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This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to examine the lives and afterlives of Arabic and Hebrew in Israeli literature, culture, and society. Hebrew is the spiritual, historical, and ideological cornerstone of the State of Israel, and Hebrew literature, having accompanied the national project from its inception, is an integral part of Israeli society. Yet in its broader geopolitical context, Hebrew is the language of a small state that views itself as an embattled island in a hostile Arabic-language sea. The book presents an alternative story of the evolution of language and ideology in the Jewish state. It takes a long historical perspective, beginning not in 1948 with the foundation of the state but rather at the turn of the century, with the early days of Zionist settlement in Palestine. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter discusses a series of struggles that took place in the course of the 20th century over the cultural character of Israeli law. In the first half of the century, a ‘Movement for the Revival of Hebrew Law’ was active in Eretz Israel. It strove to fashion Israeli law in accordance with the contents of the Halakhah, after adaptation to modern jurisprudence. The development of the law in the State of Israel, however, followed an entirely different course. During the thirty years of the British government over Palestine (1918–48), the local legal community underwent an extensive process of Anglicization. In its wake, the law of the State of Israel developed in close association with Anglo-American law and with the political theory that underlies it — liberalism. The call for a linkage between Israeli law and the Halakhah was reasserted following two legislative developments in the 1980s and 1990s. The first was the enactment of the Foundations of Law statute in 1980, stating that among the sources for filling lacuna in the law are ‘the principles of freedom, justice, equity, and peace of Israel's heritage’. The second was the enactment in 1992 of the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, and Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation. These two Basic Laws defined Israel as a ‘Jewish and democratic state’. The grant of standing to ‘Jewish heritage’ in the country's law and definition of Israel as a ‘Jewish state’ served as the basis for a claim that it is the legislative intention to develop Israeli law in affinity with the Halakhah. Supreme Court Justices Menachem Elon and Aharon Barak engaged in a vigorous debate over the cultural orientation to be adopted in the development of Israeli law in the ensuing decades. The debate shed light not only on the two options relevant to the future development of Israeli law, but also on the two main cultural options between which the Jewish people has vacillate! d in the modern era: Western culture and traditional Jewish culture.

This chapter investigates the first of three external challenges which defined Jewish life in western Europe in the late 1940s and 1950s. This was the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. For the first time in modern history, Jews could choose whether or not to live in the diaspora. There were hundreds of survivors in Belgium, France, and the Netherlands who were convinced that they had no future in Europe and migrated to Palestine as soon as they could. Those who chose not to were now forced to think more seriously about their decision to remain in western Europe. Zionist stalwarts, in particular, were challenged to reassess their role now that the Jewish state was a reality. What resulted was a transformation in collective and personal behaviour and attitudes that largely strengthened collective Jewish identity and commitment.

This chapter offers some principles for the constitution of Israel's regime, political culture, and law given the country's multicultural condition. First, Israeli liberals need to pursue actively the preservation and cultivation of Israel's liberal democratic regime. Second, since so many Israelis (both Jews and Arabs) are religious, of the two variants of liberal political theory, namely comprehensive and political liberalism, Israel should opt for the political rather than the comprehensive. Israel may count on the possibility of collaboration between secular liberals (both Jewish and Arab) and religious Zionists in establishing a Rawlsian overlapping consensus in favor of the preservation and further cultivation of the country's liberal-democratic regime, political culture, and law. Third, Israel should be viewed as a Jewish state in the sense of enabling different groups of Jews to develop their unique Jewish cultures. Israel should be seen as ‘the state of the Jews’ rather than a ‘Jewish state’. Fourth, Israel should cultivate and emphasize Israeliness as an inclusive super-category that encompasses all its citizens, both Jewish and Arab. Fifth, Israel should add to its current definition as a ‘Jewish and democratic state’ a third element of identity, that of a ‘multicultural state’. In the alternative, Israel should find a way to add to the current definition of its identity an element that will express the existence in the country of an Arab national minority. Sixth, Israel should create a new equilibrium between uniformity and diversity in its life. On the one hand, while most of the law of the state should be uniform, some of it will remain differential. On the other hand, Israel should make the republican ideal of the common good an important ideal in its political culture.

This chapter explores the period from 1914 and the beginning of World War I through the end of World War II. The world changed, and so too did the foreign policy beliefs of American Jews—but not as much as might have been expected given this long stretch of murderous anti-Semitism. The American Jewish Committee went to Paris after World War I with the agenda of convincing the victors to force the new national states of Europe to recognize the fundamental rights of minorities and to lobby for a League of Nations with responsibility for monitoring and enforcing those rights. At the same time, there was a slow, cautious acceptance of Zionism. However, not all Zionisms are alike, and as American Jews increased their support for Zionism, they also gravitated toward a version that did not hinge exclusively on the Jewish state.

The Peel Commission Report conceals within its confident espousal of partition a struggle over the definitions of Palestine, the Jewish National Home, Arab nationalism, and British obligations under the Palestine mandate and the mandates system more broadly. It simultaneously reflects and obscures the rifts within the Commission, and the input of British military and official, Jewish and Arab voices. The very form of the Report was determined to some degree by the compromise brokered by Rumbold between Hammond, who wanted the Report to focus almost exclusively on recommendations for dealing with Arab and Jewish grievances under the terms of the mandate, and Coupland, who felt that partition deserved to be placed front and center. As Rumbold suggested it should do, the Report avoided rendering its policy suggestions completely moot by recommending that they be implemented during the transition to partition. However, the disagreement between Coupland and the rest of the Commission over the underlying cause of unrest in Palestine is completely invisible in the Report. Despite holding the minority opinion that the mandate itself was the cause of the problems in Palestine, and that the only solution was to end the mandate and partition the country,

This chapter examines the creation of the Palestinian minority in Israel, focusing on the principal areas that underwent dramatic change in Palestinian lives: land, work, and family structure. The chapter provides an overview of internal minority politics, the party system, and political behavior. It also lays groundwork for the other chapters and presents the book's first hypothesis, in which the marginality of women is viewed as part of the marginality of Palestinian Israeli citizens a whole. It considers three broad areas: the historical circumstances that created the Palestinian minority in Israel following the creation of the Jewish state in 1948; al–Nakba (the catastrophe) that ensued for the Palestinian minority in Israel; and the contradictory ways in which the politics of Israel has impacted the Palestinian minority's political, economic, and social experiences, including those of women.

This chapter discusses the construction of new identities by examining how European Jews understood the purposes and meanings of Zionism in Zion. Pioneers built Zionism on a rejection of Europe and an anticipation of creating an alternative modern Jewish personality. The analysis presented in the chapter rests on a study of the largest social institution established by Zionist society: a secular, public school system. Through it, Zionist ideologues, public officials, and educators attempted to transform European Jewry. Willing to preserve what they admired in the culture of the shtetl, they rejected its passivity in the face of physical threats and actual violence. These educators insisted on a new national, educational, cultural ideal. The chapter reveals that in turning away from the traditional orthodox schooling of the shtetl, Zionists developed a new curriculum to produce modern, secularized Jews who were capable of defending themselves and their homeland.

Any discussion applying a cultural analysis perspective to the mesorah must analyze the role of Israel, which occupies a unique place in the hearts and minds of many, though certainly not all, Jews. Chapter 8 examines the multifaceted relationship between Israeli and Jewish law and between Jewish law and Israeli Jewish identity. It addresses these relationships in the context of the following two extraordinarily complex questions. First, what difficulties does Israel face as a Jewish state in striking a balance between Jewish law and its secular laws? Second, what does it mean to be a Jewish state when the majority of Jews in Israel do not observe halakhah? These questions go to the heart of what Jewish identity means in the state of Israel.

In 1933, the Zionist movement in Manchester was already fifty years old. The first Manchester Jewish organisation to promote the colonisation of what was then Ottoman Palestine was founded in 1884, the first body seeking the creation of a Jewish state in 1896. By 1900, the community had generated twelve Zionist formations, representing most facets of the international Zionist movement. Manchester became the home of the Russian émigré, Chaim Weizmann, already a leading player on the international Zionist scene formed the ‘Manchester School’ of Zionists which Weizmann gathered around him during his Manchester years. This group included young men and women—Simon Marks, Israel Sieff, Leon Simon, Harry Sacher, Harry Dagut, and Rebecca Sieff—who were to become key figures amongst the leaders and publicists of British Zionism. It was with their backing that Weizmann was able to negotiate the Balfour Declaration.

This chapter turns to politics. Here, the return of the Jews to history was also their return to the realm of politics and statesmanship, whether as participants in European politics in various countries or as a new emerging political entity in Palestine from 1882. The idea of a Jewish state could be nourished by the memories of Jewish independence and Jewish sovereignty in biblical and post-biblical times, or by the messianic prophecies, but no one seriously thought of a revival of a Jewish kingdom. Thus it was the European political experience which was the political school of the Zionist movement. When Jews of the late nineteenth century lost faith in absolute enlightened monarchies (or after monarchies gave way to other types of government), the liberal-democratic paradigm of state that they adopted was closer to the political heritage of classical antiquity than to the Jewish political heritage. In that they followed the course taken by Western civilization.

Taking view of the local, regional, imperial and international forces shaping partition planning, this book argues that such planning reveals the tensions of maintaining imperial control in an era of imperial uncertainty and transformation, and in the glare of international scrutiny. For British administrators, partition had the potential to satisfy a range of local and international actors eager to see progress towards self-government, and would thus remove both a material drain on Britain’s resources and a moral stain on its reputation. It would also, crucially, solidify Britain’s position in the region. Partition plans of the 1920s and 1930s envisioned retaining British control over symbolic and geostrategic assets, such as Christian holy sites, airfields, oil pipelines, broadcasting stations, and a deep-water port in the Mediterranean. On the other hand, partition would almost certainly require forced population transfer; would be unacceptable to some international and local actors; and might cause regional and even global instability, thus endangering Britain’s reputation and strategic position in the world. Ultimately, then, the imperial imperatives that first drove British officials to imagine partition later hindered them from implementing it.

This chapter discusses the War of Independence, and how its initial phase had an adverse effect on the Zionist cause. The situation was sufficiently precarious that by March the United States was calling for a review of the UN decision. Israeli leaders were also not certain of the outcome. Accordingly, the Haganah formulated a strategy, Plan D, that underscored that a successful defense would have to be mounted beyond the very narrow confines of the land allotted the Jewish state. It is clear only in retrospect that Israel would survive the initial civil war and the invasion of regular Arab armies on May 15. When the conflict ended in 1949, Israel had extended its boundaries beyond the UN partition plan. There were also significant changes in demography. Many Arabs from within the designated Jewish state and in the areas incorporated in the course of the war had become refugees, reducing Israel's Arab population to 13 percent of the total.