Revised to provide the most up-to-date assessment of Israeli society, this text uses history and current events to explain the nation's present demographic and socioeconomic position.

This volume illuminates changes in Israeli society over the past generation. Goldscheider identifies three key social changes that have led to the transformation of Israeli society in the twenty-first century: the massive immigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union, the economic shift to a high-tech economy, and the growth of socioeconomic inequalities inside Israel. To deepen his analysis of these developments, Goldscheider focuses on ethnicity, religion, and gender, including the growth of ethnic pluralism in Israel, the strengthening of the Ultra-Orthodox community, the changing nature of religious Zionism and secularism, shifts in family patterns, and new issues and challenges between Palestinians and Arab Israelis given the stalemate in the peace process and the expansions of Jewish settlements. Combining demography and social structural analysis, the author draws on the most recent data available from the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics and other sources to offer scholars and students an innovative guide to thinking about the Israel of the future. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of contemporary Israel, the Middle East, sociology, demography and economic development, as well as policy specialists in these fields. It will serve as a textbook for courses in Israeli history and in the modern Middle East.

A non-political examination of the integration of Israel's economy, its ideas and innovations in the global marketplace.

This book provides the most up-to-date assessment of Israel's society today, portraying the country's ethnic diversity, its economy, and demographic changes. Revealing linkages between demographic transformation and socioeconomic change, Goldscheider shows how ethnic group formation emerged in Israel to create the present mix of Jewish and Arab populations. He also reviews the policies of Palestinian and Israeli governments concerning immigration, describing the ways in which socioeconomic development within Israel, urbanization, and industrialization have evolved through the use of outside capital and increasing dependency. The book reveals two unique sets of processes about Israel today. The first concerns important changes in marriage, family and intermarriage, educational attainment and occupational achievement, ethnic politics, religion, and the changing role of women. A second but related concern pertains to the social and economic contexts of community life. Here Goldscheider investigates rapid change among Israel's major urban centers, towns, and agricultural centers, including the Kibbutz as well as Arab communities. In concluding chapters, the author discusses the role of government in shaping population policy, including health, fertility, and contraceptive and abortion issues. He also describes the influence of Jewish communities outside of Israel and the impact of the Middle East conflict with Arab states on Israel's domestic policy as well as the conflict with populations in territories administered by Israel since 1967. Likely to be a standard reference for years to come, the book is essential reading for political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, and historians concerned with Israel's politics and society.

Providing an inclusive, yet multi- layered perspective on leisure cultures in dynamic hegemonic, subcultural, and countercultural communities, this volume investigates the disciplinary and interdisciplinary aspects of leisure studies in the age of mass migration, nationalism, cultural wars, and conflicted societies in Israel. Israeli society has struggled with complicated geopolitical, intercultural, economic, and security conditions since the establishment of the State of Israel. Consequently, the emergent leisure cultures in Israel are vibrant, diversified, exuberant, and multifaceted, oscillating between Western and Middle Eastern tendencies. The chapters in this edited volume reflect dramatic influences of globalization on Israeli traditions, on one hand, and emergent local practices that reflect a communal quest of originality and authenticity, on the other hand. This book opens up a critical perspective on the tension between contested leisure cultures that are interconnected with spatial and temporal changes and interchanges. Examining leisure as a part of social, interethnic, physical, gendered, and sexual changes, the volume is a key text for scholars and students interested in leisure culture, Israeli society, education, cultural and media studies, and the Middle East.

"Few countries receive as much attention as Israel and are at the same time as misunderstood. The Oxford Handbook of Israeli Politics and Society brings together leading Israeli and international figures to offer the most wide-ranging treatment available of an intriguing country. It serves as a comprehensive reference for the growing field of Israel studies and is also a significant resource for students and scholars of comparative politics, recognizing that in many ways Israel is not unique, but rather a test case of democracy in deeply divided societies and states engaged in intense conflict. The handbook presents an overview of the historical development of Israeli democracy through chapters examining the country's history, contemporary society, political institutions, international relations, and most pressing political issues. It outlines the most relevant developments over time while not shying away from the strife both in and around Israel. It presents opposed narratives in full force, enabling readers to make their own judgments"--

Moshe Shokeid narrates his experiences as a member of AD KAN (NO MORE), a protest movement of Israeli academics at Tel Aviv University, who fought against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, founded during the first Palestinian Intifada (1987-1993). However, since the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin and the later obliteration of the Oslo accord, public manifestations of dissent on Israeli campuses have been remarkably mute. This chronicle of AD KAN is explored in view of the ongoing theoretical discourse on the role of the intellectual in society and is compared with other account of academic involvement in different countries during periods of acute political conflict.