ABSTRACT Yigal Schwartz, Amos Oz’s long-time editor and a prominent Oz scholar, reflects on the author’s impact on Israel culture.

ABSTRACT The year was 1973 when I read the story Late Love by Amos Oz, and underlined the following passage: […] something must, absolutely must, reveal itself, a formula, a dazzling system, a purpose, surely it is inconceivable that you will go from birth to death without experiencing a single flash of illumination, without encountering a single ray of sharp light, without something happening, surely

ABSTRACT This article examines Oz’s novel The Same Sea (1999) and argues that it marks the novelist’s attempt to join a new phase in Israeli literature. Comparing The Same Sea to two novels by Yoel Hoffmann, one of the most famous representatives of this phase, the article sheds light on Oz’s struggle to balance between the writing norms that helped establish his status as “the shaman of the tribe”

(2021). Electrical Palestine: Capital and technology from empire to nation. Journal of Israeli History. Ahead of Print.

ABSTRACT This article offers a discussion of Amos Oz’s early translation and reception history in the American literary scene. The article pays particular attention to Oz’s double capacity as novelist and political commentator, and how it may have contributed to the unique role quickly assigned to him in American public and intellectual discourse. Against the backdrop of the formative social and political

(2021). The unchosen ones: Diaspora, nation, and migration in Israel and Germany. Journal of Israeli History. Ahead of Print.

(2021). Israel’s long war with Hezbollah: Military innovation and adaptation under fire. Journal of Israeli History. Ahead of Print.

ABSTRACT Throughout his career, Amos Oz explored different kinds of narrations that would enable him to capture both the story of individuals and the voices of the collective. The stories often presented a tension between the first person singular and the first person plural narration. In A Tale of Love and Darkness, Oz finally found a harmonious and comfortable way to speak and write in what I define

ABSTRACT This article discusses the autobiographical writings of Amos Oz and Ronit Matalon and focuses on A Tale of Love and Darkness (2002) and The Sound of Our Steps (2008). Although the novels differ in terms of era, language, ethnic background, and the gender of the narrator/protagonist, the core plot of mother and child, the spatial concepts of home, garden, and land, and other shared structural

ABSTRACT If early in his career Amos Oz was regarded as the epitome of the new Israeli or Hebrew, later critics tended to reduce Oz’s image to that of a member of a specific group – Ashkenazi Laborites – that was once the hegemonic group in Israel but has seen its status decrease in recent years. This article seeks to show that in his career, Oz exhibited views on Jewish history and the future of the

ABSTRACT This article offers a comparative reading of stories by Amos Oz and Sherwood Anderson to propose “smallness” – evoked by genre, setting, and literary devices – as a vital literary strategy structuring Oz’s works. Manifestations of smallness, fundamental to the twentieth-century American literary imagination, are indispensable in Oz’s stories. Paradoxically, both Oz’s literary modernism and

ABSTRACT This article argues that the “First Aliyah,” associated with the private agricultural colonies (moshavot) of the late nineteenth century and long studied primarily in its pre-World War I context, must be studied as a mandate and early state-era retrospective creation. It was forged during a period of Labor Zionist hegemony and in light of Palestinian resistance and rising Jewish immigration

ABSTRACT This article examines mnemonic practices and discursive strategies that structure the past and its relation to the present, drawing on examples from Israeli Jewish culture. The discussion explores the discursive construction of an “event” as a singular development and underscores the significance of its beginning and ending. It analyzes the impact of introducing symbolic bridges connecting

(2020). Continuities and ruptures in time. Journal of Israeli History: Vol. 38, Special Issue: Beginnings and Endings: Narration and Emplotment in the History of Zionism and the State of Israel; Guest editor: Orit Rozin, pp. 1-3.

ABSTRACT While scholars agree that the labor movement’s demise was a turning point in Israeli history, they have failed to explain how, why, and even when it happened. The influence wielded by its cultural institutions declined in the 1960s; political support for it declined in the 1970s, and its economic institutions crumbled in the 1980s. Which of these marks the beginning of the end? Were these

ABSTRACT This article offers a slightly different historical path toward understanding how Shas arrived on the Israeli political scene. This view highlights the ideological climate that prevailed among the Haredi elements of the Mizrahi religious leadership during the State of Israel’s formative years. These elements constituted a small Mizrahi religious circle – the Ne’emanei Ha-Torah movement that

ABSTRACT During the years of WWII, when Hanna Rovina was in her fifties, her cultural image as “the mother of the nation” coalesced in the Yishuv. This article explores this public image, while looking at two of her successful dramatic roles of that time, the title roles in Jacob Gordin’s Mirele Efros, Karel Čapek’s The Mother and an exemplary performance that she gave in Italy for the soldiers of

ABSTRACT The article focuses on three “Holocaust trials”: the Kapo Trials (1950–70); the “Kasztner Trial” (1953–58); and the Eichmann Trial (1961), to decipher the illusion of collective memory that marks the Eichmann Trial as the first Israeli legal confrontation with the Holocaust. It argues that the historical–legal oblivion into which the “Kapo Trials” sank is not a product of the mere passage

ABSTRACT A case study of one nuclear family, the Mutchniks from Nahalal, focusing on the dynamic between its dominant patron, Pinchas, and its dominant matron, Rosa, and a spatial analysis of the “home away from home” they had built in Yeruham from 1956 to 1969. These two aspects tie together an article concerned with several interlocking questions. What kind of decisions make up an intergenerational

ABSTRACT The term “a light unto the nations” is a hallmark of modern Jewish identity but the subtle divergences in the meaning of the expression among its diverse proponents shed light on the continuities and differences among modern Jewish ideologies. David Ben-Gurion, in particular, regarded the calling to be “a light unto the nations” as a central mission of the State of Israel. Before the 1950s

ABSTRACT This article looks to European Jewry between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to illuminate the role of love in a modern nationalist movement. In the third quarter of the nineteenth century, the political activist Moses Hess (1812–1875) and the historian Heinrich Graetz (1817–1891) professed a sentimental love of Jews and of the land of Israel. In the 1880s, the hovevei tsion

(2019). Desert in the promised land. Journal of Israeli History: Vol. 37, Israel and Jewish Communities Worldwide: New Approaches and Directions, pp. 285-286.

(2019). Halakha and the challenge of Israeli sovereignty. Journal of Israeli History: Vol. 37, Israel and Jewish Communities Worldwide: New Approaches and Directions, pp. 282-284.

(2019). Arabs and Jews in Ottoman Palestine: Two worlds collide. Journal of Israeli History: Vol. 37, Israel and Jewish Communities Worldwide: New Approaches and Directions, pp. 280-282.

(2019). Preventing Palestine: a political history from Camp David to Oslo. Journal of Israeli History: Vol. 37, Israel and Jewish Communities Worldwide: New Approaches and Directions, pp. 277-279.

(2019). The Routledge handbook of Israeli Security. Journal of Israeli History: Vol. 37, Israel and Jewish Communities Worldwide: New Approaches and Directions, pp. 275-276.

(2019). Israel and Jewish communities worldwide: New approaches and directions. Journal of Israeli History: Vol. 37, Israel and Jewish Communities Worldwide: New Approaches and Directions, pp. 155-156.

ABSTRACT This article explores previously undervalued aspects of Zionist and Israeli visual culture in light of the (newly recognized) significance of Jews in the history of photography. Zionism and the emergence of the State of Israel accrued a great deal of good will and benevolent publicity due to the historical confluence between Jews and the rise of photojournalism especially from the 1920s to

ABSTRACT This article explores Western Jews’ admiration for the new State of Israel on the basis of women’s representation. Pamphlets, biographies, and whole series of fundraiser films, produced by Zionist women’s organizations, depicted Jewish-Israeli women as carriers of democratic values, caring mothers for all of Israel’s population, and courageous fighters for their people’s survival. The Jewish-Israeli

ABSTRACT From 1897 to 1914, a small group of Danish Zionists presented the Danish Jewish community with a variety of Zionist objectives. In contrast to existing research, I argue that this activism played an important role in the communal change that took place among the Danish Jews before the outbreak of WWI. I identify how the salience of East European immigrants in Copenhagen compelled the self-conceived

ABSTRACT This article explores the relationship between the Jewish Territorialist movement and the State of Israel during the first decade of the Jewish State’s existence. Territorialism was never explicitly anti-Zionist, but it did grow increasingly critical of Zionist policies, especially regarding the Palestinian Arabs, and of Israel’s militaristic character. While their stance vis-à-vis the young

ABSTRACT Based on a comparison between Jewish and Sahrawi nationalism, the article introduces James Scott’s theorization of state-evading and state-making societies to the study of Zionist state formation. Given the state-evading features of Jewish Diaspora life (physical dispersion, segmentary kinship, acephalous social structure), the article argues that Zionism might best be compared to the state-making

(2019). Undeclared wars with Israel. East Germany and the West German Far Left, 1967–1989. Journal of Israeli History: Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 135-153.

ABSTRACT This study explores how and why Moshe Dayan became the symbol of the modern Israeli hero in American culture. Through an examination of variegated evidence it is possible to discern patterns that illustrate the ways Dayan’s image crystallized, first, in the American Jewish arena, and then more broadly, in wider American public consciousness. With his trademark eye patch and irreverent personal

(2019). Jabotinsky’s Children – Polish Jews and the rise of right-wing Zionism. Journal of Israeli History: Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 146-149.

(2019). Haifa: City of steps – landscape and literature of Hadar HaCarmel. Journal of Israeli History: Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 151-153.

(2019). Birthrate politics in Zion: Judaism, nationalism, and modernity under the British mandate. Journal of Israeli History: Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 149-151.

(2019). The Mizrahi Era of Rebellion: Israel’s foreign civil rights struggle, 1948-1966. Journal of Israeli History: Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 144-146.

(2019). The Lion’s Den: Zionism and the left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky. Journal of Israeli History: Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 139-141.

(2019). The road to September 1939: Polish Jews, Zionists and the Yishuv on the Eve of World War II. Journal of Israeli History: Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 141-144.

ABSTRACT The capital city is the place where political entities are represented in national space. This space acts as a mediating force between society, the nation, and the outside world, and it is very important for the development of a system of visual national symbols. The political leaders, national and local, are those who shape the capital city. Therefore, examining the relationship between municipal

ABSTRACT This paper illustrates the possibility of gaining meaningful insights into a place by exploring its relationship with its surroundings. A model is suggested for examining the possible significances of this relationship and the actual meanings attributed to it by those who plan and use the place. The site analyzed here is Sidnā ‘Alī, an Islamic shrine on Israel’s Mediterranean coast. Sidnā

ABSTRACT The article examines changes in the commemoration work and memorial discourse surrounding the first Sephardi Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel, Rabbi Ben-Tzion Meir Hai Uziel. While commemoration work in the public sphere in Israel has dwindled over the years, there has been a revival of memory discourse in recent years, especially amongst Religious Zionists. The article proposes reasons

(2017). A Rising Tide? Mixed families in Israel. Journal of Israeli History: Vol. 36, ‘A Rising Tide? Mixed Families in Israel’, pp. 103-123.

ABSTRACT This article presents an ethnographic picture of Russian immigrants of mixed Jewish origin in their encounter with the state national bureaucracy in Israel. It discusses the meanings and outcomes of the religious categories of classifications embraced by the Jewish state for the newcomers' lived identities. The article suggests that the meanings of ethnic mixture are not given, but that they

ABSTRACT This study of offspring of parents of mixed ethnicities demonstrates how persistent ethnic identities are. A case study of Israelis born into ethnically-mixed marriages between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi parents, it reveals the ambivalence expressed by respondents about their dual ethnic inheritance. While romanticizing their mixed ethnicity, respondents take issue with the dominance of one side

ABSTRACT Since its establishment, Israel’s population has included individuals associated with different religions and ethnic groups. The literature on religious intermarriage in Israel is not abundant. This probably reflects the relative paucity of cases in relation to a total population that has overwhelmingly tended to perform endogamous marriages – within the Jewish population but also within each

ABSTRACT In this article, I analyze how the mainstream media in Israel, increasingly shaped by social media, constructs a story about a mixed marriage between an Israeli woman, who was raised as Jewish and had converted to Islam, and a Israeli Muslim-Arab man. Referring to 57 items published mainly in August 2014 (during the Third Gaza War), a “human rights,” a “Romeo and Juliette,” and an “assimilation”

ABSTRACT This study explores the way intermarriage between Palestinian women and their Jewish spouses occurs in a context where historical and structural inequalities underlie the relationship between the two groups, and the way these women negotiate their crossing of ethnic, religious and social borders under these circumstances. Studying Jewish-Palestinian intermarriage enhances our understanding

ABSTRACT Are German non-Jewish partner/spousal migrants a discrete group in Israel, given the unique history of Israel and Germany, or do they form part of Israel’s wider, if stratified, non-Jewish migrant population, a group that is subject to restrictive policies? Do German partner/spousal migrants share similar experiences with other non-Jewish partner/spousal migrants from countries of the global

ABSTRACT This article sheds light on the socio-legal implications of the dissolution of “mixed” marriages. By analyzing two legal cases decided by Israeli shari‘a and civil courts, the article shows how such dissolution transforms the map of social conflicts and coalitions that was formed when the marital union was established. It illustrates how the ex-spouses’ families and communities are drawn into

ABSTRACT This study examines the relation between mixed-ethnicity couples and marital dissolution in Israel, an ethnically stratified immigrant society, including Jews from different continents and Israeli Palestinians. Findings indicate that, when defined broadly, mixed-ethnicity couples have higher divorce risks than endogamous couples. However, comparing mixed and non-mixed couples in terms of specific

ABSTRACT This paper examines changes that have occurred in Israel’s citizenship policy towards family immigrants since the early 1990s, when it became a country of immigration. Its findings indicate that Israel now has a much more restrictive policy towards Palestinian family immigrants, and a somewhat more inclusive policy concerning the naturalization of various other groups of family immigrants

ABSTRACT Lehava is an Israeli extreme right-wing organization dedicated to fighting intermarriage and especially preventing Arab men from courting Jewish women. This article presents the results of an ethnographic research on Lehava. The organization is examined in the context of growing Jewish ethno-nationalism in Israel and the contingent development of new urban extreme right-wing movements. The

Abstract From the founding of Tel Aviv adjacent to the Arab city of Jaffa, a new and unique reality arose in Palestine in the form of neighborly relations between a Hebrew city and an Arab city. A deep rift in these relations resulted from the riots of 1921 and 1929, and in Zionist historiography it is argued that from the 1921 riots onward, the ties between them weakened and deteriorated constantly

Abstract Israeli rule over the territories it occupied in the June 1967 war has been the subject of animated international debate in the past half century. This article explores the policy-making process behind Israel’s immediate postwar propaganda and public diplomacy, or “hasbara” in Hebrew, intended to put before foreign audiences the necessity and legitimacy of the occupation. Based on unpublished

Abstract Because of the significance attached to it, the Knesset passed the 1950 Law of Return in an unprecedentedly short time, but it took two more years to pass the Citizenship Law. The official protocols regarding the legislation of Israel’s Citizenship Law illuminate the main concerns of the drafters. The goal of the emerging national citizenship regime was not just to promote Jewish immigration

Abstract The nature of British rule in Palestine, as it settled down after the approval of the Mandate in 1922, had its critics among the Zionist ranks. Using original sources, this paper examines the attitudes of the leadership of the Revisionist Union (RU) towards the British from the first quarter of the 1920s till the mid-1930s. Unlike the later paramilitary organizations, the Revisionist founders

(2017). The Arab-Israeli Conflict in American Political Culture; The New American Zionism; Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict Over Israel. Journal of Israeli History: Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. 95-99.

(2017). Francophone Jewish Writers: Imagining Israel. Journal of Israeli History: Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. 99-101.