relationship between state and religion, secularization, and modernization. The book is based on the claim that Israel is indeed experiencing a signif- icant and ...
Book Reviews
Guy Ben-Porat, Between State and Synagogue: The Secularization of Contemporary Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 280 pp., $28.99 (paperback). The impression one can get from reading the daily Israeli press and various academic literature is that Israel is going through a process of ‘religionization’. The demographic increase in the religious population, the phenomenon of hazara b’tshuva (taking on religious observance), the strengthening of the religious parties, and the rise of religious nationalism are only a few examples of religion’s current resurgence in Israel, as in other countries around the world. On the other hand, day-to-day Israeli life reflects quite the opposite picture: malls and entertainment places are open every Shabbat nationwide; growing numbers of Israelis are opting for civil marriage; and private secular cemeteries are spreading throughout the country. From this point of view, the religious coercion bemoaned by many is hardly noticeable. How can these two contradictory trends co-exist? By means of a comprehensive analysis of four secular phenomena—civil marriage, secular burial, the sale of non-kosher food, and shopping on Shabbat (chapters 3–6)—BenPorat’s Between State and Synagogue provides a fascinating explication of this contrast, while contributing important theoretical insights pertaining to the relationship between state and religion, secularization, and modernization. The book is based on the claim that Israel is indeed experiencing a significant and accelerated secularization process that began in the 1990s. Mass immigration to Israel from the former Soviet Union (FSU), an extremely secular society, and the development of Israeli capitalism have enhanced this process (37–41). The rise of consumerism in Israel has brought about a dramatic increase in the volume of business carried out on Shabbat, and shoppers all over the country now have access to a wide variety of nonkosher foods, including bacon. In addition, thousands of immigrants who Israel Studies Review, Volume 29, Issue 1, Summer 2014: 142–165 © Association for Israel Studies doi: 10.3167/isr.2014.290110 • ISSN 2159-0370 (Print) • ISSN 2159-0389 (Online)
Book Reviews | 143
are not recognized as Jews have increased the rate of civil marriage, and the spectrum of available options for performing such marriages has widened. However, Ben-Porat’s main claim is that these processes have not essentially altered the religious status quo, which remains at the foundation of the relationship between religion and state in Israel. Following Ulrich Beck, Ben-Porat claims that the sphere of “‘real’ politics” was not affected by the secular changes. These changes came into effect at the “subpolitics” level, the “noninstitutionalized form of politics ‘outside and beyond the representative institutions of the political system of nation-states’” (21), namely, civil organizations and entrepreneurships. Thanks to this lucid insight, Ben-Porat avoids falling into the trap that ensnared many researchers before him who could not explain why religion’s status in Israel’s political sphere continues to remain stable, while at the same time the public and social arenas become progressively more secular. What, then, is the reason for this? Why has Israeli secularization not influenced the classic political arena, side by side with its existence in the sphere of ‘alternative politics’? Ben-Porat convincingly argues that Israeli secularization stems not from a well-formulated secular ideology that seeks to change the existing religion and state arrangements, but rather from pragmatic needs that are met through specific local solutions that take advantage of the state’s weakness in enforcing its laws. So long as they are able to advance their businesses, secular entrepreneurs whose motivation is chiefly financial have no interest in rocking the boat by undermining the existing arrangement. Similarly, most immigrants, and specifically the non-Jewish ones, have had no ambitions—at least so far—of undermining the current social order, provided that they are able to find specific solutions to meet their needs. Thus, for example, a business owner who opens his shop on Shabbat will not attempt to confront the authorities and embark on a public struggle. Instead, since most of his affluent clients own private vehicles, he will distance his business from the big cities, making it easier for him to continue employing Jewish workers illegally. This description does not negate the fact that there are still various ideological groups in Israel that continue to fight against the Orthodox monopoly. These groups, consisting mainly of secular ideologists and religious non-Orthodox groups, continue to pressure the political and legal systems to change the unique status of religion in Israel. However, as opposed to the past, when the ideological forces worked alone and unsuccessfully, the activities of non-ideological groups from the 1990s onward has significantly weakened religion’s power in the public arena, if not in the political one. In light of this analysis, Ben-Porat suggests an interesting answer to the question of whether Israel has become more secular. Based on the important distinction between secularization as a decline of religious authority
144 | Book Reviews
and secularism as a secular ideology, Ben-Porat asserts that Israel is becoming “secularized but not secular” (225). Growing parts of Israeli-Jewish society are secular in the sense that they do not feel committed to religious laws, nor do they obey them. However, no significant group with a coherent secular ideology has developed in Israel. Quite a few of the secular entrepreneurs interviewed by the author do not define themselves as secular but rather as ‘traditional’. Many Israelis violate the Shabbat by carrying out commercial and entertainment activities on it, yet they continue to preserve some of its religious customs and are interested in the preservation of Shabbat’s unique character, even in the public arena. Most of the private cemeteries that provide secular burial services maintain separation between Jews and non-Jews, and some of them do not even allow non-Jews to be buried at all, in conformity with Halakhah, since they believe this to be the preference of the majority of their clientele. In the conclusion of the book, Ben-Porat does not seem to be optimistic regarding the chances of an ideological and humanistic secularism developing in Israel, since the prevailing secularism is skin-deep and materialistic—a ‘live and let live’ type of secularism. Zionism’s inability to detach itself from the religious tradition, which is seen by many as the raison d’être of Zionism and the State of Israel, together with the development of the ‘secularization of everyday life’, have not generated a foundation for such a change and actually hinder it to a large extent (225–228). However, just as it was impossible to foresee the secular revolution taking place in Israel over the last two decades, so it is difficult to tell what the future has in store. Netanel Fisher The Open University of Israel
Hanna Lerner, Making Constitutions in Deeply Divided Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 274 pp., $29.99 (paperback). This book seeks to address an (allegedly) relatively neglected aspect of constitutions—the fundamental, identity-defining, ideological, and symbolic aspect of a constitution as expressing the aspirations and common goals and norms of the nation (4). Examples presented here relate to the role of religion in the state and the question of language. The volume aims to fill this theoretical lacuna by examining the historical experience of three countries characterized by deeply divided societies when they attempted to deal with these fundamental questions during the process
Book Reviews | 145
of drafting a formal constitution: Ireland in 1922, India in 1947–1950, and Israel in 1948–1950. This analysis reveals the possibility of avoiding a constitutional decision on these questions in the formal constitution (the ‘incremental approach’). Thus, in effect, decisions on controversial issues are removed from the constitutional domain and transferred to the political arena. Lerner supports this approach, after engaging in an impressive examination of its concomitant disadvantages. The book discusses an important question, and the debate it conducts is significant and thought-provoking. The possibility described is certainly viable. Its assessment and the importance of the identity-defining and symbolic role of the constitution are issues worthy of examination. I will review some general topics that are raised and then address the ‘Israeli situation’ as analyzed in the book. First, the choice of the three countries on which the author focuses is not entirely convincing. The criteria for selection are the absence of acceptance of the basic assumptions upheld by liberal philosophy and, mainly, the desire of different camps in the society to force their political philosophy on the country as a whole (33). It is particularly unclear why Ireland was chosen. Ireland was not an independent state determined to form its own constitution; rather, it was the case of a struggle between the Irish leadership and an external power—Great Britain. The special features of the Irish constitution resulted from external constraints, given the lack of full independence. Consequently, it does not afford an example for learning about constructing a constitution in an independent state. With regard to Israel, it is difficult to assess the significance of the dispute over the identity of the state—that is, the relationship between religion and state—in the 1st Knesset’s decision to refrain from establishing a constitution. Clearly, additional considerations influenced this decision, among them the refusal to limit the power of the government and the objective of providing the government with maximum freedom of action. If factors other than identity are given considerable weight, the Israeli case becomes less typical for Lerner’s purposes. The similarity between developments in Israel and India is very limited. India established a written constitution, including the constitutional protection of human rights, with a very active court in this area. The dominant political force (Jawaharlal Nehru) supported an inclusive constitutional concept. The identity issue that was postponed—namely, the official status of the Hindi language—was not a concession with regard to the liberal aspect of the constitution but instead involved an issue of national identity. The postponement was not made out of consideration for political opponents; instead, it was based on the lack of practical feasibility. India’s treatment of substantive family law resembles that of Israel.
146 | Book Reviews
However, the differences are very significant: in India, civil marriage is not entirely prevented. The Indian constitution has not refrained from addressing this issue. It set a goal in a soft constitutional provision, and subsequent developments progressed toward realization of this goal. Given a complete constitution, a specific issue could be repaired in due course. As a result of patient implementation, appropriate regulation was eventually enacted. In India, we see that the logic of the whole projecting onto a specific void left inside was exercised. However, there is no such logic in the Israeli system, in which the whole in this area is a void. It is doubtful whether the case of India teaches anything about the desirability of missing the historic moment and postponing the constitutional act. Second, although not explicitly stated, Lerner apparently prefers, as a matter of principle, the model of an all-inclusive constitution in identity-defining and particularistic terms over a watered-down model that is identity-defining but all-inclusive in the liberal sense. Such a preference deserves a thorough discussion, which is not provided. The author does not inquire why the aspect of identity receives but scant attention in constitutions. Is addressing this issue an essential (or at least an important) role of a constitution? Would doing so impose an excessive burden on a constitution, particularly in modern or postmodern non-homogeneous societies that lack unity of aspirations or particularistic goals (e.g., Poles who are devout Catholics and Poles who are Communists)? Such a preference is natural for those who belong to the national majority in a state (e.g., Jews in Israel), because only they can say that constitutions provide the citizenry with a sense of honor and authorship—a sense that “we the people” includes them (18). It is easy to see that the emphasis on the element of the identity of the majority is made at the expense of the excluded minority. It is not surprising, therefore, that examples cited as religious or national identity constitutional models—such as France and Germany in national terms and the Scandinavian countries in religious terms—are weak instances of the identity-defining element in constitutions. One way to avoid the difficulty underlying the study is to adopt a more modest approach to the project called a ‘constitution’. The more watered-down and limited the ideological/particularistic aspect of the constitution, the easier it is for all sectors of the public to agree to it. Such a limitation on the constitution does not compel individuals or communities to give up their particularistic aspirations. They are prevented, however, from imposing these aspirations on the entire state and all citizens, including those whose aspirations are different and even opposite. This can be done if a distinction is drawn between state and
Book Reviews | 147
society and if each community is allowed to act in the public social sphere in a way that realizes its own identity without forcing a single identity on society as a whole (Ezrahi et al. 2001). Third, the author assumes that social agreement is a prerequisite for the establishment of a formal constitution. It is doubtful whether this assumption is always valid. Did such consent precede the American or German constitutions? The author’s own analysis indicates that such agreement did not precede the Kemalist constitution in Turkey. India too established a comprehensive, even if not entirely complete, constitution. As Lerner writes, there is certainly the possibility of a decision by the majority, especially when a significant majority favors one position. Moreover, the approach of a historic moment for the establishment of a constitution entails the notion that at such a moment in time it is not essential to ensure a broad consensus. What were the repercussions of Israel missing the historic moment of writing a constitution when the state was established? Alongside the social price of adopting the incremental process—including severe infringement on the rights and status of women, as lucidly analyzed by the author— one should add the enormous difficulty, perhaps impossibility, of completing the constitution after 1948. Indeed, a ‘constitutional amendment’ was adopted in 1992 in the shape of the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, as described in the book. However, this is merely a weak and partial amendment that does not include rights to equality or the freedom of expression, religion, education, or welfare, while the rights that are included are not entrenched. In addition, there is a constant dispute over the powers of the High Court of Justice. Since 1992, Israel has been in a constitutional deadlock with regard to efforts to establish a constitution. The anti-democratic legislative initiatives in the 18th Knesset illustrate the dangers of legislative activity in the absence of a rigorous constitution that protects all human and civil rights (Kremnitzer and Krebs 2011). An examination of the Israeli incremental approach (as a substitute for a constitution) provides a rather gloomy reality: the removal of marriage and divorce from the domain of civil law and its allocation (or abandonment) to the hands of the Orthodox religious establishment meant the sacrifice of women’s right to equality. The arrangements made with the ultra-Orthodox leaders exempted men from military service, provided that they dedicate themselves to the study of the Torah, thus removing them from the labor market. This has placed the burden of caring for the family and earning a livelihood on ultra-Orthodox Jewish women, who, due to socialization processes, accept this situation. The political compromise also included splitting the education system into streams (referring here to Jewish streams) and subjecting National Religious and
148 | Book Reviews
ultra-Orthodox children to a politically motivated education that emphasizes the particularistic at the expense of universal, humanistic, and liberal perspectives. To sum up: secular Jewish men made a deal for which they paid in a currency that was not theirs—the rights and status of both secular and religious Jewish women. Short-sighted politicians thus shaped a situation that endangers the fate of Israel as a substantive democracy. This outcome is not surprising. From a theoretical standpoint, on what basis might one expect that day-to-day politics based on short-term considerations of political survival, preservation of political power, and concern for particular interests would yield worthy results? Perhaps in certain social conditions it is not possible to achieve a constitution that would enjoy public legitimacy. In such situations, ordinary politics govern. However, there is no good reason to make this default scenario one that is morally desirable and worthy of adoption from a normative point of view. Mordechai Kremnitzer The Hebrew University of Jerusalem References Ezrahi, Yaron, Mordechai Kremnitzer, Margit Cohn, and Eitan Alimi. 2001. Israel towards a Constitutional Democracy. [In Hebrew.] Jerusalem: Israel Democracy Institute. Kremnitzer, Mordechai, and Shiri Krebs. 2011. “From Illiberal Legislation to Intolerant Democracy.” Israel Studies Review 26, no. 1: 4–11.
David Ohana, Israel and Its Mediterranean Identity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 216 pp., $85.00 (hardback). In this book, David Ohana raises and answers two critical questions: what is Israel’s character, and, correspondingly, what should it be? His answers are unequivocal: Israel is Mediterranean, and it should keep going that way. As a historian of ideas, he presents the views of intellectuals bearing on this bold thesis. The two scholarly pillars of Mediterraneanism are Braudel in the Mediterranean annals and Goitein in Jewish history. To quote from Ohana’s foreword for Nocke (2009: vi): “The cultural survey that Nocke conducts of the contemporary visual arts, popular music, literature, architecture, etc., in Israel reveals the young Israeli society as a vividly Mediterranean one.” In her book, Nocke well documents these developments in Israel. What is ‘Mediterranean’? For Ohana and other protagonists of the Mediterranean school, it is a blanket term for all the countries on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea: Portugal, Spain, southern France, Italy, the
Book Reviews | 149
Balkans, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and North Africa. These countries have, Ohana asserts, a common climate, geography, history, and culture. Mediterranean people, in this argument, are relaxed, moderate, sociable, extroverted, hospitable, cooperative, and hedonistic. Their healthy cuisine is rich in vegetables and fruits. In their lifestyles and thoughtways, they synthesize the cultural heritages of Asia, Africa, and Europe. These commonalities draw them together and propel them to engage in dialogue rather than conflict. Ohana observes: “The Mediterranean option is a possible bridge between Israel and its Arab neighbors, between Israel and Europe and among Israelis themselves” (26). Mediterranean cooperation is supported by the European Union in the hope that a shared identity for Arabs and Jews will reduce the severe disputes dividing them. It boosts Israel’s integration into Europe and softens the growing divisions in a post-ideological and deeply divided Israeli society. According to Ohana, the benefits for Israel are plenty. As a member of the Mediterranean region, it is no longer a foreign body in the area. It gains solidarity and peace with its close and distant neighbors. It is accepted into the exclusive club of the Western world. It can pride itself on being enlightened and multicultural. It is hard, nevertheless, to accept Ohana’s answers to the questions he poses. There is no evidence for geographic determinism. The cultural, political, and economic heterogeneity among the countries in the region is enormous. As a collective consciousness, Mediterranean identity is simply non-existent. The limited EU efforts have so far yielded meager results. Neither Israel nor Israelis are Mediterranean. Contemporary Israel has more in common with Spain and France than with Syria and Libya. In spite of its pretensions, Israel is not Western (Smooha 2005), nor is it Eastern European, Near Eastern, or Mediterranean. Israeliness has components from all of these cultures, but it is, however, a new and highly unique hybrid, emerging from Jewish life in Palestine and Israel. Israelis, both Jews and Arabs, do not view themselves as Mediterranean. Israel cannot be regarded as a post-ideological society as long as Zionism continues to determine the thinking of Jewish elites, the state continues to implement large-scale Zionist projects, and the Jewish public continues to take Zionism for granted. The more pertinent issue is whether Mediterraneanism should become a political agenda for Israel. It is a pity that Ohana does not discuss in detail the alternative options open for Israel—that is, Middle Eastern, global, or Western—and does not show the superiority and feasibility of the Mediterranean option. If Israel wishes to be part of the Middle East where it is located, the Middle Eastern option is the right choice. After all, the majority of its
150 | Book Reviews
population—Palestinian-Arab citizens and Mizrahi Jews—originated in the Middle East. Israel shares with the Muslim countries the millet system, which shapes its ethno-religious identity. Integration into the Middle East provides Israel with the best chances of regional acceptance. Yet Ohana does not even consider this possibility, and as a result he has been accused of resorting to Mediterraneanism as a means to divorce himself from Mizrahiut (Easternness) (Hochberg 2011). A number of Mizrahi romanticists who believe that Mizrahim were and still are Arab Jews prefer this direction. Israeli-Arab intellectuals oppose Mediterraneanism because it is bound to replace pan-Arabism. On the other hand, mainstream Israel rejects incorporation into the Middle East and views settlement of the Israeli-Arab conflict as a happy divorce from the area. To be in the company of Syria, Egypt, and Iran is the Israeli nightmare. The global option suggests a better deal for Israel. This possibility opens up the world to Israel through real and virtual contacts, prompting it to adopt and adapt what it needs and deems fit. Israel will continue enriching its hybrid nature without commitment to any contemporary civilization. However, this avenue has the disadvantage of ambiguity and detachment. While Israel is not Western, it is already marching on that path and is definitely more Western than Mediterranean or Middle Eastern. It has a very strong Western orientation, and most of its ties are with the West. Its leaders and Jewish population believe that Westernism guarantees Israel’s survival by preserving its edge on the Arab world. The lure of the West is bound up in modernism, success, riches, democracy, and power. Zionist Israel also needs a Western identity and mission in order to maintain its firm connections with the Western-based Jewish Diaspora. Although Ohana’s book does not resonate with Israel’s realities and dreams, it is a challenge for the skeptics. The Mediterraneanism it advocates can hardly compete with Israel’s drive to the West, but it would become relevant if and when Israel becomes disaffected with the Western option. Sammy Smooha University of Haifa References Hochberg, Gil Z. 2011. “‘The Mediterranean Option’: On the Politics of Regional Affiliation in Current Israeli Cultural Imagination.” Journal of Levantine Studies 1, no. 1: 41–65. Nocke, Alexandra. 2009. The Place of the Mediterranean in Modern Israeli Identity. Leiden: Brill. Smooha, Sammy. 2005. “Is Israel Western?” Pp. 413–442 in Comparing Modernities: Pluralism versus Homogeneity: Essays in Homage to Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, ed. Eliezer Ben-Rafael and Yitzhak Sternberg. Leiden: Brill.
Book Reviews | 151
Margalit Toledano and David McKie, Public Relations and Nation Building: Influencing Israel (New York: Routledge, 2013), 200 pp., $145.00 (hardback). During the summer of 2013, the International Communication Association, the largest association for communication research, held a pre-conference entitled “New Histories of Communication Study.” The aim of the conference was to take a comparative, even global, perspective and to map unexplored domains in the social, intellectual, and institutional history of communication and media studies. Proceeding along a similar path, this book serves as an illuminating addition to this new direction in communication research. Looking at the story of Israel’s national evolution from the unique perspective of professional public relations and hasbara,1 this volume makes a significant contribution. It adds not only to the under-researched history of communication studies, but also to the developing discipline of Israel studies. This examination of public relations practitioners, lobbyists, fundraisers, propagandists, and hasbara professionals depicts the role that these communicators played in shaping the narratives of the new nation and disseminating them to both internal audiences and the world. As the first book on Israeli public relations, the authors contest American-centric theories of public relations by taking into account different national cultures and points of view (16), and they employ concepts from public relations scholarship to scrutinize the evolution of the profession in Israel. Their analysis identifies and explores the roots of these professional values in the Jewish Diaspora as well as the hasbara effort conducted by the Zionist movement. �Toledano and McKie make a significant contribution to the knowledge of public relations practices in other areas of the world beyond the United States. Moreover, they delineate the problematic development of PR practices in Israel by analyzing the relationships between socio-political and symbolic realities. These ties are explored through the use of interviews with Israeli practitioners to examine existing interpretations, alongside analyses of published institutional stories, histories, cultural studies, literature, economic analyses, social studies, and the media. The narrative that emerges from their investigation illustrates the role of journalists as lobbyists and also explains why professional public relations in Israel lagged behind that of other developed nations. They show that it was not only editors, journalists, and other media practitioners who played the role of lobbyists, spokespersons, and fundraisers at the beginning of the last century, but also Zionist leaders. It is intriguing to discover other sides of Israeli forefathers such as Chaim Weizmann and
152 | Book Reviews
Judah Magnes, whose talents as fundraisers and lobbyists were no less important than their intellectual and political abilities. Yet this is not the authors’ only purpose. Their second goal is to add another perspective to the vast literature on nation-building from the point of view of public relations, using Israel as a case study. Their point of departure is Anderson’s (1991) conceptualization of ‘imagined communities’, which is consistent with the role played by language, media, and PR theories and practices and with the need for professionalism. Thus, they provide an overarching analysis of the role of communication—print media, visual media, symbols, stories, and more—that served to maintain the Jewish community, culture, and religion, despite millennia of living in Diaspora, and the use of all these techniques in building the new nationstate of Israel. �Toledano and McKie examine the Zionist project by presenting theories of public relations with specific emphasis on the concept of propaganda. The authors argue that the Jewish community in the Diaspora used public relations to build unity, solidarity, and consensus and that those values were transferred to the pre-state Yishuv and later to the government of Israel. As they put it: “During the 16th to 18th centuries the go-between who communicated with the Jewish community and the authorities developed into a professional institution” (35). In Eastern Europe, this function became a prestigious job (shtadlan, in Yiddish) that helped the Jews to survive as a religious/ethnic minority, while those Jews who lived in Palestine depended on donations and sent emissaries to collect them. Yet the heart of the book focuses on the Zionist project. Theodor Herzl is the major figure of the first Zionist PR campaign and the prototype of the kind of people who would later lead Israeli hasbara/ propaganda during most of the twentieth century. Herzl “organized one of the world’s most impressive international campaigns. The campaign helped establish a successful political movement and set up the principles and values that guided the movement’s effort to reach and influence public opinion all over the world” (48). His personality combined the persuasiveness of a politician with the legal and journalistic skills that made him “a phenomenal diplomat and lobbyist” (ibid.). From its outset, the Zionist nation-building project “put media, public opinion, lobbying, fundraising, and propaganda very high on its agenda” (49). During the pre-state period and after the War of Independence up to the 1960s, these Zionist practitioners depended on professional communicators to influence public opinion and to enlist and motivate the public to meet the varied challenges in the process of building the Jewish homeland. Thus, time after time during the first two decades of independence, the roles of journalists and publicists merged. In the 1960s, however, a gradual change
Book Reviews | 153
in Israel’s political and social realities, eventually followed by changes in the economic and cultural spheres, saw the emergence of professional services in public relations. These humble beginnings were found in campaigns promoting consumption, improved lifestyles, and entertainment. From a fresh point of view, backed by academic and archival material, the book provides fascinating descriptions of the journey of practitioners (journalists, editors, scientists, politicians, and others) representing various institutions that took part in the hasbara campaign of the Zionist project. However, these campaigns, which lasted from the end of the nineteenth century until today, has included distressing implications, such as the loss of democratic values and the symbolic annihilation of Palestinian citizens. The hasbara machinery has tended to ignore those values and the Palestinians’ human rights. Toledano and McKie conclude that Israel has been effective in creating a brand, but that “a change towards a closed, centralized, and less democratic state in the new millennium poses new challenges for human rights and freedoms. And it poses serious risks for the profession” (178). Although finishing on a pessimistic note, they are not without hope concerning the role of the Israeli media and its performance and the notion that PR practitioners in Israel may contribute to the strengthening of democracy and the empowerment of civil society. Anat First Netanya Academic College Notes 1. The Hebrew word hasbara is variously translated as ‘public relations’, ‘propaganda’, ‘explanation’, and ‘information’, generally on behalf of the State of Israel.
References Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. 2nd ed. New York: Verso.
Myron J. Aronoff and Jan Kubik, Anthropology and Political Science: A Convergent Approach (New York: Berghahn Books, 2013), 368 pp., $95.00 (hardback). Myron Aronoff and Jan Kubik have taken aim at the insularity of the various social sciences, and what a breath of fresh air that is! These two noted social scientists, whose numerous books and articles have spilled over
154 | Book Reviews
disciplinary boundaries for years, present what they call a ‘convergent approach’, bringing together anthropology and political science (not to mention sociology). Their topics sound like those of political scientists— parties, political coalitions, democratization, peace processes, the state, civil society, and the like—while their way of approaching these subjects hews closely to anthropology’s cultural paradigm. The authors home in on the question of legitimacy while considering a number of other topics, including democratization and identity construction (ethnic and national identity). Their principal tool is cultural analysis, “the symbolic and semiotic dimensions of politics, e.g., the importance of symbol, myth, rhetoric, and ritual” (xv). Indeed, in some ways, Aronoff and Kubik are evangelists for semiotic analysis, arguing that the events, people, and institutions of politics can be seen through the lens of their ‘meaning’. Still, they are careful to add that the sort of rational analysis found in political science is not incompatible with various types of cultural analysis and that causal explanation can be combined with cultural interpretation. The authors claim to be riding a wave of resurgent use of qualitative, micro-level, historical research in political science. But I am less sanguine that the discipline has been able to escape the narrow methodological and epistemological rut that it has dug for itself over the last few decades. The works being cited that challenge the dominant approach seem to me to be little more than spitting in the wind. Be that as it may, whether or not there has been a sea change, as Aronoff and Kubik claim, this volume is a welcome antidote to disciplinary provinciality. The book ranges over a wide expanse of topics and themes, including the authors’ previous research on Eastern Europe, Israel, India, and the Netherlands; post-communism; dominant parties; civil society; methodology; epistemology and ontology; and much more. Overall, the goal is to take the preoccupations of political science and change the focus from distant (political scientists’ penchant for universalizing findings) to close up (anthropologists’ preference for particularizing). They argue for applying ethnographic analysis to political science’s traditional case studies, a combination put forward by one of the authors’ heroes, Max Gluckman, as the ‘extended case study’. To help accomplish this, the authors present an outstanding critical understanding of five different types of ethnography—traditional/positivistic, interpretivist, postmodern, global (multiple research sites), and paraethnography (i.e., fieldwork sites like the International Monetary Fund, where the researcher is unlikely to gain direct access and has to rely on a variety of first-hand accounts and documents). In some ways, the last of these—paraethnography—is the most novel. It is applied in the book
Book Reviews | 155
with great effect to the Camp David II negotiations. A variety of accounts are analyzed to tease out differing interpretations—two in particular, the Orthodox and the Revisionist—of what actually happened at the negotiations and why they failed. For students of Israel, the book’s value goes beyond its theoretical usefulness. It is also a treasure trove of material on the politics of the country. Some of that can be found in the thematic chapters on ritual, identity, and other topics, and some in chapters dedicated to Israel. Practically all the material on Israel is drawn from Aronoff’s lifelong research, which has appeared in multiple books and articles. His most exciting work, to my mind, is on Israel’s Labor Party, which in one form or another dominated formal and informal politics for the better part of the twentieth century. Some of the most useful applications of the authors’ convergent approach are illuminated through the case of this party. Labor underwent a long process of internal decay and decline in the 1960s and 1970s, resulting in its ouster from power in the 1977 elections. Aronoff demonstrates through the use of ritual analysis how middle-level operatives in the party were well aware of the internal rot and were in a position to do something about it. But the patron-client structure of the party dissuaded them from acting together or confronting the top leaders. Instead, they engaged in sharp, sometimes satirical criticisms of the leaders, but did so in ritualized form and in settings where their disparagement would not jeopardize their positions or rock the boat. Aronoff adds a new dimension to the concept of ritual by placing it in such an unusual setting. I remember giving a lecture in Stockholm some years ago, using some of Aronoff’s insights on the importance of state-level ritual analysis in complex societies. I argued that all modern states use such rituals as a means to legitimate themselves. The reaction among the Swedish social scientists was sharply negative. They claimed that the Swedish state legitimated itself to the population only through its utility and not by the use of non-instrumental, non-rational ‘rituals’. No sooner had I left the lecture hall at noon than I witnessed the changing of the guard at the Royal Palace. Ceremonially dressed members of the Swedish Armed Forces, who guard the castle and serve as honorary guards to the king, high-stepped and strutted around Old Town. So much for the absence of ritual. Anthropology and Political Science is not the sort of book you would want to take to the beach. It is theoretically extremely rich and, as a result, heavy going at times. The models can be complex. Israeli national identity, for example, which is analyzed through a constructivist approach, is delineated by time (itself broken down into linear, mixed, and cyclical), space (legal rational borders, homeland, and religious fetish), religiosity (secularism, traditionalism, Orthodoxy, and ultra-Orthodoxy), and
156 | Book Reviews
security (perceptions of personal and collective well-being). The various brands of Israeli national identity are applied to the ongoing cleavages that make Israel such a deeply divided society and yet one that somehow remains intact and clings to a democratic tradition. For all of its theoretical complexity, the payoff in navigating this outstanding book is well worth the effort. Joel Migdal University of Washington
Rachel S. Harris and Ranen Omer-Sherman, eds., Narratives of Dissent: War in Contemporary Israeli Arts and Culture (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2013), 378 pp., $39.95 (paperback). War is an often inevitable part of the process of creating sovereign entities that hold geographic territories. Virtually no modern nation exists whose birth has not been accompanied by some sort of violent conflict. In the case of Israel, war and the military narrative are primordial elements. With the birth of the state and immediately following the Declaration of Independence, the war known by that name broke out. Like signs engraved on a body, wars have accompanied Israel throughout the 66 years of its existence, creating a unique history of numerical time beats—1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982—inscribed deep within the consciousness of every Israeli. This book is a collection of articles that seek to address the narrative of war and how it is exemplified in Israeli-Jewish culture. In the opening sentence of the introduction, co-editor Ranen Omer-Sherman states that a real sense of national belonging is almost always linked with army service “for younger Israeli men and women” (1). While this may be a correct assertion, it is not precisely accurate, since it is proper to add the word ‘Jewish’ to this sentence. This missing word helps us locate the collection within the complex puzzle of the Israeli politics of identity, as the volume contains a discourse of stratified identities. The diverse voices and representations, in fact, form the volume’s organizing logic via interesting and complex subjects. The book contains 19 articles, arranged in three parts. The majority of the contributions analyze art and cultural works through a literary and narrative reading. The first part, which bears the rather abstract title “Private and Public Spaces of Commemoration and Mourning,” consists of six articles dealing with the disciplines of music, architecture, the visual arts (performance and painting), and the Internet. The second and third parts
Book Reviews | 157
are entitled more concretely “Poetry and Prose” (eight articles) and “Cinema and Stage” (six articles) respectively. The variety of contributions provides a comprehensive—but not overly general—cultural picture. As is common in narratives, the boundaries of the plot and identity of the participants must be determined. Omer-Sherman explains in the introduction that a historical division exists according to which narratives of dissent are formulated. The 1980s constitute the watershed, that is, the decade in which the paradigmatic shift occurred that deeply influenced the narratives of war in Israel. Three events—the signing of the peace treaty with Egypt in 1979, the First Lebanon War in 1982, and the beginning of the First Intifada in 1987—completely altered the Israeli perception of war. In their wake, the understanding was born that wars can be resolved by peace treaties and that the ever-present sense of national threat can be annulled. The circumstances led some politicians to consider a new phenomenon—initiating a war rather than reacting to aggression—while promoting the notion of ‘war of choice’. Meanwhile, growing awareness and recognition of the Palestinians as an oppressed people fighting for their independence was taking hold, further changing the Israeli discourse. From that point onward, the old narrative representing the Zionist ideology of the establishment of the state, which viewed the sacrifice of soldiers as a necessary evil and treated the fallen as heroes, began to crack. That ethos gave way to a new narrative, called ‘post-Zionist’ by some. This narrative gives a greater place to the individual within the nation-state, encouraging active citizenship, skepticism, and critical thought, and questions the necessity of war. Virtually all of the articles in the volume relate to this double narrative, whether in an effort to strengthen it or to negate it. The historical claim on which the collection is based serves as a criterion for the choice of material included. Thus, for example, the First Lebanon War as a formative event addressed by the cultural works discussed appears explicitly in the contributions by Hollander, Peleg, Abramson, Szobel, Raizen, and Feige. The focus on this period further sharpens the relevance of this edited volume for contemporary Israel in the year 2014, due to its affinities with the present and its engagement with a conflict that is still pressing and unresolved. These are the details of the ‘plot’ itself. But who are the players that narrate the story? Of course, there are always (at least) two sides to a war. The traditional Israeli narrative of war belongs primarily to Israeli-Jewish males. However, this collection augments the possibilities of non-agreement by giving space to the voices of others—a fact that for me, as a scholar of gender studies, is particularly interesting. Twelve of the 19 contributors are women. Another—Danny Kaplan—heads the masculinity track of the
158 | Book Reviews
Gender Studies Program at Bar-Ilan University. In the narrative analysis section, three of the articles fall into the ‘women writing about women’ genre: Esther Raizen on Raya Harnik, Ilana Szobel on Dahlia Ravikovitch, and Shiri Goren on Gabriela Avigur-Rotem. Another chapter—by Philip Metres—compares the work of the Palestinian woman writer Sahar Khalifeh with that of David Grossman. Rachel Harris, the other co-editor of the collection, writes about cinema films that focus on women during the Gulf War, which took place largely on the home front and heightened the presence of the female narrative (whose rise parallels that of the post-Zionist narrative). The recognition that war on the home front is no less difficult than that on the battlefield gradually penetrated the discourse, revealing that the masculine militaristic discourse does not necessarily meet women’s definitions and needs for security. This stance was most effectively established in UN Security Council Resolution 1325, adopted in 2000, which affirms the role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts. Rather extraordinarily, the only article in this volume to employ the term ‘gender’ in its title is Esther Fox’s piece, which surveys feminist discourse in Israel, using a fascinating and significant diagnosis. Fox describes and identifies two parallel approaches: the ‘egalitarian’, which seeks to place women as fighters on the front alongside men, and the ‘pacifist’, which refuses to take part in violence and strives to settle conflicts in the spirit of feminine principles. In various ways, the collection thus succeeds in combining different perspectives and beliefs about narratives of war in the Israeli context. The voices that speak are heterogeneous, the time period defines the discussion in optimal fashion, and the narratives of dissent are explained and exemplified in diverse and thought-provoking ways. Tal Dekel Tel Aviv University
Yigal Zalmona, A Century of Israeli Art (London: Lund Humphries, 2013; Jerusalem: Israel Museum), 498 pp., $80.00 (hardback). This volume by curator Yigal Zalmona presents a unique and broad-ranging analysis of the field of Israeli visual art. First published in Hebrew in honor of the reopening of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem in 2010, it was also prompted by the almost complete lack of recent books and catalogues in Hebrew that offer a comprehensive historical perspective of the arts.
Book Reviews | 159
Such a volume, like Levita and Ofrat’s (1980), had not been published in decades. Another series of catalogues devoted to the subject appeared in 2008 with the title Sixty Years of Art in Israel. Published under the aegis of the Ministry of Science, Culture, and Sport, its purpose was to honor the State of Israel’s sixtieth Independence Day. A Century of Israeli Art—which begins in 1906 with the creation of the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem—takes the form of a chronological historical review. It commences with European anti-Semitism at the end of the nineteenth century, passes through the waves of aliyah and the establishment of the Yishuv, and ends up at the shifts and turbulences characterizing the final decades of the twentieth century. Its 12 chapters are ordered according to the major periods within Israeli art during this time frame, with approximately 190 artists being referred to in total. The beginning of each chapter and sub-chapter describes the period and gives a comprehensive and in-depth view of the historical background. Art lovers unfamiliar with the history of the State of Israel will benefit from the general historical background. The book’s methodological approach is not meant to provide merely a technical, chronological division, however; it is also intended to situate artistic production within the historical context. The discussion then broadens out, intertwines, and develops into an analysis of the art field, artistic trends and themes, and the artwork of various and diverse artists. Throughout, Zalmona links the art to the world in which it is created: society, state, culture, economy. In the introduction, he identifies its intended readers as “lovers of art … anyone interested in tracing the echoes of Israel’s history in its visual art” (xii). This linkage between art and social reality is prominent in the description of the days of the Yishuv. Thus, for example, in discussing artist Reuven Rubin (1893–1974), whose work demonstrates the shift in his self-perception from an exilic Jew to a local pioneer (44–53), Zalmona creates direct associations with the historical narrative. Despite being aware of the intrinsic conflict between art and reality—that is, between art as a tool for building ‘national collectivity’ and art in the spirit of high modernism that emphasizes individualism and strives toward ‘art for art’s sake’—he never severs art from history or society and the world in which it is embedded. In surveys such as this, the unfolding chronology is a tangible phenomenon. By the nature of things, distant history is easier to conceptualize than close events. Thus, while no difficulty exists in identifying the statue Nimrod (dated 1939) as a seminal work and devoting a whole chapter to it, or in finely elucidating the differences between the 1920s and 1930s after the local disturbances of 1929, the discussion of recent history is less decisive and consolidated.
160 | Book Reviews
In the final chapter, which surveys Israeli art in the 2000s, Zalmona seeks to address the trend toward ‘weakness’ in Israeli art, as he puts it. Under the heading “The Beauty of Weakness,” he comments on a variety of subjects, including childhood, individualism and the family, the home, the image of the soldier, Jewish national identity, dealing with the Holocaust, migration and Diaspora, and so forth. Here, too, the historical perspective is present as Zalmona analyzes the phenomena and their manifestations. Another argument for the change in the nature of the discussion lies in the influence of the critical discourse of postmodernism, which stands in opposition to the ideas and discourse of modernism. This volume, therefore, represents the work of a curator who takes an overtly historical approach to art. Zalmona (b. 1945) is a well-known and central figure in the Israeli art establishment, an experienced and erudite curator who has served as the curator of the Israel Museum since 1980 and also, for the past 14 years, as head interdisciplinary curator. He candidly describes his position in the field, using the insight formulated by art and culture researcher André Malraux: “In order to understand what the outside of an aquarium looks like, it’s better not to be a fish” (xii). Zalmona’s field of expertise is the historiography of Israeli art, especially its early period. The relationship of Israeli art to the East has been a topic of special interest to him, and he has co-curated a major exhibition on this theme (Zalmona and Manor-Friedman 1998). In the context of the local politics of identity, the Hebrew version of the book has been subject to some negative reviews (see Sperber 2011). These have focused on the fact that, despite his extensive engagement with Eastern culture, the narrative that Zalmona outlines is principally male, Eurocentric, and Israeli-Jewish. His gaze is primarily directed toward canonic creativity—the center of the field, artists who exhibit in museums and win broad acclaim. Those who are ‘Others’ in this narrative—religious Jews, Palestinians, women, Mizrahim, the LGBT community—fare very poorly. Zalmona himself acknowledges this fact, confessing in the preface to the book that a survey such as the one he presents resembles “a wide net with large holes, through which some excellent artists and artworks must inevitably slip” (xii). While he refers, for example, to the intriguing artwork created in the communities of the “Old Yishuv” in Ottoman Palestine prior to the waves of Zionist aliyah (17), this is clearly not the story he seeks to bring to center stage. Although his net certainly has large holes in it, what it succeeds in catching is nonetheless very wellchosen and conceptualized. The volume is thick and heavy, with high-quality paper and binding; it is a book that feels good in one’s hands. Skimming through it is like taking a fascinating visual and experiential journey. Not many books like this
Book Reviews | 161
exist, and its importance cannot be underestimated, due to its broad canvas, its deep retrospective scrutiny, and the place that it gives to one clear voice to pronounce its wisdom. One can object to this voice and criticize it, but Zalmona’s very creation is a valuable cultural asset. Tal Dekel Tel Aviv University References Levita, Dorit, and Gideon Ofrat. 1980. The Story of Israeli: The Days of “Bezalel” in 1906 to Our Times. [In Hebrew.] Tel Aviv: Massada. Sperber, David. 2011. “Yigal Zalmona, 100 Years of Israeli Art.” Images 5: 110–117. Zalmona, Yigal, and Tamar Manor-Friedman, eds. 1998. To the East: Orientalism in the Arts in Israel. [In Hebrew.] Jerusalem: Israel Museum.
Ilana Szobel, A Poetics of Trauma: The Work of Dahlia Ravikovitch (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2013), 198 pp., $76.50 (hardback). The history of modern Hebrew literature—like most literary traditions in the West—has long featured its male writers and poets. Even now, despite more than two decades of scholarly efforts to rid ‘paternal hegemony’ (Judith Butler’s phrase) from literary scholarship, studies of women poets still have more than a whiff of subversiveness about them in their effort— their need, really—to challenge a dominant view of the inexorable progress of a litany of male figures. In A Poetics of Trauma: The Work of Dahlia Ravikovitch, Ilana Szobel reminds us right up front that this is the first study of Ravikovitch in English, a fact that should amaze and appall. Even in Hebrew, despite some excellent recent work on Ravikovitch and Yona Wallach, the general trend of criticism is to wage an uphill fight to gain legitimacy and recognition for women writers as significant figures in the development of the literary tradition. In Ravikovitch’s case, the critical effort to include her as one of the important and prominent writers of her generation seems doubly appropriate. Not only was she a major writer, but her work consistently invoked the emotional and psychological impact of a life lived on the margins of normative society. Natan Zach and Yehuda Amichai might have raised the individual to the forefront of Hebrew poetics in the 1950s, but it took Ravikovitch and Wallach to express the turmoil, trauma, and repressiveness of the experience of the margins—especially the experience of being a woman. While Wallach was well-known for her incendiary public
162 | Book Reviews
recitations and general outspokenness, Ravikovitch, in her greater reticence, no less radically worked to establish a new poetic subject—a subject who internalized a vast and complicated array of emotional trauma, reflecting critically on Israeli society at large. For the most part, Szobel is less concerned with Ravikovitch’s place in history than with the ways that she constructed the themes of her writing. A Poetics of Trauma presents Ravikovitch’s work as a self-contained corpus whose expressive catalyst derives from the need to construct a viable fictive subject who would embody the suffering, trauma, and humiliation experienced by a modern woman. Extra-literary concerns and events hardly influence the criticism, even in the chapter on Ravikovitch’s political poetry, which became more prominent and outspoken during the course of the 1980s and 1990s. Trauma defines the study, but it remains a personal, hermetic feeling of inner psychology—an odd critical choice, given the predominance across Israeli criticism and scholarship in recent years to find and analyze trauma throughout Israeli culture and society. Consistently in the book, Szobel carefully dissociates Ravikovitch’s poetic subject from the inevitable urges to create a personal biography from Ravikovitch’s work, which helps focus on how subjectivity is constructed within writing. However, this focus on the poetic subject belies a certain misnomer in the title: this book really does not encounter poetics at all. Rather, it is a description and analysis of the fictive thematics of trauma and minor-ness. None of the criticism attempts to get at the architectonic structures of poetic form. Instead, Szobel’s concern focuses on the four major thematic categories of Ravikovitch’s work: the condition of orphanhood and, more specifically, the daughter’s loss of the father; estrangement; madness; and political identification with victims and victimhood. The categories themselves all make sense—both separately and entwined with each other—to give us a rich portrait of the writer’s complete literary project. On the other hand, the move from poetics to thematics raises serious questions and opens up critical impasses in Szobel’s book. The concentration on thematics parallels an odd focus on Ravikovitch’s prose writing— odd because Ravikovitch’s stronger reputation, and what would attract most readers to the book, is her work as a poet. In perhaps the most forceful and important chapter, Szobel’s analysis of the distinction between writing about madness and mad writing uses examples exclusively from prose. The question of madness and writing certainly applies to prose as well, especially, as Szobel would have it, in the context of discussions about normative linguistic usage as opposed to transgressive expressive practices. But those same issues are perhaps even more important for poetry, which
Book Reviews | 163
would seem to give the poet greater license to transgress linguistic norms and thus meld the two realms of writing about and within madness. Is it even possible to talk about madness in writing within a critical approach that, by necessity, posits conscious intent in the creation of the literary subject? Is mad writing needed to successfully portray madness in writing? To avoid biographism, Szobel must assume fictive intent on Ravikovitch’s part. But intent of consciousness seems to fly in the face of a critical approach that relies heavily on the methods of psychoanalysis. In this context, one cannot help but wonder about the place and relation of Wallach’s poetics for an understanding of Ravikovitch’s writing. Szobel early on dismisses Wallach as irrelevant because of inexorable differences precisely in Wallach’s poetics of madness. But difference acts as the critical lens through which Szobel would have us see Ravikovitch. Szobel admits at the very end of the book that Ravikovitch and Wallach’s relationship was fraught by a type of anxiety (perhaps of influence). But at that point, it is too late to explore the influence that anxiety might have played on their depictions of madness. If madness is a literary construct and not an essential condition of writing, then comparison and context seem critical for analysis. A host of similar and relevant writers of madness—all absent from this study— present themselves: the American poets Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, who provide a transcultural parallel; Amos Oz and A. B. Yehoshua, whose stories from the 1960s embrace madness and psychological realism as essential formal and thematic elements; and the poet David Avidan, who experimented with psychedelic writing in the 1960s. Would not contrasting Ravikovitch’s writing against theirs help to establish the strength, uniqueness, and subversiveness of her own embrace of madness in her work? Should we not see a writing of madness in Ravikovitch as inflected through her contemporaries? Szobel’s restriction of the analysis of madness to prose work highlights two fundamental problems with this study, one practical, the other conceptual. First, the practical. In a book on a major Hebrew poet, it is difficult to reconcile the fact that there is no Hebrew script on the printed page. From my own experience, I would tend to blame the press for this. Still, the lack of Hebrew itself feels typographically emblematic of the lack of engagement with poetics—that is, with the way that language, on its basic levels, constructs and constrains the hermeneutics of the text. The typographical issue reflects as well on the conceptual issue, since Szobel’s theoretical framework draws primarily from the psychoanalytical work of Jacques Lacan—a framework that would seem to push us into a critical consideration of the fundamental building blocks of poetics. By analyzing only thematic representations of madness and trauma, and not
164 | Book Reviews
a poetics as such, and concentrating only on conscious literary expression and intention, Szobel undermines the strength of her theoretical approach. She thus molds Lacanian theory into a struggle of the individual against the dominant forms of cultural hegemony. The book’s deployment of Lacanian ideas is confined mostly to an unnuanced invocation of the phrase ‘symbolic order’, which becomes a discursive mechanism external to the willed intentions of the hermetic self, a counterforce against which the struggling writer fights for expressive space. From my own reading of Lacan, I cannot help but think that Szobel compresses and confuses the idea of symbolic order beyond useful recognition. Indeed, Szobel seems much more caught up in questions of discourse and power, derived to an extent from Foucault (whom she cites), but more so from neo-Marxian analyses of culture, especially those of the Frankfurt School. The problem here is that Szobel’s analyses depend so much on a psychoanalytic unconscious to get to the idea of trauma (and the sections on trauma itself are really quite good), but then she negates the strength of that critique by emphasizing the thematic construction of Ravikovitch’s literary subject as something other than the poet herself. In literary terms, madness and trauma end up only as fictional appliqués, the product of a literary imagination unfettered by what is being depicted. The relation between writing proper and the affect of writing is never fully explored and ends up, I believe, as too simplistic, too much part of an uncomplicated intentionality. The strength of Lacanian theory, it seems to me, is how it complicates assumptions of both determinism and hermeticism for the self. A Lacanian struggle with the symbolic order would be internal—a struggle with oneself and one’s own unavoidable complicity with the symbolic structures that act to imprison the self. In this sense, Ravikovitch’s desires for selfconsumption and self-denial, which Szobel rightly refuses to redeem as figurations of something less self-destructive, seem ripe for Lacanian analysis because they imply an understanding of the formation of the self as part of the problem of identity. In Szobel’s criticism, on the other hand, a picture of Ravikovitch emerges as a lone genius, a rebel working out (and against) the oppositional constraints of an external, paternalistic symbolic order. It all seems so easy. Lacan, I think, has in mind an understanding of identity formation that is much more complex than how Szobel describes the mechanism of symbolic identification. While I do not dismiss these as minor quibbles, there is something quite refreshing in Szobel’s acceptance and application of theory to an analysis of Ravikovitch’s corpus. What Szobel does well is to surround Ravikovitch and her own criticism with the seriousness of theory. Discussions of Hebrew literature need much more of that. It has been a long time coming,
Book Reviews | 165
in the same way that women poets need to become part of the normative historiography of the literary tradition. Szobel’s book pushes the field and hopefully the general study of Israeli culture to think beyond the ways that theory has been applied in the past—and then mostly rejected. For that alone, this book deserves praise. Eric Zakim University of Maryland
