Caribbean Zion: A creolization perspective on Jewish-Israeli cultures

ABSTRACT

The article explores Jewish-Israeli cultures through the innovative prism of creolization, defined here as the contingent and dynamic process of transculturation between European Jews, Middle Eastern Jews and Palestinian Arabs. Similar to the history of ethnogenesis in the Caribbean, Israeli society emerged from a process of colonization and immigration in a setting of geographic isolation, resulting in a contested process of ethnicization and indigenization. Based on case studies of Jewish-Israeli cultures (including food, language, and religious practices), the article argues for a periodization of Jewish-Israeli creolization. After a long period of intense interaction and creolization between Ashkenazi settler-immigrants and native Palestinian Arabs under Ottoman and British rule, Israel’s state-founding elites aimed at top-down Europeanization and decreolization after 1948. Since the rise of country’s right in the 1970s, Israeli society has been undergoing a process of renewed creolization between Ashkenazi Israeli and Mizrahi Israeli elements.

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers as well as Anna Sunik, Orit Rozin, Assaf David, Nissim Leon, Raef Zreik, Derek Penslar, Zachary Lockman, the postdoctoral fellows of the Polonsky Academy and the participants of the conference ´Jewish Questions and the Global South´ for their helpful and constructive feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Derek Penslar, ‘Is Israel a Jewish State?,’ in Israel in History. The Jewish State in Comparative Perspective (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 65–89.

² Baruch Kurzweil, ‘Mahuta U-Mekoroteha Shel Tnuat ‘Ha-Ivrim Ha-Tze’irim’ (‘ha-Kna’anim’) (Hebrew) (Essence and Origins of the Movement of the ‘Young Hebrew’ (‘Canaanites’),’ in Sifrutenu Ha-Chadasha—Hemshech o Mahapecha? (Hebrew) (Our New Literature: Continuity or Revolution) (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1959); David Ohana, ‘The Israeli Identity and the Canaanite Option,’ in The Gift of the Land and the Fate of the Canaanites in Jewish Thought, ed. Katell Berthelot, Joseph E. David, and Marc Hirshman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 311–52.

³ Ronald Yanta and Yonatan Mendel, ‘Consuming Palestine: Palestine and Palestinians in Israeli Food Culture,’ Ethnicities 14, no. 3 (2014): 412–35.

⁴ Israel Bartal, Tangled Roots. The Emergence of Israeli Culture (Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2020), 7.

⁵ Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau, and Raphaël Confiant, ‘In Praise of Creoleness,’ Callaloo (1990): 886–909, 893–894.

⁶ This argument builds on Penslar’s analytical approach of ‘placing Zionism in Asia, as it were’ in the context of postcolonial state formation, Derek Penslar, Israel in History: The Jewish State in Comparative Perspective (New York: Routledge, 2007), 92.

⁷ Michel-Ralph Trouillot, ‘Culture on the Edges: Creolization in the Plantation Context,’ in Caribbean Cultural Thought. From Plantation to Diaspora, ed. Yanique Hume and Aaron Kamugisha (Kingston and Miami: Ian Randle Publishers, 2013), 142–56, 147.

⁸ Cynthia Johnston, ‘Checkpoint Hebrew Finds Way into Palestinian Lexicon’, Miftah, 17 September 2004, http://www.miftah.org/PrinterF.cfm?DocId=4841.

⁹ Robert Chaudenson, Creolization of Language and Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), ch 4.

¹⁰ While the term ‘Ashkenazi’ refers to the Jewish Diaspora that was shaped in Europe, the relatively recent neologism ‘Mizrahi’ (i.e. Eastern or Oriental in Hebrew) refers to the Jewish Diaspora that emerged in the Middle East and North Africa.

¹¹ On the ‘homo sovieticus’ trope in the study of post-Soviet Jewry, see also Judith Kessler, ‘Homo Sovieticus in Disneyland: The Jewish Communities in Germany Today,’ in The New German Jewry and the European Context, ed. Y. Michal Bodemann (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 131–43.

¹² George Lang, Entwisted Tongues. Comparative Creole Literatures (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 104.:

¹³ Ethan B. Katz, Lisa Moses Leff, and Maud S. Mandel, eds., Colonialism and the Jews (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2017).

¹⁴ Wieke Vink, Creole Jews: Negotiating Community in Colonial Suriname (Leiden: Brill, 2010).

¹⁵ Sarah Phillips Casteel, Calypso Jews. Jewishness in the Caribbean Literary Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016).

¹⁶ Nicholas R. Spitzer, ‘Monde Créole: The Cultural World of French Louisiana Creoles and the Creolization of World Cultures,’ The Journal of American Folklore 116, no. 459 (2003): 57–72, 58.

¹⁷ Derek Jonathan Penslar, ‘Is Zionism a Colonial Movement?,’ in Israel in History. The Jewish State in Comparative Perspective (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 90–111.:

¹⁸ Lila Abu-Lughod, ‘writing against culture’, in Oakes, Timothy, & Price, Patricia L. (Eds.), The Cultural Geography Reader, 471, (London: Routledge, 2008).

¹⁹ Sadik J. Al-Azm, ‘Palestinian Zionism,’ Die Welt des Islams 28, no. 1 (1988): 90–98.

²⁰ Alan Dowty, The Jewish State. A Century Later (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1998), 201.

²¹ Jacqueline Knörr, ‘Contemporary Creoleness; or, The World in Pidginization?,’ Current Anthropology 51, no. 6 (2010): 731–59.

²² Robin Cohen and Paola Toninato, ‘The Creolization Debate: Analysing Mixed Identities and Cultures,’ in The Creolization Reader. Studies in Mixed Identities and Cultures, ed. Robin Cohen and Paola Toninato (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), 1–21., 4.

²³ Aviva Halamish, ‘A New Look at Immigration of Jews from Yemen to Mandatory Palestine,’ Israel Studies 11, no. 1 (2006): 59–78, 65–66.

²⁴ Cohen and Toninato, ‘The Creolization Debate: Analysing Mixed Identities and Cultures.’, 4.

²⁵ Percy Hintzen, ‘Race and Creole Ethnicity in the Caribbean,’ in Caribbean Cultural Thought. From Plantation to Diaspora, ed. Yanique Hume and Aaron Kamugisha (Kingston and Miami: Ian Randle Publishers, 2013), 62–74., 62. On the ‘white sabra’, see also Meron Benvenisti, Halom Ha-Tzabar Ha-Lavan: Otobiografiyah Shel Hitpakhut [The Dream of the White Sabra: An Autobiography of Disillusionment] (Jerusalem: Keter, 2012).

²⁶ In the context of Caribbean societies, Hall speaks of a ‘the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s’ which ‘marked the decisive, dramatic, epochal shift of accent from the European to the African pole’, Stuart Hall, ‘Creolité and the Process of Creolization,’ in Creolizing Europe: Legacies and Transformations, ed. Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez and Shirley Anne Tate (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015), 12–25, 19.

²⁷ Jacqueline Knörr, ‘Creolization and Pidgnization as Concepts of Language, Culture and Identity,’ in Creolization and Pidginization in Contexts of Postcolonial Diversity, ed. Jacqueline Knörr and Wilson Trajano Filho (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 15–35., 17.

²⁸ Efraim Torgovnik, ‘Israel: The Persistent Elite,’ in Political Elites and Political Development in the Middle East, ed. Frank Tachau (New York: Schenkman and John Wiley, 1975), 219–52.

²⁹ Kimmerling’s acronym of ACHUSALIM seeks to describe the Israeli equivalent of WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant); ACHUSALM stands for ashkenazi (Ashkenazi), chiloni (secular), vatik (established), sozialisti (socialist), and le’umi (nationalist), see also Baruch Kimmerling, Ketz Shilton Ha-Achusalim (Hebrew) (The End of the Rule of the ACHUSALIM) (Jerusalem: Keter, 2001).

³⁰ David Hart, ‘Scratch a Moroccan, Find a Berber,’ The Journal of North African Studies 4, no. 2 (1999): 23–26.

³¹ Cohen and Toninato, 5. On creolization as a ‘master symbol’ beyond the Caribbean, see also Ulf Hannerz, ‘The World in Creolisation,’ Africa 57, no. 4 (1987): 546–59 and Aisha Khan, ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth: The Caribbean as Master Symbol,’ Cultural Anthropology 16, no. 3 (2001): 271–302.

³² John H. McWorther, The Creole Debate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 9.

³³ Ghil’ad Zuckermann, Revitalistics. From the Genesis of the Israeli Language to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 33.

³⁴ Knörr, ‘Creolization and Pidgnization,’ 18.

³⁵ George Lang, Entwisted Tongues. Comparative Creole Literatures (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 104.

³⁶ Hall, ‘Creolité and the Process of Creolization.’, 17.

³⁷ Nahum Goldmann, Be-Darkei Ami (Hebrew) (On the Paths of My People) (Jerusalem: HaSifriya HaZionit, 1968), 176 (with many thanks to Orit Rozin for directing our attention to this passage).

³⁸ David Ben-Gurion, ‘An Eternal People or a Mediterranean People,’ Articles Division, 6 May 1954, Ben-Gurion Archives [in Hebrew].

³⁹ Edward Kamau Brathwaite, ‘Creolization in Jamaica,’ in The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, ed. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 202–5, 204.

⁴⁰ Dan Diner, Israel und Deutschland: Über Nähe und Distanz ihrer Wissenschaftskulturen. Ein Bericht über die Förderung der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften in Israel und ihre historischen Voraussetzungen, ed. Michael Globig (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002), 505.

⁴¹ ARISA Featuring Margalit Tzan’ani, ‘Po Se Lo Europa (It Ain’t Europe Here)’, YouTube, 22 October 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxbGdh0ekac.

⁴² Jacqueline Kahanoff, ‘What about Levantinization?,’ Journal of Levantine Studies 1, no. 1 (2011): 13–22.

⁴³ Robert Chaudenson, Creolization of Language and Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 22–23.

⁴⁴ Knörr, ‘Contemporary Creoleness; or, The World in Pidginization?’, 732.

⁴⁵ Cohen and Toninato, ‘The Creolization Debate: Analysing Mixed Identities and Cultures.’, 9.

⁴⁶ Robert Chaudenson, Creolization of Language and Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), ch 4.

⁴⁷ Jacqueline Knörr and Wilson Trajano Filho, ’Creolization and Pidgnization in Contexts of Postcolonial Diversity: Context, Content, Structure,’ in Creolization and Pidginization in Contexts of Postcolonial Diversity (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 1–14, 4.

⁴⁸ Hintzen, ‘Race and Creole Ethnicity in the Caribbean.’, 62. On the Zionist conceptions of the ‘melting pot’, see also Yosef Gorny, ‘The ‘Melting Pot’ in Zionist Thought,’ Israel Studies 6, no. 3 (2001): 54–70.

⁴⁹ Palmach, an acronym for plugot machatz (Hebrew: strike force), was established in 1941 as the elite fighting force of the Zionist militia Hagana (Hebrew: defense) in Mandatory Palestine.

⁵⁰ Israel Bartal, Cossack and Bedouin—Land and People in Jewish Nationalism (Tel-Aviv: Am Oved, 2007), 77–79. [Hebrew]

⁵¹ Oz Almog. The Sabra: The creation of the new Jew (Tel-Aviv: Am Oved, 1997), 326. [Hebrew]:

⁵² Naomi Bahat-Ratzon, People Dancing—Dance-Society-Culture in the World and in Israel (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2004), 51–33. [Hebrew]

⁵³ Dina Roginsky, ‘About Arabs, Jews, and Dance: Dance Relations in Palestine and in the State of Israel,’ in Moving through Conflict. Dance and Politics in Israel, ed. Dina Roginsky and Henia Rottenberg (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), 11–36.

⁵⁴ Oz Almog, The Sabra: The creation of the new Jew (Tel-Aviv: Am Oved, 1997), 390–1. [Hebrew]

⁵⁵ Dalia Manor, ‘Orientalism and Jewish National Art: The Case of Bezalel’, in Orientalism and the Jews, edited by I. D. Kalmar and D. J. Penslar (Boston: Brandeis University Press, 2005), 142–161.

⁵⁶ David Ohana, ‘The Myth of Nimrod: ‘Canaanism’ between Zionism and Post-Zionism,’ in Modernism and Zionism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 122–78.

⁵⁷ Amir Ben-Porat, ‘The commodification of football in Israel’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 33.3 (1998): 269–276.

⁵⁸ Jose’ Luis Panea, ‘Identity, spectacle and representation: Israeli entries at the Eurovision Song Contest’, Doxa Communication, 27 (2018): 121–145.

⁵⁹ Aziza Khazzoom, ‘The Great Chain of Orientalism: Jewish Identity, Stigma Management, and Ethnic Exclusion in Israel,’ American Sociological Review 68, no. 4 (2003): 481–510.

⁶⁰ Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader, (New York: Atheneum 1997), 222.

⁶¹ The original quote appeared in an article entitled ‘The Orient’ published in Rassvet. Zeev Jabotinsky, ‘HaMizrakh (The Orient)’, In Yosef Nedva eds., Ekronot Mankhim LeBa’ayot HaShaa [Guiding Principles for the Problems of Our Time[(Tel Aviv: Jabotinsky Institute, 1981), 91.

⁶² The MAPAI party (an acronym for Mifleget Po’alei Eretz Israel, Party of the Workers of the Land of Israel) was a Labor Zionist party closely affiliated with the state’s founding elites.

⁶³ Ehud Barak, Address by Foreign Minister Ehud Barak to the Annual Plenary Session of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council, 11 February 1996, http://mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH016g0.

⁶⁴ ‘Why should he wear a bulletproof vest, asks Leah Rabin,’ Haaretz, 28 October 2001. [in Hebrew]

⁶⁵ Anita Shapira, Jews, Zionists and in Between (Tel-Aviv: Am Oved, 2007), 249. [Hebrew]

⁶⁶ Smadar Shefi, ‘Ofakim Hadashim—Eser Shnot Omanut (Hebrew) (Ofakim Hadashim—Ten Years of Art),’ in HaAsor HaRishon, ed. Zvi Zameret and Chana Yablonka (Jerusalem: Yad Yitzhak Ben Tsvi, 1997), 281–98.

⁶⁷ Eli Salzberger and Fania Oz-Salzberger. ‘German Tradition of the Israeli Supreme Court’, Tel Aviv UL Review. 21 (1997): 294–259.‏

⁶⁸ Avi Shilon, The Decline of the Left Wing in Israel: Yossi Beilin and the Politics of the Peace Process (London: I.B.Tauris, 2019), 71.

⁶⁹ Alon Gan, ´Anatomia shel Hachmatza Historit´ [Anatomy of a missed historical chance], Haaretz, 18 September 2006, https://www.haaretz.co.il/misc/1.1350259. [Hebrew]

⁷⁰ Amit Segal, ‘40^th anniversary for Lapid Guide’, Mako, Channel 2, 30 September 2010, https://www.mako.co.il/news-channel2/Channel-2-Newscast/Article-16b1a0381e36b21004.htm .

⁷¹ Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, (New York: Random House, 2014); Amos Elon, The Israelis: Founders and Sons (1971; reissued 1983) and Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness, 2002.

⁷² For instance see Hannan Hever, Yehouda Shenhav, and Pnina Motzafi-Haller, eds., Mizrahim be-Israel: Iyun bikorti mechudash (Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute Publisher, 2002); Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled, Being Israeli: The Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship (Cambridge: Cambridge University PressPublisher, 2002); Yehouda Shenhav, Ha-yehudim ha-aravim: Le'umiyut, dat ve-etniyut (Tel Aviv: Am-Oved Publisher, 2003); Baruch Kimmerling, Mehagrim, mityashvim, yelidim: Ha-medinah ve-ha-chevrah be-Israel beyn ribui tarbuyot le-milchamot tarbut (Tel Aviv: Am-Oved Publisher, 2004); Yossi Yonah and Yehuda Goodman eds., Ma'arbolet ha-zehuyot: Diyun bikorti be-datiyut u-ve-chiloniyut be-Israel (Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute Publisher, 2004); Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, ‘The Zionist Return to the West and the Mizrahi Jewish Perspective,‘ in Orientalism and the Jews, ed. Ivan Davidson Kalmar and Derek J. Penslar (Waltham:Brandeis University Press Publisher, 2005), 162–181 and Gil Eyal, The Disenchantment of the Orient: Expertise in Arab Affairs and the Israeli State [Stanford: Stanford University Press Publisher, 2006].

⁷³ Established in 1984, the Shas party (an acronym for Shomrei Sepharad, or Sephardic guardians) represents the interests of Israel’s Ultra-Orthodox population from a Middle Eastern Jewish background.

⁷⁴ In the words of Swirski, ‘The Orientals strengthened the hyena—the Likud—in order to weaken the bear—the Labor Party’, Shlomo Swirski, Israel: The Oriental Majority (London: Zed Books, 1989), 53.

⁷⁵ Colin Shindler, ‘From Left to Right’, Israel Studies 23, 3 (2018): 61–67.

⁷⁶ Asher Arian, ‘The Israeli Electorate, 1977,’ in The Election in Israel—1977, ed. A. Arian (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Academic Press, 1981) 253–276.

⁷⁷ Or Kashti, ‘Analysis of the election [Nituach ha-bechirot],’ Haaretz, 19 March 2015. [Hebrew]

⁷⁸ Rivi Gillis, ‘The Question of Ethnic Identity in the Israeli Settlements’, Theory and Criticism, 47 (2016): 41–65. [Hebrew]

⁷⁹ Uri Cohen and Nissim Leon, ‘The Mahapach and Yitzhak Shamir’s Quiet Revolution: Mizrahim and the Herut Movement’, Israel Studies Review, 29, 1 (2014): 18–40.

⁸⁰ Ephraim Ya’ar and Ze’ev Shavit eds., Trends in Israeli Society (Tel-Aviv: The Open University, 2001) 377–375. [Hebrew]

⁸¹ Chaim Isaac Waxman and Michael Appel, To Israel and Back—American Aliyah and Return Migration, New York: American Jewish Committee, Institute of Human Relations, 1986.

⁸² Uri Cohen and Nissim Leon, ‘The New Mizrahi Middle Class: Ethnic Mobility and Class Integration in Israel,’ Journal of Israeli History 27, no. 1 (2008): 51–64.

⁸³ Yaacov Yadgar, Secularism and Religion in Jewish Israeli Politics: Traditionists and Modernity (London: Routledge, 2011).

⁸⁴ Asher Cohen and Bernard Susser, ‘Jews and others: non-Jewish Jews in Israel’, Israel Affairs 15.1 (2009): 52–65.‏

⁸⁵ Moshe Lissak and Efrayim Leshem, ‘The Russian intelligentsia in Israel between ghettoization and Integration’, Israel Affairs, 2(2) (1995): 20–36.

⁸⁶ Dimitry Shumsky, ‘Post-Zionist Orientalism? Orientalist Discourse and Islamophobia among Russian-speaking Intelligentsia in Israel’, Social Identities, 10, 1 (2004): 83–99.

⁸⁷ Viki Edzinsky, ‘To be an Israeli, To became a Mizrahi? Social construction of Ethnicity, divergent assimilation and consolidation of local pragmatic identity among young Russian-Spoken in the Israeli periphery (M.A Thesis, Tel Aviv University, 2014).

⁸⁸ Matti Friedman, ‘Israel’s Russian Wave, Thirty Years Later’, Mosaic, 2 November 2020, https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/israel-zionism/2020/11/israels-russian-wave-thirty-years-later/.

⁸⁹ Larrisa Remennick ed., The Russian 1.5 Generation in Israel: Between Protest and Belonging, Bar Ilan University, Vol. 18 (2015–2016): 16.

⁹⁰ Friedman, ‘Israel’s Russian Wave’.

⁹¹ Edward Kamau Brathwaite, ‘Creolization in Jamaica,’ in The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, ed. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 202–5, 202.

⁹² Ghil’ad Zuckermann, Revitalistics. From the Genesis of the Israeli Language to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 33.

⁹³ Zuckermann, Revitalistics. From the Genesis of the Israeli Language to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond, 36 and 44.

⁹⁴ Ibid., 36.

⁹⁵ Ora (Rodrig) Shwartzwald, ‘The Weight of Foreign Influence in Hebrew,’ Am Vasefer 10 (Tel Aviv: World Hebrew Alliance, 1988), 49. [in Hebrew]

⁹⁶ Abd el-Rahman Marai, ‘The Echo of the New Ulpan,’ issue 100, (Tel Aviv: Beit Berl, Winter 2013): 123. [in Hebrew]

⁹⁷ Yehouda Shenhav et al., Yedi’at Aravit Be-Kerev Yehudim Be’yisrael (Command of Arabic among Israeli Jews) (Jerusalem: The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, 2015).

⁹⁸ Abd el-Rahman Marai, ‘Arabic and Hebrew in Israeli Reality,’ in Yotam Benziman ed., Plural Language: Hebrew as a Cultural Language (Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute, 2013), 164–182. [in Hebrew]

⁹⁹ Nissan Netzer, ‘Hebrew in Jeans: The Character of Hebrew Slang,’ Beersheva: Ben Gurion University, 2007 [in Hebrew]. See also a survey conducted by Rubik Rosenthal in 2005, which found that 34% of 265 foreign words that had penetrated colloquial Hebrew were of Arabic origin. Rubik Rosenthal, ‘Achla Dawin: Arabic Shows a Surprising Innovative Capacity in Hebrew Slang,’ Panim 33, (2005): 40–45. [in Hebrew]

¹⁰⁰ Shlomo Arzi and Hanoch Daum, ‘Gantz is talking’ Yediot Acharonot, 2 August 2019. [in Hebrew]

¹⁰¹ Vanity Fair, ‘Gal Gadot Teaches You Hebrew Slang’, YouTube, 13 October 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX01L8wmhBk&t=1s.

¹⁰² Anna Prashizky, ‘Ethnic fusion in migration: The new Russian–Mizrahi pop-culture hybrids in Israel’, Ethnicities, 19.6 (2019): 1062–1081.

¹⁰³ Oz Almog, The Sabra. The Creation of a New Jew (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 243.

¹⁰⁴ Ephraim Ya’ar and Ze’ev Shavit eds., Trends in Israeli Society (Tel Aviv: The Open University, 2001), 205. [Hebrew]

¹⁰⁵ Motti Regev and Edwin Seroussi. Popular music and national culture in Israel, (University of California Press, 2004).

¹⁰⁶ Motti Regev, ‘Ethno-national pop-rock music: aesthetic cosmopolitanism made from within.’ Cultural Sociology 1.3 (2007): 317–341.

¹⁰⁷ Sharon Shahaf, ‘Prime Time Post-Zionism—Negotiating Israeliness Through Global Television’ (PhD diss., The University of Texas, 2009).

¹⁰⁸ Oded Erez and Nadim Karkabi, ‘Sounding Arabic: Postvernacular modes of performing the Arabic language in popular music by Israeli Jews,’ Popular Music, 38(2) (2019): 298–316.

¹⁰⁹ Amy Horowitz, Mediterranean Israeli Music and the Politics of the Aesthetic (Wayne State University Press, 2010).‏

¹¹⁰ Chen Almaliah, ´How A-WA's new album became a cultural event (despite the arrogance of the critics)´ (Hebrew), Haaretz, 18 September 2018, Neta Elkayam and Amit Chai-Cohen also formed a band that performs revived and original songs in Darija (Moroccan Arabic). Their most recent project, ‘Arans Session,’ was directly influenced by recordings of women’s songs from the Atlas mountains, and won considerable appreciation both from music critics and audiences. See also ibid.

¹¹¹ Rom Atik, ‘Non-stop party,’ Haaretz, 7 January 2016.

¹¹² Aryeh Tepper, ‘The Brothers al-Kuwaiti’, Jewish Ideas Daily, 25 March 2011, http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/850/features/the-brothers-al-kuwaiti/.

¹¹³ Simona Wasserman, ‘Musical innovation and institutionalization in the field of Mizrahi music in Israel,’ Studies in the Renaissance of Israel (2014): 4322.

¹¹⁴ Interview with Tasa, June 2021

¹¹⁵ Roee Parsol, ‘Without being disguise: The Israeli Singer who became a star in Arab States’, Maariv, October 11, 2018.

¹¹⁶ Danit Zamit, ´Neta Elkayam: In Morocco I went to the stage with a galabiyyah for men´, (Hebrew), Ynet, 7 January 2020https://www.ynet.co.il/entertainment/article/H1gjz9eeU

¹¹⁷ Ben Shalev, ‘A Series of Arab-Jewish Melodies: What a Brilliant show’, Haaretz, September 8, 2017

¹¹⁸ Ephraim Ya’ar and Ze’ev Shavit eds., Trends in Israeli Society, (Tel Aviv: The Open University, 2001), 211. [Hebrew]

¹¹⁹ Yael Raviv, Falafel nation: Cuisine and the making of national identity in Israel (University of Nebraska Press, 2015).

¹²⁰ Orit Rozin, ‘Food, Identity, and Nation-Building in Israel’s Formative Years,’ Israel Studies Forum 21, no. 1 (2006): 52–80, 73–74.

¹²¹ Ronit Vered, ‘What the Food Menus at Netanyahu’s Official Banquets Reveal About Israel’s Cuisine’, Haaretz, 5 December 2020, https://www.haaretz.com/food/.premium.MAGAZINE-what-the-food-menu-at-israel-s-official-state-banquets-reveals-about-its-cuisine-1.9347744 .

¹²² Yael Raviv, Falafel Nation.

¹²³ In this context, it should be noted that Israeli governments refused to subsidize pita bread until the 1980s, arguing that it did not represent the taste of most of the Israeli population, For instance see Ella Shohat, ‘Sephardim in Israel: Zionism From the Point of View of its Jewish Victims’. Social Text, 19–20 (1988): 22.

¹²⁴ Florence Fabricant, ‘Israeli Chef Eyal Shani makes his New York debut’, New York Times, 8 January 2018.

¹²⁵ Ofri Ilany, ‘Israel Hi Polin (Im of Bi-Mkom Chasir) [Hebrew] (Israel Is Poland (with Chicken Instead of Pork)),’ Haaretz, 27 July 2016, https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/the-edge/.premium-1.3019706 .

¹²⁶ Ronit Vered, ‘The Story Behind an Iconic Israeli Street Food: The Sabich’, Haaretz, 21 December 2017, https://www.haaretz.com/food/.premium.MAGAZINE-the-story-behind-the-one-real-israeli-sandwich-the-sabich-1.5629370 .

¹²⁷ Yehuda Etzion, Adventures of the Mufti and the Doctor: The Zionist-Muslim Discourse about the Temple Mount and the Temple on the Backdrop of the 1929 Riots (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Sifriyat Beit-El, 2014).

¹²⁸ On the role models for Israel’s Chief Rabbinate (including Catholic Ireland), see also Alexander Kaye, The Invention of Jewish Theocracy. The Struggle for Legal Authority in Modern Israel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).

¹²⁹ This conjecture is based in part on research and surveys conducted by the Guttman Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research (at the Israel Democracy Institute), from 2009 till 2013. See also: https://en.idi.org.il/publications/6870.

¹³⁰ Yaacov Yadgar, Secularism and Religion in Jewish Israeli Politics: Traditionists and Modernity (London: Routledge, 2011).:

¹³¹ Anat Feldman, ‘Ethnic religious politics in Israel: The case of the Shas Party’, In Giuseppe Giordan and William H. Swatos eds., Testing Pluralism: Globalizing Belief, Localizing Gods, (Brill, 2013), 193–210.

¹³² Nissim Leon, ‘Rabbi’ Ovadia Yosef, the Shas Party, and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process’, The Middle East Journal 69.3 (2015): 379–395.

¹³³ For the intellectual legacy on which Shas builds, see also Zvi Zohar, Rabbinic Creativity in the Middle East (London: Bloomsbury, 2013).

¹³⁴ David Horowitz, ‘Nobody Hijacked Israel. It’s Just Not What Its Pioneers Thought They’d Created (Interview with Matti Fridman),’ Times of Israel, 29 July 2019, https://www.timesofisrael.com/nobody-hijacked-israel-its-just-not-what-its-pioneers-thought-theyd-created/.

¹³⁵ Michel-Ralph Trouillot, ‘Culture on the Edges: Creolization in the Plantation Context,’ in Caribbean Cultural Thought. From Plantation to Diaspora, ed. Yanique Hume and Aaron Kamugisha (Kingston and Miami: Ian Randle Publishers, 2013), 142–56, 143.

¹³⁶ Kees van der Waal, ‘Between Purity and Creolization: Representations of Race, Culture and Language in the New South Africa,’ Creolization and Pidginization in Contexts of Postcolonial Diversity, ed. Jacqueline Knörr and Wilson Trajano Filho (Leiden: Brill, 2018): 309–33, 315.

¹³⁷ Mimi Sheller, Consuming the Caribbean. From Arawaks to Zombies (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 188.

¹³⁸ Stephan Palmié, ‘Creolization and Its Discontents,’ Annual Review of Anthropology 35 (2006): 433–65.

¹³⁹ Rex M. Nettleford, Caribbean Cultural Identity: The Case of Jamaica, An Essay in Cultural Dynamics (Kingston: Institute of Jamaica, 1978), 733.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Volkswagen Foundation.