and being candid about my own background and intentions with the research. I introduced myself as a PhD student in America, a position that holds high prestige in

15

Israel, who studies religious and ethnic identities. I then mentioned that I lived in Israel from 2011-2014 and worked as an editor for Haaretz where I first became fascinated with the Christian community in Israel. Haaretz is a politically left-leaning Israeli newspaper which seemed to signal trust to the self-identified Arabs I spoke with who were understandably concerned about my motivations for asking them sensitive political questions. For the Arameans, who are generally proud patriots of Israel, I mentioned that

I made Aliyah in 2011, the word Jewish use to describe the process of immigrating to Israel and becoming an Israeli citizen. It translates in English to “the act of going up” and often holds profound religious and nationalist connotations. Conveying this aspect of my background immediately seemed to put these participants at ease in sharing their preference for trying to better integrate with the Jewish community.6

I began each interview by asking the participant to tell me about their background, such as where he or she grew up and went to school, the origins of their family in Israel, and the role of religiosity and faith in their lives (e.g., “Did someone in your family think it was important to attend church consistently or pray together when you were growing up? Do you practice your religion today? When and why do you attend church?”). After going through their life narrative, with extensive questions about the social networks in their neighborhoods and schools (e.g., Did you attend school with non-Christians? Did you have any close non-Christian friends? Would your family have been ok with you dating a non-Christian?), whether they thought about joining the Israeli army (mandatory for ) and why they chose the career path that they did, I asked them to tell me

6 I do not have concern that my identity as an American who made Aliyah affected any interviews with Arameans, as they all expressed extreme enthusiasm that an American/Israeli Jew was taking interest in their community. 16 a bit about how they identify today, including among their friends and family, when interacting with non-Christian Israelis, and when travelling abroad. I then asked them to share their general thoughts on Christian-Jewish relations and Christian-Muslims relations (e.g., “How are relations between Christians and Jews today? Do you ever hear about any problems, such as at the airport? Is there anything that could improve this relationship? Has the relationship changed in any meaningful way?”). I found that asking these questions in the abstract versus asking them to tell me their personal opinions resulted in lengthier and more candid discussion. Finally, with my Aramean participants,

I asked them to tell me when they learned that they were Aramean (e.g., if they had heard about this distinct ethnic identity their entire lives or relatively recently), their relationship with Shadi Khalloul, how they manifested their Aramean identity (e.g.,

“How do people you meet know that you are Aramean?”), and the importance of official ethnic distinction.

I transcribed the interviews and subsequently analyzed them with the qualitative coding software NVivo. I likewise transcribed and analyzed field notes from time I spent with Shadi Khalloul (who spearheaded the Arameans’ movement for recognition) outside of interviews. I attended several meetings with Israeli parliament members with Mr.

Khalloul, a national ceremony honoring the Israeli military, and various meetings at non- profit organizations invested in religious pluralism. I likewise spent extensive time at Mr.

Khalloul’s home eating meals with his wife and children, at his brother’s house in listening to Khalloul children sing Christmas songs, and with Mr. Khalloul’s parents who live in the house above him in Gush Halav. I took notes on all these experiences and

17 included them for analysis. After several rounds of inductive coding, key themes emerged, including 1) the salience of religious identity over other repositories of cultural meaning; 2) the realization that a “Christian” identity conveyed important political and social identities in the Israeli context, as opposed to purely religious ideas; 3) the significance of living in proximity to political conflict (e.g., living in Jerusalem versus a village in the north); and 4) Christians’ dismay over their lack of political power and their observation that other groups obtained power in Israel through seeking ethnic distinction, such as the Druze and Bedouin. Upon discovering these themes, I then constructed a codebook and returned to the interviews to deductively code them. I present my findings below.

18

Chapter 4: The Salience of Religious Identity

Introduction

The Middle East is unfortunately a setting that is rife with conflict. Often, this conflict appears to take place along both ethnic and religious cleavages. In other words, conflict in this setting is often between two groups who differ in both their ethnic and religious identities. For example, there has been considerable violence in Egypt committed by Arab Muslims against Coptic Christians7 (Henderson 2005). Likewise, there were both salient ethnic and religious divisions in what is often referred to as the

Armenian genocide8, during which Muslim Turks executed large numbers of Christian

Armenians (The Armenian Genocide 2015). Finally, the century-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict is yet another example of a struggle between two groups who differ both in their ethnicities (Arabs, Jews) and their religions (Muslims, Jews).

One clear implication from the existence of such violence is that ethnicity and religion are both salient social identities in this region. For social scientists, a social identity refers to an individual’s sense of who they are based on what groups they belong to (Tajfel and Turner 1986). In many parts of the Middle East, the existence of violence that falls along both ethnic and religious cleavages suggests that ethnicity and religion are important ways in which people categorize themselves and others. Further, violence along these cleavages suggests that individuals ascribe important meaning to these two

7 Many Coptic Christians do not identify as Arab 8 There is ongoing debate among governments, social scientists, and legal scholars as to whether the violence in the Ottoman empire committed by the Turks against the Armenians can be classified as a “genocide.” 19 identities. For example, individuals may attribute different sets of values to the two identities and make important decisions about their most intimate and long-lasting social ties (e.g., spouses) based on similarities in these identities.

In this light, this chapter explores what sort of importance people ascribe to a religious identity versus an ethnic identity. Does one identity create a more prominent

“in-group”? Does one identity better capture how individuals experience boundaries between groups? As described in the previous chapter on my research approach, I utilize the Christian community in Israel as a case study. There are both salient religious and ethnic differences between this group and the two dominant groups in Israel, Arab

Muslims and Jews. In other words, there are salient religious and ethnic differences between this group and other groups in a Middle Eastern setting in which religion and ethnicity are salient sources of social fracturing. Therefore, Christians in Israel9 are a compelling group through which to generate insight as to what sorts of ideas ethnic versus religious differences convey to people.

I first examine how social identity theory provides a lens through which to address the question of whether people ascribe mores salience to an ethnic or religious identity. After outlining the theory, I then explore similar types of questions that have been asked regarding the relationship between race and ethnicity in the United States.

Essentially, prior research demonstrates that race and ethnicity in the United States are not always experienced as analytically distinct or/or equally significant social forces.

Instead, the salience of each identity is relational and context-dependent. Through the

9 I do not use the phrase “Israeli Christians” as many Christians in this country prefer the national identity of Palestinian 20 lens of social identity theory, these findings indicate the importance of understanding how individuals themselves interpret their identities and group membership. Therefore, this finding adds further support to the need to identify how individuals themselves in the

Middle East interpret the relative salience of ethnic and religious identities.

After this theoretical discussion, I present the empirical evidence. Based on the findings, I argue that individuals place more salience on their religious identities than their ethnic identities for three reasons. First, all but one of the 80 interviewees described how they lead introductions of themselves both within and outside of Israel by calling attention to their Christian identity rather than their ethnic identity. Second, all but one of the 80 interviewees either stated outright that they would prefer to marry or date other

Christians (or that they would prefer for their children to marry or date other Christians) or more diplomatically conveyed that it would be “easier” to marry/date a Christian.

Third, the majority of interviewees called attention to the social and political ideas that a

Christian identity conveys, indicating its general salience in the social environment as compared to an ethnic identity.

Social Identity Theory

The social identity theory rests on the foundational philosophical idea that as humans, we have a strong need for identity (Bloom 1990; Breakwell 1986). Many theorists link this need to the basic survival instinct of the infant, such as Freud and Mead did. As we gain confidence that our physical needs will be met, we turn to the higher- order needs first identified by Maslow (1970), including our desire for the psychological

21 security that we are living in an orderly and predictable world. In other words, as humans we crave “continuity across time and situations” (Breakwell 1986:24). A personal identity that categorically answers “who am I and where do I come from” provides a critical component of this craving for continuity. Indeed, cognizant of this strong identity impulse, Article 8 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child officially codified the right to a personal identity as a fundamental human right (Marshall 2014).

Social identity theory likewise further argues that humans do not only seek a personal identity, such as a name, a nationality, and an understanding of their lineage, they also require a social identity. In other words, we have a strong need to belong to groups, which provide a sense of belonging in the complex social world, as well as self- actualizing qualities like pride and self-esteem (Seul 1999). According to social identity theory, our inter-personal relationships are fundamental to securing a stable sense of self, or again, a feeling of “continuity across time and situations” (Breakwell 1986:24; Tajfel and Turner 1986:16). Finally, a group is conceived of as a set of individuals who hold a common social identification or view themselves as members of the same social category

(Stets and Burke 2000).

In essence, according to the social identity model, humans categorize people to make sense of the social environment (e.g., black, white, Christian, Jewish, American,

Australian, student, teacher). Through a social comparison process, individuals who are deemed similar are categorized with the self and labeled the in-group, whereas persons who are deemed different are categorized as the out-group (Stets and Burke 2000).

Following categorization, evaluation processes occur, during which individuals ascribe

22 meaning and value to their in group. Critically, as Hogg and Abrams (1988) emphasize, the social categories are structured and exist only in relation to other contrasting categories (e.g., Christian versus Muslim). In other words, each contrasting category has more or less power, prestige, and status.

In more concrete terms, individuals conform to the norms of the group in which they have placed themselves (e.g., I am Jewish so therefore I should behave the way that

Jewish people behave) and evaluate the relative positive or negative identity of their groups through comparison with other groups (Cooley 1902; Goffman 1963; Mead and

Morris 1967). Finally, the theory asserts that social categories precede individuals. People derive their identities from pre-existing categories, such as race, religion, and ethnicity, for example. However, every individual is a unique combination of social categories, and therefore the set of social identities making up that person’s self-concept is unique (Hogg and Abrams 1988).

In the following section, I review literature on the relationship between race and ethnicity through the lens of social identity theory. Essentially, scholars have found that these identities are not always experienced as analytically distinct or equally significant social forces. Instead, they hold different levels of salience for different individuals in different contexts. For example, in the United States, black immigrants experience race as a more prominent identity for the formation of in-groups and out-groups (Lee and Bean

2004; Waters 1990), whereas Hispanics inexperience ethnicity as the more salient social category that structures their social experiences (Hitlin, Brown, and Elder 2007; López

2005). Viewed through the social identity framework, this body of work points out that

23 identities are relational and context-dependent. Therefore, rather than assuming that religion and ethnicity are distinct and salient bases of group association in the Middle

East, we must empirically investigate what sort of salience actors actually ascribe to these identities and, relatedly, how these identities are actually informing group formation processes.

The Relationship Between Race and Ethnicity as A Framework

For the past few decades, scholars have debated how to make sense of the relationship between racial and ethnic identities (Brubaker 2009). In a heated discussion between Loveman and Bonilla-Silva, for example, the two scholars debate whether we should theorize race and ethnicity in isolation from one another. In one corner, Bonilla-

Silva (1999) argues that ethnicity and race deserve discrete analytical frameworks, as each has a particular production, visibility, and relationship to power. In the other corner,

Loveman (1999) accuses Bonilla Silva of conflating categories with groups, of assuming that once labels such as black or Hispanic are ascribed to a people, they become real categories of identity. The problem, according to Loveman, is that “it is not axiomatic that membership in a category will correspond directly to experienced group boundaries or social identities” (Loveman 1999:892). For Loveman, the idea that ethnicity and race are salient and distinct bases of group association and identity must be empirically proven.

Thinking through Loveman’s assertion, myriad studies call attention to the fact that people do not experience ethnicity and race as analytically distinct and/or equally

24 significant social forces; separating the two identities for official projects like census reports often means missing the actual ways that people experience boundaries between groups. For example, Hitlin and colleagues (2007) demonstrate that a statistically significant portion of Hispanics in the United States will choose “other” rather than white when provided the option for racial identification purposes. Their Hispanic identity is their racial identity. In this vein, the United States Census Bureau (2017) more recently reported that the “some other race” population, intended to be a residual category, was the third largest race group in both the 2000 and 2010 censuses. As Hitlin and colleagues

(2007) foreshadowed, the large size of the “some other race” category was primarily due to reporting by Hispanics. However, there were also large segments of individuals from

Middle Eastern or North African populations who selected “some other race” (Census

2017). Together, such findings affirm that for many ethnic minorities in America, their ethnicity is their race.

While the above studies imply that ethnicity can supersede race in terms of capturing the boundaries that structure people’s lived realities, other studies suggest that race can sometimes supersede ethnicity. For example, Waters (1994) notes that second- generation West Indian and Haitian American immigrants—at least those who live in inner cities compared to other areas of the country—are more likely to identity as a black

American rather than with their parents’ ethnic origins or as a unique immigrant identity.

Likewise, Haller, Portes, and Lynch (2011) analyzed longitudinal data on the children of immigrants living in San Diego and Miami. The authors constructed upward and downward mobility indices measuring outcomes such as contact with the criminal justice

25 system and lack of completion of high school. Essentially, they find that second and third generation black immigrants experience downward mobility compared to the generally upward mobility that characterized the experiences of non-black second and third generation immigrants.

In a similar vein, Rumhaut’s (2005) analysis of the Children of Immigrants

Longitudinal Study finds that second and third generation black immigrants perform at lower levels in school than all other measured ethnic groups. He concludes that the black/non-black racial divide is so staunchly institutionalized in American society that falling on the “black” side of this dichotomy often leads individuals to recognize this identity as more saliently influencing their lives than their ethnicity. Lee and Bean (2004) draw a similar conclusion in their annual review piece, noting that while racial divides between whites and Latinos may be fading, as measured in part through inter-marriage rates, racial divides between whites and black remain clearly evident.

In sum, as previously stated, the salience of both ethnic and racial identities is relational and context-dependent (Morning 2014). In some contexts, for some people, ethnicity supersedes race as a meaningful category of identity, suggesting that race can function as a component of ethnic identity. A sizeable portion of populations identifying as Hispanic or of Middle Eastern and North African descent, at this distinct historical moment, believes that their ethnicity separates them from the “white” community.

Marking themselves as white on a census or government form makes little sense in terms of capturing their lived experiences, including where they live, who they marry, their health statistics, or access to education. In other contexts, ethnicity functions as a

26 component of racial identity. For black immigrants in the United States, their ethnicity can function primarily to mark them as black, as fundamentally distinct from the white population (Waters 1990).

In this light, I now turn to my interviews with Christians in Israel, who live in a society clearly demarcated by salient ethnic and religious differences (unlike in the

United States, which is clearly demarcated by racial differences). Rather than assuming that ethnicity and religion are distinct bases of group membership, I investigate what salience individuals in this context actually ascribe to different identities. In other words, through the lens of social identity theory, does one identity better capture individuals lived experiences and the way they categorize themselves and others into in-groups and out-groups? My research strongly suggests that religion is a more salient identity for three reasons. First, individuals prefer to draw attention to their religious identities when introducing themselves to other social actors both within and outside of Israel. Second, the interviewees expressed strong preference to marry an individual who shared their religious category. Third, individuals often spoke about the political and social ideas a

“Christian” identity conveyed, indicating the overall salience of this religious categorization in their social environment.

Introductions

I met with Anna at a small café on the campus of Tel Aviv University. It was mid- morning, and she was kindly granting me an hour of her time in between classes and the rush to catch the train that would take her home to Nazareth, known worldwide as the

27 city where Jesus grew up, where Anna lives with her husband and children. Anna is a 35- year-old highly educated woman who attended elite, Christian private schools her entire life. Despite the fact that she grew up in Israel and her mother-tongue is Arabic, she speaks English completely fluently, and is pursuing an English-language MBA through a joint program with an Israeli University and a prestigious program in the United States.

When Anna is not studying or spending time with her family, she works as a controller for a global company, and spends much of her time travelling around the Middle East for business.

After asking Anna a bit about her family background and upbringing, I asked her to talk a little bit about how she thinks about her identity, followed by questions about how she concretely identifies herself when she’s travelling abroad. Here is her explanation of her identity introduction:

I say, ‘I am Christian’ and sometimes I add ‘Arab.’ So, ‘Christian Arab.’ Christian is always at the beginning. It is important to us because we are a minority. Us Christians … we have a lot of things to be proud of because we are Christians, [such as] education, how we accept others, are open to others, respected here and outside [the country], how we teach our kids peaceful values, whatever. So, we will identify ourselves as kind of, you know, Christian Arabs, not Arabs. It is Christian Arabs.

Anna’s explanation of her identity is emblematic of the sentiments among most everyone I spoke with. It makes sense that the Arameans would highlight the salience of their Christian identity, as they are spearheading efforts to formally separate themselves from Muslims. For example, here is one emblematic segment of a conversation I had with

28 an Aramean respondent, a 56-year-old woman living in Gush Halav, the tiny village in the north where Shadi Khalloul is from.

Question: So, when you are outside of Gush Halav, in Jerusalem for example, or in the south, how do you introduce yourself?

Answer: When I meet new people I do not know and they ask, “where are you from?” I say Gush Halav. And I say I am Christian. That is it.

Question: Do they ask if you are Arab or Christian?

Answer: Yes, whenever I meet new people, that is the question.

In a similar example, a self-identified Aramean man probably in his 30s or 40s responded in the following ways to my question, emphasizing the salience of his

Christian identity.

Question: When you are abroad, how do you introduce yourself?

Answer: Christian, Israeli

[Later in the conversation]

Question: Have you changed your [government-issued] ID?

Answer: Next week

Question: And why will you change it?

Answer: I am Christian. I do not want to be Arab.

The last response in the quote above is particularly revealing, the interviewee’s statement of “I am Christian.” In other words, this individual IS his religion. While he

29 views ethnic categorization as a more fluid and permeable identity, religion fully encompasses who he is and reflects the most prominent “in-group” that he belongs to.

While the Arameans’ answers were expected, I was surprised to learn that even many self-identified Arabs like Anna still (mostly) preferred to convey their Christian background as their primary category of identity. In fact, only one interviewee strongly disagreed with this sentiment, a young man in his mid-20s who was living in East

Jerusalem. This individual chastised me throughout the interview, claiming that

Christians and Muslims are all Arabs who all are equally oppressed by the Israeli occupation, and that simply by asking him these types of identity questions I was cooperating with Israeli government efforts to drive a wedge between Christians and

Muslims.

However, Yasmine, an 18-year-old self-identified Arab woman beginning her first degree at Hebrew University, shared sentiments similar to Anna and the rest of the interview participants. She told me that she spends a large amount of time thinking about her identity, as she is one of the few Christian students at the university – typical for public education institutions in Israel. She has many conversations with peers about where she fits in in Israeli society and how she shares her identity with people. In her words:

… when it comes down to it, I know I am Christian. When I have kids, I will baptize them, I will give them First Communion. Like, the rituals are important to me. It is kind of like a secular Jew where they are like, “Okay, I do not really care much for the Torah but yes, my kids will get a bar mitzvah, my kids will do this.” So, to me, Christianity's more of my ethnicity. It is more ritual …, it is less of like a faith-based thing. I prefer to think of faith as like a book that I have to read, but I do not feel a connection to it.

30

While there was considerable dispute among my interviewees as to whether

Christians were ethnically “Arab” or ethnically “Aramean,” as well as where they fell on the “Israeli” or “Palestinian” spectrum, most all respondents explained that their Christian identity more saliently affected the structure of their social life, including their values, where they lived, and who they spent their time with. Nadia, for example, a young self- identified Arab woman in her 20s working as a server at the Jerusalem YMCA while attending graphic design school, informed me that she usually identifies herself as “a

Christian Arab Israeli of Palestinian descent.” She further elaborated that she did not know if that was her “correct” identity, but it was how she understood her place in the world.

Likewise, Mary, a self-identified Arab homemaker in her 30s who lives with her husband and children in East Jerusalem, emphasizes the universality that a Christian identity offers by explaining to me that she introduces herself as a “nationalistic

Christian” to people that she meets abroad, as it helps remove her from the context of the

Arab-Israeli conflict and provides her own unique identity. The small Christian minority in Israel has extensive experience explaining to their non-Christian neighbors exactly where they fit in in this complicated, farraginous society, and therefore can generally thoughtfully articulate how they view their most prominent identities.

Of note, one of the reasons Christians in Israel seem to so strongly identify with their religious group is because they have been marked as different by the rest of the Arab community. For example, Yasmine, the 18-year-old student at Hebrew University told

31 me that she spends a lot of time worrying about ISIS and violence against Christians in

Israel’s surrounding countries Of course, an alternative possibility is that Yasmin is motivated to elevate her Christian identity to distance herself from a radical and highly maligned group. However, she told me:

We are different, because ... So, for example with ISIS, they are ... It is easier for them to turn people against Christians … than to turn people of the same religion against each other. So, they start off with the Christians and then they move on to the … Sunni … Shia, and all those other different groups. But it is easier for them to turn against Christians.

Likewise, Anne, a 55-year-old married homemaker living in the tiny village of

Gush Halav in the north of Israel said that throughout her childhood in Israel, “We always felt, we would go to a lot of places and we would say we are Arabs and Christians and people would say no, you are not Arabs, you are Christians. Even in places we would go, we would talk, and people would not even define us as Arabs.” In general, the

Christian community generally feels that – as one interviewee put it – “As Christians, we know we are different. The [Arabic] language is something we acquired throughout time.

We are speaking the language of others, but in terms of behavior and life, we are totally different than the Arabs. We are Christian.”

All but one of the Christian interviewees I spoke with emphasized how they draw attention to their Christian identity when meeting other social actors both within and outside of Israel. The Arameans in the north typically state that they call themselves

“Christians” or “Christian-Israelis.” Sometimes they describe identifying themselves as

Aramean, though they believe this entails a much lengthier conversation as many people

32 are unfamiliar with an “Aramean” ethnicity. In a similar vein, the Christians in the center cities state that they identify as “Christian Arabs” when meeting other social actors.

Often, in the context of colloquial conversation, they use the phrase “Arab Christian,” as this order aligns better with English grammar, but they emphatically report that they invoke their Christian identity first when meeting new people. Together, these findings strongly support the argument that religion supersedes ethnicity as a meaningful category of identity, or from the lens of social identity theory, religion creates the most salient and meaningful “in-groups.”

Marriage Preferences

Another finding indicating that Christians place more salience on their religious versus their ethnic identity is the fact that all but one of the interviewees indicated that either they themselves would prefer to marry someone else within the Christian religion or, in a similar vein, they would prefer their children to marry someone within the

Christian religion. In other words, for their most long-lasting and intimate social relationships, Christians preferred other social actors within their religious categorization rather than merely within their ethnic categorization. This suggests a strong perception among my interviewees that only someone who shares a similar religious categorization would be aligned on the type of worldview necessary for two partners to raise a family.

Even though many Christians in Israel did view themselves as sharing important similarities with Arab Muslims, such as the type of food they eat or the language they

33 speak, there are still strong and significant boundaries separating Muslims and Christians.

Religion is responsible for the most significant “us” versus “them” categorizations.

To start, a 31-year-old self-identified Christian Arab male from Jaffa shared with me this thoughts about marriage. He had interesting insights during the discussion, as he had attended college at George Washington University and therefore viewed how religion operated in Israel versus the United States in terms of group formation processes. At the time of this interview, this individual was not married, so I therefore asked him if his parents would be ok with him marrying someone outside of the religion. In general, I found that asking someone to talk about what someone else close to them thinks, as opposed to their own thoughts and feelings, elicited more thoughtful and candid discussions. He responded that marrying outside of the Christian religion would be a

“betrayal” to both the family and the larger community. The emotion the word “betrayal” evokes reflects the significance such an act would have on his family. To marry someone of a separate religion would be a betrayal to his tribe. Because of this fact, this interviewee wishes that the word Christian was viewed more as a faith, as it is in the

United States, rather than carrying connotations about lineage, like it does in Israel. In his words:

I think many people here ...view their [Christian] identity, like I said, as like a lineage, and if they break away from it, even if they would like to, it is betrayal to the family. It is betrayal to the larger community. You also need a lens where you view your religion as a faith relationship with God and not as something that identifies you by blood. You are not necessarily born by blood as Christian and so you cannot ... this is the community that you cannot marry outside of.

34

A common theme among many of the interviews in response to questions about whether they would prefer their children to marry within the religion was that marrying outside of the religion would result in a total loss of identity. Such a perspective connotes the idea that if you do not belong to a religious group, you have no group. While you may still share important ethnic similarities with other actors, it is unclear where you truly belong, as religion fundamentally defines people in this context. For example, a self- identified 68-year-old Aramean male informed me that his daughter, who was now married and in her 40s, had been forbidden by him to marry outside of Christianity, as it would result in their kids having no idea “where they belong.” Notably, he employs the words “religion” and “race” completely interchangeably, once more reflecting the idea that religion in Israel (and perhaps in the broader Middle East) connotes biological lineage, as the individual above noted. As this interviewee explains:

No, [my daughter] wants the same religion and race so no. it is not…because it is not good for her or for me, and not good for the future of kids. … about their identity. And with a Christian identity to marry a Muslim, it is impossible. There is a tear in…there is a tear here. Where to connect, what population, what will they do in life? We have something like this in Gush Halav, a Muslim and Christian and they did not pick a religion. And their kids are lost in that bubble. True, their lives on a daily basis are normal but they do not know where they belong. To whom? Where to go?

In a similar vein, another individual more diplomatically conveyed that while he would have “no problem” if his daughter married a Jew or a Muslim, his preference is that it will be a Christian. His primary reasons are because he understands that different religions in Israel “keep to themselves” as well as the fact that Christians in Israel have a distinct “mentality.” The word “mentality” is especially informative, as it strongly

35 suggests that people in this setting ascribe different worldviews and values to individuals along primarily religious divisions. Because of his observations that different faiths keep to themselves and maintain distinct worldviews and values, this individual prefers that his daughter remains true to her deepest “roots.” In his words:

I have no problem that she will marry with a Jew or Muslim. My preference is that it will be a Christian for a few reasons: mentality, identity of her kids. Not because I am “anti.” I have people in my family that married outside, that converted. What happens in those families? Some of the kids are Jews, some are Christians. Some are orthodox, some are modern. Why is this? Because all the faiths want to keep to themselves, they stick to their religion as much as possible. Where does it comes from? People look for framework, and that is in the mosque, church, synagogue. They want to be part of something. … To marry, I prefer to keep our roots, to marry a Christian, and then she will keep the mentality and the traditions. … for example, a Jew that converts? He deserves his mentality, his practices, to celebrate his holidays. (79)

Expressing a parallel sentiment, yet another respondent told me that it was forbidden for her daughter to marry a Muslim because the religion is completely different. In other words, a difference in religious group membership creates complete incompatibility. This social distinction matters more than all other social distinctions.

While a Christian and a Muslim may view themselves as sharing important ethnic and/or cultural similarities, their religious distinction would not yield a compatible partnership.

Of note, this individual similarly shares that she IS Christian, just as the individual in the previous section noted that he IS his religion. In her words:

But even in my family, it is forbidden for my daughter to marry a Muslim. She can only marry a Christian. It is the same for all of my children. Everyone needs to marry within their own religion. Like…only Christians. For me, it is forbidden to marry a Muslim, because his religion is completely different than my religion. I am Christian. How can I marry a Muslim?

36

As a final note, the Israeli state clearly contributes to the institutionalized nature of religious difference. A number of individuals explicated that one reason it would be hard to marry outside of their religious communities is because religious institutions are charged with issuing marriage certificates. For example, a Jewish couple must obtain a marriage certificate from the government-appointed rabbis who issue them, a Muslim couple from government-appointed Imams, and Christians from government-appointed

Christian clergy. In this way, there is clearly a dialectical process through which religious difference creates the significant in-groups and out-groups. In one interviewee’s words:

It would be hard, you know, as a traditional Christian from the city here [to marry a non-Christian]. It would be a lot of work to convince [my parents]. But if I had to, I think I could choose my way, and I am sure my parents would support it … But in Israel, it is really complicated. It is very difficult. If you live here and you marry a Muslim or a Jew, it is not easy to get the certificate of marriage. It is very difficult to marry from another religion.

To conclude, the vast majority of interviewees I spoke with either forthrightly stated or clearly implied that it was critical that both they and their family members married within the Christian religion. Many respondents were surprised I would even ask such a question, answering that “of course” it was important to marry another Christian.

To do otherwise would be to “betray” both their family and their roots, as one individual emotionally explained. For the most long-lasting and intimate relationships in their lives, then, Christians prefer to align themselves with social actors who match their religious criteria. Religion, rather than ethnicity, structures the most salient in-groups and out- groups in a Middle Eastern setting.

37

Christianity As A Political and Social Identity

Finally, respondents were well-aware that their categorization as Christian suggested particular social, political, and even economic identities to the Jewish population – the dominant status group in Israel. For example, from a social perspective,

Christians seem to universally agree that Jews perceive Christians as adhering to more peaceful, western norms than Muslims. From a political perspective, Christians agree that

Jews see them as less of a threat than Muslims in terms of possible terrorist activities.

From an economic perspective, Christians believe that Jews see them as higher educated and more socio-economically advanced, deeming them worthier of civilized treatment.

The complexity of ideas that this religious identity conveys suggests that is a highly prominent aspect of their daily navigation of the social world. It reflects the general salience of the religious identity as compared to the ethnic identity.

To highlight this finding, a young woman living in her 20s living in a predominantly Arab section of Tel Aviv, explained outright that Christianity is a political, social, and economic identity, rather than simply a categorization that reflects your particular belief system. Further, she believes that Christians are well-aware that their religion works to their advantage in daily interactions with the dominant status group. In her words:

As Christians, we have superiority feeling. As Christians, we are very proud … we actually clench to our Christianity, and that is why I fear when people ask me, “Are you Christian?” I am like, "Yes, not because I am actually Christian, I am very atheist, I do not practice, I did not, but because politically, it is so significant that you are Christian here. It distinguishes you completely than being a Muslim

38

or being any kind of other. So, yes, it is political. It is a political identity, and a social, and an economic identity.

Another respondent echoed this sentiment, drawing attention to the fact that a

Christian identity does not necessarily convey much about a particular belief system, but holds other, more important connotations, such as your general paradigmatic perspective on the world. This young, 28-year-old man, who lives in the center city of Jaffa and identifies as Christian Arab, told me that being Christian in Israel is absolutely not something you “choose” but rather is something you are born into. In his words:

… It is a faith identity ... but here, being of any religion, including Christian, it is more of a community identity, like you are born Christian, you are born Muslim, you are born Jewish. It is not just a faith identity. So, you go to church and you go to mosque to worship God, but as others see it, you are born into that community and it is not something you necessarily choose. That is the understanding people have in the United States. That it is something you chose: I became a Christian ... or identify as one. That is how people talk about it [in the United States]. Here, it is that you are born Christian, like your family is Christian.

Other interviewees explained to me that the Israeli Army “helps Christians

[because] they like them more” and that Israeli Jews think Christians are “more open- minded.” Similarly, people told me they draw on a Christian identity to distance themselves from an “Arab” categorization that puts them in the “Muslim zone … which is the enemy.” Likewise, another respondent, who had recently obtained a job at Israel’s

Holocaust Memorial Institute teaching Arab youth about the Holocaust, told me he got the job “because I am Christian. It was very apparent that they only accepted me because

I was Christian.” Just as the individual above explained, belonging to the Christian community in Israel is much more than a faith, it is a political and social identity that

39 quickly communicates important ideas about alliances to the dominant status group in

Israeli society. It therefore sometimes behooves Christians to invoke these norms when navigating different power systems, such as education and the workforce.

Other Christian respondents pointed out that many Muslims ascribe important social and political identities to Christians as well, and in interactions with these social actors, Christians may be motivated to draw on their cultural similarities as Arab. For example, one respondent explained that:

Many [Muslims] have never met a Christian. To them we are just this like alien, foreign thing. They do not know what we are. But then when they realize that, okay, you are Arab, you are human, then they ease off a little. But it depends on exposure. The more they have been exposed to Christians, the less inclined they are to be racist. The less they were exposed to Christians, the more racist they can be.

In a similar vein, another young man living in a tiny village in the north explained that “the Palestinians say Christians who support Israel are traitors, and Jews sees us as

Arabs, not all [Jews] have the awareness that we are not Arab. So, we are stuck in the middle.” Finally, in one particularly memorable quote, a young woman reverberated this sentiment, telling me that “for me, Arab Christians are the missing link for the peace process because we connect a lot of different people. But, people refuse to acknowledge our existence.”

The above quotes signal the fact that a Christian identity structures norms for interaction with non-members of this religious category. With Jews, the dominant status group in Israeli society, Christians may draw on perceived positive facets of their identity, such as adherence to peaceful, liberal ideals. In contrast, with Muslims,

40

Christians may sometimes adhere more to Palestinian norms to convey that they are not

“traitors” supporting a Zionist occupation. Finally, with both Jews and Muslims,

Christians often feel that they should more strongly manifest their identity to ensure that they are not “stuck in the middle”, or worse, completely unacknowledged. This shared struggle that Christians face to constantly negotiate their identity when communicating with outsiders seems to increase Christian group cohesion and group identity. The complicated web of ideas that a Christian identity conveys reflects the salience of the religious identity in their social environment.

Conclusion

The Middle East is a setting in which ethnicity and religion are clearly important ways in which people place social actors into groups and ascribe meaning, such as worldviews and values, to the “types” of people that belong to those groups. In other words, from the perspective of social scientists, ethnicity and religion are clearly important social identities, an individual’s sense of self based on what group they belong to. One way we can infer the fact that ethnicity and religion are prominent social identities is the observation that so much violence occurs along ethnic and religious cleavages. Violence is strongly indicative of feelings of social distance, of a perception that people in a different group are very unlike people in the group in which an individual places him or herself.

In this light, this chapter explores how individuals themselves view the salience of a religious identity versus an ethnic identity. I asked this specific question because a body

41 of work analyzing identity in the United States indicates that paramount identities in this context, race and ethnicity, are not always experienced as analytically distinct social forces. For example, a Hispanic American does not experience the social world in one way because she is Hispanic and in another way because she is white. Instead, her ethnicity encompasses her entire social experience. She experiences feelings of prejudice and exclusion in predominantly white public spaces because of her ethnic difference

(Flores-González 2017). Likewise, a Haitian American does not experience the social world in one way because she is black and in another way because of her Haitian ethnic origins. Instead, her race predominantly structures her social experiences (Waters 1994).

The salience of race versus ethnicity in the United States is relational and context- dependent.

Given this finding that race and ethnicity are not always experienced as analytically distinct social forces in the United States, this chapter therefore explores how minority individuals in a Middle Eastern setting experience the identities of religion and ethnicity. I find that Christians in Israel view their religious identity as a considerably more salient social force. In other words, one’s religious group membership predominantly structures how someone constructs a social identity and experiences boundaries between groups. I infer this finding for three reasons. My interviewees emphasize their Christian identity upon meeting people, they prefer to form their most intimate social ties with other members of the Christian religion, and they believe their

Christian identity is more useful for interaction with Jews, the dominant status group in the region. Like race and ethnicity in the United States, the salience of religion versus

42 ethnicity in the Middle East is relational and context-dependent. More broadly, this chapter emphasizes the theoretical point that, in all parts of the world, it is an empirical question as to how individuals construct their social identities and experience boundaries between groups.

43

Chapter 5: Bright Boundaries

Introduction

In the previous chapter I demonstrated that, in the Middle East, religious identity is more salient for an individual than ethnic identity. The majority of Israeli Christians with whom I spoke view their religious group as the primary and most important group that they belong to. Many Christians, especially those in the center cities, see cultural similarities between themselves and non-Christian Arabs (e.g., Muslim Arabs). For example, they eat the same types of food and speak the same language. But for the most consequential decisions in their lives, such as whom to marry, they seek out and consult actors from within their own religious group.

In this chapter, I expand on this finding and explore how people perceive the relationship between their ethnic and religious identities. I also explore why individuals hold different perspectives on this relationship. These questions are imperative because in various Middle Eastern societies, governments have placed myriad religious groups under one ethnic umbrella and then implemented important policy decisions according to the perceived needs of distinct ethnic groups. For example, at one time or another, the

Israeli government has placed Christians, Druze, and Muslims under the ethnic label

“Arab” and has provided money to “Arab” leaders to improve “Arab” schools. Likewise, the Egyptian government includes Christian Copts under the ethnic “Arab” label, and does not allot this distinct religious minority political representation or funding (Carter

1986).

44

The evidence in this chapter will demonstrate that grouping various religions under one ethnic umbrella is sometimes problematic, as individuals do not always perceive similar ethnic qualities with others outside of their religious groups. Instead, individuals sometimes perceive religion as encompassing their ethnicity. For example, many of my Christian interviewees generally categorize the social world from the perspective that Christians can be many different ethnicities, but Christians are fundamentally different from all other religious groups. Likewise, the fact that the fought for and received official ethnic distinction in the 70s suggests this ethno- religious group did not view over-arching ethnic similarities with Muslims or Christians.

They, too, perceived their religion as encompassing their ethnicity. In sum, the evidence presented in this chapter finds that there are at least two distinct ways that social actors organize ethnic and religious division in their minds. For example, either one ethnicity can encompass different religions, or one religion can encompass different ethnicities.

How individuals perceive the ethno-religious relationship depends (in part) on how they believe they are viewed by a dominant group. In other words, an individual will harbor a particular view based on how a dominant group demonstrates through words and behavior that the individual is fundamentally different because of some distinct quality that he or she possesses. Evidence in this chapter suggests that if individuals are consistently marked as ethnic others by a dominant group, then then they will likely relate more closely to all individuals marked as ethnically distinct, regardless of religious divisions. As a result, these individuals will be more likely to perceive ethnicity as encompassing religion. In contrast, if individuals are marked as religious others by a

45 dominant group, then they will be more likely relate more closely to all individuals in their religious category, regardless of ethnic difference. In turn, they will perceive their religion as encompassing ethnicity.

In sociological terms, the social factor that influences how people perceive the ethno-religious relationship is what type of boundary, or social distinction, is the most salient in their social world (Alba 2005). If ethnicity is the most salient social distinction, then individuals will be more likely to view their ethnicity as encompassing their religion.10 If religion is the most salient distinction in a social environment, then individuals will be more likely to view their religion as their overarching identity that encompasses their ethnicity. More concretely, evidence in this chapter finds that the

Christian/Muslim religious boundary is the most salient division in the villages in the north of Israel, whereas the Arab/Jewish boundary is the more salient division in the center cities, influencing how Christians in each of these settings perceive the general relationship between their ethnicity and religion.11

In this chapter, I begin by reviewing the concept of a boundary, typically understood as a social distinction that affects how people behave toward one another. In the United States, for example, race is an especially salient boundary that fundamentally

11 As discussed in the methods section, the salience of the Arab/Jewish boundary in the center cities is likely a result (at least in part) of the fact that these cities have played key roles in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There was extensive fighting in the years 1948 and 1967 in these religious and economic capitals between “Arabs” and “Jews” (Tessler 2009). As such, many of my Christian interviewees in these settings shared many heart-wrenching stories about the persecution of their families as Arabs in these years. Likewise, because Jerusalem and Jaffa are religious and economic capitals, interviewees perceived a heightened presence of Israeli security and a corresponding perception of anti-Arab discrimination, influencing their identification of a strong Arab/Jewish boundary in this setting (Field Notes December 2016; Field Notes January 2017; Field Notes April 2018; Field Notes May 2018). I discuss these points throughout this chapter.

46 determines how people categorize both themselves and others into groups (Waters 1990).

Further, Blacks, who fall on the numerical minority side of the racial divide, often view race as trumping other components of their social identity, such as class (Waters 1994;

Feagin 1992). Extending this line of work, I draw on my interviews to argue that the most salient social boundary will likewise affect how people view the relationship between ethnicity and religion. Christians in the villages in the north of Israel speak most emphatically about a religious boundary between themselves and Muslims, and view

Christians and Muslims as fundamentally distinct groups of people with no ethnic overlap. Christians in the center cities speak more emphatically about an ethnic boundary between Jews and Arabs, and therefore view Christians and Muslims as sharing a larger ethnic categorization. It is the presence of these different social boundaries that most affects how my interviewees perceive the ethno-religious relationship.

Boundaries

Boundaries have long been of interest to social scientists and are part of a classic conceptual toolkit” (Lamont and Molnar 2002). Social scientists are fundamentally concerned with understanding the nature and implication of social distinction. How and why do people categorize the world into “us” versus “them”? Likewise, how and why do these divisions change, creating new “us” versus “them” categories? How does membership in one category or another influence people’s access to important social resources, such as jobs, houses, and spouses? Finally, what distinctions are the most important for affecting access to these resources?

47

Boundaries are a theoretical tool to help scholars answer these sorts of questions. They are typically defined as “conceptual distinctions that orient social action”

(Alba 2005). In other words, individuals will behave toward other social actors in their environment according to which side of a social boundary they fall on. Critically, boundaries call attention to the fact that social identities such as ethnicity and race are not pre-defined, fixed categories, but rather they are socially constructed and change over time. In other words, because people’s understanding of boundaries change, social groups are continually “constituted and re-configured” (Wimmer 2008:1072). As one example, what it means to be white in early 20th century America was fundamentally different than what it means to be white in 21st century America. In the early 20th century, whiteness required membership in the Protestant religion and an ethnic origin from northern or western Europe. Today, those religious and ethnic qualifications for whiteness have diminished and the whiteness category has expanded.

There are many different types of boundaries that exist in the social world. Put another way, there are many different types of “conceptual distinctions” that orient how we behave toward one another. For example, Alba (2005) identifies citizenship, religion, race, and ethnicity as important boundaries in the United States and Europe. Individuals in the United States and Europe will typically try to ascertain whether someone has citizenship or does not, what religion they practice, and what racial and ethnic groups someone belongs to. We have these categorizations pre-determined in our minds, and we often seek to place people in these categories upon meeting them to place them in some sort of hierarchy. Other scholars have similarly called attention to the salience of class as

48 an important social boundary in the West (Lamont and Molnar 2002). Like citizenship, religion, race, and ethnicity, we have pre-conceived ideas about different class categories, and our minds try to place people into these categories to understand where they fit into societal structures.

Of primary importance for this research, not all boundaries are the same. They can exhibit markedly distinctive characteristics. In particular, some boundaries are

“bright,” meaning they are widely recognized and institutionalized (Alba 2005). When boundaries are bright, the question of who belongs to the dominant status group and who does not is indisputable. Other boundaries are “blurred,” meaning they are not as institutionalized, and it is sometimes possible for an individual to be on either side of the divide (Alba 2005). The primary take-aways are that all boundaries are of greater or less permeability and that different boundaries can be bright or blurry in different settings.

As one example, Alba (2005) demonstrates that religion is an especially bright boundary in France. Roman Catholicism is significantly institutionalized in day-to-day life as a result of the country’s long history of bloody religious conflict that resulted in

Roman Catholicism becoming the mainstream dominant religion (Zolberg and Long

1999). We see this institutionalized nature of the Roman Catholic religion through the fact that recognition of Christian holidays is taken for granted in school and workplace schedules. Likewise, nativity scenes are displayed in post offices and the public square facing City Hall in Paris. Churches can be found in every major neighborhood, though it can be difficult to locate other places of worship, such as mosques (Zolberg and Long

1999). Finally, while it is acceptable to wear crosses, the wearing of headscarves is

49 forbidden. In sum, non-members of the Roman Catholic religion, including the recent influx of Muslim immigrants, cannot help but be aware of their status as outsiders (non-

Catholics, in this case).

In a similar vein, citizenship is an especially bright boundary in Germany. It is exceedingly more difficult to become a citizen of Germany (Alba 2005). Up until 1999, second-generation children were still considered legally foreign-born at birth and had to undergo arduous naturalization procedures to become German citizens. Requirements for citizenship included long periods of residency in Germany, German language fluency, a significant fee, and no police record. While many of these requirements were eased in

1999, applicants for German citizenship today must still surrender previous citizenship, a requirement that has posed a significant challenge for Turkish families who want to remain citizens of due to how inheritance laws work in that country. In contrast, second-generation children who are born in the United States are automatically American citizens (Alba 2005).

Finally, in the United States, race is an especially bright boundary. The position is wide-spread among scholars that, in United States, race is the most difficult boundary to cross. For example, Waters’ (1999) research demonstrates how determinative the black- white boundary is for English-speaking West Indian immigrants and their children. Race fundamentally structures the identity options for the second generation, and in every day experiences, black West Indians are unable to avoid being viewed through the prism of race (Waters 1999; Alba 2005). Likewise, Feagin (1992) demonstrates that despite the economic success of middle-class blacks, discrimination in the public sphere results in

50

“black” superseding other components of their ethnic identity. In other words, in the

United States, for those on the “black” side of the racial divide, race trumps all other markers of social identity.

What is most important in terms of understanding bright boundaries is the fact that they often result in hierarchies, or different groups having differential access to social resources. For example, in France, it is not simply that religion is an especially salient boundary and therefore the influx of Muslim immigrants view themselves as outsiders, it is the fact that Muslims are relegated to marginal positions. For example, Laurance

(2001) points out that as of 2000, the four million Muslims in France had 1,558 prayer spaces in all of France, the vast majority quite small and makeshift. In contrast, there are over 40,000 Catholic places of worship. Likewise, while the state is explicitly required to maintain previously-constructed Christian edifices, there are severe limitations on the construction of new religious sites, which has the most impact on Muslims. Thus, religion in France does not just function as an important distinction by which people are placed into different groups. Rather, it functions to place people in hierarchical groups, and members of the non-dominant religion understand their secondary, marginal social placement through continuous religious discrimination and disadvantage.

Likewise, race is not just an especially salient social distinction through which

Americans are prone to place people into categories and draw conclusions about them.

The more consequential point is that race places people into hierarchical categories that affect access to resources (Bonilla-Silva 1999). Whites, the race in the superior position, reap material rewards across economic, political, and social systems (Bonilla-Silva

51

1999). Haller, Portes, and Lynch (2005) demonstrate this reality through their longitudinal analysis of second-generation immigrant children in San Diego and Miami.

In contrast to white immigrants, black immigrants experienced downward mobility across generations, as measured through failing to graduate high school and contact with the criminal justice system. Further, when people fall on the non-dominant side of the

“brightest” boundaries in their social environments, the content of that boundary ends up trumping other aspects of their social identity (Feagin 1992).

The above literature notes that different boundaries, such as religion, race, and citizenship, hold different levels of salience in different countries. However, evidence in this chapter will demonstrate that there can likewise be within-country variation regarding the salience of different boundaries. Christians who live in villages in the north of Israel perceive religion as the most salient boundary in their social lives. They perceive religion as the most salient boundary because they believe they experience significant discrimination and disadvantage from Muslims, who are the dominant members of their communities, both numerically and in terms of wielding levers of power (Field Notes

April 2018; Field Notes May 2018). In contrast, Christians in the center cities view ethnicity as the most salient social boundary in their lives. They view ethnicity as the most prominent social boundary because they believe they are discriminated against by the Jewish majority as non-Jews. To be clear, in the rural north and the center cities it is the perceived discrimination and prejudice that seems to create the most salient social boundary.

52

Because of the presence of these different types of social boundaries, Christians in these two settings have distinct perceptions of whether ethnicity or religion trumps one another. As a reminder, Feagin (1992) notes that the salience of race in the United States results in members of the non-dominant group perceiving their race as trumping other markers of identity, such as class. In other words, despite the economic success of middle-class blacks, racial discrimination in the public sphere results in a “black” identity taking precedence over other identities. Similarly, the paramount religious boundary in small Israeli villages results in members of the non-dominant group perceiving religion as their most important social marker. In contrast, the paramount ethnic boundary in center cities results in a worldview, for the non-dominant group, that ethnicity trumps religion.

The construction of distinct social boundaries fundamentally affects how people perceive the hierarchy between their religious and ethnic identities.

I. THE BRIGHT RELIGIOUS BOUNDARY IN THE NORTH

During the four weeks that I was interviewing Christians in the villages in the upper Galilee, I lived in a small room in the back of the main Maronite church in Gush

Halav. The majority of Arameans I spoke with live in this tiny village, but there are

Aramean sects of varying sizes across many other localities in Israel. One night in May

2018, the entire village woke to a series of explosions, when Iranian forces in Syria launched missiles into the Upper Galilee that were intercepted a few miles away by

Israel’s Iron Dome’s Missile Defense System. As members of seemingly every household in Gush Halav gathered in the streets at 3am to investigate the noise, I marveled at the 53 uniqueness of the region, of both living in a village where 5 people I had met only the week before called to make sure I was ok, and the severity of the consequences of choosing which groups to align yourself with.

The next day, I ended up interviewing one of the men I had seen on the street the night before, a man in his 50s named Rami who Shadi said had long identified as

Aramean. As per usual, Shadi and I arrived at his house and spent the first 20 minutes sitting with the man and his family on the couch in the tiny living room, drinking Turkish coffee, munching on cake and other sweets, and debating the political implications of the developments the previous night. Mr. Khalloul then provided a lengthy explanation of who I was and what I was doing in their village while encouraging Rami to be candid with me, assuring him that I was simply a PhD student intellectually interested in learning more about the Aramean identity.

After the introduction, Rami and I moved to a quieter spot in the small house.

After the initial walk-through of his basic life history, I asked him to tell me a bit about what his Aramean identity meant to him. Throughout this segment of the conversation,

Rami conveys two primary points. First, that from his perspective, Christian and

Aramean identities are fundamentally intertwined. All Arameans are Christian. Thinking about this relationship in terms of Venn diagrams, for Rami, a religious “Christian” circle completely envelops a smaller ethnic “Aramean” circle. In other words, religion encompasses ethnicity.

Second, Rami, like many other interviewees, intimates that he holds this perspective because of the salience of the Christian/Muslim boundary in his village.

54

Rami describes the presence of the boundary through emphatically disparaging the perceived inequity in the village between Christians and Muslims. The frequency and emphasis with which interviewees invoked this boundary indicates its perceived

“brightness” from their perspectives. Christians in this region did not complain about abuses committed by the Israeli military, as is common for non-Jews in other settings, but consistently lamented the power that Muslims have in their villages compared to them, especially the fact that Muslims will not let Christians teach their history and culture in their shared schools. Because of the perceived disadvantage and discrimination,

Christians in the north of Israel feel fundamentally identified as a religious other, and do not view themselves as sharing any overarching similarities with Muslims. In Venn diagram language, Muslims and Christians are in two completely separate circles.

Further, the Muslim circle completely encloses the “Arab” circle. As such, almost all of the Christians in the north use the words “Muslim” and “Arab” completely interchangeably.

Religion Encompasses Ethnicity

To begin, here Rami describes the intricate connection between his Aramean ethnicity and his membership in the Christian religion. He explicitly told me that “all of the Christians in the Middle East belong to the Aramean people …. [and] all of the

Arameans are Christian.” This is the most explicit example of the worldview in this community that religion trumps/encompasses ethnicity. This is the clearest example of

55 the view that Christians and Muslims are completely different groups (“circles” in Venn diagram lingo), with different lineages, languages, and value structures. In Rami’s words:

Growing up … I felt that I am different. There was not a stage in my life where I believed that I could belong to the Arab people. And in school they always talked about us being Arabs, but I did not believe it. I did not believe it. Especially because we prayed in Aramaic in church. Aramaic and Arabic. But the majority was Aramaic. So, I asked myself, maybe we are not Arabs, so then what are we? Are we Maronites? I always searched for my true identity and I decided … well there is no Maronite nation. It is an ethnicity. We pray in Aramaic and speak Aramaic … So, there is an Aramean people that still exists and still speaks its own language, at church and at home. In Iraq and Syria, there are hundreds of people who speak Aramean there even now. So … I realized that there are Christians in the Middle East and that they are Aramaic. And all of the Christians in the Middle East belong to the Aramean people. At least historically, we belong to the Aramean people. There is nothing else and there cannot be anything else. Of course. I do not want to be defined as Christian alone. I want to be defined as Aramean. Of course, all of the Arameans are Christians.

Like many other interviewees in the north, Rami then discusses his dislike of

Arabs, including his extreme frustration that he had to learn about the history of the

Quran and the caliphs in school as well his understanding that Arabs conquered and murdered Christians throughout history. The fact that Rami invokes the Quran when discussing “Arabs” reflects his view that an Arab identity is synonymous with a Muslim identity. In other words, Rami’s sharp distinction between Arabs and Christians is essentially a sharp distinction between Muslims and Christians. This distinction stands so strongly for Rami because of his belief that Muslims have inflicted harm on Christians throughout centuries. In line with the question of why Rami holds a particular viewpoint that religion encompasses ethnicity, it is because of the salience of the religious boundary

56 in his neighborhood and the fact that he feels marked as a religious other by a dominant majority. In Rami’s words:

… to be defined as Aramean means learning the language, the culture, my history, and not the history of the Quran. I do not need to know what the caliphs did, when they came and conquered my country, our countries, Aramean countries – Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. And how they killed us. And to give my kids names, like [some] Christians do now, of the murderous Arabs—like Khalid? Khalid murdered 70,000 Arameans in Syria. The Christians give their kids names like Khalid. Who is Khalid? He is your murderer. You do not need to know that. I, as an Aramean, need to teach my son his true history and not what [Arabs] put in his head.

Rami, like myriad other interviewees, wants his son to know his “true” history, which for Rami is the history of the Christian people, not the Muslim people. In his mind, there is a strong distinction between these two peoples. Because this is the brightest boundary in Rami’s world, and he is consistently made aware of his religious marginalization by the dominant majority, the content of the religious boundary trumps other components of his identity. Rami views the world from the perspective, “Christians can be many different ethnicities, including Arameans, but Christians are fundamentally different from Muslims.” Rami likewise believes, “Muslims can be many different ethnicities, including Arab, but Muslims are fundamentally different from Christians.”

Later that same day, I had a similar conversation with a Maronite Christian woman in her 40s, who likewise lives in Gush Halav, is a close friend of Shadi’s, and identifies as Aramean. In this segment of the conversation, I was in the middle of trying to understand her thoughts as to what the “rules” should be for someone to officially register as Aramean with the Israeli government, or what sorts of documentation

57 someone should have to provide. In this discussion, she notes that from her perspective, outsiders can register as Aramean as long as they first take the necessary steps to become formally Christian, including undergoing a baptism and conversion. In other words, the first point of entry to the Aramean ethnic identity is to enter the Christian religion. As she explains it:

Question: If someone converted, from being Jewish to Christian, or from Muslim to Christian, can she ever be officially Aramean?

Answer: If she converted? Yes. If she converted and was at the church, then yes. They accept her. It depends on the priest, and how she converts, if she is baptized ... She can do it, but it depends on the priest and how he will accept her, there are certain things she needs to do, like baptism, and praying.

As with the previous interviewee, there is clearly a strong link in this woman’s perception of the perspective that religion encompasses ethnicity. For her, different religions do not share overlapping similarities. Again, in Venn diagram language,

Christians and Muslims constitute two completely separate circles with little overlap, in the minds of the Arameans, though each of these religious circles can have different ethnic circles inside them. Likewise, another respondent implied that his religious and ethnic identities are both fundamentally intertwined and hierarchical. As he states: “To be

Aramean is first of all a faith.” In other words, the most important component of being

Aramean is to be a Christian. Not language or proof of biological lineage, but faith. As long as someone meets this essential requirement, then she can be Aramean. Finally, another man looked me in the eye and succinctly stated: “Look. Our culture is religious culture.” In each of these examples, individuals point out that the first point of entry to an

58

Aramean identity is to enter the Christian religion. Religion is the overarching identity, the most important boundary that encompasses ethnicity.

The fact that so many of my respondents told stories of being awoken to their

Aramean identities through praying in Aramaic at church likewise testifies to their conception that their religion encompasses their ethnic identity. Their ethnic identity is a part of their religion. As Rami explained, these interviewees believe that all Christians in the Middle East are Aramean, and all Arameans are Christian. Their worldview is that religion is the brightest boundary that creates the strongest source of difference between groups of people. For example, one 70-year-old woman told me:

We [always] knew that we are Aramean. But … we did not speak the language; even my parents. We did not know it. We always knew that we were Aramean, from when we were small. But we never spoke the language. Only now are they adding it to the school. The small children, the new generation, I think they have already begun to speak and understand. But we never spoke it. We did not even learn it. But in church the priest would pray, almost all of his prayers were in Aramaic.

A younger individual, a self-identified Aramean man in his 30s who had obtained his first degree in Germany a decade earlier shares a similar narrative of how he understands the relationship between his ethnicity and his faith, and the critical role the church played toward his awakening and conception of his distinct ethnic identification.

Like the woman above, he views his ethnic identity as part of his religious identity. In his words:

Even in Germany, I wanted to do my final thesis on the influence of the Aramaic language, but in the end, I did something about the internet and the language of the internet … But we are Aramaic speakers and pray in Aramaic I knew that back then. We also learned in religious school from the priest. He would teach

59

us. But not so much that we could talk. That was…something just connected to prayer. But … Shadi [recently] began a course to learn Aramaic for older people. And we also started building the Aramaic association here in the village. So, he began it and we run it together.

In sum, as stated throughout this section, the Arameans in the north view religion as encompassing ethnicity. For them, the first entry point to an Aramean ethnicity is a

Christian religion. Ethnic identity is merely a part of religious identity. Religion is the key point of distinction that separates people into different groups.

Perceived Religious Discrimination

An equally (if not more) powerful sentiment expressed exclusively in the north was the idea that renewing and invoking an Aramean identity was in large part also about rejecting an Arab identity, which Christians in this part of the country view as completely synonymous with Muslim. Again, the Christians in the north consistently invoked a strong distinction between Christians and Arabs. The frequent invocation of this distinction reflects the salience of the religious boundary in their villages and its perceived impact on daily social life. Critically, this boundary is hierarchical and therefore manifests through Christians not being afforded the same rights and privileges as Muslims. In other words, Christians are especially attuned to the religious boundary because they feel so consistently marginalized as a religious minority. Because of the starkness of religious discrimination, religion becomes their most salient and important identity that encompasses all other identities.12

12 Since Christians in the north themselves feel the distinction between themselves and Arabs, they would like to make this difference apparent to the outside world through an official Aramean ethnic identity, as I explore in detail in the next chapter. 60

Demonstrating this narrative, one 18-year-old man from a small-town neighboring

Gush Halav explains his constant frustration at being identified as Arab by strangers.

Interestingly, this individual does not seem as concerned about the fact that he has to formally register with the government as Arab. He is more frustrated that individuals in informal social interactions do not understand his true identity. He said to me: “Listen, everyone who sees and hears me when I speak Arabic, he says that I am Arab. But they do not know that I am Christian. Just when they start speaking with me. Understand?”

Expressing an identical sentiment, a woman in her 40s told me that for her, the main draw of a formal Aramean identity is that she will not be categorized as Arab by outsiders. She completely rejects an Arab identity and wants to construct the same boundary in outsider’s minds that she constructs in her own mind. In her words:

In the beginning, I was not Aramean or anything. I wanted to be Christian. My race is Christian. That is what I wanted in the beginning. But when [Shadi] started telling us Aramean and such, we learned there was an Aramean identity, and we said ok. Aramean. The point is, I do not like hearing Arab.13

In similar words, another respondent told me that for him, the Aramean identity meant that “you belong to the Arameans. You do not belong to the Arabs.” Likewise, when I asked someone to clarify the difference between Arabs and Arameans, he invoked religion, telling me that unlike Arabs, Christians place strong emphasis on “forgiving.” In all of these examples, the interviewees strongly imply that the Aramean identity is a rejection of an Arab identity, a reaction to the existence of a bright religious boundary.

13 The importance of Shadi to the Christians in the north construction of their Aramean identity is clear here. I address this fact in-depth in the next chapter, through my discussion on charismatic leadership. 61

The constant invocation of a distinction between Christians and Arab reflects the salience of an overarching religious boundary in this setting.

As previously discussed, Christians are continually reminded of the salience of the religious boundary because they feel marginalized and discriminated by the Muslim majorities in their neighborhoods. It is the salience of perceived religious discrimination that leads to their religious identity encompassing their other identities. In one particularly clear rendition of perceived mistreatment by Muslims, an older woman in her

80s recalled a story her mom had told her about her experiences during a battle in

Lebanon, the ancestral home of much of the Maronite Christian community in Gush

Halav. This woman’s mother impressed upon her the idea that Muslims steal from

Christians and abuse women, including Christian women. As previously noted, this woman uses the labels of “Arab” and “Muslim” completely interchangeably. In her words:

My mom always said “Do not trust any Arabs. Do not trust them to come into your house.” … Our Muslim neighbor in Gush Halav has 5 sons. Girls would be handed out to each one of them. Muslims. They are like that. We are not. We are different. It hurts. But there is nothing to do about it. We have to live with them. It hurts inside but you do not trust them. Not with your money, not with your body. In war, my mom told me that there was one Arab soldier who said, “Where is your money?” … She was pregnant, eight months … he said, “Where is your money?” … He wanted to put a knife in her stomach. So, because of that. Maybe because of that my mom said “Do not trust them. Do not let them into your house.”

Other interviewees implied that the salience of the religious boundary in their villages at this particular point in time is a product of the recent growth of Muslim families. Perceived demographic shifts have made the boundary more prominent and

62 impactful. For example, one of the few white-collar professionals I spoke with who identifies as Aramean and has lived in Gush Halav his entire life described his perception of the cultural changes in the neighborhood as a result of the perceived growth in Muslim families. He laments that Christian holidays are not perceived as special anymore, that

Christians are uncomfortable publicly displaying symbols of their religion, and that

Christians are forced to listen to frequent calls to prayer for Muslims, even at four in the morning. In other words, it is possible that the change in religious culture in the neighborhood has contributed to the brightness of the religious boundary and the related perspective on how ethnic and religious identities interact. In his words:

Christians used to be the majority. For example, for Christian holidays, we used to not study in the school. Nowadays, Christian holidays and Muslim holidays, there is no school. So, it is not special. There is nothing special … So, you know [Christians] are losing the touch. We are losing the touch of our Christianity here in the village. We are looking forward to going back … The behavior of people has also changed. In many villages you do not see Christians put their crosses out, as they used to. Even in Nazareth. You know Nazareth used to be about 60% Christians, now it’s only 20-25%. As another example I can give you, I have got a very good friend, a really good friend called Dr. Moustafa and he is Muslim. And even he tells me that the imam, many times the imam asked him to use the microphones in the morning, at 4 o’clock in the morning, for the prayer … [Christians] do not want to wake up at 4 in the morning.

In another example, an elderly man in his 80s, who has lived in Gush Halav since the day he and his family were expelled from their original village in Israel’s 1948 war for independence, described his perception of the large growth of the Muslim population over the past few decades. Of note, Muslims are generally perceived to have many more children than Christian families, thereby growing at faster rates. From this individual’s standpoint, Christian relations with Muslims were always tense and have only escalated

63 in recent years as the Muslim population has grown. In contrast, he believes that relations with Jews have always been peaceful. In his words:

In my childhood [Gush Halav] was almost 90% Christian. There were a few Muslim families and that was ok. But afterwards Christians started leaving and Muslims started coming here. So today we are in a situation that more or less 65-70% Christian and the rest is Muslim. Of course, currently the relations are okay, but there were a few incidents and it was, let us just say … the Muslims examine the Christians to see if they are “strong” or not. Because [Christians] are strong then [Muslims] say okay, let us leave them alone. We will leave them. But the moment that [Muslims] see, I hope not, but the moment they see that they are stronger [than the Christians], then there can be problems.

Question: So … how are relations between Christians and Jews? Have they changed since your childhood?

Answer: The relations between us and the Jews were always great. [Gush Halav] is the only village in the area that is not a Jewish village. I will not say that it is an Arab village … we are Arabic speakers but we are, I do not personally believe that I am Arab. So, we live with good relations with the [Jewish collectives] here in the area … We are almost cut off from the other Arab populations. We, I remember that we had a soccer team that was, the name was “the Gush Halav team” but there were actually a lot of players in the group from Safsufa, which is a [Jewish community] near us. It is less than a kilometer from here. And until now the relations are really good between us and the Jewish communities and Jewish collectives.

Likewise, the individual in his 30s who had spent many years studying in

Germany expressed a similar perception of change in the social composition of his village. He told me that: “There are a lot of changes [going on] socially. Because when I was here there were not a lot of Muslims here. And after I came back from Germany there were more. Now I know a few people here and not the majority.” The multiple references by interviewees to recent demographic growth in Muslim communities further

64 reflects the salience for these individuals of the religious boundary in their communities, and the related perception that as Christians they are fundamentally different from

Muslims and need to formally solidify this difference through an official Aramean identity. In line with this sentiment, another individual told me that, “The way

[Christians] think is different than the Arab or Muslim way of thinking… It goes back to how [Muslims] teach their kids in homes and education.”

Again, one of the most distressing implications of the salient religious boundary for these interviewees is the fact that their children often have to learn Islamic history in schools. This manifestation of the boundary is what fundamentally makes Christians feel like marginal outsiders and therefore view their religion as their most salient and important identity. Here is one emblematic example of an individual describing this perceived form of discrimination:

Listen. [Christians] love learning our history, but we do not get to. Here in school, they force us to learn the history of the Muslims. And our kids, I have a granddaughter in 6th grade and she says to me, “Grandma, why are they teaching us their history? We are not learning our history.” Because [Arabs] do not allow them to teach the history. All of my grandchildren do not know their history. You want the Muslims to learn their own history, so they should. Why not? But it is also my right to learn my history, correct?

This anger about Muslim control over school curricula was one of the most common theme I heard throughout my interviews in the north. I heard many angry statements such as, “What did they teach us in the school in history? About Islamic history. They never tell us about Christian history” and “We learned Arabic in school until today. Until now they teach Arabic. We learned about Arab history. They did not

65 teach us our history.” Likewise, as noted above, Rami is livid that he spent his childhood learning about the history of the Caliphs and the Quran, when he perceives the Caliphs as instigating genocides throughout time against the Christian people.

To summarize this section, the Christians in the north perceive a bright religious boundary in their villages, in which they are tiny minorities compared to Muslims, who appear to be growing at fasters rates due to the number children they have. Christians perceive the salience of the religious boundary through the discrimination and prejudice they feel they endure as members of a religious minority. Christians consistently feel like a marginalized group through the fact that they cannot learn their history in schools, display their religious symbols, or maintain the Christian character of their communities.

Because of the brightness of this religious boundary, Christians in the north perceive their religion as their most salient, important identity. They therefore tend to view religious difference as the most important form of difference. In other words, they see the world from the perspective that Christians and Muslims are completely different groups of people, with different histories, different worldviews, and different values. Just as a bright race boundary in the United States affects how the non-dominant group

(blacks) organize the salience of their racial and economic identities (Feagin 1992), the bright religious boundary impacts how individuals on the non-dominant side of the boundary (Christians) perceive the relationship between their religious and ethnic identities.

66

II. THE BRIGHT ETHNIC BOUNDARY IN THE CENTER CITIES

Ethnicity Encompasses Religion

In contrast to the Christians I spoke with in the north, the Christians in the center cities of Jerusalem and Jaffa consistently invoke an ethnic distinction in their social setting between Arabs (a group in which they place themselves) and Jews (who they generally perceive as both an ethnicity and a religion). When they discuss how they perceive their identity, Christians in the center cities consistently define themselves as

Arabs in relation to Jews. Further, they generally note this distinction through describing discrimination and prejudice that they and their families have endured for generations as

Arabs in a Jewish state. The salience of the ethnic boundary in these settings is clear from the frequency and emphasis with which these interviewees describe Jewish discrimination and oppression against Arabs. Unlike the Christians in the north,

Christians in the center cities never defined themselves in relation to Muslims, but spoke most frequently about their marginal, secondary status as Arabs compared to Jews.

In Venn diagram language, individuals in Jerusalem and Jaffa generally described their social world from the perspective that a large Arab circle envelops smaller Christian and Muslim circles. In other words, for these individuals, Christians and Muslims share important overlapping similarities as Arabs. This stands in stark contrast to the Christians in the villages in the north, who view Christians and Muslims as fundamentally different groups of people that do not share important similarities. Further, for most of the

67 interviewees in center cities, Jews tended to comprise an entirely distinct group (or

“circle” in Venn diagram lingo), completely separate from Arabs.14

Again, the salience of the Arab/Jewish boundary in the center cities is clear from how emphatically and frequently interviewees in the region discuss the presence of anti-

Arab sentiment. They generally describe their perception of Arabs as marginalized, oppressed, second-class citizens in two ways. First, through sharing stories of what they perceive as genocidal violence that took place by Jews against Arabs (including both

Christians and Muslims) in the wars of 1948 and 1967. During each of these wars, there was violence across many parts of Israel, but there were particularly fierce battles that occurred in Jaffa in 1948 and Jerusalem in 1967, as discussed in the methods section

(Tessler 1967). The narratives of the violence that took place against Arabs in these years in these settings have been passed down through generations and clearly constitute a hugely important part of people’s identities, as the evidence in this section will show.

Second, the interviewees describe their perception of Arabs as second-class citizens through discussing the prejudicial profiling they endure on a daily basis. Because

Jerusalem is a religious capital and Jaffa an economic center, interviewees perceive heightened Israeli security in these cities compared to the north of Israel. For example, there is a strong perception that there are more police officers walking around public settings in Jerusalem and Jaffa than in the north. As such, interviewees in these cities frequently brought up the fact that they feel profiled by Israeli security on a consistent basis, who hear them speaking Arabic and assume they are plotting terrorist activities.

14 However, some individuals did harbor a view that “Jew” was fundamentally a religious designation, and therefore the larger category of ethnicity could include the Jewish religion. 68

Christians in the center cities see themselves as sharing a larger, overlapping ethnic group with Muslims because both groups are discriminated against as Arabs. For these interviewees, ethnicity encompasses religion. This stands in stark contrast to the

Arameans in the north, who feel marginalized by Muslims, and therefore perceive religion as a hugely important source of difference between people.

Jonny, a self-identified Christian Arab15 that I spoke with toward the end of my fieldwork in Israel, explains his general worldview that an ethnicity is a large category that includes many different religions. Jonny owns a store in the port city of Jaffa, which is a section of Tel Aviv heavily populated by Arabs. His family has lived in Jaffa for centuries, and he feels passionate about both Arab and Christian presence in this land and all issues pertaining to his ethnic and religious histories. Emblematizing the sentiments described above, Jonny explained to me during our 90-minute long conversation outside of his store that:

Non-Arabs will not understand, but the name “Arab” has a large meaning, it is a big nation, let us call it, complicated, with many parts inside itself, in this nation. You can find Jewish Arabs who no longer exist because of Israel. They vanished, the Jewish Arab communities in the 50s. You can find Christians who are Arabs a long time ago. In the north you have the Druze, a new religion, so it is a natural thing, that this once great [Arab] nation split into a few religions. Arabs never looked at religion as a nationality like Israelis chose to do. Judaism is not a nationality, but Israel did it by force. Christianity, Islam, these are not a nationality, it is an identity, religious identity, that is it.

15 Although Christians in the center cities identify as Arab, as mentioned in the previous chapter, they still perceive their religion as their most important identity for the construction of in-groups. For example, Christians in the center cities who say that of course they are Arab because they speak the Arabic language still say that they would prefer to marry a Christian rather than a Muslim. 69

In Jonny’s view, Arab is not synonymous with Muslim, as is perceived in the northern villages, but rather is a larger category that has encompassed many different religions throughout its history. I heard similar sentiments from many individuals I spoke with in center cities. For example, another young woman in Jaffa, who works at a high- tech company and spent her high schools year in the United States (and therefore speaks

English especially well), explained to me her perception of the complexity of the Arab ethnicity, and its allowance for multiple religious and national identities. She, too, holds a worldview that ethnicity encompasses religion. In her words:

Arab is a cultural thing. It is a cultural identity that transcends boundaries, so you can be an Arab-Lebanese. You could be an Arab-Syrian. You could be an Arab-Syrian-Jewish person, Arab-Syrian-Christian, Arab-Syrian-Muslim and those are three different categories of identity.

Like Jonny, this young woman sees Arab as a large, complex category that can include people who practice different religions and people who live in different countries.

Unlike the Arameans in the north, in this context, ethnicity and religion are not entirely conflated. To state your religion is not to fundamentally state your ethnicity. In this context, unlike in the north, it makes perfect sense to identify as both Arab and Christian.

Perceived Ethnic Discrimination in the Center Cities: Jews Committed Historical

Atrocities Against Arabs

One of the seminal inferences from the data is that Christians in this part of Israel feel consistently discriminated against as Arabs by Jews, and therefore feel a stronger

70 connection with their Muslim neighbors. One especially powerful way that Christians feel marginalized as Arab is through the re-telling of narratives about atrocities Jews committed against Arabs during the wars of 1948 and 1967. These stories are especially meaningful for the construction of identity because families in this region of the world can often trace their lineage back to a particular city for multiple generations. So, individuals feel strongly connected to their neighborhoods in Jerusalem and Jaffa, and can generally describe in-depth the violence that took place in these cities and neighborhoods and its impact on their families and their communities. For example, one young man in Jaffa told me:

That is the thing about here. That is another thing that people realize when they come here, is how closely people are tied to their community. People do not tend to move away. So, it is not really that crazy for here. People do go back generations. Great-grandparents worked in different places, so my great- grandfather who worked in the orange orchids would go to Cairo to switch seasons. So, he would go catch the train, go to Egypt to work there for a season, and then come back [to Jaffa].

Later, this same individual shares with me a long narrative about his family’s perception of what occurred in Jaffa in 1948, during what Israel refers to as its War of Independence.

The detail and emotion with which he shares this story indicates how important it is to his understanding of his identity. He feels a strong connection to his Arab identity because of his belief that his community was, in his words, “massacred” simply for being Arab. As he describes it:

Like if you take Jaffa in '48, people were exiled from here. It was genocide and terrifying things happened. Jaffa was bombed with a ton of bombs. It was all destroyed. If you see a photo of Jaffa in '48, you say, “Wow.” Berlin got less

71

bombs than Jaffa. Jaffa was erased. From one-hundred fifty-thousand people that were here, only two-thousand five-hundred stayed. And not because they were scared from bombs. They were scared because they saw people dying in front of them and they ran away. You go to the North [of Israel] … There was a war there too, but [Arab residents] were expelled and not killed and murdered and massacred. You go to Jerusalem, they did not have the '48. They had the '67 … all this massacre … if you see the photos, you get shocked. So, [Jerusalem] got the shock only fifty years ago. [Jaffa] got the shock seventy years ago. So, it is different shock, different stories, different narrative. You have a different shock. And now, it is different here. So, every area has a different kind of occupation.

This individual’s perception of the qualitative differences in the types of atrocities

Arabs faced during the 1948 and 1967 wars is an interesting idea that emerged in interviews with Christians in the center. As he explains, while Arabs across the country faced hardships and oppression during these battles, Arabs in Jaffa and Jerusalem witnessed especially high levels of violence. This is because both Arabs and Jews battled fiercely for control over these religious and economic capitals. As such, there are particularly disturbing stories that have been passed down for generations among families in this region, which seminally influence attachments to identities that were perceived as under attack. In other words, the difference in the qualitative types of atrocities committed against Arabs in Israel’s wars –exiles in the north, massacres in the center— may partly explain why individuals in this region have such disparate perspectives on the salience of an Arab identity.

In a similarly emotionally-charged retelling of the trauma afflicted on Arabs during Israeli-Arab wars, another young man in Jaffa told me a harrowing story about his grandparents’ exile from their Jaffa home in 1948. In his words:

72

My grandparents were forced out and were chest deep in water trying to get on boats to survive. They turned back last minute. That is something my grandfather experienced firsthand at nine-years-old. And it was right down here at the Jaffa port. So, that is what I am saying, people did not talk about that because they were traumatized.

Again, the frequency and emphasis with which individuals shared these stories of trauma reflect the brightness of an ethnic boundary in their social environments, which in turn affects their perception that their ethnic identity encompasses their religious identity.

They view their social environment from the perspective, “Muslims and Christians are similar because we both endured horrific atrocities as Arabs.” This stands in stark comparison to the Arameans in the north, who view Muslims and Christians as fundamentally different.

In this vein, yet another self-identified Arab Christian I spoke with shared a longer version of the battle in Jaffa in 1948, describing his grandfather’s harrowing journey to save his paraplegic brother:

The mayor of Jaffa basically...what is it called? He succumbed or gave up the city. So, the remaining people started to flee. My dad’s father, he was nineteen at the time when they started to flee, and they were getting on this smaller boat to make it out to a larger ship that was going to go to either Cairo or Beirut. They did not really know. It was just like, “Let us get on the boat.” So, they were trying to get on. They finally make it on this little boat and they are drifting away from the pier and then my great-grandfather looks back and he sees his brother, who is a paraplegic and no one is helping him on. He finally gets really angry and tells his wife, “You are so worried about your kids, take them and go. If my brother is going to die here, I am going to die with him.” And so, he jumps off. He jumps off and swims back. My grandfather tells the guy to turn around and drop them off. They get dropped off and they go home. Their house was already boarded up and so they stayed in their nook with chickens and lamb until they took up shelter in an abandoned home. And then people reallocated houses and things. But, yeah, that is the experience of many. My wife’s grandfather, his father had gone to war in the first World War. He had

73

fought in the first World War, came back on foot. So, he kind of saw what it was like to be kind of stranded, not be in your own hometown. He said, “I would rather die in my hometown than be a refugee outside of my country.”

Together, all of these narratives of atrocities committed by Jews during the 1948 and 1967 wars strengthen an Arab identity, which lessens the social distance between

Christians and Muslims and increases the social distance between Christians and Jews. In other words, the stories of these atrocities contribute to a perspective that there are two seminal, overarching groups in Israel: Arabs and Jews.

Perceived Ethnic Discrimination in the Center Cities: Contemporary Anti-Arab

Profiling

In a similar vein, because Jerusalem is a religious capital for many different religions and Jaffa is the most important economic center in Israel, there is a perceived heightened presence of Israeli security in these settings and a corresponding perception of frequent anti-Arab profiling. Dealing with the daily hassle of Israeli security is a shared burden that unites Christians and Muslims alike, who perceive Israeli security forces as pinpointing Arabic speakers for extra harassment. One young woman based in Jerusalem told me about the frustration she endures trying to visit family members in the West

Bank, which should only be a 20-30-minute drive, but often requires hours of her time since, in her words, Israel Jewish security does not care about burdening Arabs. She explains:

For me, I do not really get this ... Like I am living life in Israel, and … it is not bothering me that there are Christian, Muslim, and Jewish people. What is really

74

bothering the most, is if I go to the West Bank and I come back to Jerusalem and have to pass security checkpoints. There is a special hour, like, we as Arab Palestinian, going in and out, know the timing. Like at 6am oh, it is going to be fine. At 8am, at 9am, a little longer … the Arabs want to go through the checkpoint, they see it blocked, they start moving on the other side making traffic. Why? Because they do not want to stand in line and wait. Why? Because Israelis have three gates, but they close two and they only keep one open for Arabs to wait.

Likewise, a man in his 40s living in Jerusalem told me that “If you are an Arab driving in Jerusalem and the police stop you, you will definitely get a fine. You will not get out of [the fine]. I know, because at least once a year, I do a film in Jerusalem and the

[Arab] crew is from Jerusalem.” In a similar vein, another young man described moving back to Jerusalem after living in the United States for a for years during the height of the

Second Intifada (the name for a Palestinian uprising). In his words, “when I moved back here at the age of sixteen … things were really tense. Moving around, you could sense discrimination. You could sense people looking at you differently.” Yet another respondent living in Jerusalem told me that he finds discrimination everywhere, on a daily basis, and that “a Jewish person” always looks at an “Arab” with suspicion. In his words:

You find [discrimination] when you go to the airport, when you go to a government office or something. You feel it on a daily basis. Even though [Arabs and Jews] live together, they cannott accept it. A Jewish person always looks at an Arab with suspicion, and the same thing on the Arab side.

Finally, another individual shared with me that during her leisure time in her childhood in Jerusalem, she would go to the mall with cousins but have to take many precautions to avoid profiling by Israeli security, such as hiding her cross and not

75 speaking Arabic. This perception of frequent anti-Arab profiling resulted in her “digging into” her Arab identity to learn more about it. In other words, anti-Arab profiling strengthened her Arab identity. In her words:

I would go out to the mall with cousins and stuff and we would put our crosses inside...tuck them inside our shirt in order to hide the fact that we are Arab. Or we would not speak Arabic out loud in elevators and things because we would get funny looks … You should not have to deal with this. But here, we were used to it. It was just like second nature to do. That is why I started digging into more of the history of the Arab identity in Israel.

In sum, in the center cities of Jerusalem and Jaffa, there is a different invocation of the ethno-religious relationship than what exists in the north. Individuals in this setting generally perceive the social world from the perspective that Arabs are a large group of people that include members of the Christian and Muslim religions. In other words, an ethnicity can include many different religions. The reason for this perspective lies in part with the construction of a bright ethnic boundary in the center cities, as opposed to a bright religious boundary in the north. The presence of the bright ethnic boundary is clear from the frequency and emphasis with which Christians in this region draw a distinction between themselves and Jews. They describe themselves as a marginalized, oppressed ethnicity that has been the victim of genocide and must continue to endure daily anti-

Arab profiling and harassment.

Conclusion

This chapter has explored two distinct ways that Christians in Israel perceive the relationship between their ethnic and religious identities. Christians in the north view 76 their religion as encompassing their ethnicity. In other words, they view Christians and

Muslims as fundamentally distinct, occupying two completely separate circles in Venn diagram language. In contrast, Christians in the center cities see their ethnicity as encompassing their religion. For these individuals, Christians and Muslims share an all- encompassing Arab categorization. The form this relationship takes is clearly related to whatever the brightest boundary is in their immediate social environment. Table 2 summarizes these findings (page 121):

To describe this chapter’s argument in a different way, Christians interpret the relationship between their ethnic and religious identities according to which identity feels more threated in their immediate social environment by a dominant status group. When their religion feels more threatened, they view their religion as superseding other components of their identity. When their ethnicity feels more threated, they view their ethnicity as superseding other components of their identity. It is the presence of a particular form of threat that affects their perception of whether ethnicity or religion is the overarching quality that creates differences between groups. Again, as argued in the chapter one, my evidence shows that (almost) all Christians view their religion as their most salient identity for generally structuring their social life, including hugely consequential decisions such as who they marry. However, the social context affects whether they view themselves as sharing an ethnic categorization with Muslims as Arabs that fundamentally differentiates them from Jews.

In the northern villages, the Arameans perceive that their Christian identity is threatened by Muslims, who are the numerical majority in their neighborhoods. Most of

77 the Aramean interviewees described in depth their beliefs that Muslims refuse to let

Christians teach their history and language in their schools. There were likewise myriad complaints that Muslims were responsible for neighborhoods losing their Christian character. For example, Christians described feeling uncomfortable displaying religious symbols outside their homes and their unhappiness at having to hear Islamic calls to prayer at four in the morning that woke their children. In a handful of interviews, individuals likewise described their perception that Muslims have committed horrific acts of genocide against Christians throughout history. It is because of this perceived prejudice and discrimination that Christians in this region view religion as the most fundamental difference between people. For this reason, Christians in this region are formally distinguishing themselves from Muslims through resurrecting an Aramean ethnicity, as I describe in detail in the next chapter.

In contrast to the Arameans in the northern villages, Christians in the center cities believe that they have experienced prejudice and discrimination by Jews as Arabs. They typically describe this persecution in two ways. First, they discuss perceived acts of genocide that Jews committed against Arabs in Jaffa in 1948 and in Jerusalem in 1967, which were pivotal years in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Because so many families in this region of the world tend to live in one city for multiple generations, the stories of violence that took place during these wars have been passed down from family member to family member, and clearly constitute a hugely important part of people’s identities.

Second, because of the fact that Jerusalem is a religious capital and Jaffa an economic center, interviewees in these settings describe their perception that there is heightened

78

Israeli security in these regions and therefore a related perception of frequent anti-Arab profiling. Because of this perceived discrimination as Arabs in a Jewish State, Christians in the center feel socially closer to Muslims than the Christians in the north. They therefore do not view religion and ethnicity as synonymous, as the Arameans do, but as more complex and distinct sources of identity.

79

Chapter 6: Official Recognition

Introduction

So far in the dissertation, I have argued two points. First, Christians in Israel often view their religious identity as their most salient and important identity for the construction of “in-groups.”16 Second, individuals view the relationship between ethnic and religious identities in at least two ways. They either view one ethnic group as encompassing many religions, or they view one religious group as encompassing many ethnicities. I argue that one key reason for these disparate viewpoints lies in whether individuals view an ethnic boundary or a religious boundary as more salient in their immediate social context.

In this chapter, I shift the focus from individuals to groups and ask why a religious community that clearly places so much value on its religious identity would want official ethnic recognition. As discussed, the Arameans in the north view religion as the most important source of difference in their social environments. They feel strongly that they are fundamentally distinct from Muslims because of their religious differences.

Given this perspective, and this clear emphasis on religion as the most important way of distinguishing people, why did the Arameans seek official ethnic distinction from the

Israeli government? In other words, why did the Arameans want to couch their religious

16 Since Israel has many broad, ecological similarities with other countries in the Middle East, including the primacy the country places on ethnic and religious identities, it may therefore likewise be the case that religious minorities in other countries in the Middle East view their religious identity as more salient than their ethnic identity. 80 distinction in ethnic terms? Relatedly, how did the Aramean movement go about achieving official distinction?

I find that the answers to these questions lie with how minorities in Israel obtain access to political power. Many ethnic minority groups in this country are able to send representatives to government committees associated with the (Israeli parliament) to advocate for their interests. For example, groups that are legally considered ethnic minorities by the Population Bureau in Israel, including the Druze,

Bedouin, Circassians, and of course, Arabs, send elected leaders to represent them on a committee called “The Advisory Committee for Equal Opportunity” that is housed under the Ministry of the Economy. This committee seeks to reduce disparities in employment between the Jewish and non-Jewish sectors in Israel (Speyer 2014). Until the Arameans achieved official ethnic recognition, they did not have representation in this political body. Instead, they were included under the ethnic “Arab” umbrella (Maltz 2014). This is just one example of the myriad political bodies to which Christians in Israel have traditionally not had access.

Given this reality, the Arameans, who generally do not see themselves as sharing similar policy needs with Arab Muslims, viewed the Druze as an important reference group (Shibutani 1955) for how to obtain their own representation in government. The

Druze were likewise an ethno-religious minority in Israel, classified as ethnically Arab by the Israeli government upon the country’s founding. However, in 1957, they, too, obtained official ethnic distinction and now select leaders to represent them for different government bodies focused on minority welfare (Oppenheimer 1978). In this light, the

81

Arameans have sought to emulate the Druze to obtain more power in Israeli politics. In other words, because of their observation that the Druze were successful in officially separating themselves from Arabs and obtaining resources from the state, the Arameans, too, carefully couch their religious distinction in ethnic terms.17

Finally, one of the reasons the Arameans succeeded in obtaining official ethnic distinction is a result of the charismatic leadership (Weber 1968) of Shadi Khalloul, who spearheaded the movement for Aramean recognition. Weber’s concept of charismatic leadership suggests that individuals who lack traditional markers of authority can still obtain passionate followers as a result of their “exceptional” and “superhuman” personalities (1922:48/1968). The vast majority of the Arameans I spoke with referenced

Shadi as exactly that – an exceptional savior-esque figure with both a clear vision and the messianic drive necessary to overcome herculean challenges, such as successfully lobbying for two bills to be passed in the Knesset (as Shadi has done). It is clear from the data that the Arameans endow Shadi with authority because of his charismatic authority, and it is further evident that his leadership has been essential to the success of the

Aramean movement for official recognition.

Throughout this chapter, I ask why a religious group would seek ethnic distinction and how it succeeds in this task. In response to these questions, I make three claims, the first two about “why” and the third about “how.” First, I argue that ethnic distinction is motivated by a desire for direct access to a central political body. While a large body of work describes how distinct groups often cooperate, organize, and build ethnic identities

17 This chapter begs the question of why Christians in the center cities do not likewise identify as Aramean. As described in the previous chapter, the data suggest it is because of their perceived solidarity with Arab Muslims in terms of experiencing violence and discrimination at the hands of Jews. 82 across ethnic boundaries to advance their size and perceived power (Okamoto and Moro

2014), less research describes the process and motivation for contracting boundaries, or essentially creating a smaller group (Wimmer 2008). Second, I argue that reference groups play a seminal role in the decision to undertake the massive challenge of lobbying for distinction. Third and finally, I demonstrate that a religious group can largely succeed in this task through the devotion and ability of a charismatic . Of note, this chapter explores the literature and findings for each of the above three topics, rather than the structure of the previous two chapters in which the entire literature review was presented prior to the findings section.

Political Access and Ethnic Group Formation

For many people, the idea that a group of individuals could “switch” their ethnic identity from Arab to Aramean is surprising. However, a long lineage of sociological research (beginning with Barth 1969) demonstrates that ethnicity can often be a “creative choice” of both individuals and groups (Nagel 1994). Political, social, and economic forces structure the set of ethnic options available to people, who then choose which identity to invoke according to its perceived utility. In this section, after first describing this dialectical process through which ethnicity is constructed, I examine how a central political body encourages specific forms of ethnic boundary construction. In particular, I find that a representative government can encourage groups to seek official distinction, including ethnic distinction, so that the group can directly access the central political arena with their specific needs.

83

Today, research rests on the constructionist view that, as Nagel (1994) articulates,

“the origin, content, and form of ethnicity reflect the creative choices of individuals and groups as they define themselves and others in ethnic ways” (Nagel 1994:152). In other words, ethnicity is not a pre-defined, fixed characteristic. It is an identity that is enacted through categories, “common sense” knowledge, symbols, discourse, and public ceremonies (Brubaker 2009). Further, ethnicity is created and recreated on both an individual and group basis as a result of a dialectical process. First, each of us carries multiple ethnic identities and second, we respond to external forces that encourage particular invocations of different identities.

Nagel (1994) notes that individuals carry a “portfolio” of ethnic identities that are more or less salient in different contexts and with different audiences. White Americans, for example, sometimes emphasize one of their several European ancestries (Waters

1990; Alba 1990), sometimes invoke Native American lineage (Beale 1957; Quinn

1990), and sometimes identify as “white” or simply “American.” Likewise, Espiritu

(1992) notes a layering of Asian-American identity, finding that the panethnic “Asian” identity represents one level, but national origin (e.g., Japanese, Chinese) also remains a seminal basis of identification. In sum, these scholars find that individuals choose from an array of ethnic, pan-ethnic, and nationality-based identities depending on the

“perceived strategic utility and symbolic appropriateness of the identities in different settings and audiences” (Nagel 1994:155).

Of seminal importance for the purpose of this research, ethnicity is not simply a personal choice, however. Rather, social, economic, and political forces in the external

84 environment structure the set of options available to someone (Nagel 1994). For example, since many whites in the United States have mixed ancestry, they can often choose which ancestry to invoke, if they choose to do so at all. In contrast, Americans of African descent are limited to one ethnicity: black (Feagin 1991). In other words, their primary ethnic category is compulsory, ascribed by others. In a similar vein, immigration policy, census designations, and federal law can provide incentives for ethnic mobilization, such as “Latino” groups comprised of members of various national origins who previously had little sense of shared history or culture (Nagel 1994).

Indeed, in this light, there is a fairly substantial body of work discussing how groups with distinct social identities, such as religion or language or national origin, build ethnic identities across ethnic boundaries to amplify their political power (Espiritu 1992;

Okamoto and Mora 2014). For example, the African National Congress in South Africa superimposed the category of “Africans” over the series of segregated ethnic groups the apartheid-state had created, which helped mobilize the disenfranchised majority

(Wimmer 2008). Likewise, Padilla (1986) describes the emergence of a Latino ethnicity among Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago in response to better obtain political resources that were distributed along ethnic lines. Finally, Espiritu (1992) shows how the

Asian-American ethnic identity emerged as a strategy to counter official policies that disadvantaged smaller Asian nationality groups.

In these and myriad other examples, there exists an underlying assumption that, for minority groups, there is power in numbers. In other words, there is power in setting aside certain sources of difference in order to create larger ethnic or pan-ethnic categories

85 that can claim to represent larger swaths of people (and thus receive larger swaths of money). Each of the groups listed in the previous paragraph sought to increase their membership to the highest number possible, reflecting conventional political wisdom that the bigger your group is, the more power and money you will receive. As a further example, in the 1980 and 1990 censuses, Asian Americans were so concerned about the ensuring a large count of their constituency that they demanded the Census Bureau designate nine Asian nationality groups as separate options, so that no Asian American would accidentally overlook checking one of the boxes (Espiritu 1992).

However, empirical evidence gathered for this research highlights the fact that there ae also significant disadvantages to being part of a large ethnic body. For a sub- group that sees itself as distinct in some important way, there is no line of direct access to the central political arena. For example, in theory, Arab representatives to Israeli political bodies represent all matters of “Arab” interest. However, in reality, because there are

1.65 Arab Muslims and 120,000 Arab Christians, political representatives are almost always Arab Muslim leaders who do not care as fervently about, for example, ensuring

Christian private schools are adequately funded. Throughout my interviews, a number of examples arose in which Christians felt under-represented in the Knesset regarding their specific political interests. Specifically, Shadi Khalloul spoke extensively about the lack of support for Christians regarding their employment needs in the Ministry of the

Economy and their education needs in the Ministry of Education.

As Shadi explains, the Ministry of the Economy has a subdivision called the

Employment Commission, which houses a body called the Advisory Committee for

86

Equal Opportunity. This committee seeks to lessen the disparities in employment rates between the Jewish and non-Jewish sectors in Israeli society. They state that their policy is “one of affirmative action” with regard to the non-Jewish sector (Report 1998).

Leaders from each of the ethnic minority communities in Israel are elected to represent the various needs of their communities to the Advisory Committee. There are leaders from Arab, Druze, Circassian, and Bedouin minorities (Report 1998). With regard to the

Committee’s focus on the Arab minority, Shadi believes that most of the efforts were focused on improving unemployment rates in the West Bank, despite the fact that the majority of Christians live in the north of the country. Likewise, according to Shadi, there were zero bureaucratic initiatives to reduce the amplified rates of unemployment for women, as the Arab leaders (again, from Shadi’s perspective) had no interest in helping

Muslim women enter the workforce.

Adding support to Shadi’s pronouncement that Christians required political representatives advocating for their specific employment needs, a common theme in my interviews with Arameans was their struggle to find adequate employment. For example, as one emblematic statement, a middle-aged woman living in Gush Halav explains:

Honestly speaking, in this country, I was lucky to find a job. I never struggled with unemployment and this is kind of a positive light for me, but not for anybody else. Honestly. I know people who have been searching for work since for over three years with no hope. With no hope and no luck. It is not easy … just … to secure your financial life.

Likewise, myriad Aramean interviewees shared Shadi’s perception that Muslims exclusively benefit from affirmative action programs intended to help the “Arab”

87 population, suggesting that Shadi was indeed representing the frustrations of his community rather than driving the agenda. For example, one individual angrily described how his sister had to wait five years to obtain a teaching position within the Ministry of

Education, as the slots specifically designated for “Arabs” always went to Muslims. In this individual’s words:

There is definitely discrimination from the Muslims. What happens? We belong to the Arabs in the situation of today. We do not have a special identity for jobs. [The government] just see us as Arabs. So, what happens is that if there is a defined position defined for the Arab population, so there are 100 Muslims who jump on the position and because [Christians] are just 10% of the Arabs, so of the 100, 10 go out for the position and most of the time Muslims are accepted because they have more power. I can tell you about my sister who studied in university. She wanted to be a teacher. For five years she cannot get into the Ministry of Education because most of the people that have control are Muslim and they prefer their ethnicity, and only after five years could she get into the education system and teach.

Finally, various Christian Aramean interviewees discussed their frustration about the work schedule in Israel. The typical workweek in this country is Sunday-Thursday. It is oriented around the Jewish Sabbath, which takes place from sundown on Friday evening until sundown on Saturday evening. Many of my respondents were understandably upset that they could not attend church on Sunday mornings. Likewise, the individuals that could take time off to pray often could not make up those hours at work and perceived themselves as suffering an economic disadvantage. Thus, myriad

Aramean interviewees wanted someone in the Knesset lobbying for Christians to be able to take off Sunday mornings without an economic penalty.

88

In a similar vein, Shadi and myriad other Christian interviewees likewise do not feel adequately represented regarding their educational needs. Right now, the Ministry of

Education in Israel operates an Arab education system for the Israeli-Arab minority. This system teaches Arab students, in Arabic, about their history and culture. There are also two “educational directorates” with the Ministry of Education operated by the Druze and

Circassian minorities. Shadi and myriad other members of the Aramean community would like to establish a separate educational directorate within the Israeli Ministry of

Education, parallel to those operated by the Druze and Circassians. At the moment,

Christians who attend public school generally attend Arab schools where they learn Arab-

Islamic history. As detailed in the previous chapter, the Arameans are generally furious over their inability to teach their children the Aramaic language in the schools in their communities and ardently proclaim their desire for their own school systems.

These are just a few of examples in which the Arameans, because they have been categorized as ethnically Arab, feel they are disadvantaged for not having a direct line of communication to the central political arena. As a few other examples, there is also the

“Ministerial Committee for the Non-Jewish Sector,” which has focused on increasing the number of Arab, Druze, and Circassian public sector employees, including on the boards of state-owned companies (Prime Minister’s Office 2005). According to Shadi, Christians are disadvantaged regarding this initiative, as slots for members of the Arab minority typically go to Muslims. Likewise, the “Civil Service Commission” ensures that spots are reserved at colleges and universities for “Arab” graduates. Again, according to Shadi, these spots tend to go to Muslims. In each of these (and myriad other) government

89 initiatives, Arameans feel their needs are often completely disregarded because they are grouped with Muslims under an Arab categorization, and do not have someone ensuring their specific desires are met. In Shadi’s words, these government bodies require a

Christian presence to represent Christian needs.

Of note, despite that fact that many Christians in the center cities do not identify as Aramean, these center-city dwellers likewise agree that Christians are disadvantaged regarding their representation needs in the government. They, too, complain about the schedule of the workweek and the fact that Christians do not have more control over school curriculums and funding. In other words, a number of self-identified Arabs likewise convey that Christians suffer from being part of too large of an ethnic group.

Shadi is extremely cognizant of this perception. He has countless stories to share of self- identified Christian Arab school principals, who will not support him officially for fear of alienating Muslims, coming to him in private and stating that they support his goal of establishing a Christian educational directorate in the Ministry of Education. Because of the fact, Shadi ardently believes that Christians in the center cities will eventually register as Aramean, once they see that such a move can genuinely lead to greater political power for Christians.

To conclude this section, in response to the question of why a religious minority may seek ethnic distinction, this research finds that such a movement is partly a response to the way a representative government may be organized. In Israel, the central political arena reserve slots specifically for ethnic minorities, so that people in the non-Jewish sector of Israeli society will have adequate representation. As a result, a religious group

90 that is couched under a larger ethnic categorization is disadvantaged from being included with such a large number of people. Extensive research has documented that ethnic boundaries change because groups of people band together to create ethnic identities across ethnic divisions. However, this research demonstrates that ethnic boundaries also change as groups of actors contract their boundaries to improve their access and representation in the central political arena.

Reference Groups

Related to the perception of lack of access to the central political arena, a number of my interviewees referenced their observation that other minorities in Israel had obtained a direct line of communication with the Knesset by emphasizing their ethnic distinction. My interviewees were quick to bring up the Druze and Circassians, two minorities in Israel who were categorized at one point as Arabs. In other words, these two groups were likewise once minorities within a minority. However, throughout time, each of these minority groups emphasized their cultural and/or religious distinction from the dominant Arab category and gained official recognition by the Israeli state as a distinct ethnic entity. In other words, Shadi and other members of the Aramean community viewed these minorities—and the Druze in particular—as powerful reference groups for their course of action.18

The idea of a “reference group” has become one of the “central analytic tools in social psychology” (Shibutani 1955:562). In the first usage of the concept, Hyman (1942)

18 To my knowledge, no research has yet examined reference groups in relation to ethnicity. 91 talked about reference groups as a point of comparison for evaluating one’s own status

(Shibutani 1955:562). He found that people create different estimates regarding their own evaluation according to the group with which the respondent compares herself. For example, if someone making a few hundred-thousand dollars a year see the middle class as a reference group for affluence, then she will view herself as quite rich. If she compares herself to NFL players, then she may not.

In other words, a reference group is a frame through which people evaluate their achievements, role performance, aspirations and ambitions (Merton and Rossi 1968).

Forthcoming evidence in this chapter demonstrates that the seemingly peculiar behavior of the Arameans— “switching” their ethnic identity from Arab to Aramean—can be explained in part by the fact that they framed their ambitions in reference to the Druze and other ethnic minorities in Israel. The Druze and Circassians served as points of reference to the Aramean community of both the sheer fact that changing one’s ethnic identity was a feasibility as well as the understanding that such an action would result in myriad concrete benefits.

As mentioned, the Arameans were particularly enthralled with the Druze, as they were likewise an ethno-religious minority who successfully emphasized their religious distinction from Arabs to obtain official recognition as an ethnic minority in Israel. I was first introduced to this infatuation with the Druze during an interview with a 50-year-old man in Gush Halav who self-identifies as an Aramean. When we were discussing his thoughts as to why Arameans required official recognition from the government, he told me that:

92

The Druze, for example, benefitted from official recognition. I do not know that they are an ethnic group. They are a religious group. But they presented themselves as if they are an ethnic group. But there is no Druze nation. Druze could be Kurdish as well, for example. But now they are not Arab.

In this quote, the individual notes the often permeable and ambiguous boundaries surrounding ethnic and religious identities. However, he witnessed the Druze, who most

Israelis associate with a unique religion, “present themselves as if they are an ethnic group.” He understands that it is the “presentation” of identity that ultimately matters in terms of obtaining recognition, rather than any historical sorts of religious or ethnic divisions. This individual’s invocation of the Druze without any direct ask on my part reveals the significance of a group for the Aramean’s decision to couch their religious distinction in ethnic terms. From the Druze, this individual understands that the

Arameans did not need any evidence of a nation to prove ethnic identity, they just required a powerful presentation.

Expressing parallel sentiments, another self-identified Aramean interviewee explained to me how the Arameans were strategically trying to emulate the Druze’s approach to gaining power in Israeli society. There is mandatory military conscription for

Jews in Israel, but not for others. While a member of an ethnic minority could volunteer, there is often massive backlash among Arab communities for people seen as trying to integrate in Israeli-Jewish society.19 However, this individual discusses the fact that the

Druze, having formally separated from the Arabs in 1957, now send their 18-year-olds to the army (without the previous backlash they would have suffered as Arabs) who then

19 This backlash is a result of the fact that many Arabs in Israel do not believe the Israeli state has the right to exist and therefore do not view the Israeli military as a legitimate military. 93 enjoy the post-release package that helps their socio-economic standing. This individual clearly views the Druze as a reference point for how the Arameans can likewise better integrate into Israeli society and therefore improve their status and standing in the country. In his words:

The Druze draft to the army, they have to draft as mandatory service. They have all of the conditions, and then they receive plots of land [after their service]. Everyone who finishes the army gets half a dunam to build a house on. They get a release package, they get…most of the Druze go to work for the police and the defense ministry. So, they are recognized as a Druze population. Not Arab. They also speak Arabic. So, I think they really benefited [from formal recognition and integration].

Likewise, a self-identified Aramean woman in her 30s who lives in Gush Halav and works as a middle school teacher in a nearby city, explained to me that she always invokes the Druze minority when explaining to her students what her Aramean identity means. The parallel nature of what makes the Druze distinct from Arab presents an apt and clear analogy. In her words:

Sometimes I write on Facebook [about my identity] and my students ask, “what is Aramean?” They don’t understand at first. I explain that just like the Druze are not Arabs, we are not either. I explain that just like they are Druze in terms of their religion and they do not identify as Arab, we are Aramean because of our religion.

In a similar vein, another individual shared with me that he thought the Druze benefitted from recognition. In particular, they get money as a result of the fact that they have a direct line of communication with the central political arena. For this respondent

94 as well, the Druze are a framework through which he views his own aspirations. In his words:

Money. They get a lot of money from the government. To their villages and to their education and for their service in the army. They have five ministers in the Knesset that help them. There are Druze ministers in the parliament. They work only for the Druze. We don’t have such a thing. We have 13 Arab members that do nothing, I mean everything they do is for the Palestinians.

Yet another interviewee told me it was important for the government to recognize the Aramean people “just like the Knesset approved recognition for the Druze … the country is a democratic country that includes new immigrations from the Soviet Union,

Yemen, all types of countries, all are under one Jewish State … but all under one democratic country.” In other words, similar to the sentiments shared above, there is an entrenched perception that the central government must represent individuals of distinct ethnic/national origins, but that religion should ostensibly be left out of government affairs.

As previously mentioned, the Druze were not the only reference group invoked when the Arameans discussed the need for official ethnic recognition. Myriad Christian interviewees— though predominantly self-identified Arameans—referenced the fact that

Circassians had official recognition as well and reaped benefits from such a status. For example, one self-identified Aramean interviewee described his desperation to no longer be lumped in with the Arabs according to the government. He shared his perception that the Circassians in Israel “have everything they need” in terms of power, status, and rights

“because they have a nationality and a language.” In his words:

95

Look … it’s not there now but at one point [the government] would write Arab on the ID cards. Today, still, if I go somewhere to work … they make me work in the Arab sector. Why? I want to be Aramean in and of itself. Like the Circassians. They’re 5-6000 people in Israel but they have a nationality, a language, they have everything they need because they’re a nationality. A lot of them are even Muslims, even though they are separate. But they are a separate nationality. So, it’s my right to be who I am and not to be what others say I am. I of course speak Arabic, but it is not really Arabic at all. My language is 70-80% Aramaic with Aramaic grammar. The language we speak now. But because of the Arab occupation, what did the Arameans do? They took their language, made it similar to the Arabs so the Arabs would understand them. But it’s not Arabic. Not at all.

As the above interviewee notes, there is a strong perception among minorities in

Israel that claiming a distinct national heritage complete with its own language is a stronger method to win representation within a political body than emphasizing religious distinction alone. Thus, after this individual discusses the Circassian language, he then immediately seeks to demonstrate the fact that the Arameans likewise have their own language. In a similar vein, another interviewee who lives in a village in the north noted his dismay that the Circassians enjoyed “more rights” than the Christians did, due to the face that they have a distinct ethnicity and have better integrated with the Israeli state after separating themselves from Arabs. He told me that:

[The government] gives more [rights] to the Circassians than to us. The Circassians are not far from us. They live here near us, and they give them. I feel it and I see it. Because they draft and serve in the army, and we don’t. So maybe it’s because of that. They also give more to the Druze than to us. Its connected to the ethnicity and the loyalty.

96

Finally, another interviewee told me that “Christians in this country, we need to take care of ourselves like the other minorities – the Druze, the Bedouins, they took care of themselves. The Circassians. They help each other out.”

In sum, other minorities in Israel who have couched their distinction from Arabs in ethnic terms serve as critical reference groups for the Arameans. The Arameans seemingly mercurial behavior of “switching” their ethnicity can be partly explained through understanding their point of view. The Druze, in particular, who couched their distinction from Arabs in religious terms, serve as aspirational goals for the Arameans, who hope to follow their strategy to improve their status and power in Israeli society. In answer to the question of why the Arameans, a religious group who clearly views religion as the most important source of distinction between people, sought ethnic distinction, it is because of their inspiration from other minorities in Israel who followed similar trajectories.

Charismatic Leadership

Finally, in regard to the question of “how” the Arameans won official ethnic distinction, the evidence suggests that charismatic leadership played a central role. Weber first notably defined charisma (1922:48/1968) as a “certain quality of an individual’s personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers of qualities.”

From a sociological perspective, the concept helps us understand why a group of people will endow someone with authority to represent their wishes. The concept is especially useful when someone does not possess other attributes of authority, such as power

97 handed by an official legal body or deriving from some other traditional source (Barnes

1978). Of critical importance to the concept, charismatic leadership suggests that not only must a “charismatic” leader possess exceptional powers, but these features must also be recognized by a group of followers. In other words, for charismatic authority to be enacted, there must be an exceptional bond between the leader and the group (Corcoran and Wellman 2016).

In this section, I first describe the herculean efforts Shadi took to establish official

Aramean recognition in Israel, including successfully passing two bills with the Israeli parliament. The first bill resulted in Christians’ legal separation from Muslims for matters of employment. A subsequent bill established official Aramean recognition. The 10 years of effort on Shadi’s behalf, as well as his collaboration with politicians and academics to persuade parliament to pass the bills, help explain why his followers view him as an

“exceptional” human worthy of leadership. After documenting Shadi’s exceptional activities, I then present evidence from a host of interviewees demonstrating their superhuman perception of Shadi and the strong bond that exists between Shadi and his

Aramean constituency. It is because of Shadi’s charismatic qualities and bond with his constituency that the Arameans achieved official recognition.

As mentioned in the introduction of this chapter, Shadi Khalloul left his hometown of Gush Halav after serving in the elite paratrooper unit of the Israeli military and attended school at the University of Las Vegas. There, he was surprised to hear one of his religion professors declare that the Aramean language “didn’t exist anymore.” In response to such a statement, given that Shadi and his community in Gush Halav had

98 been praying in Aramaic for multiple generations and felt a strong connection to the language, Shadi describes feeling distraught that people did not know about his community. In his words:

The professor said that Aramaic, he said a sentence like, “Jesus was Jewish, and I do not think he spoke English, or Spanish, or Ladino or other languages, he spoke Aramaic. He spoke the Aramaic language, which does not exist anymore.” So, this is where I felt that no one knows about us.

In response to this experience at university, Shadi returned to Israel immediately upon graduating, founded the Aramean Heritage Association, and proceeded to try to revive the Aramean language and improve the lives of the Christian minority in Israel with an almost messianic level of zeal. Here, he speaks with emotion and passion about the desire to preserve the Aramean identity and help all Christians in Israel, regardless of their denomination or self-identification, improve their lives in Israeli society. In his words:

The aim of this association was, and still is, to integrate the Christian Aramaic population in Israel. This population is all of the Christians with all denominations and churches in Israel. These are what I call Arameans, even though they speak Arabic, and even though they describe themselves as Arab, some of them at least, not all. But we are working for all Christians, without any difference, and we are co-existing with the Jewish population. Besides that, the aim is to have the recognition of the Aramaic nationality for us as Christians in Israel, as our forefathers did. We succeeded all of that in 2014.

After founding the association in 2005,20 and obtaining extensive coverage in the news over the following few years for his efforts to revitalize the Aramaic language,

20 For the book I will address if the association was initially supported when Shadi first founded it. 99

Shadi then began the process of lobbying the Israeli parliament to pass legislation related to advancing the welfare of the Christian minority in Israel. The priorities of the Aramean

Heritage Association were, in this order, to: 1) Establish a Christian village in Israel with a cultural center to study and preserve Aramaic; 2) Establish representation for Christians in the Ministry of the Economy’s “Advisory Committee for Equal Opportunity”; 3)

Achieve official Aramean recognition and 4) Establish a separate “educational directorate” for Christians within the Ministry of Education.

Since the Aramean Heritage Association’s founding in 2005, Shadi has successfully accomplished priorities two and three. He has yet to be successful in his ability to establish a Christian village or a separate educational directorate, but remains determined despite the fact that his lobbying has been rejected for the past 13 years and he has experienced death threats and innumerable verbal and physical attacks from Arab leaders.

Bill #1: To Establish a Christian village in Israel

According to Shadi, the first bill that he presented to the Knesset was to establish a Christian village, or more specifically in his words, an “Aramaic Center for the

Maronite community in the village of Bar’am.” The location of Bar’am is highly symbolic for Shadi and many other Arameans. A lot of the Christian community in Gush

Halav used to live in Bar ‘am, but they were expelled by the Israeli military in 1948 during Israel’s war for independence. Since then, the Christians (and their descendants) who were expelled have been repeatedly petitioning the Israeli court to return to Bar’am, even winning a supreme court decision in 1952. However, each time the community

100 came close to actually returning to Bar’am, security concerns arose for the Israeli military preventing the enaction of the decision. Instead of allowing people to return to Bar’am in

1952, the military decimated the empty village instead, over concerns about its proximity to Lebanon. Shadi explains that, regarding his bill to establish a new Christian village and

Aramaic Center in Bar’am, he spent a year collecting signatures from parties across the political spectrum and establishing a close relationship with a Minister in , the centrist political party that was in power at the time. But then elections occurred, the government changed, and the next government rejected the budget that had been allotted from the Ministry of Culture for the project. Despite this rejection, Shadi has continued lobbying for a Christian village for years, and continues to implore me (literally) every time we speak to advocate for this project with the powerful Christian community in the

United States.

Bill #2: To Establish representation for Christians in the Ministry of the Economy’s

“Advisory Committee for Equal Opportunity”

After initiating this bill for a Christian village, Shadi’s next project was to establish Christian representation in the Ministry of the Economy’s “Advisory Committee for Equal Opportunity.” According to Shadi, his primary motivation for this bill was the fact that Arab leaders were not interested in helping women enter the workforce, which was frustrating for Christian women who wanted to work and would benefit from government affirmative action programs. A secondary concern was the fact that a large part of the work on behalf of the Arab minority was focused on the West Bank, where there are not many Christians. What is most compelling about this story, demonstrative of

101

Shadi’s “superhuman” charismatic qualities, is the extent to which Shadi was attacked by

Arab leaders during his presentation to Knesset members about why Christians and

Muslims required separate representation. There is a now (somewhat) famous YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdtanaAo9zQ) with over 30,000 views of

Hanin Zoabi, an Arab member of the Knesset who leads the “” of all Arab parties, being escorted out of the room during Shadi’s presentation after she erupted in verbal attacks declaring that Shadi was a vicious evil-doer. Shadi filed a lawsuit against her and lost, but believes that the Jewish majority in Israel seeing the types of “threats and physical attacks” facing Christians won him the support necessary for the passage of this bill. Christians and Muslims are now legally separate bodies in the Ministry of the

Economy (Speyer 2014).

Bill #3: Official Aramean Recognition

The third bill Shadi initiated was for official Aramean recognition. For this process, Shadi first developed strong relationships with two important allies who he knew would support the bill. These allies were Father Gabriel Naddaff, a Greek-Orthodox priest who touts himself a “spiritual leader,” and Ihab Schlayon, a lieutenant general in the Israeli military. Together, these three individuals founded the “Christian Officers

Forum” to encourage Christian enlistment in the military. After achieving recognition in the media for this project, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Shadi to express his support for this initiative. Netanyahu then arranged a meeting with Shadi, Father

Naddaff, and Ihab Schlayon, during which they discussed the idea of official Aramean recognition. Netanyahu made the appropriate connections – he introduced Shadi to

102

Gideon Sa’ar who was working in the Ministry of the Interior and had the power to instruct Israel’s Population Authority to create a new Aramean category. Sa’ar asked

Shadi to compile “position papers” from academics who could support his assertion that

Arameans were a distinct ethnicity. Shadi spent a year searching for academics willing to involve themselves in Israeli politics, eventually compiled the necessary documents from

“professors at Oxford who do not want their names shared,” arranged a meeting to present the papers to Sa’ar and 10 of his contacts, and succeeded in obtaining official

Aramean recognition (Maltz 2014). Again, the fact that Shadi accomplished this work on his own time, travelling three hours to the Knessest in Jerusalem on a weekly basis while holding down a job in the north as a sort of factory manager, reflects the passionate zeal required for changing government legislation.

Bill #4: Establish a separate “educational directorate” for Christians within the Ministry of Education

Finally, the fourth bill Shadi continues to lobby for is for a separate Christian educational directorate in the Ministry of Education, parallel to the directorates operated by the Druze and Circassians. Shadi has been meeting on a consistent basis with Michal

Cohen, general director for the Ministry of Education. The problem Shadi faces at this point, from his perspective, is that all of the leaders of Christian schools (such as the priests who run the fancy Christian schools in the center city of Jaffa) support him in private but will not make their support public. According to Shadi, everyone he speaks with agrees that it would be better if the Christians could be in charge of their own budgets and curriculums, but they want the government of Israel to initiate such a

103 proposal rather than it coming from them. Again, despite the herculean challenges facing him, Shadi continues to speak about accomplishing this goal with passion, zeal, and an unyielding desire to pass such a proposal through whatever means necessary.

Shadi’s Respect in The Community

As a result of Shadi’s tireless pursuits in support of the Christian minority and his political savvy for actually accomplishing his initiatives, all of the Arameans in Gush

Halav speak about him as a sort of savior figure, indicating the strong bond that exists between Shadi and his followers. I heard myriad comments throughout my interviews such as “we are all with Shadi now. We want Shadi,” “Only Shadi knows our pain. Only one. Shadi. Not anyone else.” and “We need to invest a lot in the next generation. Make more Shadis.” An older man in his 70s spoke in awe to me of Shadi’s “courage” in actually speaking out loud, in public, for policies many Christians had wanted for a long time. In his words:

When Shadi came back from the States and started speaking about the Aramaic heritage, I saw myself at the age of 20, eager to change what I wanted to change and to express my real feelings. But Shadi actually said it in public. Because really these were our aspirations. We weren’t courageous enough. We didn’t have the courage to express them outright, or to be outspoken. When Shadi came and Shadi was…wow. Let’s say he’s very frank.

Other individuals shared similar sentiments that Shadi helped awaken them to their true identities, and they now felt a purpose and passion in life that had previously been lacking. While they had been aware all their life that there was something different about them from Arabs, in large part because they prayed in Aramaic, only Shadi was

104 able to truly “teach” them and help “develop” their sense of identity. For example, one individual explained to me that:

Before Shadi, there was an old man in Gush Halav who I think is 90 years old today. All the time, he would tell us that we’re Aramean. But what is the problem there? He would not teach us and develop us like Shadi does today … He would always explain to us all the time that we are Aramean. But there was no one to teach us and explain it to us. We knew that we’re Aramean, but did not know how. Until Shadi came and taught and explained everything to us.

In a similar vein, another individual stated:

Thanks to Shadi we slowly began to understand what Aramean is and still…there is a summer camp and we go help him. He explains what the Aramean identity is, does a camp for the kids. My daughters are also there with him, help him. My son also helps him and we are there with the Aramean flag and the Israeli flag.

Finally, another respondent likewise informed me that Shadi along helped the community focus on what the Aramean actually meant in terms of their identity. In his words:

We knew it all the time that we had something Aramean within us. It is not like I suddenly discovered it. But we did not have Shadi that would really say to us “Hey, we have to stop for a second and really understand this.” The priest was alone. And I do not think that the priest can be the patriarch in the church and also be involved in Aramaic and everything. This identity is something, it gave us something.

Charismatic leadership is a theoretical tool to help understand why some leaders carry power within their communities despite the fact that they may lack “legal” or

“traditional” types of authoritative status (Weber 1922/1968). Of critical importance to the concept, there must not only be an aspect to the leader’s personality that is

“superhuman,” there must also be a strong bond between the leader and their community

105

(Corcoran and Wellman 2016). Shadi’s unyielding efforts to achieve concrete legislation to improve the lives of the Christian minority in Israel, his political savvy in actually accomplishing these goals, and his consistency in the face of rejection and verbal attacks suggests exactly the type of charisma that Weber was talking about. And the fact that his community speaks about him as a sort of messianic figure who has almost single-handled reinvigorated the Aramean identity reflects the clear bond that exists between Shadi and his community. It is clear that this particular configuration of a charismatic leader with a strong bond to his followers is one of the key reasons Arameans successfully established official ethnic recognition.

Conclusion

This chapter has addressed the questions, why did a religious group that clearly values its religious distinction so highly seek official ethnic distinction? Likewise, how did they achieve this distinction? I find three answer to these questions, the first two about “why” and the last answer about “how.” First, in regard to “why,” a representative government can encourage a group to seek distinction, including ethnic distinction, to achieve a direct line of communication with the central political arena. There is a substantial body of literature demonstrating that ethnic groups construct ethnic identities across ethnic boundaries to increase their size and perceived political power. However, this research demonstrates that there are also significant disadvantages to being part of too large of a group, as you cannot have someone representing your specific interests.

This is especially true in Israel, a country in which the government reserves specifically ethnic spots in its political bodies. Christians, as only a minute component of the “Arab”

106 categorization, have been disadvantaged for being only a religious minority within a larger ethnic minority.

Second, the Christians regarded the Druze as a critical reference group through which they viewed the possibility and benefits of seeking ethnic distinction. The Druze were likewise once a religious minority within an ethnic minority, but successfully won official ethnic recognition from the state in 1957. As a result of their recognition, the

Druze are perceived to have more successfully integrated with the Israeli state, and now serve in the military and reap the socioeconomic benefits of military service. The seemingly mercurial behavior of a religious group “changing” its ethnicity can be explained by the understanding of what group they were comparing themselves to as a reference of possible courses of action to improve their status.

Third and finally, in answer to the question of “how” the Arameans won official recognition, this research suggests that charismatic leadership played a critical role. The

Arameans had a leader who devoted all his energy and free time to achieving the

Aramean’s political objectives. His continued pursuits in the face of relentless rejection and attacks as well as his political savvy in creating allies demonstrates the type of

“superhuman” quality to his personality that Weber initially discussed. Because of these qualities, the Aramean leader has a bond with his community that increases his legitimacy and allows him to effectively represent the Arameans and lead their community. For these three reasons, a desire to more efficiently access the central political arena, the power of reference groups, and charismatic leadership, the Arameans in Israel successfully sought and achieved official ethnic recognition.

107

Chapter 7: Conclusion

This dissertation explores how a particular religious minority in Israel interprets the meanings attached to its religious and ethnic identities as well as the relationship between their religious and ethnic identities. There were three motivations for this project. First, a substantial body of work in the United States exploring the relationship between race and ethnicity notes that minority individuals, such as Hispanic-Americans and Iranian-Americans, do not experience these identities as salient and distinct social forces. They do not experience the social world in one way because of their ethnicity and in a different way because of their race. Instead, these individuals often see their ethnicity as encompassing a “non-white” racial identity as well. For these groups, to state one’s ethnicity is to state a racial categorization. In light of this finding, my research investigates how identities in other parts of the world outside of a United States context relate to one another.

The second motivation for this project, and the fact that I chose the Middle East as a focal point, was the fact that the Middle East is a context in which violence often occurs between groups who differ in both their ethnic and their religious identities. This suggests that ethnicity and religion are prominent social identities that communicate important meaning to other social actors in the social environment. Therefore, I investigate how individuals themselves in the Middle East interpret the meaning and salience of their religious and ethnic identities to understand which identity they see as the most prominent source of difference.

108

The third motivation was the fact that across the Middle East, there has been a conspicuous flowering of “non-Arab” ethnic identity movements among Christian (and other) Middle Eastern minorities. From the Copts in Egypt to the Kurds in Turkey and the

Iraqi Christian political party the Zowaa, various social movements across the Middle

East have contested the imposition of Arabic language and culture over what they perceive as a discrete ethnic identity, and have fought for recognition and political autonomy (Maltz 2014). In particular, a sect of Arabic-speaking members of the Christian community in Israel, whom the Israeli government has long identified as part of the country’s ethnic Arab minority, have revitalized an ethnic identity of Aramean. In 2014, after several years of petitioning the government, the state of Israel legally recognized

Arameans as an independent minority, allowing them to register with the Interior

Ministry as a distinct ethnicity (Maltz 2014). Given these developments across the

Middle East, my research investigates why a Middle Eastern Christian group seeks ethnic distinction as well as how they go about actually achieving it.

Through 80 interviews with Christians in Israel21 in both small northern villages and the center cities of Jerusalem and Jaffa, I argue three points. The first point is that minority individuals in this context view their religious identities as more salient than their ethnic identities. In other words, religion is the primary “in-group” that individuals belong to (Stets and Burke 2000). I infer this finding for three reasons. First, when

Christians in Israel introduce themselves to other social actors both within and outside of

Israel, they highlight their Christian identity above all else, either introducing themselves

21 I say “Christians in Israel” rather than Israeli Christians as many interviewees reject an Israeli identity in favor of a Palestinian one. 109 as “Christian” in and of itself, or sometimes adding “Arab” as a secondary word. Second, the vast majority of my respondents explained that they would prefer that both they themselves and their family members marry someone within the Christian religion. To do otherwise, as one respondent indicated, would be a “betrayal” to their communities.

Seeking others with a similar religious identity for the most consequential and intimate social ties indicates the prominence of this identity over other identities. Third and finally, many of my interviewees described how important their religious identity is to gain favor with the Jews, the dominant status group. For these individuals, a “Christian” designation does not simply convey a faith, but important social and political ideas as well. They perceive that the Jews view them as more educated, higher socio-economic status, and less of a threat to security than Muslims. Together, these findings reflect the importance of assessing how individuals themselves perceive identities and construct group boundaries, rather than assuming that different identities are equally salient bases for group association and formation processes.

The second point I argue is that my respondents harbor different perspectives on how ethnicity and religion relate to one another. I find that how people view the relationship between their religious and ethnic identities varies considerably according to the context of their social environment. The Arameans in the north view religion as fully encompassing their religion. In other words, their religion and ethnicity are essentially synonymous; to state your religion is to state your ethnicity. In contrast, Christians in

Jerusalem and Jaffa do not view ethnicity and religion as conflated. They view themselves as sharing an ethnic Arab categorization with Muslims. The form this

110 relationship takes results in part from whether a religious identity or an ethnic identity feels more threatened in the immediate social environment. Christians in the north perceive their religious identity as under threat, whereas Christians in the center cities perceive their ethnicity as under threat. The source of the threat is related to perceptions of who the dominant status group in the area is—Muslims in the north, and Jews in the center cities.

Finally, the third point I argue addresses why a religious group that clearly prioritizes its religious identity above other identities would seek ethnic distinction and, relatedly, how they actually accomplish this feat. I find two answers to the “why” question. First, ethnic distinction provides a direct line of access to the central political arena. In general, Christians have been disadvantaged by not having political representatives lobbying for their particular needs. Official ethnic distinction addresses this problem. Second, Christians in Israel understand the feasibility of such a social movement through the reference group of the Druze, who likewise converted their status from an ethno-religious minority to an ethnic minority in 1957. Finally, in response to the

“how” question, my research shows that the Aramean’s success in obtaining official ethnic distinction was in large part a result of a charismatic leader.

Notably, there are two significant limitations to this research. First, my methodology relied on snowball sampling, as this was the only feasible way to gain access to members of this unique population. As such, the data I collected may not be representative of the perceptions of the entire Christian population in Israel. However, this research was not conducted from a positivist approach that sought to uncover the

111 complete truth through methods such as triangulation. Instead, I approached this research from a social constructionist perspective, and asked how my interviewees were constructing and interpreting their own social realities in the context of shared realities

(Reczek 2014). My data set of 80 interviewees was large enough to generate key themes to investigate these questions. The second limitation is the lack of engagement with questions about how ethnic and religious identifications affect perceptions of citizenship and related national identifications. For example, I did not address my interviewees’ perceptions about how their ethnicity combined with their religion affected their relationship with the Israeli State. Engaging with these ideas in the future is critical, as initial explorations of how ethnic and religious identities interact indicate serious consequences for attitudes toward out-groups and general integration processes

(Martinovic and Verkuyten 2012).

Together, my findings suggest three important implications for sociological theory. First, it is critical that scholars assess how individuals themselves understand the salience of different identities and experience boundaries between groups. In the United

States, separating categories such as race and ethnicity on official forms like the census assumes that individuals actually experience race and ethnicity as distinct social forces.

For example, it assumes that a Hispanic-American experiences certain aspects of social life in one way because she is Hispanic, and in a different way because she is white. A body of social science research indicates that this is not reflective of lived realities

(Flores-González 2017; Maghbouleh 2017; Hitlin, Brown, and Elder 2007). Instead, a

Hispanic-American views her ethnicity as likewise marking her as “non-white.” In a

112 similar vein, my research demonstrates that in settings where religion and ethnicity are primary cultural markers, such as the Middle East, individuals likewise do not experience social life in one way because of their religion and in another way because of their ethnicity. Instead, religious minorities such as Christians often view their religion as likewise marking them as ethnically distinct from other individuals and groups.

Of course, as the second chapter argues, whether a member of a religious minority views their religion as synonymous with their ethnicity depends on the context of the social environment. More specifically, it depends on what is perceived as the brightest boundary in their immediate social environment (Alba 2005). If religion is the primary social distinction through which individuals draw conclusions about one another, then a religious minority will be more likely to perceive their religion as encompassing all other markers of identity. For example, the Arameans in the north of Israel perceive that their religious identity as threatened by the numerically-dominant Muslim majority in their neighborhoods and as such view religion as the most important source of different between people. In contrast, if ethnicity is the primary social distinction through which individuals draw conclusions about one another, then a religious minority will be more likely relate to all people marked as that ethnicity, despite religious difference. For example, the Christian Arabs in Jerusalem and Jaffa describe a strong perception that they experience anti-Arab prejudice alongside Muslims from Jews. As such, the Christian

Arabs in the center cities view themselves as socially closer to Muslims and ascribe to the idea that they share an ethnic categorization as “Arab” with Muslims.

113

Finally, despite the fact that religion is often perceived as the most prominent source of difference between people, a religious group may seek ethnic distinction if the organization of the political arena encourages this strategy. Thus, while religion may very well be the most prominent source of different and the most salient category for the construction of “in-groups,” minorities may couch their religious distinction in ethnic terms to accrue political power and resources (Wimmer 2008). They may actually succeed in this challenging endeavor if they are advantaged with a charismatic leader who maintains a strong bond with his community. The fact that many religious (and other) minorities across the Middle East are seeking increasing levels of formal ethnic distinction, including the Copts in Egypt, the Kurds in Turkey and the , likely reflects the fact that many Middle Eastern countries allot power according to ethnicity. The fact that the Arameans in Israel have actually succeeded in their quest is a testament to their charismatic leadership.

114

References

Alba, Richard. 2005. “Bright vs. Blurred Boundaries: Second Generation Assimilation and Exclusion in France, Germany, and the United States.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 28:20-49.

“The Armenian genocide.” 2015. Education Journal. 4272015 (230).

Barth, Fredrik. 1969. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. Boston: Little, Brown.

Barnes, Douglas F. 1978. “Charisma and Religious Leadership: An Historical Analysis.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 17 (1): 1.

Beale, Calvin. 1957 “American tri-racial isolates: Their status and pertinence to genetic research.” Eugenics Quarterly 4:187-196.

Bloom, William, 1990. Personal Identity, National Identity and International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 1999. “The Essential Social Fact of Race.” American Sociological Review. 64 (6).

Breakwell, Glynis. 1986. Coping with Threatened Identities. London: Methuen.

Brubaker, Rogers. 2009. “Ethnicity, Race, and Nationalism.” Annual Review of Sociology 35: 21-42.

Connor, Walker. 1978. “A Nation Is A Nation, Is A State, Is an Ethnic Group Is A …” Ethnic and Racial Studies. 1 (4): 377-400.

Corcoran, Katie E. and James K. Wellman. 2016. “People Forget He’s Human: Charismatic Leadership in Institutionalized Religion.” Sociology of Religion. 77 (4): 309-333.

Cooley, Charles H. 1902: Human Nature and the Social Order. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, revised edn 1922

Espiritu, Yen. 1992. Asian American Panethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Feagin, Joe R. 1991. “The Continuing Significance of Race: Antiblack Discrimination in Public Places.” American Sociological Review 56:101-116.

115

Feagin, Joe R. 1992. “The Continuing Significance of Racism: Discrimination Against Black Students at White Colleges.” Journal of Black Studies 22:546-578.

Flores-Gonzalez, Nilda. 2017. Citizens but not Americans: Race and Belonging Among Latino Millenials. New York: New York University Press

Flamini, Roland. 2013. “Forced Exodus: Christians in the Middle East.” World Affairs 176(4).

Goffman, Erving, 1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Golan, Arnon. 2012. “The Battle for Jaffa, 1948.” Middle Eastern Studies 48 (6).

Haller, William, Alejandro Portes, and Scott M. Lynch. 2011. “Dreams Fulfilled and Shattered: Determinants of Segmented Assimilation in the Second Generation.” Social Forces 89(3).

Henderson, Randall P. 2005. “The Egyptian Coptic Christians: the conflict between identity and equality.” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations. 16 (2): 155-166.

Hitlin, Steven, J., Scott Brown, and Glen H. Elder. 2007. “Measuring Latinos: Racial vs. Ethnic Classification and Self-Understandings.” Social Forces. 86 (2): 587-611.

Hogg, Michael A. and Dominic Abrams. 1988. Social Identifications: A Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations and Group Processes. London: Routledge.

Lamont, Michele, and Virag Molnar. 2002. “The Study of Boundaries in The Social Sciences.” Annual Review of Sociology. 28: 167-195.

Laurance, Jonathan. 2001. “Islam in France.” The Urban Institute. http://www.brook. edu/dybdocroot/fp/cusf/analysis/islam.htm

Lee, Jennifer and Frank D. Bean. 2004. “America's Changing Color Lines: Immigration, Race/Ethnicity, and Multiracial Identification.” Annual Review of Sociology 30.

López, Ian Haney. 2005. “Race on the 2010 Census: Hispanics & the Shrinking White Majority.” Daedalus 134 (1): 42-52.

Loveman, Mara. 1999. “Is ‘Race’ Essential?” American Sociological Review 64(6):891- 98.

116

Maghbouleh, Neda. 2017. The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Maltz, Judy. 2014. “Israeli Christian Community, Neither Arab nor Palestinian, Are Fighting to Save Identity.” Haaretz. Retrieved October 16, 2016 (http://www.haaretz.com/israelnews/.premium-1.613727).

Mansour, Johnny. 2012. Palestinian Christians in Israel: Facts, Figures and Trends. Diyar Publisher.

Marshall, Jill. 2014. Human Rights Law and Personal Identity. London: Routledge.

Martinovic, Borja and Maykel Verkuyten. 2012. “Social Identity Complexity and Immigrants’ Attitude Toward the Host Nation: The Intersection of Ethnic and Religious Group Identification.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 38 (9): 1165-1177.

Maslow, H., ed. 1970. Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper and Row.

Mead, George Herbert, and Charles William Morris. 1967. Mind, Self, and Society; From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press.

Merton, Robert K. and Alice S. Rossi 1968. “Contributions to the Theory of Reference Group Behavior.” Pp. 279-334 in Social Theory and Social Structure, edited by R. K. Merton. New York: The Free Press.

Morning, Ann. 2014. “And You Thought We Had Moved Beyond All That: Biological Race Returns to the Social Sciences.” Ethnic and Racial Studies. 37(10): 1676- 1685.

Nagel, Joane. 1994. “Constructing Ethnicity: Creating and Recreating Ethnic Identity and Culture.” Social Problems 41:152-176.

Okamoto, Dina, and G. Cristina Mora. 2014. “Panethnicity.” Annual Review of Sociology 40(1): 219-239.

Oppenheimer, Jonathan. 1978. “The Druze in Israel, as Arabs and non-Arabs: An Essay on The Manipulation of Categories of Identity in A Non-Civil State.” Cambridge Anthropology 4 (2): 23-44.

Padilla, Felix. 1986. “Latino ethnicity in the city of Chicago.” Pp. 153-171 in Competitive Ethnic Relations, edited by S. Olzak and J. Nagel. New York: Academic Press.

117

Penn, Michael Philip. 2015. Envisioning Islam: Syriac Christians and the Early Muslim World. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Quinn, William W. Jr. 1990. “The southeast syndrome: Notes on Indian descendant recruitment organizations and their perceptions of Native American culture.” American Indian Quarterly 14:147-154.

Prime Minister’s Office. “Report of the Government Ministries-Activities in the Non- Jewish Sector in 1997.” 1998. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Retrieved November 26, 2018 at (http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFA- Archive/1998/Pages/Report%20of%20the%20Government %20Ministries- %20Activities%20in.aspx).

Reczek, Corinne. 2014. “Conducting a Multi Family Member Interview Study.” Family Process. 53 (2): 318-335.

Rumhaut, Ruben G. 2005. “Turning Points in the Transition to Adulthood: Determinants of Educational Attainment, Incarceration, and Early Childbearing among Children of Immigrants.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 28(6):104l-86.

Seul, Jeffrey R. 1999. “Ours Is the Way of God': Religion, Identity, and Intergroup Conflict.” Journal of Peace Research. 36 (5): 553-569.

Shibutani, Tamotsu. 1955. “Reference Groups as Perspectives.” American Journal of Sociology. 60 (6): 562-569.

Small, Mario Luis. 2009. “‘How Many Cases Do I Need?’ On Science and The Logic of Case Selection in Field-Based Research.” Ethnography. 10(1): 5-38.

Speyer, Lea. 2014. “Arab Christians No Longer Grouped as Muslims in Israel.” Breaking Israel News, November 26, 2018 at https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/11451/arab-christians-no-longer-grouped- muslims-israel/#Vm0ukGkV6eqXofjS.97

Stets, Jan E., and Peter J. Burke. 2000. “Identity Theory and Social Identity Theory.” Social Psychology Quarterly 63(3).

Tajfel, Henri and John C. Turner. 1986. “The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behavior.” Pp. 7-24 in Psychology of Intergroup Relations, edited by Stephen Worchel & William G. Austin. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Tepper, Aryeh. 2015. “Christians in the Holy Land: Don’t Call us Arab.” The Tower. Retrieved December 2, 2018 at http://www.thetower.org/article/christians-in-the- holy-land-dont-call-us-arabs/

118

Tessler, Mark L. 2009. A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. 2nd ed. Bloomington: Indiana.

Thompson, John. 2014. “Preparing for the 2020 Census; Measuring Race and Ethnicity in America.” United States Census Bureau. Retrieved December 1, 2018 at https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/director/2014/10/preparing-for-the- 2020-census-measuring-race-and-ethnicity-in-america.html

United States Census Bureau. 2017. “Research to Improve Data on Race and Ethnicity.” Retrieved November 30, 2018 at https://www.census.gov/about/our-research/race- ethnicity.html.

Waters, Mary C. 1999. Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Waters, Mary. 1990. Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Waters, Mary C. 1994. “Ethnic and Racial Identities of Second-Generation Black Immigrants in New York City.” International Migration Review. 28 (4): 795-820.

Weber, Max., ed. 1968. On Charisma and Institution Building. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wimmer, Andreas. 2008. “The Making and Unmaking of Ethnic Boundaries: A Multilevel Process Theory.” American Journal of Sociology 113(4):970–1022.

Zolberg, Aristide R., and Long Litt Woon. 1999. “Why Islam Is Like Spanish: Cultural Incorporation in Europe and the United States.” Politics & Society. 27 (1).

119

Appendix: Tables

Table 1: Characteristics of Christian Interviewees

Number of Christian Arab respondents 30

Number of Aramean respondents 50

Live in a village in the north: 48

Live in a center city: 32

Women: 23

Men: 57

Age Range 18-83

Mean Age 42

Education:

Only High School/Trade School 20

First Degree 35

Graduate Degree 10

Unknown 15

120

Table 2: Summary Table of Differences in Perspectives on Ethno-Religious Relationship

Arameans in the North Christian Arabs in the Center Cities

Perception on the Religion and ethnicity are Religion and ethnicity are Relationship Between synonymous. To state you distinct sources of identity. Religion and religion is to state your One ethnicity can contain Ethnicity ethnicity. many different religions.

Perception of Religion. Specifically, the Ethnicity. Specifically, the Brightest Boundary in religious boundary between ethnic boundary between Immediate Social Christians and Muslims. Arabs (including Christians Environment and Muslims) and Jews.

Perception of Why the Muslims discriminate against Jews committed atrocities Boundary is Bright Christians through not letting against Arabs in the 1948 and Christians teach their history 1967 Israeli-Palestinian wars in schools or maintain the and continue to engage in Christian character of their contemporary anti-Arab villages. profiling.

121