Please note that the event starts at 17.15.
Israel exists in tension. It seeks to be both a democracy and a Jewish state. With a growing non-Jewish Arab population, these goals are difficult to maintain simultaneously. Politicians and citizens are faced with choices about Israel’s future identity. This project assesses the relative value Jewish Israelis place on potential elements of Israel’s future, especially democracy, Jewish identity, and peace through a traditional conjoint study on a Jewish Israeli panel based on Shamir and Shamir’s (1995) examination of goals for a future Israeli state. Within the Jewish population of Israel, there are multiple ethnic groups who co-exist unequally.
Ashkenazi Jews – Jews of European extraction – are culturally privileged in Israel and the US, relative to Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews – Jews of Middle East/North African extraction. This pattern is referred to as Ashkenormativity (Shohat 2003). Ethnic groups may have a different sense of linked fate with other communities in the state. Non-Ashkenazi Jews place greater value on the Jewish identity than the secular Zionist project of modern Israel (Lewin-Epstein and Cohen 2018, 2126). Recent research in race and ethnic politics suggests that groups show skin-color-based internal hierarchies, and intra-group complexion differences drive differences in political and racial attitudes (Ostfeld and Yadon 2021; Yadon and Ostfeld 2020). These less-privileged Jewish groups might then be more interested in preserving the Jewish majority and status position. The study finds that the relatively-lower-status Jewish groups in Israel have different perspectives on Jewish nationalism and the resolution for the Israel-Palestine situation than Ashkenazim.
Due to limited spaces for COVID restrictions, participation on site will be allowed on a first-come, first-served basis. The speaker will present in person, the talk will be live-streamed and participants will receive the zoom link once registered.