Jewish Communities in Israel

by

Steven E. Zipperstein, Richard D. Hecht

• LAST REVIEWED: 02 December 2024
• LAST MODIFIED: 20 March 2025
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199840731-0255

Introduction

This bibliography provides critical research citations for Jewish communities in Israel. The Hebrew kehilah and its plural kehilot are translated as “community” and “communities.” The terms edah and edot are almost synonyms, but are better understood as communities within the larger community. (This distinction is much like the German distinction between Gesselschaft, “society,” and Gemeinschaft, “community.”) This bibliography uses Benedict Anderson’s well-known description of the “imagined political community” with some of the characteristics of the nation-state as a frame within which to situate Jewish communities in Israel. Thus, “community” is understood here to be an imaginative social and symbolic structure that allows individuals to extend themselves through shared values and bonds, through structures of time and space, through genealogies, and through alliances to create social solidarity or what Anderson described as simultaneity. Israel is a highly differentiated society in which individuals participate in multiple imagined communities with multiple solidarities. In some societies there is one overarching mechanism to unify these communities and multiple solidarities. For example, in Switzerland, military conscription is central to Swiss national solidarity. Similarly, in Israel, universal conscription in the Israel Defense Forces has been one of the most important ways of achieving national solidarity and “leveling” among both embedded and newer Jewish communities within the country. For some communities, military conscription is the fault line that divides communities. In our organization of the rich and complex tapestry of these multiple communities, Judaism is only one element in the formation of these communities. The sections of the bibliography begin with a series of citations to a representative sample of classical studies of Israeli society, reaching back to the pre-state period. (The period between the mid-1950s to mid-1980s saw an enormous amount of scholarship examining the sociological and religious aspects of Jewish communities in Israel, and that body of literature alone could comprise a full-scale bibliography.) The second section provides a series of demographic studies. The third section focuses on the Ashkenazim, Sephardim, and Mizrachim in Israel. The fourth section provides research on the immigrant communities, including communities from the Americas, from the United Kingdom and Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, from some of the Europe, the Yemenite and Ethiopian communities, from the former Soviet Union and Russia, from Morocco and Iraq. The fifth section contains citations to research on religious communities and ideological communities, in the haredim, the members of the settlement movement, secularists, and members of the non-Orthodox Jewish communities. The sixth section focuses on metaphorical communities that are defined by economic or spatial metaphors. The seventh section provides research on early state-building communities and their trajectory into the state. A final note: this bibliography covers English language sources. A significant body of Hebrew scholarship also analyzes Jewish communities in Israel.

Classical Studies of Israeli Society

S. N. Eisenstadt was the leading sociologist in Israel for many decades, producing a prolific outpouring of scholarship on the development of the state, its institutions, and its various Jewish communities, including the hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Jewish communities throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Eisenstadt 1951–1952 analyzes youth and social structure in the new country. Eisenstadt 1952a addresses immigrant absorption. Eisenstadt 1952b takes a deeper look at the processes of immigrant absorption. Eisenstadt 1952c analyzes the institutionalization of immigrant behavior. Patai 1953 and Eisenstadt 1954 analyze the cultural and institutional opportunities and impediments to absorbing and integrating Oriental Jewish immigrants. Eisenstadt 1985 offers a masterful analysis of nearly four decades of the evolution of Israeli society and its Jewish communities since statehood. Shuval 1963 examines the experience of immigrants arriving in Israel during 1949–1950. Lissak 1969 analyzes group mobility during the first two decades of statehood. Peres 1971 offers interesting insights into the different perspective of Israeli Ashkenazi and Oriental Jews toward each other. Smooha 1978 provides a brilliant analysis utilizing structural pluralism theory and the dynamic paternalism-cooptation model. Horowitz and Lissak 1989 presents a thorough analysis of the decline of Israeli institutional effectiveness during the 1980s.

• Eisenstadt, S. N. “Youth and Social Structure in Israel.” British Journal of Sociology 2 (1951–1952): 105–114.

  DOI: 10.2307/587382

  Analyzes youth culture development in Israel. Divides youth movements into three categories: (1) “pioneering type” with an agricultural-Zionist focus, (2) “working youth,” and (3) “recreational.” Identifies Oriental Jewish families/tradition as obstacles to the development of youth culture within their community. Analyzes how traditional familial divisions of labor impact Israeli youth. Describes urban divisions of labor as not family-based and more oriented toward youth culture. Discusses the “formalized” youth culture of kibbutzim.

• Eisenstadt, S. N. “The Process of Absorption of New Immigrants in Israel.” Human Relations 5 (1952a): 223–245.

  DOI: 10.1177/001872675200500301

  Notes the strong emphasis among immigrants of belongingness to the Jewish nation. Immigrants thus accept the Jewish nature of the country as a given and seek to integrate into existing structures rather than attempt to change such structure. The “pioneers” who immigrated to Palestine from Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were motivated by the desire to build an entirely new social and political structure for Jews, whereas the immigrants from North Africa and the Near East in the early 1950s were focused on attaining social and political security rather than social change.

• Eisenstadt, S. N. “The Process of Absorption of New Immigrants in Israel.” Human Relations 5 (1952b): 223–245.

  DOI: 10.1177/001872675200500301

  Analyzes the “adaptation” of immigrants to Israel in the spheres of family, political life, economy, etc. Evaluates emotional characteristics of immigrants as related to their ability to adapt; for example, “frustration-toleration,” “ambiguity-toleration,” “ego-strength,” etc. Focuses on the “internal cohesion and collectivity-orientation” of individual family relations. Organizes Jewish communities into three groups based on their relationship with the surrounding Gentile communities, with these groups and their type of relation largely bound by geographic origin.

• Eisenstadt, S. N. “Institutionalization of Immigrant Behavior.” Human Relations 5 (1952c): 373–395.

  DOI: 10.1177/001872675200500404

  Notes the nature of the absorption process for new immigrants changed from the earlier model of dynamic absorption for European immigrants to a more bureaucratized model, with less mobility and opportunity for immigrants from North Africa and the Near East. Israeli society confronted two new problems: tensions resulting from new waves of immigration; and the need to legitimize and institutionalize private activity by developing group values and aspirations compatible with the absorbing society.

• Eisenstadt, S. N. The Absorption of Immigrants: A Comparative Study Based Mainly on the Jewish Community in Palestine and the State of Israel. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1954.

  Analyzes various cases of immigration to pre- and post-state Israel. Finds that institutionalizing immigrant behavior is complex and difficult. Successful immigrant absorption depends on the interplay between immigrant desires/expectations and the receiving country’s ability to balance those expectations against the institutional structure and other constraints embedded in the receiving society’s civil and social culture.

• Eisenstadt, S. N. The Transformation of Israeli Society: An Essay in Interpretation. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985.

  Pre-state Israel comprised of the old, “Oriental” Jewish community; (2) European immigrants motivated by the desire for a new society, and (3) refugees from Nazism who did not assign any special significance to Israel. Israel post-statehood worked to meld these groups by rejecting diaspora norms in favor of intergroup marriage, economic activity, youth groups, etc.

• Horowitz, D., and M. Lissak. Trouble in Utopia: The Overburdened Polity of Israel. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989.

  Examines Israeli institutions and how they functioned in the 1980s. Explains the decline in effectiveness of the government and the spread of cultural malaise in Israel during the 1980s. Traces the integrative and disintegrative trends in Israel and shows how a society that had laid the foundations for a cohesive Jewish nation-state became increasingly vulnerable to centrifugal forces. The book not only reflects a broad and comprehensive approach, but also focuses on themes that cut across institutional structures, such as the weakening of social and political cohesion in an overburdened polity.

• Lissak, M. Social Mobility in Israel Society. Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1969.

  Examines the location and changes of Jewish ethnic groups in the socioeconomic and sociopolitical structure of Israel, touching on aspects of group mobility. The time perspective is limited to about 1948–1968, during which the state of Israel was formed, and the region saw a large-scale expansion of cultural heterogeneity in Jewish population of Israel. One critic noted the book contains little discussion and only very sketchy data concerning the socioeconomic mobility of individuals either within or between generations.

• Patai, R. Israel Between East and West: A Study in Human Relations. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1953.

  Analyzes the potential for absorbing and integrating Oriental Jewish culture into the dominant Ashkenazi culture of early post-statehood Israel to create a synthesized “Israeli” culture. In a 1969 postscript, argues for embracing cultural pluralism as the state progress toward becoming a predominantly Westernized and advanced society. By doing so, Israel will have succeeded in transforming “culturally deprived populations into peoples of marked cultural excellence.”

• Peres, Y. “Ethnic Relations in Israel.” American Journal of Sociology 76.6 (1971): 1021–1047.

  DOI: 10.1086/225030

  Notes that relations between European and non-European Jews are asymmetrical in Israel. While there is considerable prejudice against non-European Jews, the attitude of non-European Jews toward Europeans is usually favorable. Ethnic hostilities between Jewish communities are tempered by a sense of interdependence due to the conflict between Israel and its neighbors and by high rates of economic and social mobility in Israel.

• Shuval, J. Immigrants on The Threshold. New York: Atherton Press, 1963.

  Examination of newly-arrived European and non-European Jewish immigrants to Israel during 1949–1950. Describes how country of origin social structures played a role in determining immigrant status in Israel, including differential social and economic conditions; religious-secular balance; and social mobility. Analyzes the impact of the strain of transit to Israel, acculturation to new societal surroundings, and orientation toward the future.

• Smooha, S. Israel: Pluralism and Conflict. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978.

  Brilliant study applying the theory of structural pluralism to Israeli society. Analyzes relations between Ashkenazi and Oriental Jews through the dynamic paternalism/co-optation model of intergroup relations. European Jews conceived of Zionism as a solution to their problems without regard to the Oriental Jewish experience in the Near East and North Africa. Although progress had been made in assimilating the Oriental immigrants, anti-Oriental paternalism contributed to further entrenchment of inequality.