Jews in Israel: Contemporary Social and Cultural Patterns Uzi Rebhun and Chaim I. Waxman, Editors

The State of Israel, established over fifty years ago, has long passed the initial stages of nation-building and has become, in many respects, a Western, technological society. Today Israel is a society in transition, in which different sets of values can increase group tensions and challenge social cohesion. A collection of twenty essays, Jews in Israel is the first volume to systematically explore the challenges and contradictions of Israel as a modern, heterogeneous society. Focusing on the behaviors of people, rather than institutions and organizations, its approach is largely interdisciplinary, with an overriding sociological perspective. The volume begins with two broadly conceived essays - a social history of Jews in Israel over the last century, and a survey of major demographic trends among Israelis in the 1990s. Topics of other essays new include immigrants such as Soviet and Ethiopian Jews, the Kibbutz, the significance of gender, the influence of major religious political parties, education, national ideology, literature, the Holocaust, and the relationship between Israelis and Diaspora Jews. In their conclusion, the editors address additional challenge facing Israeli Jewry in the twenty-first century, with special emphasis on the tension between the desire to maintain the unique character of the Jewish state and the values of a modern democratic society. Uzi Rebhun is lecturer at The A. Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Chaim I. Waxman is Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies, Rutgers University, and co-editor of Jews in America (UPNE, 1999)