A Home for All Jews: Citizenship, Rights, and National Identity in the New Israeli State

by Orit Rozin

Overview

Orit Rozin’s inspired scholarship focuses on the construction and negotiation of citizenship in Israel during the state’s first decade. Positioning itself both within and against much of the critical sociological literature on the period, this work reveals the dire historical circumstances, the ideological and bureaucratic pressures, that limited the freedoms of Israeli citizens. At the same time it shows the capacity of the bureaucracy for flexibility and of the populace for protest against measures it found unjust and humiliating. Rozin sets her work within a solid analytical framework, drawing on a variety of historical sources portraying the voices, thoughts, and feelings of Israelis, as well as theoretical literature on the nature of modern citizenship and the relation between citizenship and nationality. She takes on both negative and positive freedoms (freedom from and freedom to) in her analysis of three discrete yet overlapping issues: the right to childhood (and freedom from coerced marriage at a tender age); the right to travel abroad (freedom of movement being a pillar of a liberal society); and the right to speak out—not only to protest without fear of reprisal, but to speak in the expectation of being heeded and recognized. This book will appeal to scholars and students of Israeli history, law, politics, and culture, and to scholars of nation building more generally.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611689518
Publisher:	Brandeis University Press
Publication date:	07/05/2016
Series:	The Schusterman Series in Israel Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	231
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

ORIT ROZIN is a lecturer in the department of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments • Introduction: Creating Citizenship in the New State • The Right to Childhood and the Age of Marriage Law • The Right to Travel Abroad • Craving Recognition • Conclusion • Notes • Bibliography • Index

What People are Saying About This

Samuel Moyn

“In her subtle depiction of the redefinition of citizenship through rights campaigns in early Israeli history, Orit Rozin achieves something few have done. Rights have to be transformed from abstractions on paper into realities of practice though struggles over inclusion, and her well-researched case studies vividly demonstrate how the search for inclusion can be contested and differential but nonetheless meaningful and real. The story of the dynamic relation of rights and nationhood told in A Home for All Jewsis exemplary for students of the modern experience across the world.”

Susannah Heschel

“In this startlingly original and fascinating cultural history, Orit Rozin tackles the complex question of how Jews supporting Zionism were transformed into citizens of the newly established democratic Jewish state. How to be part of the Jewish nation and yet retain individual identity, how to be a citizen of the state and yet independent of its encompassing grasp, how citizenship applied to Arabs as well as Jews: these were the complex questions negotiated during the first years of the State of Israel, and Rozin brings brilliant insight and clarity to her analysis.”

Derek Penslar

“A Home For All Jews makes an important and original contribution to our understanding of the construction of citizenship during Israel’s first decade. Firmly anchored in archival sources, and enriched by theoretical literature on citizenship, rights, and freedoms, A Home For All Jews delineates the pressures that limited the freedoms of Israel’s Jewish citizens while noting the populace’s willingness to protest and to demand the right to be heard. An engaging, well-crafted, and illuminating book.”

Editorial Reviews

Israel brought a multitude of people together, many of whom viewed one another as foreign and alien—who lived side by side and encountered one another in ways that changed everyone and shaped the nation’s society and culture. Rozin brings this world to life. She enables us to see how new forms of thought and action could evolve out of rupture and how they could imprint a set of norms that would form the basis for the range of power citizens hold in the Jewish state. Even as Rozin’s study is focused on Israel’s past, it helps explain what the country has become in the present.”—The New Rambler


“Part of the prestigious Schusterman Series in Israeli Studies, this slim volume packs in a surprising amount of facts and perceptions about life and citizenship in Israel. While a scholarly text in scope and content, A Home for All Jews is written in a way that makes it appealing to academics and non-academics alike..”
—Jewish Book Network


“Whether Rozin is describing conflicts over what she calls “positive rights” or “negative rights” (such as “freedom from state interference”), exacting research is evident on every page; this is a scholar who knows how to craft penetrating cultural narratives out of dry legislative language and statistics. . . . A Home for All Jews is a model of concise exposition and balanced argument.”

—H-Judaic


“One of the crucial points the new Jewish identity involved was the bond with the Jewish communities of the world.”
—Eunomia

From the Publisher