Haim Watzman The tent protesters who’ve shaken the complacence of the Israeli leadership these last few weeks combine, as most protest movements do, radicalism with reaction. That is, they call for sweeping changes in Israeli society and government, but they also hark back to a mythical golden time when, they believe, Israeli society was kinder [...]
Understanding Religion, Ethnicity, and Identity-Tamar El-Or’s “Reserved Seats”
August 3rd, 2011 · 2 Comments · Culture and Ideas
Tags: anthropology·Israeli identity·Israeli society·Jewish identity·mizrahim·Pardes Katz·Sephardi Jews
Does Israeli Equal Jew? On a Shared Israeli Identity
July 27th, 2008 · 6 Comments · Judaism and Religion
Gershom Gorenberg A few days ago, Haim, you responded to a challenge I raised in a post on the conversion battles. Your answer made me realize that I hadn’t phrased the question sharply enough. I wrote: “We need to define a civic Israeli identity not dependent on halakhic status.” You wrote that I was right, [...]
Tags: Brother Daniel·civil identity·Conversion·Jewish identity·Law of Return
Black and White and Jew All Over: Eric L. Goldstein’s “The Price of Whiteness”
May 21st, 2008 · 5 Comments · Culture and Ideas
Haim Watzman If, like me, you are a Jew who grew up in America in the second half of the twentieth century, your Jewish identity was molded by a set of what seemed like self-evident propositions. First and foremost, Jews are different from other people in that they belong to a community that was both [...]
Tags: blacks·Jewish identity·Jewish-American history·race relations·Sami Rohr Prize·whites

