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This paper deals with the problem of the Hebrew term קָדֵשׁ. It is usually associated with temple prostitution in Ancient Israel, although evidence for temple prostitution in Israel is missing. After a summary of the myth of sacred prostitution, as it was 'invented' by researchers of the 19th and 20th century, the paper gives an analysis of the ten instances in the Old Testament where the term occurs. Instead of a conclusion, the author offers a thesis about the origin and use of the term קָדֵשׁ. Originally a broad term for priestly personnel, it developed into an insult, which has more sexual than cultic connotations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper addresses personal implication into three fundamental catastrophes of the 20th century. While these are disjunctive, they are nevertheless interconnected. Such interconnection is demonstrated and exemplifi ed here by germane episodes of the author’s own life and family experience. Her Jewish South African background lets her probe into the remnants of a Palestinian village buried beneath a “South African” Forest in Israel, for which she once raised money as a child; brings her to the small town in Upper Hesse whence her grandmother made a narrow escape to South Africa from Nazi terror; and confronts her with the blank space of what once was Cape Town’s sprawling District Six which lies in the vicinity of where she lives and from where the inhabitants were deported by the Apartheid regime. All three spaces have in common that what makes them important in this refl ection has been obliterated by force and political fi at. In recounting her own experience, including the making of a fi lm on the three contexts, the author traces ways to retrieve mnemonic traces, on a personal level and beyond. At the same time, she demonstrates entanglements of complicity in the processes addressed that any serious treatment has to confront. Such engagement is set against the simplistic and destructive answers to complicity and complexity, ethno-nationalism and identity politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the last Gaza war in 2009, an unusual meeting of Israeli ex-soldiers initiated a heated debate in the public domain. The soldiers confessed some uncomfortable insights about apparently pointless violence, but an internal investigation could not prove their allegations. At first glance, it seemed the military contradicted itself. This paper aims to show that such confusing events are not an isolated case, but the result of a strategy of mobilization of global acting activism networks which include NGOs, international donors and individual personalities. Based on fieldwork with Israeli activists and critically inspired by debates on ethnography and globalization, I follow complex configurations of actors that indicate zones of political friction. Activists operate in key areas of state sovereignty rather than to stand opposed to it. There are two implications of the emerging power of these networks: on the one hand, the conflict on the ground seems to be transformed into a meta-conflict consisting only of signs and counter-sign; on the other it is here emblematic how classical political units, such as the state conceptualized as a unitary actor, seems at first glance to be dissolved, but also reproduced in an iconic way [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of ÖZP - Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft is the property of Oesterreichische Zeitschrift fur Politikwissenschaft and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper discusses evaluations of distributive justice in two different situations. Focal point is the so-called equity axiom which lies at the heart of Rawls' second principle of justice, the maximin rule. Our investigation which was run at a German university spans over a period of fifteen years. It seems to us that consideration for the worst-off (group) in society has become considerably weaker over the years. This and related observations are tested by using a probit model including several demographic characteristics of the probands. The supposed time trend proves to be statistically robust. Several reasons for this observation are given. Obviously, depending on the underlying context, evaluations are to some degree influenced by current topics, including the ongoing discussion about the German educational system as well as about recent economic problems. We also briefly refer to findings that we obtained in the Baltics and in Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to characterize teacher trainees who immigrated to Israel during the 1990s. The life stories of six students who emigrated from the Ukraine, Russia, the Georgian Republic, Argentina, Chile, and Ethiopia are analyzed. The central finding suggests that their stories are devoid of the human, geographic, and cultural aspects of Israeli society. This finding is surprising because it differs from other studies. We used the Foucauldian concepts of the descendants of time and the lodgers of space for understanding the phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]