This article explores how middle-class Jewish men on reserve duty in the Israel Defense Forces form a "proper" masculinity through humor and jokes. Reserve service creates a fruitful territory for researching four issues that have not been extensively studied in the literature on masculinities: the relation between gender and age, the periodic reaffirmation of masculinity along the life course, how women are perceived as sexual objects and how informal social pressure is placed on singles to marry and begin families, and how men not only are motivated by homophobia but use images of women and homosexuals to map and interpret power relations and competition between men.

In this paper I examine how Arab-Palestinians who teach Arabic in Jewish schools appropriate performative identity strategies through passing as hybrid to gain inclusion into the schools. The paradox is that although these teachers are recruited specifically because they are Arabs, they are expected by teachers and students to conceal their Arabness. I argue that because of the ethno-national bright boundaries in Israel, which do not encourage integration but hybridization into roles defined by the state, Arabs cannot and mostly do not want to pass as Israeli-Jews but as good Arabs who do not reside beyond the binarism Jew/Arab but are in-betweens.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract