“The Holocaust Does Not Belong to European Jews Alone”: the Differential Use of Memory Techniques in Israeli High Schools

YEHUDA C. GOODMAN The Hebrew University of Jerusalem NISSIM MIZRACHI Tel Aviv University “The Holocaust does not belong to European Jews alone”: The differential use of memory techniques in Israeli high schools ABSTRACT A teacher delivers a lesson to a low-academic-track class in a Jewish Israeli high school during the morning of Holocaust Day, right before On the basis of participant-observations of classroom the school’s public commemorative ceremony. The class, seated in the tra- discussions in Jewish Israeli high schools during two ditional frontal arrangement, is composed mainly of Mizrahim (from fam- memorial days, we examine how different ethnoclass ilies whose countries of origin are in Arab lands) and lower-class students. groups within a presumably consensual national Following Ministry of Education regulations, the teacher tries to focus his collectivity remember the nation. We found that students on memories of the Holocaust: “As I was born in 1962,” he says, teachers use different memory techniques with “and grew up between the Six Day War [1967], the Yom Kippur War [1973], different groups of students and in relation to and Sheleg [shorthand for ‘Peace for the Galilee,’ the official Israeli name different historical memories, and we suggest that for the 1982 war in Lebanon], the Holocaust captured my imagination. The doing so variously repositions subgroups toward the past experience of the Holocaust is related to our experience today, to our public sphere. We argue that, to understand need to fight, because others want to destroy us. [. ] I don’t come from the ethnoclass memory work and its differential same Diaspora as these people who went through the Holocaust, but I feel appropriation and refraction along ethnoclass I’m very much connected to it” (Tekhnologit-track class, School A, April 29, divides, scholars need to go beyond the contents of 2003).1 historical narratives and collective ceremonies to inquire into the plethora of memory techniques In a nearby classroom filled with students enrolled in a high-status aca- social actors use. [ethnoclass, national memory, demic track—mainly Ashkenazim (whose families are of European origin) memory techniques, citizenship participation, and middle- to upper-class students—the discussion takes place in a dif- hegemony, Israel, high school] ferent format. Tables and chairs are arranged so that students sit facing each other rather than the teacher. The chalkboard is covered with news- paper clippings about the Holocaust collected by the students and their teacher. The lesson is conducted mainly by the students, and their discussion begins with a debate on the uniqueness of the day and whether Holocaust Day should be observed in combination with Remembrance Day, which is dedicated to commemorating Israel’s military dead. Stu- dents tell personal stories about their recent visits to the death camps in Poland and repeat stories they have heard at home. One student tells her classmates about her grandfather, who ate paper to avoid starving while imprisoned in the camps. Another student talks about his grandfather, a painter who managed to survive by drawing maps for the Nazis. AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 95–114, ISSN 0094-0496, online ISSN 1548-1425. C 2008 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.2008.1548-1425.00008.x American Ethnologist Volume 35 Number 1 February 2008 The other students find the stories moving, and some cry memory consensus and showed how subaltern accounts, (Ben-Tehumit-track class, School A, April 29, 2003). in the face of a dominant version, are expressed through dual meanings, circuitous routes, hidden tracks, and mem- tate-sponsored collective memory work during Is- ory traces (Cole 2001; Smith 2004; Swedenburg 2003). raeli memorial days, including the work done in Continuing this line of inquiry, we ask the pragmatic high school settings, is aimed at incorporating cit- question of how disparate ethnoclass groups come to re- izens into the collective national narrative (Han- member the nation differently in instances of covert social delman and Katz 1998). Still, because the Jewish conflicts. How are social divisions explicated through mem- SIsraeli academic tracking system reproduces ethnic divi- ory work when their overt expression is limited or obscured, sions between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim that are highly that is, when relations between groups are not openly con- correlated with socioeconomic status (Ayalon and Shavit flictual but, rather, take the form of social centrality versus 2004; Swirski 1990),2 we ask how Jewish ethnoclass sub- peripherality? What happens when diverse groups do not groups in the Israeli nation-state remember, when they all necessarily adhere to different national narratives (Wertsch presumably share a hegemonic national ethos. The issue and O’Connor 1994) but actually share a dominant narra- of memory work is especially intriguing in the Jewish Is- tive? In such cases, common notions of a pluralistic pub- raeli context because, in contrast to other countries (e.g., lic space—such as “contestation” and “agency”—which are the United States; see O’Connor 1999), in Israel race and used to account for clear-cut struggles over national mem- ethnic (and, to some extent, class) differences are obscured, ory, appear unfit to capture the intricacies of memory work, downplayed, or even squelched in schools (and in society especially given socially blurred, downplayed, and even sup- at large). For example, students who are marginalized along pressed and denied group differences. In the midst of what ethnic, race, or social-class lines do not fully acknowledge seems to be national solidarity and agreement, differences their disadvantaged position in the structure of opportuni- are worked out in much more subtle ways, in particular, ties described by sociologists.3 Furthermore, although col- through the differential use of “innocent” memory practices. lective memory in Israeli schools is refracted along the di- vide between Jews (Ben-Amos and Bet-El 1999) and Arabs (Al-Haj 1995), and although Israeli–Palestinian national The pragmatics of collective memory: Memory techniques memory has been deeply debated among sociologists and Further insights into how different ethnoclass groups re- historians in recent years (Ram 2003), Jewish students and member may be achieved, we argue, by adopting a specif- teachers do not experience collective memory as a con- ically social-practice perspective. We join recent anthropo- tested terrain of alternative narratives and typically as- logical approaches that have challenged monolithic and sume that there are no differences among themselves.4 This deterministic understandings of national memory by of- widespread assumption creates a public secret around ethn- fering a “bottom-up” direction of inquiry.5 Consistent with oclass memory work, the existence of which forms the social the growing interest in practice theory in anthropology conundrum we examine in this article. (Holland et al. 1998:19–46), psychological anthropology (Desjarlais and O’Nell 2000), and sociology (Schatzki et al. Ethnoclass complexities and memory techniques 2001; particularly in repertoire theory—see, e.g., Mizrachi et al. 2007; Swilder 2003), these approaches emphasize per- National memory and ethnoclass sonal experience of collective memory and aim at analyzing National memories are contradictory and contested per- the mediating space between shared histories and subjec- spectives on the past (Wertsch 2002:24). Social groups do tivities (White 2001). Continuing anthropological research more than “organize” national memories to fit their present into nondiscursive and nonideational mediations of mem- concerns (Halbwachs 1980); they shape them in light of po- ory (e.g., Basso 1996; Battaglia 1992; Bloch 1998; Conner- litical struggles (Gillis 1994), ideological and moral debates ton 1989; Stoller 1995), we try to further develop the con- (Irwin-Zarecka 1994), and power relations (Schudson 1995). cept of “memory techniques.” We attempt to broaden and Social, racial, ethnic, and political disagreement (Devine- deepen the study of the differential ways in which ethn- Wright 2003:14–17) over collective memory may be overt, oclass subgroups remember the nation by examining the with each social group openly debating national memory social situations in which memories are articulated, by ex- (e.g., Barton and McCully 2003) or with one group attempt- ploring the diverse practices through which collective mem- ing to undermine that memory (e.g., Ahonen 1992; Wanner ory is worked out, and by inquiring into how the same 1998:94–108, 141–169). But conflict over collective memory group remembers selected national memories differently. may well be more covert and devious. On the basis of in- By techniques, we mean sets of practices through which sights into postcolonial societies (e.g., Bhabha 1994, 1998), individuals and groups are conceived, shaped, acted on, anthropologists appropriated Antonio Gramsci’s notion of and allowed to act. The notion of “techniques” or “tech- “hegemony” to examine the complexities of a presumable nologies” in relation to human capacities, experiences, and 96 The differential use of memory techniques American Ethnologist subjectivities is derived from Michel Foucault’s (1994) un- axes between various social subgroups (ethnoclass is one derstanding of modern power as a form of practical rea- major axis of conflict). Second, schools reproduce sociocul-

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