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Unique realities influenced the development of the military nursing profession in Israel. While other countries, such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, established military hospitals staffed by separately trained military nurses, conditions in Israel led to the development of interlocking military and civilian healthcare sectors, as the young country responded simultaneously to healthcare needs brought on by war, ongoing attacks on civilians, and massive waves of immigrants, including European Holocaust survivors and Jews from Arab countries. Relying on an analysis of documents in multiple archives, contemporaneous newspaper articles and interviews conducted with nurses who served in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and the 1956 Sinai Campaign, this paper describes the development of the nursing profession in Israel through 1958, when military nursing was fully established as part of the civilian health sector, a reality that continues to the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though greatly routinized over the past two decades, assisted reproductive technologies still invoke an occasional public debate around a dilemma that is constituted as unprecedented. This paper examines one such case that took place in Israel—that of a legal dispute between estranged partners over the right to have their fertilized eggs implanted in a surrogate mother's womb. The paper probes the political repercussions of the case in terms of the impact on the pronatalist local order and gender relations. It shows that certain subjects, mostly those of a more ‘female’ domestic character, received exceptional public attention and indeed called into question prevailing ideas and power relations. At the same time, in other contexts of the debate, the status quo was reaffi rmed within an updated framework. On the whole, the dilemma at hand and the innovative options enabled by technology were largely contained within the established gender order. Still, the case did contribute, if modestly, to women's rights and autonomy. The paper's conclusion suggests that public debates regarding reproductive disruptions may become a vehicle for both patriarchal gender relations and social transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the role of al-Mirsad as a newspaper in Arabic in the service of a Zionist party. The assertion advanced here is that al-Mirsad functioned not merely as a mouthpiece of Mapam, but a vehicle of expression for local intellectuals and creators as well. Following a survey of the paper's origin and character, the discussion focuses on the treatment of Nasser and Arab nationalism in al-Mirsad, comprising a case study of an issue that occupied al-Mirsad and the Arab community in Israel for much of the paper's existence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What does it mean to be religious in a secular, western, modern society? Emuna Elon's novel, Heaven Rejoices, engages this question through a story of two intertwined love affairs: one thwarted—a previously orthodox mother's youthful unconsummated love for a future rabbi and leader in the settler community, and one realized—her orthodox daughter's love for his son. This paper first identifies three categories of cultural expression among orthodox Israelis—reformist, voyeuristic, and pedagogical. The paper then examines how the novel, a pedagogical artifact, simultaneously captures the ambivalences and tensions embedded in the contemporary orthodox experience and suggests a resolution that hinges on a differentiation between ‘orthodox’, ‘ultra-orthodox’, and ‘secular’. I conclude that in its attempt to chart purportedly clear boundaries between these social categories the novel partakes in broader cultural negotiations between orthodox traditionalists and reformists about the face and future of Israeli orthodoxy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, the older females in an extended family, including mother, aunts, sisters or grandmother, instructed young women about the various aspects of the life cycle, including puberty, menstruation, sex, reproduction and child care. In Israel, the immigration process has changed social relationships and family structures, which in turn shape the intergenerational transfers of knowledge. As a result, over the past few decades other sources of knowledge have become important influences in producing knowledge for young women. These include their peers, school, scientific information, doctors and commercial products. This paper examines how Ethiopian mothers after immigration to Israel pass health-related information to their daughters in relation to puberty, menstruation, childbirth and breast-feeding, as well as behaviors that are important for health maintenance and promotion: nutrition, smoking and exercise. Using qualitative interviews of three mother-daughter pairs and six additional women informants, the paper examines how women's health behaviors changed as young women adapted to Israeli norms while retaining their respect and understanding of the views of their mothers' generation toward heath and health promotion. Two sets of values interacted to influence health behavior: cultural values including religious traditions; and perceptions of the health-related value of the behavior, which were tempered by personal or vicarious experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The funding of the 1948 Israeli War of Independence illustrated the importance attributed to the support of the Yishuv in the war effort. In addition to recruitment of man power and mobilization of the economy that support also included the public's participation in raising the means to fund the war. This article discusses the characteristics of this process, which began with the voluntary loan For the Security of the People in November 1947 and ended with the national loan in December 1948. The effects of the change and transition brought about by acceleration of the fighting and the establishment of the State of Israel, and at its core the increasing involvement of the State and its centralist power, are apparent in the public's participation in raising the funds. This paper focuses on the mobilizing role of the civil organizations and at their core the middle class economic organizations and the Histadrut. The paper delineates the manner in which the structure of the society, the effort to widen the scope of the mobilization, and the endeavor to obtain the public's support in the war effort required setting cooperative arrangements and economic and political coordination. Evasion of fund raising was revealed and the demand for increased involvement of the State as part of the realization of the ‘equality in sacrifice’ principle during war was brought to the forefront of the public agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the frame of feminist theory, this paper analyzes the efforts of two Israeli filmmakers to disclose women's perceptual struggle: against gendered imperatives that encourage women not to look; against the habit of looking at 'others' as objects to be feared or controlled; against the forces of materialism, national insecurity and political/military power that make looking impossible. In The Women Next Door and Detained, Michal Aviad and Anat Even interview Arab and Jewish women, enacting the transgressive intention to occupy what Kaja Silverman has called 'a viewing position other than that assigned' by their culture. In Ever Shot Anyone? Aviad interviews male reservists, making visible the gendered imperative not to look-even as she defies it. And in Closure Even constructs a metaphor for the gradual occlusion of vision that constricts awareness of others and changes the promising trajectory of Israeli culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chochana Boukhobza's 1986 novel Un éétéé àà Jéérusalem subverts and recasts several recurring tropes, figures and discourses from the intertextual reservoir of Judaic culture. This article proposes that the novel's feminist deconstruction of foundational Judaic myths and metanarratives informs the protagonist's corporeal revolt against the patriarchal confines of the Tunisian-Jewish subculture from which she hails. It also analyzes the text's intimations that the causes of the violence occurring in both the familial and the societal frameworks in which the female characters find themselves may be linked to the trajectories of two dominant Judaic discourses: religious piety and (Zionist) Israeli nationalism. Finally, the paper looks at how different recastings of revered Jewish female figures are involved in destabilizing the manifestations of patriarchy in the novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Israeli adult literacy campaign, Operation Eradicate Ignorance ( Hamivtza lebi''ur haba''arut, 1964--1976), brought together two groups of women from different cultural backgrounds and education. This paper analyzes recollections of participants, collected in 2005--2008, in an attempt to evaluate the consequences of this cross-cultural gendered encounter. Data suggest that the confrontation between traditional female multitasking and modern skills led to opportunities for mutual learning and empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the failure of Israel's Ashkenazi (Jewish, of European, Yiddish-speaking origin) feminist peace movement to work within the context of Middle East demographics, cultures, and histories and, alternately, the inabilities of the Mizrahi (Oriental) feminist movement to weave itself into the feminist fabric of the Arab world. Although Ashkenazi elite feminists in Israel are known for their peace activism and human rights work, from the Mizrahi perspective their critique and activism are limited, if not counterproductive. The Ashkenazi feminists have strategically chosen to focus on what Edward Said called the Question of Palestine-a well funded agenda that enables them to avoid addressing the community-based concerns of the disenfranchised Mizrahim. Mizrahi communities, however, silence their own feminists as these activists attempt to challenge the regime or engage in discourse on the Question of Palestine. Despite historical changes, the Ashkenazi-Mizrahi distinction is a racialized formation so resilient it manages to sustain itself through challenges rather than remain a frozen dichotomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to chart the influence of communal heritage and social history on the absorption of the Mashhadi community in Israel during the 1950s, with a special focus on its women. The central argument is that the status of Mashhadi women continued to be shaped by their past membership in a crypto-faith community. Interviews with Mashhadi women who immigrated to Israel during the 1950s suggest that this heritage was the basis for two contradictory patterns of absorption. Their close-knit ethnic communal ties would continue in Israel-as they have indeed been sustained in other lands of immigration. At the same time, their vision of Israel as the land of ultimate redemption allowed for the dissolution of the underground community and for individual assimilation into the wider Jewish-Israeli society. These women echo a yearning for past communal warmth and mutual help while expressing a deep satisfaction in taking part in the process of redemption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores three successive anniversary celebrations of Tel- Aviv—1929, 1934, and 1959—as an aspect of the cultural and political history of the city. The three anniversaries examined in this paper were celebrated in the "First Hebrew City" phase of the cultural history of Tel-Aviv and, accordingly, their major theme was Tel-Aviv as a Zionist success story. The historical analysis of three successive anniversaries affords an opportunity to discern continuities in the form of festive patterns and recurrent ideological themes. It also highlights period-specific concerns and political contingencies underlying particular anniversary celebrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In late 2006, leading Palestinian Arab intellectuals, political leaders, and activists in Israel compiled The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel. The document rejected the designation of Israel as a Jewish State, which they argued was exclusionary and denied the Arabs full equality. The document went on to de-legitimize the Zionist enterprise as "colonialist" and "imperialist", but at the same time sought to obtain recognition of the Palestinians in Israel by the Jewish majority as a national minority. This paper argues that while recognition of the Palestinians in Israel as a national minority is an eminently reasonable demand, the Jewish majority would find it difficult to accept so long as the national rights of the Jewish majority were simultaneously denied by the Palestinian citizens of Israel. It is not what the Palestinian minority in Israel demands for itself that is the problem, but rather the rights it seeks to deny the Jewish majority, especially the right to self-determination that is, inter alia, the right of the majority to define the state as it sees fit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Male infertility, which contributes to roughly 60-70% of infertility cases in the Middle East, is especially agonizing in this region, where fatherhood is crucial to achieving masculine adulthood and community standing. In this paper, we compare the infertility experience of two groups of Palestinian men, one living in Israel and the other in Lebanon. The study is based on ethnographic interviews conducted with 24 men between 2003 and 2007. The findings cluster at three levels of daily experience. At the subjective level, men express a sense of "asynchronization," namely, feeling as if they are lagging behind or deviating from the normal masculine l~[e trajectory. At the community level, men vary greatly in their disclosure practices, but all are preoccupied with monitoring the flow of infertility-related information. We attribute the centrality of this gate-keeping activity to the stigma of infertility and related treatments. At the societal level, the state's role acquires heightened significance, owing to the marginalized minority status of Palestinian men in both countries. Our comparison reveals two contrasting situations: In Lebanon, the high cost of treatment places it beyond the reach of many Palestinians, thus epitomizing their civil marginality and poverty. In Israel, where fertility treatment is state-funded, eligibility on the grounds of one's Israeli citizenship comprises a relatively positive experience for Palestinian men, who are otherwise routinely discriminated against in crucial life domains. More generally, the study illustrates how advanced fertility treatments, in their global spread, serve to entrench ideas of reproductive normalcy, individuality, and citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with one of the most dominant elements in Israeli national identity—the Shoah. The paper asks how the Mizrahim in Israel related to it, since for most of them it was a remote historical chapter. The answer is given through an analysis of three generations of Mizrahim—those who lived during the Second World War and immigrated to Israel during its formative years; their children, most of whom were born in the Jewish State and educated in the Israeli educational system; and their grand children. The first generation viewed the destruction of the European Jews with profound compassion, but felt that the Shoah was a chapter in the history of the European Jews. Their children attempted to connect, facing, to a large extent, resentment and alienation. Their grand-children already have the Shoah burnt in their souls—being an integral part of their self-definition as Israelis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses two intellectual models that attempted to grant religious meaning to Zionism and the Jewish State without turning them into non-rational religious entities. Rabbi Uziel's model, like that of Rabbi Kook, interprets the development of the State within the framework of the messianic idea. However, while Rabbi Kook speaks in terms of the messianic approach of the Kabbalah, Rabbi Uziel formulated his messianic approach on the rational philosophy of Maimonides. As a result, the State is not ascribed some absolute value—after all, no messianic State is a value in itself, but is seen as a means for the individual to reach religious fulfillment. Therefore, the test for the State will be whether it meets the halachic and moral standards that represent the only framework within which reality takes place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zionist collective memory has long associated Masada with the struggle to secure Jewish sovereignty over the land of Israel. This article examines the effects of the political upheavals of the Oslo and post-Oslo periods on the meanings ascribed to Masada. It documents the popularity of a critical counter-narrative in tour guides' presentations of Masada to diaspora Jewish tourists. Directly informed by memories of the Rabin assassination, this critical counter-narrative emphasizes the dangers posed by Jewish extremists adhering to messianic religious ideologies. The focus on internal rather than external threats to Jewish sovereignty represents a sharp break with past framings of Masada's meaning. The paper discusses the implications for the study of political culture and collective memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Zionist movement was the flagship of territorial socialization until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The establishment of the state was a turning point in modern Jewish history because some goals of the Zionist movement were achieved and an independent political entity with international recognition was established. The state itself continued to concern itself with territorial education in order to increase the citizens' identification with the territory. By emphasizing the Zionist-Jewish aspect of the subject, Geography was seen to assist in establishing a connection for the children of immigrants with their new country. Geography was not only intended to convey knowledge about the Land of Israel, but also, principally, to assist children's emotional absorption in the country, through transfer of knowledge about Israel's past, landscapes, and nature. How has the teaching of geography changed over the last century in the Land of Israel? Which social ideas and which fields of geographic thought have shaped the teaching of the discipline, the curriculum, and the development of school textbooks? These are some of the central questions of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Stanley Waterman regarding the surveys of Israeli human Geography, and another by Shaul Krakover and Yehuda Gradus on Israeli geographers' writings up to the early 2000s.

Primarily through an investigation of his iconic story "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities" and against a pervasive critical tendency to identify Delmore Schwartz with recognizably "Jewish" sociocultural narratives, this article argues that Schwartz finds experience alienating precisely in the expectation that it recover a legible reality. Indeed, the critical reduction of Schwartz to various formulaic accounts of Jewish assimilation, artistic genius, and modern estrangement ends up illuminating the very way in which Schwartz in fact resists these clichés. The paper relies on the idea of overdetermination as delineated by Freud and Althusser to outline Schwartz's insistence that the ideal imaginative investments made in experience—investments that are presumed to render reality emotionally and ethically useful—on the contrary put reality at an irretrievable remove. Understanding how Schwartz's engagement with modern experience is ultimately more intractable than the extant critical commonplaces about him allow provides an opportunity to move beyond ethnic and racial essentialism in the study of literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes issue with a certain inconsistency in the collective portrait of Palestinian women citizens of Israel, as it is depicted in the feminist literature which emphasizes, simultaneously, multiple forms of oppression and impressive resisting capacities, but does not give sufficient explanation of how these two seemingly contradictory aspects interrelate. I argue, using ethnographic data, that more attention than that paid so far should be given to structural tensions between the various regimes that compose the Israeli-Palestinian gender order, notably the family, the state, and the national/ethnic communities. While the shared patriarchal nature of these regimes produces powerful experiences of omnipresent and naturalized oppression, competition among them allows women some very important latitude. My emphasis on the contradictory location of Palestinian women in Israel is intended to place their agency in finer perspective, through elaborating the structural setting within which it is made possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Israeli society has the highest rates of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) interventions in the world, as well as the highest per capita consumption rate of infertility therapy, with In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) at its center. This situation is sustained by an unprecedented public health policy, posing hardly any restrictions on the eligibility of Israeli citizens for infertility treatments within the National Health Insurance (NHI) system. Given the health risks as well as the emotional and financial costs involved in the excessive use of IVF, this pattern of regulation and consumption calls for a careful sociological and ethical consideration of its origins and implications. The paper is based on an analysis of key processes and events that took place in the Israeli regulatory and legal arena between 1994 (when the Israeli National Health Insurance Law was enacted) and 2003 (when the last attempt thus far to de-insure IVF was made). Processes and events that took place within that decade include legal actions taken by consumers in matters concerning IVF, court verdicts on IVF usage, parliamentary discussions on IVF regulation and failed attempts to restrict NHI coverage of IVF. We argue that existing policies and utilization patterns of IVF in Israel are embedded within several frameworks: Israel's pro-natalist culture and "pro-family" values (both of which are contextualized within the Jewish state), a political discourse of demographic threats and rights, organizational changes stemming from the 1994 NHI Law, and the emergence of a "consumer rights" discourse within the public health system. In the concluding section, we discuss the ethical aspects of IVF in Israel, arguing that a reconsideration of priorities in a context of limited economic resources is much needed at this time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the story of Haim Sloves. This is also a story narrating the Jewish people and the Jewish communist's allegiances. This paper discusses the significant period of a specific Jewish communist's life. It suggests goals for moral judgment but less ideologically driven and a recollection of the communist trajectory. These are contained in the issues featured including: religio-historical significance of a Jewish communism, Slove's image of the Jewish people, tension in the Jewish tradition between the particular and the universal, and the distinction between mystique and politique.

This article explores the practice of Islamic feminist ijtihad (IFI), which is a critical feminist stance toward religious texts and is the leading approach of Palestinian Islamic feminist women in Israel. Ijtihad means to expand one’s capacities and use them to the utmost. In particular, it embodies the effort to learn and undertake religious interpretation. This article analyzes the dual challenges of Israeli hegemony and the patriarchal interpretation of Islam in the complex political reality of Israel/Palestine today. It is based on semistructured interviews with activists from the Women and Horizons Association (WHA), an Islamic feminist organization that emerged under Israeli settler colonialism. The findings show that a critical view of religious texts contributes to constructing a feminist Islamic interpretation dedicated to improving women’s status and furthering their struggle against the intersecting power structures of patriarchal Islam and Israeli policies designed to dismantle Islamic religious power and prevent its resurgence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the history of the development of a discourse that regards the Bedouin of the Negev desert in Southern Israel as an indigenous people of Israel. This movement has generated a great deal of activity in recent years, particularly the submission of a petition to the U.N. by activists asking for the Bedouin to be recognized as having indigenous communal rights in 2005. The subject is examined in the context of the worldwide recognition of indigenous rights that culminated in the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which was adopted on the 13th of September 2007. The article takes account of the processes and activities of individuals who have helped lead and craft a narrative of an indigenous Bedouin identity. It also explores the rise of an indigenous consciousness movement as reflected in states, academic institutions, NGOs, and individuals across the world, with a focus on some of the implications for Israel and the region of the current struggle for recognition for indigenous rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most salient divisions between medieval Rabbanites and Qaraites was in the field of calendar. Qaraites and Rabbanites disagreed on how to determine which years to intercalate (i.e., to extend with the insertion of a thirteenth month) in order to keep up with the seasons. While the Rabbanites used a fixed nineteen-year cycle of intercalation, the Qaraites maintained that intercalation must be based on the state of ripeness of barley crops in Palestine. This created problems for Qaraite communities outside of the Land of Israel, many of whom found it impossible to receive information about the state of crops in Palestine in time to celebrate Passover. This article investigates how medieval Qaraite Diaspora communities made a decision to intercalate. Based on a wide range of sources many of which were not previously discussed, it studies the Diaspora communities’ approaches to empirical intercalation and provides an in-depth analysis of the Qaraites’ attitude toward and use of mathematical methods, such as the method of the vernal equinox and the Rabbanite nineteenyear cycle of intercalations. The article also reflects on the attitude of Palestinian Qaraite ideologists toward the calendar situation in the Diaspora and argues that the division between Qaraites as adherents of an empirical intercalation vs. Rabbanites as followers of a fixed calculated scheme was never clear-cut when considered in the context of the entire Qaraite Jewish community, and of lived practice rather than ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the establishment of the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) and on its first major operation, the first census and the general registry of the population; and deals with the social and political implications of central services of national statistics in the context of Israeli society. The establishment of a central bureau of statistics with extended jurisdiction was, paradoxically, a means to make the work conducted by the CBS invisible. The legitimacy of the start to exercise power over its citizens helped to construct the CBS as a "gray" institution, divorced from politics; a center of calculation that reflects society without influencing or constructing the social world it describes.

Interviews Abba Eban, former chairman of Knesset committee on foreign affairs and defense of Israel. Views of Eban on political policies and international relations; Opinion of Eban regarding political policy towards Arabs; Conception of Eban on the settlement of Arab-Israeli dispute after 1967.

This article examines the Foreign Relations documents of the U.S. and the papers of government officials in the Truman administration that reveals the possibilities for peace in the Middle East in 1949 and the opportunities present for the U.S. to have played a major role in the peace process. The first Arab-Israeli war came to an end with the signing of an armistice agreement between Egypt and Israel on the island of Rhodes, on February 24, 1949, under the direction of United Nations Mediator Ralph Bunche. Within the next five months, successful armistice agreements were concluded between Israel and Trans Jordan, Lebanon and Syria; and permanent peace negotiations were expected to follow before the year's end. In order to appreciate the possibilities for peace in the Middle East in 1949, we must go back to December 1948 when the United Nations General Assembly, in anticipation of the end of hostilities between the Arabs and Jews, established a Palestine Conciliation Commission consisting of representatives from France, Turkey and the U.S. Its major task, which was to be pursued concurrently with the armistice negotiations, was to negotiate peace treaties between Israel and the Arab states. Along with its pursuit of permanent peace, the Commission was also to formulate a plan for the internationalization of Jerusalem and to arrange for the repatriation and resettlement of approximately 725,000 Palestinian Arab refugees.

The article examines the electoral behavior among soldiers in the armed forces of Israel. Several issues are discussed including the effect of the army service as a socializing agent on voting patterns, the voting in the 1949 elections, and the electoral change in the 1970's and 1980's. The voting patterns and Democratic beliefs of the army's officers are discoursed. The paper also touches on the link between conservatism in the military mind, the support of conservative parties, and the correlation of political attitudes with voting patterns.

The article presents the misinterpretation of political elites in Israel. It deals with Israel's political elite up to the elections to the Eighth Knesset in December 1973 following the Yom Kippur War. Several tables are presented showing the Regional origins of the Jews in Israel, the regional origins of the members of the Knesset, regional origins of the Cabinet Ministers during the Seven Knessets. It also examines the representatives of Israel's political elite with respect to age, country of origin, residence, and sex. It attempts to analyze the dynamic aspect of representation and to account for the liability of a political system to tolerate a degree of misinterpretation.

Examines the court decision involving a young woman raped by her boyfriend in Israel. Discussion on the issue of violence against women; Criticism on the legal system with precedential decisions; Questions on the rights of women in the courtroom.

The article reveals a historical source that has been overlooked in the research of Israeli society and women, including the history of Israeli feminism: the Hebrew journal Ha'ishah bamedinah, edited by Tehila Matmon and published for just four years, between 1949 and 1953. The journal's declared mission was to raise the awareness of Israeli women to the intolerable gap between the State's declared equality between men and women and the situation in real life, and to urge women to take action and release society of the chains of discrimination. The journal's unique content and rhetoric may be one reason why it succumbed to oblivion. From a historical perspective, its editor was way ahead of her time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

La belle juive ("the beautiful Jewess") is an archetype of nineteenth-century European Romantic literature, painting and theater. Intriguingly, a similar pattern is discernible in present-day Israeli theater with regard to actresses of Ethiopian Jewish origin. The mainstream theater is embracing these young women, offering them leading, passionate roles. However, their case calls for a careful double check of beauty as human capital. I would like to explore how the nineteenth-century European archetype operates in ways that stereotype these women in twenty-first century Israel as figures of alterity and exoticism. Their beauty operates in both cases as gender-oriented otherness and as the location of difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to shed new light on the entry of Jewish women into the public sphere in this period and on their achievements, and to briefly hint at the difficulties they encountered. It will outline the contours of the collective contribution made by professional women to the civil society of pre-State Israel during the first half of the twentieth century. In this pilot study, I will discuss only a few extraordinary professional women who strongly influenced their respective fields. I will focus on four areas—medicine, social work, education and dance—with special attention to the new social approaches that these professional women tried to institute. My goal is to consider the subject from a comprehensive perspective: How did the work of women contribute to the public sphere in the Mandate years, and to the forging of another kind of new Hebrew woman? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jewish Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) society is characterized by high fertility as part of what it sees as an inherent female identity. This article examines patterns of health behaviors and subjective experiences during pregnancy and childbirth among Israeli Haredi women, based on a qualitative study designed to investigate these phenomena within the Haredi cultural and social context. The research question of interest was: Given the importance of fertility and children in the Haredi population, how do women cope with normative pregnancy and childbirth experiences and with those that may be challenging, difficult or traumatic? Twenty Haredi women were interviewed, and the content of their interviews was analyzed. Six themes emerged that highlighted issues faced by Haredi women: social pressure to conceive; availability of social-communal resources for women after childbirth; seeking knowledge about reproductive health; medical practices and choices; traumatic experiences of reproductive events; and spiritual issues. These themes emphasized the unique characteristics of the Haredi woman's pregnancy and childbirth experiences. The findings point to the central role of the rabbi, religious faith and spirituality, considerations when using medical services and the importance of modesty as resources that help the women to navigate pregnancy and childbirth, which are seen as experiences that build identity among ultra-Orthodox women. Adverse reproductive events may lead to distress, but there is a reluctance to discuss them or seek treatment. The discussion integrates the findings with the current state of the literature, points to areas of change and adaptation and proposes practical recommendations that reflect the need to promote culturally sensitive reproductive health practices within the existing Israeli health care system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the almost unknown stories of the 96 women POWs in Israel's 1948 War of Independence and endeavors to analyze their experience of captivity and the perceptions that accompanied it, from the moment of their surrender, through the period of their captivity and up to their return home. It explores the manner in which normative perceptions of gender shaped the experience of women in captivity, despite their being in a situation that was seemingly identical to that of the 900 male captives. Thus, apart from adding a new chapter to the history of women in Israel, the story of the Israeli women captives serves as a test case for discussing issues relating to captivity and gender. There are similarities in the ways in which women experience captivity, and in how female captivity is perceived, at the time and afterward, both by the captives and by the society to which they belong. Although captivity is experienced by both men and women, often together and in similar circumstances, this does not blur gender differences but rather preserves and even accentuates them. The frequent and mythological association of sexual violence and rape with female captives was evident in the preconceptions shared by both women and men and was a prime source of fear even before they fell captive. However, the women's experience in captivity in Israel's 1948 war does not support this myth. Although both men and women fell into captivity during Israel's War of Independence, seemingly offering evidence of the gender equality said to have prevailed in that period, a gendered analysis suggests otherwise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses an essay published in the journal regarding the rejection of the legitimacy of Israel by Palestinians.

This article explores the early prose fiction of Amalia Kahana-Carmon, one of the 'founding mothers' of contemporary Israeli literature. Lacking strong literary foremothers, Kahana-Carmon established her formative place in Israeli literature through an intertextual process based on crossgender identification with a male literary tradition which is thereby opened up to a new reading. The article examines the cross-gender intertextual process sketched out by Kahana-Carmon in her early prose, focusing on the story that became, in time, the one most identified with her: 'Ne'ima Sasson kotevet shirim' (Ne'ima Sasson writes poems). As I would argue, the complex, gender-loaded literary dialogue with the Hebrew canon outlined in 'Ne'ima Sasson' laid the foundation for Kahana-Carmon's poetics. This is a poetics (or, rather-ars-poetica) based on an ongoing confrontation with the male canon of Hebrew literature, a canon with which Kahana-Carmon identifies while at the same time exposing its gender-fluid aspects, which were not recognized by her male peers or by Hebrew literature scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The teaching of Israel at American universities has grown dramatically in recent years and has become "normalized" in the curriculum. A census was conducted at 316 schools to assess 2011-2012 course offerings related to Israel in order to analyze growth over time, characteristics of courses, and institutional characteristics that contribute to growth. Results indicate a small increase in Israel-focused courses between 2008-09 and 2011-12, following a two-thirds increase from 2005-06 to 2008-09. Courses were offered under a variety of disciplinary auspices including Jewish studies, political science, history, Hebrew, and other fields. The number of courses offered remained strong particularly at more prestigious schools with large Jewish populations. External support from programs that place or train qualified faculty yield more courses about Israel at their respective institutions, but the effect cannot persist without the continued presence of those faculty. A key focus of further research is to understand the impact of Israel courses on students and discourse about Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses gendered aspects of Israel's tender years child custody laws, which apply to young children, in light of the emergence of men's activist groups as opponents of feminism. Topics include the notion of mothers as primary caregivers, the media activism of fathers' rights groups, and the response of Israeli feminist organizations to men's rights groups.

The article explores the effects of the Jewish Holocaust of 1939-1945 on Israeli culture, collective memory, and historical self-understanding. Particular focus is given to the development of public and individual methods of commemorating the Holocaust and remembering its lessons. The author discusses concerns that traumatic memories of the Holocaust would negatively affect Israeli worldviews and political interactions. Emphasis is given to the importance of Jewish survival in Israeli collective memory. Other topics include the Israeli educational system, organized youth field strips to Holocaust sites in Poland, and antisemitism.

Fatah activists in Jerusalem did not initiate suicide attacks during the second intifada (which began autumn 2000), as opposed to Hamas activists in the city and Fatah activists all over the West Bank and Gaza. I suggest that one of the main reasons for this unique behavior is the tradition of the joint non-violent Palestinian-Israeli struggle in the city against the Israeli occupation and the settlement project, which was the strategic choice of Fatah leadership in Jerusalem under Faisal Husseini since the mid-1980s. I argue that it is not the contact between Israelis and Palestinians by itself that has led the latter to avoid killing civilians, and some of the former to refuse serving in the Israeli army, but the joint vision of the relation between the two people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article treats the topic of political cartooning and the evolution of a genre during the early years of Israeli statehood. It focuses particularly on the work of two prominent cartoon artists, Friedel Stern and Kariel Gardosh (Dosh), who made their careers in Israel in the 1950s and '60s and whose politically charged images have been sanitized over time. It looks at how attitudes towards certain imagery have changed so that political commentary that was seen as relevant and acute during early statehood eventually lost its political edge through historical handling and revision. These two cartoonists provided strong visual symbols of early Israeli national identity, which invariably had political motivations, and yet their legacy as political commentators during a crucial period in Israeli political history is often overlooked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unique and radical statement Gedolah averah lishmah mimitzvah shelo lishmah appears in the Babylonian Talmud just twice, in Tractate Nazir and in a parallel text in Tractate Horayot. Scholars and commentators have suggested different interpretations of the enigmatic term averah lishmah. Legal readings tend to explicate it as "permission to perform a transgression out of a positive motive," "rejection of one norm in favor of a loftier one," or "violation of the law in order to preserve it" Another reading of the term, in the spirit of Rashi and the Tosafists, takes it as a "transgression committed for the sake of a commandment" or "for the sake of God" In this article, I will suggest that the precise meaning of the term is "transgression with good intention," or "a sin done for its own sake" an interpretation that takes into consideration the direct literary and gender context of this talmudic statement. In rabbinic literature and in the thought of R. Moshe Haim Luzzatto, the concept of averah lishmah pertains to a single matter: a seductive act bordering on sexual transgression performed for the sake of the people of Israel--a role in the drama of national salvation which is assigned to women only. By examining evolving interpretations of this passage in the Talmud, we can observe the development of one type of Jewish messianic thought from its inception in rabbinic sources through its subsequent unfolding in kabbalistic literature, where the perception of male and female roles are underscored in a highly developed myth of national redemption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1990s witnessed a growing rapprochement in relations between Turkey and Israel, which in a decade's time have become strained, reaching an all-time low with the Mavi Marmara incident in 2010. This article aims to analyze the developments in relations between the two countries mainly in the 2000s. The domestic, regional, and international levels are examined, with special attention to the factors that led to the current state of strained relations between the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the Sino-Israel relationship from the Chinese perspective. It argues that the relationship is at a crossroad because China is increasingly more proactively involved in the international arena, which will inevitably lead to China's more assertive role in trying to facilitate solving the Israel-Palestinian conflicts. China has been inclined to be more supportive to the Palestinian side based on Chinese cultural values, traditionally stronger ties with Arab countries, and also since Palestine is generally considered as the weaker side of the conflict. A strong Israel-U.S. relationship will help balance Israel's relationship with China. The Sino-Israel relationship cannot be viewed out of the context of a Sino-U.S. relationship. China is more concerned with its relationship with the U.S., the only other world economy comparable in size to China's, in order to protect the peaceful world order for further development. Future Chinese involvement with the Palestinian region will be more constructive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India and Israel established full diplomatic relations in 1992. Bilateral trade has grown from $$200m in 1992 to $$5b in 2010. High-level collaboration in defense, science, and IT reflect inter-governmental trust and a stable partnership. Israelis and Indians interact along many axes as they traverse each other's terrains. However, these exchanges find only peripheral reference in official discourses and have received little scholarly investigation. Over 40,000 Israelis visit India annually and 70,000 Indian Jews live in Israel, aside from other (non-Jewish) Indian community clusters. What is the nature of Indian-Israeli encounters socially, culturally, and politically? Do they impact the meta-narrative of India-Israel relations? How can people-to-people synergies be better harnessed to bolster the bilateral relationship? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the modesty campaigns led by Neturei Karta circles in the period 1938--1974 under the leadership of Rabbi Amram Blau (1896--1974). This study was made possible following the discovery of Blau's personal archive. It explores the defensive stage of the modesty campaign that was aimed mostly to strengthen the Haredi enclave and to separate it from secular Jerusalem with the establishment of the modesty patrols. It discusses the offensive campaign with the examination of the struggle against mixed swimming pools and against a club operated by Working Mothers' organization. The second stage was intended mainly to reinforce Neturei Karta's leadership position among the Haredi public in Jerusalem. It explores the zealotry ethos in the context of the torching of the Eros sex shop in Jerusalem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]