‘Family Structure’: Intractable Eurocentric Fantasies in Contemporary Israel

Abstract

This article offers a critical study of the iteration and reiteration of Israel's national identity. Thus this study falls within a well charted research terrain. And like many studies falling within its purview, it is also intended to do more than just describe attempts to impose uniform collective identity on obdurate social and cultural diversity. It is intended to examine the national project as 'a form of cultural elaboration' entrapped within an insoluble predicament. While aiming at molding a homogeneous national collective out of social and cultural diversity, this project generates intricate dialectics involving practices of social inclusion and exclusion. These dialectics take on board often racial myths. We examine these dialectics and the racial myths associated with them vis-à-vis the iteration and reiteration of Israel's national identity. Aside from inculcating the belief among Israeli Jews that their identity is reflective of a common cultural heritage that reaches back to times immemorial, these myths also register a yearning to reconnect Israel with its lost European, 'Judeo-Christian' heritage. Conveying these aspirations, either covertly or overtly, these myths support and reconfirm existing social and racial hierarchies in Israeli society.

Religion and Volunteering

“…There are many beautiful values in the Jewish religion -of helping the other, of […] charity, of humanism". Similarly to what has been argued by Yonah et al (2010), the longing for the past that conjoins the narratives of decline described earlier, encloses an aspiration to restore the old hegemonic order that is obscured through the mythical representation of the past. The new symbolic repertoire developed by the Good Spirit staff and board members conflates mythical motives from the 'civil' and 'traditionalist' religions, which nurture their attempts to create a broad social consensus for the new notion of 'volunteering' they aspire to promote.…”

“…The discrepancy between these two realms explains why even Ashkenazi Jews who have managed to retain an economic privilege nonetheless express dissatisfaction, often accompanied by a sense of disempowerment, as regards the cultural-ideological transitions that are occurring in Israel. These anxieties have been implicitly and explicitly articulated in Israeli newspapers, which are still dominated by Ashkenazi writers (Yonah et al 2010), and were expressed by wealthy Ashkenazi business people when describing their motivation to engage in philanthropic activity (Barkay 2008;Shimoni 2008).…”

The elasticity of the Color Line

“…The present essay illustrates this argument in a new way. It proceeds from the understanding that newspapers enable us to glean typical discursive practices that make use of the symbolic repertoire figuring in the cultural elaboration of the nation, as claimed by Yonah et al (2010). However, the symbolic repertoire dealt with by the present essay is present not in the written text but rather in the photographs accompanying texts that appear in the press.…”

“…In this journal, Yonah et al (2010: 4) have recently pointed out the role of the racial signifier in the containing and excluding Israeli national mechanism as revealed in the popular press in Israel. The authors initially state that the dialectics of containment and exclusion have been addressed by many researchers in the three past decades and specify the major works written on the subject in the fields of literature, culture studies, sociology, and political science.…”

“…It proceeds from the understanding that newspapers enable us to glean typical discursive practices that make use of the symbolic repertoire figuring in the cultural elaboration of the nation, as claimed by Yonah et al (2010). Thus, it functions as an active agent in the national socializing project even if unintentionally.…”