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Religious conversion is often associated with ideals of religious sincerity. But in a society in which religious belonging is entangled with ethnonational citizenship and confers political privilege, a convert might well have multilayered motives. Over the last two decades, mass non-Jewish immigration to Israel, especially from the former Soviet Union, has sparked heated debates over the Jewish state’s conversion policy and intensified suspicion of converts’ sincerity. When the State Winks carefully traces the performance of state-endorsed Orthodox conversion to highlight the collaborative labor that goes into the making of the Israeli state and its Jewish citizens. In a rich ethnographi...
The standard histories of Zionism have depicted it almost exclusively as a Jewish political movement, one in which Christians do not appear except as antagonists. In the highly original Zeal for Zion, Shalom Goldman makes the case for a wider and m
The one intelligent overview of Israeli politics that addresses the paradox at the heart of Israeli statehood: How can Israel be both a Jewish state and a democratic state?
In this powerful book one of the most important Jewish thinkers in the world today grapples with issues that increasingly divide Israel's secular Jewish community from its religious Zionists. Addressing the concerns of both communities from the point of view of one who is deeply committed to religious pluralism, David Hartman suggests a more inclusive and inviting framework for the modern Israeli engagement of the Jewish tradition. He offers a new understanding of what it means to be Jewish--one which is neither assimilationist nor backward-looking, and one that enables different Jewish groups to celebrate their own traditions without demonizing or patronizing others. In a world polarized be...
This book reviews the status of Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews) through a most recent comprehensive research of the roots of Jewish Identity. The author argues that Jewishness is not determined by scientific and sociological techniques alone, but is a function of halakha (Jewish Law). Consequently, where, as here, "historical truth" is uncertain, it is "halakhic truth" which is definitive for Jews. All of these issues revolve around the crucial question "who is a Jew?"The upsurge of aliyah from Ethiopia reached its peak, as is well-known, with "Operation Moses" in 1984-1985, and with "Operation Solomon" in 1991, rescue airlifts that resonated around the globe. This immigration of 70,000, including the current return of the Falas Mura, has intensified debates on questions concerning the Law of Return.
A collection of studies dealing with various aspects of Jewish political life. The philosophical and structual elements of the Jewish polity in the Diaspora, political change in 20th-century Anglo and American Jewish communities, Jewish identity in the State of Israel, the role of its religious political parties, and Israeli public protest, are all analysed from a Jewish and a general comparative perspective.--Dust jacket.