This sixth volume in the Books on Israel series is an interdisciplinary compilation that encompasses contributions from both the social sciences and the humanities, and reflects the exciting integration of approaches that are on the cutting edge of Israel Studies. The contributors go beyond the review of recent books on Israel to offer original examinations of the state of scholarship about Israel within the various disciplines of anthropology, economics, history, literature, political science, and sociology. Recent trends in contemporary Israeli society, politics, economics, and culture are also explored.

Introduces the cutting edge issues and current scholarship in the interdisciplinary field of Israel Studies.

A fascinating analysis of how the study of ritual is critical to illuminating what is Jewish about Jewishness.

While there are books that describe the history and traditions of the Druze as an ethnic and religious group, this is the first and only academic book of its kind. It gives voice to the Israeli Druze, through in-depth interviews with 120 people, 60 young adults and 60 of their parents’ generation. How is this traditional group, bound together through the centuries by their secret religion and strong value system, dealing with modernization? What contradictions and continuity come to light in the stories of this people during a time of transition? Can their religion, and their very identity, survive the meeting with the modern, technological world? What resources do the young and the not-so-young bring to the task of preserving their community and helping it to flourish as the world changes around them? The people in this text answer these questions through the telling of their stories, in which they express their values, opinions, beliefs and aspirations. The book draws out theoretical, practical, religious and sociological implications from this analysis, in order to shed light on the challenges faced by other traditional societies meeting modernity.

This book examines the impact of changing modes of cultural transmission on Jewish and Western cultures over the past two thousand years. The contributors to the volume survey some of the ways -- conscious and subconscious -- in which cultural elements arc selected, shaped, and transmitted, and some of the ways they in turn shape the future of their cultures. Focusing on a range of Jewish cultures from late antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the modern period, the authors consider both the transformation of traditions in their travels from one contemporaneous cultural context to another and their transformation within a single culture overtime. Some of the studies in the book deal with the transition from mixed oral-written cultures to ones in which written-print is nearly exclusive. Other chapters deal with the processes of transmission such as anthologizing, translating, teaching, and sermonizing. By contextualizing Jewish culture within Western culture and including a comparative perspective, the book makes an important contribution to Judaic studies as well as to other areas of the humanities concerned with questions of textuality and culture.