While Israel is a small country, it has a diverse and continually changing society. As a result, since the 1960s Israeli anthropology has been a fertile ground for researchers. This collection introduces readers to the diverse field of social anthropology in Israel today, pointing to both its rich history and promising future. Drawing upon recent research as well as a few key older articles, editors Esther Hertzog, Orit Abuhav, Harvey E. Goldberg, and Emanuel Marx have selected contributors that highlight different theoretical perspectives and touch on a variety of relevant topics....
While Israel is a small country, it has a diverse and continually changing society. As a result, since the 1960s Israeli anthropology has been a fe...
The relocation of North African and Middle Eastern Jews to Israel in the 1950s and 1960s brought together communities from Egypt, Iraq, Kurdistan, Yemen, and many other Islamic countries, as well as their unique music styles. In the unstable, improvisatory spaces of transit camps, development towns, and poor neighborhoods, they created a new pan-ethnic Mizrahi identity and a homegrown hybrid music that inspired equal parts high-pitched enthusiasm and resistance along the fault lines of Israel's ethnic divide. In Mediterranean Israeli Music and the Politics of the Aesthetic, author Amy...
The relocation of North African and Middle Eastern Jews to Israel in the 1950s and 1960s brought together communities from Egypt, Iraq, Kurdistan, ...
While first-generation immigrant women often begin their lives at the bottom of their new societies, the fates of their adult daughters can be very different. Still, little research has been done to examine the opportunities or constraints that second-generation women face and the class achievements they make. In this volume, author Beverly Mizrachi presents an in-depth study of 40?-50-year-old Moroccan women whose parents made up part of the largest ethnic group to enter Israel after its establishment in 1948 and whose mothers began their new lives at the bottom of the economic and social...
While first-generation immigrant women often begin their lives at the bottom of their new societies, the fates of their adult daughters can be very...
As a result of the introduction of the printing press in the mid-nineteenth century and the proximity of European culture, language, and literature after the French occupation in 1881, Judeo-Arabic literature flourished in Tunisia until the middle of the twentieth century. As the most spoken language in the country, vernacular Judeo-Arabic allowed ideas from the Jewish Enlightenment in Europe (the Haskalah) to spread widely and also offered legitimacy to the surrounding Arab culture. In this volume, authors Yosef and Tsivia Tobi present works of Judeo-Arabic Tunisian literature that have...
As a result of the introduction of the printing press in the mid-nineteenth century and the proximity of European culture, language, and literature...
At the beginning of the twentieth century, many perceived American Jewry to be in a state of crisis as traditions of faith faced modern sensibilities. Published beginning in 1909, Rabbi and Professor Louis Ginzberg's seven-volume "The Legends of the Jews" appeared at this crucial time and offered a landmark synthesis of aggadah from classical Rabbinic literature and ancient folk legends from a number of cultures. It remains a hugely influential work of scholarship from a man who shaped American Conservative Judaism. In "Louis Ginzberg's" Legends of the Jews: "Ancient Jewish Folk Literature...
At the beginning of the twentieth century, many perceived American Jewry to be in a state of crisis as traditions of faith faced modern sensibiliti...
In 1839, Muslims attacked the Jews of Meshhed, murdering 36 of them, and forcing the conversion of the rest. While some managed to escape across the Afghan border, and some turned into true believing Muslims, the majority adopted Islam only outwardly, while secretly adhering to their Jewish faith.
Jadid al-Islam is the fascinating story of how this community managed to survive, at the risk of their lives, as crypto-Jews in an inimical Shi'i Muslim environment. Based on unpublished original Persian sources and interviews with members of the existing Meshhed community in...
In 1839, Muslims attacked the Jews of Meshhed, murdering 36 of them, and forcing the conversion of the rest. While some managed to escape across th...
In Israel, anthropologists have customarily worked in their "home"-in the company of the society that they are studying. "In the Company of Others: The Development of Anthropology in Israel "by Orit Abuhav details the gradual development of the field, which arrived in Israel in the early twentieth century but did not have an official place in Israeli universities until the 1960s.Through archival research, observations and interviews conducted with active Israeli anthropologists, Abuhav creates a thorough picture of the discipline from its roots in the Mandate period to its current place in...
In Israel, anthropologists have customarily worked in their "home"-in the company of the society that they are studying. "In the Company of Others:...
In The Power of a Tale: Stories from the Israel Folktale Archives, editors Haya Bar-Itzhak and Idit Pintel-Gensberg bring together a collection of fifty-three folktales celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Israel Folktale Archives (IFA) at the University of Haifa. Established by the folklorist Dov Noy in the 1950s, the IFA is the only archive of its kind in Israel and serves as a center for knowledge and information concerning the cultural heritage of the many ethnic communities in Israel.
For this jubilee volume, contributors each selected stories from the more than...
In The Power of a Tale: Stories from the Israel Folktale Archives, editors Haya Bar-Itzhak and Idit Pintel-Gensberg bring together a collect...
"Magic culture is certainly fascinating. But what is it? What, in fact, are magic writings, magic artifacts?" Originally published in Hebrew in 2010, Jewish Magic Before the Rise of Kabbalah is a comprehensive study of early Jewish magic focusing on three major topics: Jewish magic inventiveness, the conflict with the culture it reflects, and the scientific study of both.
The first part of the book analyzes the essence of magic in general and Jewish magic in particular. The book begins with theories addressing the relationship of magic and religion in fields like comparative...
"Magic culture is certainly fascinating. But what is it? What, in fact, are magic writings, magic artifacts?" Originally published in Hebrew in 201...
In the thirteenth century, an anonymous scribe compiled sixty-nine tales that became Sefer ha-ma'asim, the earliest compilation of Hebrew tales known to us in Western Europe. The author writes that the stories encompass -descriptions of herbs that cure leprosy, a fairy princess with golden tresses using magic charms to heal her lover's wounds and restore him to life; a fire-breathing dragon . . . a two-headed creature and a giant's daughter for whom the rind of a watermelon containing twelve spies is no more than a speck of dust.- In Tales in Context: Sefer ha-ma'asim in...
In the thirteenth century, an anonymous scribe compiled sixty-nine tales that became Sefer ha-ma'asim, the earliest compilation of Hebrew ta...
