Israel Studies Review

The article aims to describe how Jewish women belonging to the majority group in Israel married to Muslim men belonging to the Arab-Palestinian minority group in Israel cope with modesty codes in their daily lives. Modesty is a prevalent value in most Muslim families but may pose particular challenges to women in mixed families. A qualitative study using semi-structured interviews was conducted with thirteen Jewish Israeli women who are/were married to Muslim Israeli men. The findings show that some of the women fully obeyed and assimilated the modesty norms that reflect conservative expectations, while others often violated them, initiating a direct conflict with their spouses. However, most women engaged in continuous negotiations with their spouses. The study offers an innovative perspective on gender relations and everyday dynamics in mixed families, particularly in divided societies. These coping strategies and ongoing interactions are not simple or monolithic but rather complex and flexible.

The sudden and meteoric rise of Otzma Yehudit has attracted significant media attention but has thus far escaped the interest of scholars. The Kahanist faction Otzma Yehudit represents constitutes an anti-democratic movement that had previously been repressed by elites in both right and left-wing parties. How did the Kahanists successfully adapt to elite pressure and build legitimacy both with the public and in government? I argue that the Kahanist movement embedded itself in larger networks to preserve avenues of state penetration. Adapting to the concentration of the party system, Kahanists pursued several strategies: external, rejecting traditional electoral competition; internal, seeking to commandeer elite-led parties; and oppositional, seeking to run as independent parties. Although each of these approaches initially proved unsuccessful, the fractionalization and personalization of Israel's political system paved the way for eventual legitimization.

Palestinian embroidery is the subject of ongoing interest, much of it on the part of Palestinian collectors, artists, and researchers. The present article focuses upon the works of Rachel Kainy, a young Israeli artist, who paints to perfection worn-out remnants of embroidered Palestinian thaubs (traditional embroidered ankle-length dresses). Retaining the traces of wear and tear on the embroidered pieces, while transposing them to the medium of painting, potentially activates the historical association of the Nakba. Living in the former Palestinian village of ‘Ayn Karim, Kainy's nuanced, thought-provoking works and accompanying story provide grounds for reflecting upon unexpected reactions of Israelis to the Nakba, as well as a plethora of issues regarding folk creativity, femininity, and occupation.

This article explores canon, canonization, and consensus in art literature through the Israeli art field. It challenges current approaches that conceptualize canon as broad agreement. It introduces the concept of “imagined consensus” and examines art canons’ relationship with fiction literature. While consensus is grounded in widespread public opinion, this article argues that “imagined consensus” is grounded in personal opinion resonating with the public over time. Consensus can arise after canon formation, which may not always reflect it. Using Israeli–Jewish art in Israel as an example, this article analyzes its rapid canonization since the 1980s. This article also argues that fictionalization in texts transforms “imagined consensus” into conventional consensus.

This article explores how teaching became a springboard for immigrant social mobility in Israel during the 1950s. At that time, one-fifth of elementary Hebrew education teachers were themselves immigrants, serving a student population where over two-fifths were from the mass migration. To address the teacher shortage, the Ministry of Education relaxed standards, employing a greater proportion of uncertified teachers. This study reveals how immigrant teachers rapidly ascended to the professional middle class via three distinct pathways. First, immigrants with no prior teaching experience in their home countries chose teaching as a new profession in Israel. Second, immigrants with previous teaching experience regained their professional status in the Israeli education system. Finally, some immigrant teachers quickly moved into managerial positions, often shortly after their arrival.

I do not know if there has ever been a war in Israel that has generated as much literary writing from its inception as the war that began on October 7th. While there are examples of writing during wartime, literature more typically engages with wars after they end, sometimes years or even decades later, or through the echoes of one war in another. The trauma of war permeates culture, literature, and art, creating cyclical returns to the Holocaust, 1948, the Yom Kippur War, and the Lebanon War. For example, Haim Sabato's Adjusting Sights, which deals with the Yom Kippur War, was published in 2003; in other words, thirty years later. Ron Leshem's If There Is a Paradise, which is about the Lebanon War, appeared in 2005, and Yoram Kaniuk's 1948 was published in 2010, over sixty years after that war. These works, among many others, demonstrate how traumatic events resonate across decades, and provide panoramas of broad historical contexts. Wars continue to be depicted long after they occur, with different perspectives, providing numerous ways to come to grips with them.

Karlinsky, Nahum, ed., The Modern Israeli and Palestinian Diasporas: A Comparative Approach (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2024). 344pp., $55.00 (hardback).

Gutkowski, Natalia, Struggling for Time: Environmental Governance and Agrarian Resistance in Israel/Palestine (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2024), 336pp., US$120.

Podeh, Elie, Villa in the Jungle (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2025), 466pp., 128NIS.