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The history of Israel's relationship with its Palestinian-Arab minority during the founding decades, from 1948 to 1968, is often portrayed as a story of formal citizenship that concealed large-scale, state-sanctioned oppression under military rule. This article excavates an untold history of employment affirmative action for Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel during these two decades which does not fit neatly into this story. Drawing on original archival research, it reveals that, during Israel's founding decades, officials adopted hiring quotas for unskilled Arab workers and for educated Arabs; requirements and incentives for hiring Arabs in government offices, Jewish businesses, and organizations; earmarked jobs and established vocational training courses for the Arab population. It demonstrates that interests in safeguarding Jewish control and economic stability aligned with egalitarian aspirations, and motivated state officials to adopt measures that promoted the inclusion of the Arab population in the workforce, albeit on unequal terms. Furthermore, these measures were part of a transformation of the state's attitude towards Arab citizens, from strict military control to a regime of “hierarchical inclusion” entailing gradual integration into the Israeli economy — mostly though its lower tiers and with a second-class status. Tracing the use of these mechanisms, not then called affirmative action but recognizable as such today, to this period of subjected population management, complicates our understanding of both this chapter in Israel's history and of affirmative action more broadly.

The article constitutes a widely researched account of mental patients and their perceptions in the early history of Israel, especially its second decade. It focuses on a single generation, which experienced the traumas of war in Europe, followed by insecurity in Israel’s struggle for independence. The article claims that in the 1960s many suffered from depression, reflected in a record number of patients in mental hospitals and mentally sick people, mostly of European origin. This study describes Israeli society in the 1960s as disturbed, immersed in nightmarish dreams and close to madness; it also discusses the genetic and neurological vulnerabilities which induced the psychosis and the social response that converted it into a chronic illness.

Storytelling in the psalter is usually attributed to those psalms which relate stories of the history of Israel. Narratology, the theory and procedure of studying narrative representations, is usually applied to narratives. However, there are certain features in the psalms, which allow us to define them as narrative texts and therefore examine them by means of narratology. This paper aims to contribute to a genre-overlapping approach towards poetry by means of opening the way to showing the benefits, as well as limitations of narratology applied to poetical texts by applying the narratological categories narrator/ narrative voice, plot/build-up of tension, characters and characterization, as well as time and space to Psalm 64. https://doi.org/10.17159/2312-3621/2019/v32n2a5

Political assassination has been on the books at least since the murder of Julius Caesar and has more recently acquired a tasteless renewal with the supposedly artistic representation of a similar ...

The schism of the united Kingdom right after Solomon’s death set Israel along a totally different historical path. Jeroboam could establish national institutions for the northern Kingdom of Israel on the model of the southern Kingdom of Judah, but to choose a new capital was the most urgent task for him. Jeroboam moved the capital from Shechem to Penuel and again to Tirzah during his reign. Omri, unlike former kings, also transferred the capital to Samaria, which did not exist until its being established by Israel. Events of this nature had been very unusual in the history of Israel. Although the transfer of capitals in the northern Kingdom is very important, few studies have been performed, and their conclusions about these transfers have not been useful. Especially regarding the transfer of the capital to Tirzah and Penuel, historians have considered these movements to be strange and unsuitable. To choose a capital reflects a national policy and vision. This study tries to explain the capitals of the northern Kingdom with a geographical approach for the purpose of understanding the reasons and background for their transfer. As a result of this study, now we can state confidently that those movements were not strange but suitable transfers that Jeroboam made to concentrate on eastern-oriented cities in order to control the Transjordan land and to integrate its tribes. Omri turned his eyes toward the coast and the sea. He chose Samaria as a base to cooperate with Phoenicia which had monopolized the coastal trade in the Mediterranean. Samaria was located inland not far from the coast and was the best place for Omri to develop his foreign policy and strategy. He accomplished prosperity and fame for the northern Kingdom of Israel after Solomon. Jeroboam and Omri founded a national base and succeeded in making the state rich and powerful. They, however, were denigrated as vicious kings because of their leading Israel to betray God and to bring the religion of Israel to a form of syncretism. Therefore, their dream and policy for a new nation reflected in the transfer of the capital was subsequently forgotten or devalued.

In Judaism, calamity [Hebr. חורבן churban, plural. חורבנות churbanot] is a cultural category that is not necessarily characterized as negative. It is viewed as a form of purification, which begins a crisis that finally leads to a religious and moral recovery. Three most important churbanot are usually recognized in the history of Israel: the destruction of Salomon’s Temple by Nebuchadnezzar (586 B.C.) followed by the Babylonian captivity, the destruction of Herod’s Temple by Titus (70 A.D.) with the subsequent dispersion of Israelites (Hebr. גלות [‘galut’]) and the Holocaust (1939–1945 A.D.), a planned and methodical extermination of European Jews. All these experiences of Jewish disaster strongly resonated with the work of Aleksander Wat (1900–1967), a Polish poet with Jewish roots. Two of his poems are analyzed here. The first one (consisting of two parts), entitled Na melodie hebrajskie [‘To Hebrew Tunes’] (from the volume Wiersze [‘Poems’], 1957), explicitly mentions two churbanot: the Babylonian captivity and the diaspora of 70 A.D. The other poem is the third part of Pieśni wedrowca [‘The Songs of a Wanderer’] (from the volume Wiersze środziemnomorskie [‘Mediterranean Poems’], 1962). It allusively mentions the Holocaust as the greatest Jewish disaster. In each case, the churban helps to identify the heart of Jewish identity. Because the Shoah cannot be said to have any positive consequences, Wat treats it in mystagogical terms, i.e., as a mystery.

Dans le paysage musical israélien, depuis 1948, les musiques « orientales » occupent une place significative. Elles proviennent de sensibilités, d’histoires éloignées les unes des autres et se rejoignent ou se différencient. De grands musiciens juifs irakiens ou égyptiens sont poussés à l’exil et s’installent en Palestine mandataire puis en Israël où, dans des conditions difficiles, ils recréent un monde musical riche, en partie marginalisé, en partie intégré à la construction d’une culture nationale. Une autre scène musicale apparaît à l’ère des télévisions et des cassettes audio, la musique s’adapte au marché « pop ». Le contexte de la world music coïncide avec des projets de rapprochement culturel entre des musiciens israéliens, palestiniens ou provenant d’autres pays du Proche-Orient. La même musique est ainsi un objet d’identifications politiques antagoniques. In the Israeli musical life, since 1948, “oriental” music has a significant place. This music has several origins and is linked with very different histories. These different musical productions can join one another or be separated. Great Iraqi and Egyptian Jewish musicians were driven into exile and settled in Mandatory Palestine and then in Israel where, under difficult conditions, they recreated a rich musical world, partly marginalized, partly integrated into the construction of a national culture. Another music scene is emerging in the age of televisions and audio cassettes, music is adapting to the “pop” market. The context of world music coincides with projects of cultural rapprochement between musicians from Israel, Palestinians and other countries in the Middle East. The same music is thus an object of antagonistic political identifications.

This paper is based on a two-hour seminar on Ancient Near Eastern Iconography with a small group of students, conducted at the Institute for Old Testament Studies and Biblical Archaeology of the Faculty of Protestant Theology in Vienna. The students are familiar with Hebrew, History of Israel and Old Testament Exegesis contents, but have no special knowledge of Ancient Near Eastern Studies. The seminar is a methodological training insofar as it aims at acquiring the ability to read iconographic source material, i.e. to grasp it in its pictorial content and to classify it in terms of cultural history. Quality, material and style can only be criticized marginally. The museum visit should make it possible to apply the acquired skills to the object.

This book chapter provides a detailed description of the discovery, research, and validation of the case of Mr. Israel Kristal of Israel, 113, as the World’s Oldest Man titleholder for Guinness World Records. In this chapter, we show how modern scientific age validation criteria were applied to prove the credibility of the claims made about Mr. Kristal’s age. Due to the hardships Mr. Kristal faced in his early life, validating his age proved to be extremely difficult. While the first attempts to validate Mr. Kristal’s age were made in early 2014, a breakthrough in these investigative efforts did not occur until January 2016. To validate his age, the Gerontology Research Group contacted not only Mr. Kristal’s family, but also international institutions specializing in genealogical research. A special note of appreciation should go to the Jewish Records Indexing in Poland for their contributions to this investigation. As a result of this international cooperation, sufficient early-life, middle-life, and late-life evidence was obtained to meet modern validation standards. Israel Kristal was finally recognized as the oldest living man in the world on Mar. 11, 2016 (retroactive to Jan. 19, 2016). Israel Kristal is the second validated supercentenarian in the history of Israel, after Dr. Maria Pogonowska (1897–2009), who was also born in Poland. In addition, he is the current longevity record-holder of Israel.

This article introduces the Assyrian and Babylonian sources relevant to the Old Testament historical books. The corpus of Assyrian sources consists mainly of royal inscriptions between the mid-ninth and mid-seventh centuries bce, pertaining to the period narrated in 1 Kgs. 16 to 2 Kgs. 21. In general, when the same events are described, the biblical accounts appear to be in basic agreement with the Assyrian sources, even though some episodes mentioned in the Assyrian sources are not included in the biblical texts and vice versa. It is plausible that the writers of 2 Kings had source-based knowledge of past events. In both cases, the historical information must be filtered through the ideological purposes of the Assyrian scribes as well as the deuteronomistic editors. The Babylonian sources confirm the conquest of Jerusalem in 597 bce and the forced migration of the Judeans, including King Jehoiachin and his entourage. Otherwise, there are no direct links between the Babylonian sources and the Old Testament historical books. Nevertheless, the Babylonian sources, especially those from Al-Yahudu, contain important information on the social environment and living conditions of the Judean population in a certain part of Babylonia in the sixth to fifth centuries bce.

The Chronicler used two types of sources in writing history: In general, the chronistic narration is based on the „Deuteronomistic history“ as it is called today. Nonetheless, the Pentateuch in its priestly components is another key to its concept. In his historical outline, the Chronicler is aware of differences of time: There is, first of all, the epoch of Moses and of the Mosaic institutions given to a wandering Israel. A new age, second, started with David gathering a scattered people toward the new center in Jerusalem. These epochs are characterized by both continuity in the worship of Yhwh and discontinuity of theperformance of that worship. The ark, the mobile sanctuary in the tent of the desert, was now to find its definite place and house, to be built and inhabited by Yhwh, prepared by David and finally realized by Solomon. According to the Chronicler, God’s word had been present in both epochs, but in different forms. Originally, it was given orally to Moses. Yet, the history of Israel as described by Chronicles refers to written documents (kakkātûb). In light of their attribution in Chronicles we should not call them „priestly“ – as it has been customary since the 19th century (de Wette, Wellhausen) –but more adequately „Mosaic“ tradition. For the Chronicler, such Mosaic tradition was applied and performed by David’s Israel. Of prime importance is the new position of Levi, Moses’ own tribe. According to the P-sources in the Pentateuch, the Levites had to do physical labour for the holy tent. But, in the era of the temple, they gained a new responsibility by interpreting, instructing and applying Tora in its broadest sense. The Priests's duties for their part are presupposed rather than itemized. Since the time of the Exodus – which is deliberately not a topic in Chronicles – they have remained the same. Decisive for the Chronicler is the new presence of Moses’ revelation in the ongoing history of Israel and its kings, accompanied and guided by Moses’ tribe, the Levites.

Research regarding historical background and literary composition of biblical writings during the last decades has followed an independent path and has been done outside of theology. The methodologies used within the academic world and the results reached so far, pose challenges to theologians and clergymen regarding the identification of the actual achievements and limitations of such researches. Bearing this in mind, the article presents some considerations regarding the findings of those researches in order to outline some practical recommendations for biblical research and the teaching of theology. After reviewing the contributions of the most relevant researchers of ¿independent histories¿ of ancient Israel and those that could be labeled as the ¿third search¿ for historical Jesus, the emergence of some agreements is established, as well as the limitations of some methodological assumptions that, by accepting only what common human experience could prove, exclude some higher-order realities or present Jesus as a figure that cannot be either Christ or son of God. The conclusion is that a reasonable balanced should be encouraged. On the one hand, a healthy openness towards the possibility that some events have taken place that, because of their own nature, cannot be proved empirically. On the other, preventing to present as facts what are literal readings of the biblical writing. La investigación acerca del marco histórico y del proceso de composición literaria de los textos bíblicos en las últimas décadas, ha seguido su propio camino, de ordinario al margen de la teología. Las metodologías utilizadas en ámbitos académicos y los resultados obtenidos hasta el momento plantean retos al teólogo y al pastor, en orden a discernir sus logros y a detectar sus limitaciones. En este artículo se ofrece una reflexión acerca de las conclusiones de estas investigaciones, orientada a plantear algunas sugerencias prácticas para la investigación bíblica y la docencia en el ámbito de la formación teológica. Después de pasar revista a las aportaciones de los autores más significativos de las “historias independientes” del antiguo Israel y a las que se podrían enmarcar en el ámbito de la “tercera búsqueda” del Jesús histórico, se constata la configuración de algunos consensos, a la vez que se perciben las limitaciones de unos presupuestos metodológicos que, si solo aceptan como ocurrido lo que la común experiencia humana manifiesta como comprobable, cierran la puerta a realidades de orden superior, o presentan la figura de un Jesús al que no se deja ser ni Cristo ni Hijo de Dios. Como conclusión se plantea la necesidad de cuidar un prudente equilibrio. De una parte, con una sabia apertura al menos a la posibilidad de que se hayan producido acontecimientos que, por su propia naturaleza, escapan a la comprobación empírica. De otra, evitando presentar como hechos reales lo que son lecturas literalistas del texto bíblico. Palabras clave: Historia de Israel; Antiguo Testamento; Jesús histórico; Nuevo Testamento; Interpretación bíblica. A pesquisa sobre o marco histórico e do processo de composição literária dos textos bíblicos nas ultimas décadas têm feito seu próprio caminho, geralmente nas margens da teologia. As metodologias usadas em âmbitos acadêmicos e os resultados conseguidos até hoje propõem desafios ao teólogo e ao pastor, no intuito de discernir seus avanços e distinguir suas limitações. Nesse artigo se oferece uma reflexão sobre as conclusões dessas pesquisas, orientada a propor algumas sugestões práticas para a pesquisa bíblica e a docência na área de formação teológica. Depois de revisar as contribuições dos autores mais significativos das “histórias independentes” do antigo Israel e das que se poderiam situar na área da “terceira pesquisa” do Jesus histórico, constata-se a configuração de alguns consensos, ao mesmo tempo percebem-se as limitações de uns pressupostos metodológicos que, se solo aceitam o que a experiência comum humana manifesta tem por comprovável enquanto acontecido; eles fecham as portas às realidades de ordem superior ou apresentam a figura de um Jesus que não pode ser nem Cristo nem Filho de Deus. A conclusão propõe a necessidade de procurar um equilíbrio prudente. De uma parte, com abertura Francisco Varo Pineda 246 | Cuestiones Teológicas, Vol. 46, No. 106 (Julio-diciembre, 2019) sabedora ao menos à possibilidade de ter produzido acontecimentos que, por sua própria natureza fogem à verificação empírica. De outra parte, evita-se apresentar como dados reais o que são leituras literais do texto bíblico.

Lukan scholarship has paid attention to the ambivalent attitude towards the temple found in Stephen's speech. However, a coherent explanation of this ambivalence is still needed from within the narrative of Stephen's retold history of Israel itself. This study points to a pattern of connection between God's salvation and Israel's worship space captured in the Song of Moses, particularly Exod 15.17, as a sub-structure of the Lukan Stephen's basic understanding ofHeilsgeschichtewithin which he integrates the stories of Abraham, exodus and David. The nature of Israel's worship space revealed in this scheme elucidates Stephen's ambivalent critique of the temple.

This study examines changes to Jewish day school students’ narratives of the history of Israel after a two-and-a-half-week trip there. Seventeen students were interviewed about the history of Israel before and after the trip. Before the trip, most students’ accounts lacked logical connections among the different events. The observations on the trip revealed that the tour guide told a story of Jewish exile and return which most of the students adopted. This finding suggests that short trips to Israel may be able to teach a coherent narrative, something formal history classrooms struggle to do. The article concludes proposing a division of labor between Israel travel and formal, classroom instruction.

By examining how Hebrew speakers respond to compliments, this study suggests a taxonomy of compliment responses, adds to the scarce knowledge about pragmatic patterns in Hebrew, and reveals parts of the “cultural script”/habitus of the Israeli speech community. A new variation of the classic Discourse Completion Test was devised and applied to compliment responses of Hebrew-speaking students. The findings suggest that Hebrew speakers tend to accept compliments more than any other politeness strategy choice, and their responses to compliments tend to be more diversified than in other cultures. A compliment's object had the most influence on strategy choice when responding to it, with an apparent differentiation between “external compliments” (appearance, performances, and possession) and “internal compliments” (physical appearance, talent, and personality), where the former is welcomed and the latter is not. A discussion about the specific socio-cultural history of Israel showed that the linguistic choices are part of a larger cultural performance of firgun, a relatively new socio-pragmatic practice that indicates a shift in Israeli politeness habitus.

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 ...

In recent years the impact of Assyriology on Biblical studies and the knowledge of the history of ancient Israel has become more and more evident. Thanks to Assyriology the reconstructions of the history of Israel in the period of the First Temple are much fuller and more comprehensive than before. The same is true in regard to the very roots and nature of many books included in the Hebrew Bible. The up-to-date results of the cooperation of Biblical scholars and Assyriologists lead us to the conclusion that in the 7th century B.C. there existed a strong and fruitful Israelite diaspora in Assyria. Because information on its existence, influence and outcome are consequently scanty in the Bible (damnatio memoriae), so Assyriology helps to gain a new knowledge about it and to assess its impact on the religion of ancient Israel.

Manfred Görg proposed to read the name Israel on a broken Egyptian inscriptionäm21687, which is now kept in the storage facilities of the New Museum in Berlin. New research during the last number of years has confirmed this reading, although the writing of the name is different from that of the Merenptah inscription. Some characteristics appear to demonstrate that this inscription is older than the Israel stela of Merenptah and may likely date to the 14th or earlier 13th centurybce. The paper will present some ideas about an earlier beginning of the formation of what is generally called Israel and about the way, how this early Israel came about.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the purported influence of a pro-Israeli environment in the West on the production of academic knowledge about the Palestine/Israel question. The most popular college textbooks on the history of the question were analysed through textbook and context analysis in order to answer the key question of the research: ‘How the knowledge of the history of the Palestine/Israel question presented in Western academia, and why has it been presented in that particular way. The results of the textbook analysis (Historical Narrative Analysis) support the conclusion that textbook knowledge on the question is mainly pro-Israeli in bias. In relation to the ‘Why’ question, the context analysis offers the ‘Jewish pro-Israeli producer’ as being the main factor for the bias in the products. An additional factor identified is that the relevant knowledge has been produced in a certain, American or Israeli, national and educational environment.