Israel Has a Jewish Problem:

Self-Determination as Self-Elimination
Joyce Dalsheim
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Israel Has a Jewish Problem
 Israel Has a Jewish
Problem
Self-​Determination as Self-​Elimination

J OYC E DA L SH E I M

1
 3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data

Names: Dalsheim, Joyce, 1961-​author.
Title: Israel has a Jewish problem : self-​determination as self-​elimination /​
Joyce Dalsheim.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, [2019] |
Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019017903| ISBN 9780190680251 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780190680268 (updf) | ISBN 9780190680275 (epub) |
ISBN 9780190068943 (online)
Subjects: LCSH: Jews—​Israel—​Identity. | Jewish nationalism. |
Self-​determination, National—​Israel. | Jews—​Israel—​Politics
and government. | National characteristics, Israeli.
Classification: LCC DS143 .D25 2019 | DDC 956.9405—​dc23
LC record available at https://​lccn.loc.gov/​2019017903

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
 To the memory of my father, Stephen Dalsheim, a righteous
man in his time, who taught me so much about what it means
to be a mensch. I’m still trying.
 Contents

Acknowledgements ix
Notes on Terms xiii

Introduction 1
1. Before the Law There Stands a Jew 19
2. On Goat Surveillance 42
3. The False Promises of Sovereignty 61
4. Self-​Elimination 90
5. Is Israel a Christian State? 130
6. The Jewish Question Again 161

Bibliography 197
Index 215
 Acknowledgements

The Trees

For we are like tree trunks in the snow. In appearance they

lie sleekly and a little push should be enough to set them
rolling. No, it can’t be done, for they are firmly wedded to
the ground. But see, even that is only appearance.
—​Franz Kafka (1971: 382)

This is a book about Israel. But it isn’t. It is a book about what na-
tionalism does, how it limits the possible ways of being because
it needs a “people” who are sovereign. More than that, it needs its
population to be legible, relatively easy to put to work and tax and
conscript into the armed forces. So while there is room for certain
kinds of differences, the state also requires a fundamental homoge-
neity among its population. James Scott (2017) would likely explain
this as a form of domestication, like the domestication of grains and
animals, or of forests and trees. This is a kind of self-​domestication,
a limiting of general ways of being. But the limitations—​like tree
trunks in the snow—​are not immediately obvious. It takes some
digging, both historically and theoretically, to figure out what’s
going on.
Books, of course, are like that as well. Their many surfaces,
smooth and sleek, hide multitudes of encounters, connections,
and dependencies with people whose names may never appear
in the stories they tell. This book deals with troublesome modern
categories like “nation” and “religion” that may seem arbitrary
but come to be taken for granted. They, like the roots beneath the
soil and snow, work in ways that may confound us. Many people
x Acknowledgements

have helped me along the way to uncover the roots of an under-

standing of how political self-​determination also involves forms of
self-​elimination. It’s been a difficult process, because of the com-
plexity of the issues and the counter-​intuitive nature of the analysis,
and because the topic itself remains politically charged. So it is hard
to get people to see what’s going on under the blanket of beautiful
white snow.
Some people agreed with the ideas I share here, and many
disagreed, but all made me think. For that I am grateful. I would
like to thank my editor, Cynthia Read, the wonderful anonymous
reviewers who provided such insightful comments, and Katherine
Ulrich for her meticulous and thoughtful copyediting. For pro-
viding the time and space in which to think and write I am grateful
to my Chair, Dale Smith, and to the Luce/​ACLS Fellowship in
Religion, Journalism, and International Affairs, and to the Buffet
Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University where
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd and Brannon Ingram hosted me. Thanks
are due to Jean Clipperton for making me feel welcome and to
Ben Schontal for being a great office mate. A special thanks to the
Deering Library at Northwestern and its librarians, as well as to
the wonderful librarians at UNC Charlotte’s Atkins Library. Many
thanks to Sean, Sol, Sofia, Cecelia, Nora, and Gabriela, for pro-
viding a home away from home.
For providing a forum in which to present the material and get
feedback, I would like to thank Rebecca Bryant for the confer-
ence on sovereignty she organized in Cyprus where I presented a
very early version of some of this work. I am grateful to Jonathan
Boyarin for many wonderful conversations and to the Department
of Anthropology at Cornell University for sponsoring my talk
there. I also am grateful to all the faculty and students at the Kroc
Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre
Dame who shared their thoughts during my presentation. Special
thanks to Asher Kaufman for his detailed comments on an early
draft of one of the chapters. Thanks to Danny Postel and all the
 Acknowledgements xi

scholars who engaged with my work at Northwestern. Many thanks

to Rebecca Bryant, David Henig, and all the wonderful colleagues
in Utrecht who provided feedback. For arranging a forum to pre-
sent my work in Amsterdam and for her insightful comments,
I would like to thank Yolande Jansen.
For support and encouragement along the way—​whether or
not they liked my ideas—​I would like to thank Gil Anidjar, Zvi
Bekerman, Sam Brody, Peggy Cidor, Hillel Cohen, Assaf Harel,
Martin Land, Abe Rubin, Amalia Sa’ar, Ben Schonthal, Gershon
Shafir, Jackie Smith, Rebecca Stein, and Lorenzo Veracini. In par-
ticular, I am grateful to Gregory Starrett for always listening,
reading, and pushing me to think further, to follow my instincts
and stand firmly behind my ideas. To all those who raised chal-
lenging questions—​like Jackie Feldman, who could ask a single
question that would occupy me for months—​thank you. And, to all
those who disagreed with the arguments presented here, I appre-
ciate those challenges, which ultimately made the book stronger,
I think, I hope.
This book would not have been possible without all the people
who remain unnamed, my interlocutors in the field who gave gen-
erously of their time, welcomed me into their homes, and shared
their thoughts with me. Finally, I would like to thank Rafi for his
endless support and patience, and Edan and Ziev for believing in
me. And, of course, I am forever grateful to Ursula, for long walks
and constant companionship.
 Notes on Terms

Israeli Ways of Being Jewish

Israeli Jews are often thought of in terms of a number of distinct

categories. What those categories are, precisely, depends on whom
you ask. We could, for example, begin with the distinction between
religious (dati) and secular (hiloni). Each of these two groups might
then further be categorized by the type of religious observance, or
by ethnic origin, or by the political positions that are thought to
characterize them.
Of course, all of these categorical determinations are overstated.
No group is ever homogenous, and each contains all sorts of
differences. And no group is ever static; they are all always changing,
and they often overlap. In addition, distinctions that might once
have been typical can shift and change over time, making what
seem like distinct groups more similar. For these reasons, any list
of the ways of being Jewish in Israel or elsewhere will at once seem
obvious and reasonable and helpful, but at the same time would in
reality be misleading, inadequate, and already outdated as soon as
it is written. In many ways these “groups” are best understood as
locations of political, theological, and cultural contestation. Any
way of constructing such categories, in other words, seems arbi-
trary. But although arbitrary, they are the distinctions through
which social and political groups are constituted. They define
inclusions and exclusions, but may be misleading both for those
involved in these contestations, and for analysts, scholars, and
readers who seek to make sense of them from different points of
perspective.
xiv Notes on Terms

That having been said, some readers may think it helpful to have
a general sense of what is meant here by terms like “hilonim” or
“Haredim” or “national-​religious.” For those unfamiliar with the
social-​religious-​political scene in Israel, I offer the following as a
place to begin to think about Israeli Jewishness.
Secular (Hiloni, pl. Hilonim) The majority of Israeli Jews self-​
identify as “secular.” However, according to recent polls, 60 percent
of the secular also say they believe in God, and similarly significant
percentages observe particular religious practices. “Secular” might
describe Israelis who observe fewer religious practices than more
observant Jews. The secular are those for whom religion or religious
practice does not define their Jewishness. Of course, within both
the religious and the secular communities, there are debates about
what the term “secular” means in the first place, and what it has to
do with one’s sense of identity or with one’s cultural practices, or
one’s sense of Israeliness. “Hiloni” can be a term that people apply
to themselves, but which they might also find offensive under some
conditions. It might be hurled as an accusation by those who con-
sider themselves “religious,” with the connotation that hilonim are
ignorant of Jewishness, or that they are lacking in ethics and only
interested in material possessions and pleasures.
Religious (Dati, pl. Dati’im, or Dosim, from Yiddish, which is
generally used by the non-​religious in derogatory ways) The term
“religious” is mostly used to refer to anyone who would not identify
as hiloni. That, of course, includes a lot of different kinds of people!
It includes religious Zionists, who are often called “national-​
religious.” Out of the religious Zionist population emerged an
anti-​Zionist strain rebelling against their parents’ generation for
not resisting the state. Sometimes called the “hilltop youth,” they
don’t think that the state always works in the best interests of the
Jewish people, and so work on their own to colonize “illegally” in
the Israeli-​occupied territories of the West Bank. Thus, the term
“religiously motivated settlers” (Dalsheim 2011) might be a more
accurate description. But the term “religious” also might refer to
 Notes on Terms xv

the Orthodox, the ultra-​Orthodox, and the modern Orthodox,

not to mention the very minor strains of Reform and Conservative
Jews, traditions imported from Germany and the United States, but
not recognized by the Israeli state or its Rabbinate. And, among the
Orthodox and ultra-​Orthodox are various theologies and practices
as well as political affiliations. The term religious can also include
the “traditional” Jews discussed below.
Traditional (Masorati, pl. Masoratiim) is a term generally
used in reference to Jews from the Middle East and North Africa
(Mizrahim) who keep traditional Jewish practices, but whose ob-
servance of Halakha is considered more flexible than other ob-
servant Jews. What unites Moroccan Jews and Iranian Jews—​not
to mention those from Azerbaijan or Iraq or Egypt or Yemen—​is
simply that they are not of European origin. But this term doesn’t
cover Ethiopians. They’re just “Ethiopians.” Obviously what we’re
talking about here is different from what we generally think of as
“religious” identity, because it has to do with “nationality” or “na-
tional origin” or language or “ethnicity” or skin tone or racialized
categories rather than “religiousness.” Mizrahim can be proud
atheists, as are/​were many Jewish immigrants from Iraq, but that
doesn’t necessarily mean they get called “hilonim,” or secularists.
That term is largely reserved for Ashkenazim, Jews of European or-
igin. On the other hand, so many people are intermarried anyway,
that who gets called what by whom for what purpose is, in technical
social science terms, “highly contextual.”
Haredi (pl. Haredim) is generally translated as ultra-​Orthodox.
Ultra? What does that mean, anyway? As Martin Land once said
to me, “What, if the commandment is Thou Shalt Not Kill, so
they ultra-​don’t kill?” The term only makes sense if one thinks of
Jewishness as some kind of continuum in which some people are not
very Jewish and others are extremely Jewish. But such an idea raises
all sorts of problems. Those referred to as ultra-​Orthodox do not use
that term to describe themselves and might even find that term of-
fensive. While the word “Haredi” is broadly used to refer to the very
xvi Notes on Terms

strictly orthodox, it includes a range of theologies, and followers of

different rabbinic leaders, who are associated with particular Jewish
communities in different parts of the world. The term Haredi can be
used as an adjective or a noun. In general, the term refers to those
Jews who strictly follow Halakha. They aspire to absolute reverence
for the Torah, including both the Written and Oral Law, as the cen-
tral and determining factor in all aspects of life. Consequently, re-
spect and status are often accorded in proportion to the greatness
of one’s Torah scholarship, and leadership is ideally linked to learn-
edness. Foundationally, the Haredim are not supporters of political
Zionism. Nonetheless, several Haredi groups have their own polit-
ical parties in Israel. These groups are sometimes distinguished by
ethnic origin. So, for example, the political party Sephardi Torah
Guardians (Shas) represents observant Sephardi Jews (those of
Spanish or Portuguese ancestry) and those from the Middle East
and North Africa. It is distinguished from other Haredi political
parties that represent Ashkenazi Jews (those of Western, Central,
or Eastern European ancestry). Shas has been analyzed as gaining
wide support among Mizrahim, regardless of their levels of ob-
servance, because it provided social welfare, including childcare.
Thus, socioeconomic issues are also interspersed with religion
and ethnicity. But these parties sometimes split from within for all
sorts of reasons. Recently, Adina Bar Shalom, the daughter of the
former chief rabbi of Shas, Ovadia Yosef, started her own party and
she has supported other religious women political candidates from
other streams of Judaism. Thus, gender also plays a role. In addi-
tion, Hasidic Jews (Hasidim) are usually distinguished from other
Haredim. Hasidic communities were generally formed around a
charismatic rabbinic leader and came to be known by the name of
the town in Eastern Europe (e.g., the Gur Hasidim, the Lubavitch, or
the Belz) in which they originated. In Israel today, there are all kinds
of combinations of theology in which Hasidic thought combines
with national-​religious thought, or Haredi ideas combine with the
ideas and practices of religiously motivated settlers. In the occupied
 Notes on Terms xvii

West Bank today, one can find yeshivas among religiously motivated
settlers that take their inspiration from a particular Hasidic rabbin-
ical tradition, or settlers whose theology has come to more closely
resemble Haredi anti-​Zionist ideas. And, of course, among the
Haredim are those who are more inclined toward Zionism and ser-
vice to the state. But, according to The Jewish People Policy Institute,
Haredim in Israel are best defined as “the population whose males
generally do not serve in the Israeli military, because they receive a
Torah study deferment. About half of the male Haredi population
works. The other portion studies Torah full time.” They are defined
here, in other words, in terms of their relationship to the state, or to
Zionist ideologies of duty and responsibility.

Other Terms/​Translations

Aliyah: Literally, to “go up.” Refers to Jewish immigration to

Israel. It can be used as a verb when a person is said to “make aliya.”
But it also refers to specific waves of Jewish immigration to Israel/​
Palestine (e.g., the First Aliyah was a major wave of Zionist immi-
gration to Palestine that occurred between 1882 and1903.)
Halakha: Halakha can be translated in reference to its lin-
guistic root in the word “to go,” signifying a path or direction, and
designates the proper path or guide to life actions and decisions.
The term Halakha sometimes refers to a particular law or ruling or
to the entire system of law. It includes biblical commandments as
well as interpretations of the great sages of rabbinical Judaism.
Haskalah: Generally refers to an ideology of moderniza-
tion in 19th-​century Europe. It is sometimes called the Jewish
Enlightenment and is traced to the thinking of Moses Mendelsohn.
Its central ideals included ways of combining traditional study with
secular subjects that would help integrate Jews in European societies.
Ketubah: Marriage contract.
Mikveh: Ritual bath.
xviii Notes on Terms

Mitzvah (pl. mitzvot, mitzvoth): The term used in reference

to biblical or religious commandments. There are said to be 613
commandments. Although this number is disputed, its origin is
traced to a 3rd-​century-​ce rabbi who explained that the 613 com-
mandments included 365 negative commands (do not), which
correspond to the number of solar days in a year, and 248 positive
commands, corresponding to the number of human bones cov-
ered with flesh. This emphasizes that one should fulfill the mitzvot
every day and with every bone in one’s body. Indeed, among ob-
servant Jews, mitzvot are part of everyday life, for example, eating
only kosher food and resting on the seventh day (Shabbat). Keeping
the mitzvot is a fundamental good; it involves doing the good that
God has commanded of His people. As such, the mitzvot are not
only good for the person who keeps them, but for the world. In
some interpretations, living according to the mitzvot contributes
to repairing the world and preparing for the messianic age, a time
when it will be possible to perform all mitzvot in their ideal context.
In order to live according to the mitzvot, one must study and learn
them. Thus understanding and action, study and performance are
intimately intertwined. The term mitzvah is used in common par-
lance to mean a good deed.
Torah: The physical Torah scroll, handwritten on parchment
and prepared by a Torah scribe, that is opened and read aloud in
synagogue. The content of the Torah refers to the five books of
Moses, but may also include other Jewish sacred literature.
Israel Has a Jewish Problem
 Introduction

“Western thought works by thesis, antithesis, syn-

thesis, while Judaism goes thesis, antithesis, antithesis,
antithesis . . .”
—​The Rabbi, in The Rabbi’s Cat (Sfar 2005: 25)

John Emmerich Edward Dalberg-​Acton, the 1st Baron Acton,

lived from 1834 until 1902. He was perhaps most famous for the
idea that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts ab-
solutely,” one of those quotes we easily recognize, but can’t quite
place. Acton’s book, Essays on Freedom and Power, appeared post-
humously in 1948. I came across that book at the Hannah Arendt
Library at Bard College, where I found Arendt’s underlining in her
paperback copy. It was the 1955 edition, its pages yellowing with
age. More than a century after his death, I found myself intrigued
by Acton’s words and captivated by Arendt’s underlining and her
small, precise handwritten notes in the margins. It was as though,
more than four decades after her death, I was thinking with the
brilliant woman herself.
Acton was writing about political systems and the history of
freedom, beginning in antiquity. In a section about the position of
citizens within the state, Arendt underlined a sentence that said,
“The passengers existed for the sake of the ship.” That sentence
struck me as encapsulating the essence of nationalist projects
and the production of national communities, which I had been

Israel Has a Jewish Problem: Self-Determination as Self- Elimination. Joyce Dalsheim, Oxford
University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190680251.001.0001
2 Israel Has a Jewish Problem

studying for some time.1 “That’s the whole story,” I thought to

myself—​“nationalism in a nutshell.” The passengers are there so
that the ship can make its voyage, not the other way around. But the
passengers can’t see things that way. That would ruin everything.
They (we) have to purchase or somehow acquire their tickets and
experience that purchase as their decision. It matters little whether
those tickets were acquired with the ease of wealth and privilege
or through enormous struggle; the passengers must experience the
voyage as their choice and for their benefit.
All such metaphors involve a level of oversimplification. We
might continue the metaphor and think about whether everyone
on such a ship counts as a “passenger,” especially people who are
captives on that ship, people who did not choose to be there, or who
want to mutiny or to escape. Issues such as these will be explored
later in the book. Nonetheless this idea of the ship, I thought to my-
self, is an apt metaphor for the case of the modern state of Israel.
Its passengers, “the people” of the nation, enable state projects, and
despite ideas about social contracts and popular sovereignty, those
projects seem to have a life of their own. Samuli Schielke (2018)
recently suggested that scholars sometimes treat abstract concepts
the way animists treat non-​humans, inanimate objects, or processes
of nature. We attribute responsibility and intentionality to them.
My theorizing in this book is surely implicated in that observation.
I have been engaging with and thinking about Israel/​Palestine
for nearly four decades, and count myself as among those scholars
who have found the theoretical framework of settler colonialism
most productive for thinking about this case.2 Much to the chagrin

1 For example, see Dalsheim (2003; 2007) on how conflict over the content of national

history does not weaken national identity, as one might expect. Instead it strengthens a
sense of national pride. See Dalsheim (2004) for a comparison of settler nationalism in
Australia and Israel and how representing the past works to produce social and political
identities for national projects.
2 Maxime Rodinson (1973) was probably the first scholar to write about Israel as a

“colonial-​settler state,” a designation that has become increasingly popular among

critical scholars and political activists who seek to decolonize Palestine. Later, critical
Israeli sociologists and historians began to analyze Israel in terms of colonialism. Baruch
 Introduction 3

of many Israelis I know, I continue to see its value. But I am also

convinced that settler colonial theorizing requires some expansion
and rethinking. Seeing social formations through a settler colo-
nial frame provides clarity. Like any frame, it helps focus the eye
on some things while also excluding other things from the picture.
While we should take care not to ignore important details, such
framing can be very helpful. It allows us to see patterns and rec-
ognize processes that repeat in other contexts. Unlike other forms
of colonialism, “settler-​colonization is at base a winner-​take-​all
project whose dominant feature is not exploitation but replace-
ment. The logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to
eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical
practices that might otherwise appear distinct—​invasion is a struc-
ture not an event” (Wolfe 1999: 163).
Contemplating that last, powerful phrase and its implications, it
became clear to me that Wolfe was right. Settler colonialism is in-
deed a structure, and one that is discernable in the United States,
Australia, Canada, and elsewhere, but it is also a process (Dalsheim
2004, 2005, 2011b) in much the same way that capitalism is a struc-
ture and also a process. Settler colonialism may shift and readjust
its route, but the course remains set, unless somehow the entire
ship is dismantled.
I have written about the ways that settler colonialism can fool
us by separating itself from itself through social, cultural, reli-
gious, and political categories that appear as binary oppositions
(Dalsheim 2011b). In the case of Israel one of the ways this happens
is when the term “settlers” is applied only to those who are ideolog-
ically driven to expand the size of the state and who live in Israeli

Kimmerling called Israel an “immigrant-​settler” state. Gershon Shafir (1989b) analyzed

Israel as a “pure settlement” colony, where state policies have been based on attempts to
control the land and labor markets. Shafir wrote that “what is unique about Israeli society
emerged precisely in response to the conflict between the Jewish immigrant-​settlers and
the Palestinian Arab inhabitants of the land” (1989b: 6). See Uri Ram (1995) for more
details on the history of Israeli sociology and the emergence of this school of thought.
4 Israel Has a Jewish Problem

Occupied Palestinian Territories. The term settlers is juxtaposed

to other Jewish Israeli citizens, some of whom might oppose
expanding settlement. It marks a part of the population as settlers
rather than understanding the whole of the Zionist project as a
settler colonial enterprise. Here, I continue thinking about those
categories and oppositions in order to untangle some of the ways
that the Israeli nation-​state produces the passengers for the sake of
its ship, whose primary goal is the establishment and maintenance
of a self-​proclaimed Jewish state in the space of Israel/​Palestine.
Scholars like Rachel Busbridge (2017) have been critical of the
settler colonial “turn” in Israel/​Palestine studies because the term
itself can offend people and therefore close down debate or limit
certain kinds of political processes. Much in the same way as the
word “apartheid” in Israel or the word “socialism” in the United
States have been decried as divisive, settler colonialism carries too
much weight, too much meaning. It evokes too much affect, which
only causes people to get angry and stop listening. If you are of-
fended, dear reader, I ask that you bear with me for just a little
longer. It’s about to get worse.
I do not disagree with Busbridge’s assessment, but suggesting that
a form of theoretical analysis is not palatable for particular kinds of
political activism is not the same as demonstrating that the analysis
is wrong. Indeed, as I have argued elsewhere, abandoning theory
for praxis has the potential to subvert the goals of those who do
so (Dalsheim 2013c, 2014). My purpose here is not to undermine
the conceptual framework of settler colonialism, but to explore and
expand parts of its analysis in order to gain additional insight into
some of the processes I am calling Israel’s Jewish problem.
One of the ways I am expanding on that conceptual frame-
work is by putting it in conversation with a much earlier critique
of Zionism that preceded settler colonial studies, but to which the
latter rarely refers. Doing so is one way that I refuse the secular/​
religious divide, which is not only a predominant way of under-
standing the issues I raise about Israel’s Jewish problem, but also
 Introduction 5

works to keep (secular) scholars from thinking with (religious)

sages. This separation, I think, is part of what Eduardo Viveiros de
Castro meant when he wrote about “the vicious dichotomies of mo-
dernity” (2014: 49). Like Viveiros de Castro, I too am convinced
that most important anthropological theory can be understood as
versions of knowledge practices of the people we study, “indigenous
practices of knowledge” (Viveiros de Castro 2014: 42). Comparing
two forms of criticism that are rarely considered in concert, I have
been intrigued by an interesting convergence around the question
of assimilation.
Writing about Australia, Patrick Wolfe asserted that “assimila-
tion completes the project of elimination” of the Indigenous pop-
ulation (1999: 176). When he wrote about Israel/​Palestine, Wolfe
made very clear that the modern state of Israel is a settler colonial
formation established by Jews who primarily came from Europe,
and that Palestinian Arabs were the Indigenous at whom the pro-
ject of elimination was aimed. He was not wrong. Given the on-
going suffering of the Palestinian population in the space of Israel/​
Palestine—​the constant precarity and endless forms of spacio-​cide
(Hanafi 2012) aimed at them—​it might seem frivolous or irrespon-
sible to shift the focus toward those positioned as settlers in the
settler colonial structure. Patrick Wolfe and other scholars of set-
tler colonialism have written about settler ideologies, erasures of
the past, and the production of national narratives that glorify the
settler project and make heroes of its protagonists. They have pri-
marily focused on how settler imaginings work together with dis-
possession of native lands, and Wolfe in particular has shown how
dispossession can also work through assimilation. But it seems to
me that the processes of assimilation/​elimination are even broader
than Wolfe has suggested.
This book is concerned with processes of assimilation aimed
at producing Jews as “the nation.” It looks at how Jewishness is
constrained in the Israeli context through myriad struggles over
meanings and practices of being Jewish. The book adds to the
6 Israel Has a Jewish Problem

scholarship on nationalism by putting it in conversation with ideas

generated through settler colonial scholarship and by continuing
the analyses of those scholars who place both nationalism and co-
lonialism within broader analyses of modernity. It continues the
critique of modernity/​Enlightenment by refusing some of the
categories through which modernity seeks to describe itself, pri-
marily the binary distinction between religion and the secular. In
this way, it adds to a growing interdisciplinary literature that closely
examines what secularism means and how it works.3 At the same
time, it uses fieldwork data—​ideas expressed by people directly
involved—​to bring forward particular Jewish concerns about the
dangers of assimilation associated with Zionist nationalism and
sovereignty in a self-​proclaimed Jewish state.
In order to think more productively about both assimilation
and secularism, the book enters a conversation with a group of
scholars who are primarily concerned with preserving Judaism and
protecting Jewish identity from the dangers of Zionism. Drawing
heavily from the perspectives of traditional Orthodox Judaism,
Yaacov Rabkin (2016), for example, insists that the modern state of
Israel is not a Jewish state. He recounts the history of Jewish oppo-
sition to Zionism, often quoting rabbinical sources and explaining
how identification with the modern state tends to replace a “value
system typical of Judaism” with nationalist ideals (2016: 50).
Yaacov Yadgar (2011) employs what he calls a “traditionist”
(masorti) Jewish perspective to suggest that “secular” Israeli Jews
(hilonim) have no meaningful Jewish identity except that which is
imparted to them by the state. While they complain about religious
impositions on their lives, Yadgar (2017) argues that these statist
Jews benefit from those impositions. It is what identifies them as
Jews in Israel and allows them the privileged position of sovereign

3 Examples of this interdisciplinary literature include the work of anthropologists

like Talal Asad and Webb Keane, political scientists William Connolly and Elizabeth
Shakman Hurd, and philosopher Charles Taylor. Chapter 1 deals with the extensive liter-
ature on the secular and secularism in much greater detail.
 Introduction 7

citizens in an ethno-​national state. Amnon Raz-​Krakotzkin has

been consistently critical of Zionist ideology and its notion that the
establishment of the state of Israel represents a negation of Jewish
exile. Raz-​Krakotzkin (1994) instead exposes Zionism as the nega-
tion of traditional Jewish understandings of the concepts of exile
and redemption. These concepts have been re-​narrated through
Zionist discourse to produce a unified national identity that also
erases the rich historicity of diverse forms of Jewish life. In partic-
ular, by aligning itself with the West, Zionism identified itself in op-
position to the East, marginalizing the rich cultures of Jews from
the Middle East and North Africa so that being Jewish primarily
came to mean not being Arab.4 Raz-​Krakotzkin also suggests that
Jews of the Middle East and North Africa (Mizrahim) might be able
to provide an alternative to this “crisis of Zionism” (2011: 73). Such
critiques of Zionist nationalism that draw on traditional (or reli-
gious) values resonate with similar critiques of nationalism in other
places, especially with the work of Ashis Nandy (e.g., 1995, 1988).
These scholars are all interested in preserving collective identity
rather than deconstructing it, as much social science might recom-
mend. Like Hannah Arendt, who came to these questions not from
traditional Judaism, but as a secular Jew who had herself experi-
enced exile, these critics suggest there may yet be a way to preserve
the Jewish nation without Zionist nationalism.5
Unlike these historians and political scientists, as an anthropol-
ogist I do not see my role as determining what is and what is not
Jewish, nor as providing alternative models or content to Jewish or
Israeli identity. Instead I present an argument based on years of eth-
nographic engagement that considers the multiple and conflicting

4 There is a growing literature on the positionality of Mizrahim, too extensive to cite in

detail here. For some of the foundational texts dealing with the question of the Arab-​Jew
see Ella Shohat (1988, 2017), Gil Anidjar (2003), and Yehouda Shenhav (2006).
5 Raz-​Krakotzkin (2011) is critical of Arendt’s Eurocentric Orientalism, but builds

on her ideas in his work on bi-​nationalism. See also Raz-​Krakotzkin (1993) on being
in exile as an ethical model of living. Daniel and Jonathan Boyarin (1993) have written
about diaspora as a non-​territorial and preferable way of maintaining Jewishness.
8 Israel Has a Jewish Problem

ways in which sovereign citizens of Israel struggle to be Jewish

there, and I offer a way of understanding what might otherwise
seems like a bizarre situation. I build on Amnon Raz-​Krakotzkin’s
idea of how Zionism tends to narrow definitions of Jewishness.
However, I am convinced that this narrowing is not only aimed at
Jews of the Middle East and North Africa. Indeed, the processes of
producing the ethnos for the ethno-​national state affect all Jewish
Israelis in one way or another.
Such processes are not specific to the Jewish state. There are
many cases in which state laws determine what will and will not
count as a particular religion, “inventing and reinventing religious
orthodoxy for a given community” (Sullivan et al. 2015: 7). For ex-
ample, in the introduction to their book on the Politics of Religious
Freedom, Sullivan and her colleagues discuss the case of Thailand.
Historically, they explain, there were at least five different traditions
of Buddhism in the place that is now Thailand. “At the end of the
nineteenth century, in a modernizing move . . . the king decided to
unify the sangha (the Buddhist monastic community). In deciding
what counted as Buddhism . . . Buddhist teaching was repurposed”
so that “the Thai state would have religion as the foundation of its
national identity. This . . . resulted in, among other things, the re-
pression of local Buddhisms” (2015: 7–​8). The state of Israel is like-
wise engaged in defining what will count at Jewishness. However,
scholars like Yadgar suggest that “the state” relies on a narrow
Orthodox interpretation of Jewish religion to maintain a Jewish
majority, which like the notion of state repression, implies a top-​
down model of imposition. My research suggests that the processes
underway in Israel are actually much more complicated. This is,
first of all, because “the state” is not so easily separable from “the
people.” While a fictional reality of unified, centralized state power
retains its hold on our imaginations, in fact state and civil society
are deeply intertwined (Aretxaga 2003; Gramsci 1971). State power
works through the myriad struggles over Jewishness in Israel.
It requires that people believe in their capacity to influence what
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