{"title":"Billion dollar madness: examining the paradox of financial satire through the 1980s economic crisis in Israeli comedy films","authors":"Ido Rosen","doi":"10.1080/13531042.2022.2136563","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13531042.2022.2136563","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Can anti-capitalist satire exist within show business, or is this an oxymoron? How can mainstream films claim to be socially conscious and rebellious, when at the same time they are products of an industry which aim to appeal to the masses and maximize profits? These questions were recently raised in relation to the popular and critical success of Hollywood hits like The Big Short and The Wolf of Wall Street, which followed the 2008 financial crash. This paper uses a group of Israeli financial satires as a case study and contributes a significant transnational addition to the debate. During the first half of the 1980s, the Israeli economy struggled with rampant inflation. The crisis inspired comedies such as Million Dollar Madness, The Plumber, and The Man Who Flew in to Grab. Although these films failed, they express a unique zeitgeist in Israeli history, and they are useful to examine the paradox. This analysis of these films provides valuable insights that can guide filmmakers toward overcoming and even resolving the paradox.","PeriodicalId":43363,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Israeli History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45973893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Class performativity, modernity and the Ashkenazi-Mizrahi divide the Jewish urban middle classes of Egypt in Israel 1948-1967","authors":"L. Alon","doi":"10.1080/13531042.2022.2149125","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13531042.2022.2149125","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the analysis of Israeli society and the experience of immigration and integration into it in the first decades after its establishment in 1948, an Ashkenazi-Mizrahi dichotomy became prevalent, and the explanatory efficacy of other contributing factors went mostly unnoticed. The academic, institutional and public discourses that focused on those among the Mizrahi Jews, who struggled to fit-in, perpetuated the early Ashkenazi establishment’s biases against all that was Arab and by extension Mizrahi. Exploring socio-cultural practices - such as dress codes and choice of language, of Jews arriving in Israel from Egypt during this period, this paper will examine the role of class identity and performativity (rather than ethnicity) in shaping the immigrant experience of newcomers. Relying on multiple sources including interviews, life stories and oral testimonials, it will argue that the Jews of Cairo and Alexandria shared an urban middle-class habitus with the Israeli Ashkenazi elites; and that the performative expression of this shared identity enabled them to open doors closed to many other Middle Eastern and North African groups and paved their way into the Israeli mainstream despite their Mizrahi decent.","PeriodicalId":43363,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Israeli History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42021297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique","authors":"A. Al-Kurdi","doi":"10.1080/13531042.2021.2033451","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13531042.2021.2033451","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43363,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Israeli History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41550369","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Moving through conflict: dance and politics in Israel","authors":"Hannah Kosstrin","doi":"10.1080/13531042.2021.2033452","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13531042.2021.2033452","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43363,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Israeli History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43555875","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On generation citizenship: The new Russian protest among young immigrant adults in Israel","authors":"Anna Prashizky","doi":"10.1080/13531042.2021.2034963","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13531042.2021.2034963","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article describes an emerging social protest movement among Generation 1.5 of Russian speakers who immigrated as older children or adolescents and came of age in Israel. It examines the generation, gender, and class aspects of the new social and cultural activism among Russian Israelis, while drawing on the concept of generation citizenship. Contrary to the civic conformism of their parent’s generation, the new Generation 1.5 leaders have developed a generational consciousness and perceive themselves as an active force for change. Acting primarily in the civic and cultural fields, the leaders of this large immigrant cohort are challenging the public discourse on Russian Israelis through successful social media campaigns such as video clips, blogs and articles, cultural festivals, public events, and media engagement.","PeriodicalId":43363,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Israeli History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44549316","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Mizrahi religion is for laymen custom”: Construction of an ethnoreligious hierarchy in boarding yeshiva high schools in Israel in the 1980s","authors":"Erez Trabelsi","doi":"10.1080/13531042.2021.2090482","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13531042.2021.2090482","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Underpinned by Bourdieuian theory, specifically, Bourdieu’s argument in Distinction (1984), this study investigates the instituting of an ethnoreligious social order in yeshiva high schools in Israel in the 1980s, as expressed in the personal accounts of Mizrahi graduates of these schools. The research findings indicate that the educational staff of the yeshiva high schools, being mostly Ashkenazi, constructed Ashkenazi religion as standard, and Mizrahi religion as flawed and out of place in the religious life of the yeshiva high school. The religious and liturgical practices in the yeshiva high schools followed purely Ashkenazi traditions, while the educational staff insisted on marking the inferiority of Mizrahi religion by means of various remarks regarding the students’ ethnic identity, in addition to inversion rituals that degraded Mizrahi religious traditions. The study findings correspond with Religious Zionist society’s preoccupation with the preference of the Ashkenazi version of religion to the Mizrahi version in state religious education in general, and in yeshiva high schools in particular.","PeriodicalId":43363,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Israeli History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45820673","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Israeli Independence Day, 1967: Mixed Messages on the Eve of War","authors":"L. Eisenberg","doi":"10.1080/13531042.2021.2045081","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13531042.2021.2045081","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Israel’s 19th Independence Day preceded the Six-Day War by three weeks. Amid worsening regional tensions, the Eshkol government supplemented traditional diplomacy and deterrence by modifying Independence Day rituals with the intention of deterring further Arab provocations; reassuring Israelis of their leaders’ competency; leading the West to blame the Arabs, should war erupt; and asserting freedom of action in Jerusalem. A close analysis of this tinkering with the press, a poem, and a parade illuminates Eshkol’s management of the deteriorating security situation and Israel’s assumptions about Arab and global actors during the “waiting period eve” (erev ha-hamtana) preceding the three-week countdown to the war. The modified rituals failed to deter the Arabs, fully reassure Israelis or appease the West, instead exacerbating tensions, but successfully demonstrated Israel’s sovereignty in Jerusalem.","PeriodicalId":43363,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Israeli History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43410911","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Joshua Generation: Israeli occupation and the Bible","authors":"Anne Perez","doi":"10.1080/13531042.2021.2033453","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13531042.2021.2033453","url":null,"abstract":"Rottenberg argues Be’er’s Reservist’s Diary ’89 and Zaides’s Quiet address the Israeli– Palestinian conflict through different modalities: by portraying scenes taken from the experiences of war (Be’er) and via metaphorical emotional relationships that do not necessarily point to the conflict but come directly from it (Zaides). Rottenberg determines a dance’s politics through audiences’ reception. Because Reservist’s Diary, performed by Jewish Israelis, dramatized clashes between Israelis and Palestinians, audiences read it as being “about” the conflict and therefore political. Quiet, on the other hand, was more abstract in terms of theme and the way the movement played out through the mixed cast of Israeli and Palestinian dancers that reflected interpersonal relationships. As a result, audiences did not consider Quiet to be about the conflict or political. Whether the dances are political is not the right question to ask about these works since they are both clearly politically enmeshed. Instead, a question arising from Rottenberg’s claim that these dances expand concert dance might be, which methods of addressing the Israeli–Palestinian conflict are most effective in doing so: making a dance that explicitly portrays violence through formalist theatrical conventions or creating a dance that appears more visually abstract built on the pain of the crisis and expressed through the bodies of its dancers? I would argue the latter, in order to manifest the structural, emotional-psychological, and human dimensions of the conflict, which are deeply engrained in audiences and performers. Moving through Conflict exemplifies the visceral stakes for the Israeli–Palestinian conflict’s personal implications. The essays demonstrate how dance embodies politics and how we can better understand Israeli history through dance exchange. This important book will benefit undergraduate and graduate students and scholars of dance and the Middle East, as well as readers interested in understanding politics through the body.","PeriodicalId":43363,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Israeli History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59757677","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Holocaust in the Israel Museum Jerusalem: A prism of the Jewish-Israeli identity discourse","authors":"Hilda Nissimi","doi":"10.1080/13531042.2021.2077192","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13531042.2021.2077192","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this article I look at the presentation of the Holocaust in the Israel Museum Jerusalem (IMJ) from its inception with special regard to the permanent exhibition after its refurbishment in 2010. It provides us with a “text” on Jewish identity of importance commensurate with the respect that the Israel Museum commands within the Jewish-Israeli cultural scene. I will do so by closely reading the presentation of the Holocaust within Israeli wider discourse on the Holocaust and its changing place in the formation of the Jewish Israeli civil religion; the IMJ both reflecting and aiming to influence toward a secular humanistic version of the state’s civil religion. Before the 2010 refurbishment, the Holocaust was presented by very few temporary exhibitions that presented the Holocaust within a framework of a universalist version of Zionism. After 2010 the Holocaust was represented at the IMJ as Yom Ha-Shoah (Holocaust Day), in a central position that ties it to both traditional and secular holy days as a vital link within Israel’s civil religion.","PeriodicalId":43363,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Israeli History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47478078","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Kommunist omed ve-shar (A Communist Stands and Sings): On Israel’s Ron Workers’ Choir","authors":"Jasmin Habib, Amir Locker-Biletzki","doi":"10.1080/13531042.2021.2097157","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13531042.2021.2097157","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT At first glance Jewish Israeli Communists and SLI (Songs of the Land of Israel) make strange bedfellows. Communist Party members would seem to be the last to sing songs that glorify the Land of Israel using Zionist tropes. Yet they did. Since the end of World War II, the Ron Workers’ Choir, which was affiliated with the Communist Party, sang SLI songs and performed on international stages in the Socialist Bloc and in Israel. This amateur choir, its history, and the ideological shifts that enabled its activity are the focus of this article. We argue here that the shift in the Jewish Communists’ ideology toward a form of qualified recognition of Israeli nationalism and the development of a Zionist Habitus enabled the reception and embrace of Zionist culture, including its settler colonial aspects, by Jewish Israeli Communists.","PeriodicalId":43363,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Israeli History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45728822","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}