ABSTRACT

This article focuses on Aliza Levenberg, an educator who taught at a Kiryat Shmona high school at the beginning of the 1960s. For three years Levenberg, a middle class Western European, travelled every week from her home in Tel Aviv to the poor town in the northern periphery of Israel, the inhabitants of which were mainly immigrants from Islamic countries. Levenberg was a productive writer. Her most famous book, Kiryat Shmona Chapters, tells of her complex encounter with a culture and way of life so different from her own. Analysing this text, our article addresses the cultural clash she experienced, illuminating its impact on her educational, social, and political perspectives. As we show, Levenberg, who at first was a “dedicated soldier” of the melting pot vision, aiming to bring enlightenment to the poor, eventually refused to take part in this forced conversion. She focused instead on listening to her students, and creating a space that would enable them to form their opinions, and express their fears and hopes. As a result, she developed a more flexible and sensitive educational vision. Reading her book as literary autoethnography enable us to expose the hidden layers of the emotional, social, and political process she underwent during this period. We argue that this process exposes the dualistic attitudes of educators who have worked on the deprived social margins. On the one hand, feelings of compassion and empathy impelled many of them to activism, yet on the other, cultural and social differences often elicited paternalistic and orientalist sentiments, which obstructed their educational efforts.

摘要

本文重点关注 1960 年代初在 Kiryat Shmona 高中任教的教育家 Aliza Levenberg。三年来，身为西欧中产阶级的列文贝格每周都会从她在特拉维夫的家中前往以色列北部边缘的贫困小镇，那里的居民主要是来自伊斯兰国家的移民。列文伯格是一位多产的作家。她最著名的书，Kiryat Shmona Chapters，讲述了她与一种与她自己截然不同的文化和生活方式的复杂遭遇。通过分析这篇文章，我们的文章探讨了她所经历的文化冲突，阐明了它对她的教育、社会和政治观点的影响。正如我们所展示的，Levenberg 起初是大熔炉愿景的“专职士兵”，旨在为穷人带来启蒙，但最终拒绝参与这种强制转换。相反，她专注于倾听学生的意见，并创造一个空间，让他们能够形成自己的观点，表达他们的恐惧和希望。因此，她形成了更加灵活和敏感的教育愿景。将她的书作为文学自我民族志来阅读，使我们能够揭露她在此期间所经历的情感、社会和政治过程的隐藏层面。我们认为，这一过程暴露了在被剥夺的社会边缘工作的教育者的二元态度。一方面，同情心和同理心促使他们中的许多人积极行动，但另一方面，文化和社会差异往往引发家长式和东方主义情绪，阻碍了他们的教育努力。