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Abstract
Among the many paradoxes of Israeli politics, there are the strategies of political inclusion used by organizations and parties representing groups that reject the universalism which Israeli democracy is heir to. This paper develops a model of ‘political inclusion Israeli-style’, illustrated by one party, Shas, which since 1984 proclaims itself the voice of the socially and culturally excluded Sephardi population of north African and Middle Eastern Jews, who represent over 40% of the Jewish population. Shas is also a movement of religious and ethnic revival which, by adopting a social strategy of self-exclusion grounded in strict religious observance, and of independence vis-à-vis established Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox politics, has gained 11 out of 120 Knesset seats, inclusion in government, and control over a share of educational and welfare expenditure. The paper raises the issue whether such less-than-perfectly universalistic practices are not a variety of corporatism and possibly, for the parties concerned, a more effective strategy of incorporation than the classic social democratic path.
Notes
1. This word means, strictly, Spanish, in reference to the Jews who were expelled from Spain and spread across the northern Mediterranean where they lived for centuries as far as Istanbul and Salonika. In Israel the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa are often called ‘Mizrachim’ (Easterners) but the followers of the ethnic-religious renewal embodied by Shas prefer to be called Sephardim, thus distancing themselves from the connotations of an inferior social status which ‘Mizrachim’ still carries.
2. This paper is based on extensive fieldwork carried out between 1999 and 2006 during which we visited yeshivas and synagogues, interviewed Shas activists, took part in women's discussion groups and courses for returnees to religious observance (ba'alei t'shuva), spoke to neighborhood Rabbis – in short we undertook a classic multi-levelled exercise in participant observation following up from one contact to another in a lengthy networking exercise which took us near to the summit of the Shas hierarchy and down to the poorer districts of Jerusalem and Petach Tikva.
3. Literally, those who live in fear of God. Haredim, here, are almost all Ashkenazi Jews, heirs to the Russian-Polish tradition; later that changes, as we shall see.
4. Shalom was against Sharon's disengagement from Gaza and Tzipi Livni was apparently against the 2006 Lebanon War and later, in April 2007, called on Prime Minister Olmert to resign, but without doing so herself. In September 2007 she remained in place and indeed seemed back on good terms with her Prime Minister!
5. It is not possible to gain access to documentary evidence of such claims.
6. In contrast, secular intellectuals pointedly use the term Mizrachim.
7. So called because they follow the study methods of the yeshivas in what was once the large state of Lithuania, and in the tradition of the Vilna Gaon, the sage who so fiercely opposed the Chassidim in the late eighteenth century (Hundert 2004, p. 175).
8. After Deri was forced out of politics, Yosef shifted from a role of spiritual leader and inspiration to more direct day-to-day involvement in Shas decision-making. Although his terms as Sephardi Chief Rabbi had finished in 1983, he continues to wield much influence over rabbinical appointments.
9. The existence of parallel Ashkenazi and Sephardi Chief Rabbinates can be understood as based on different traditions of worship and religious observance, in which ethnic identity acted as an appendage.
10. As a Rabbinic sage, of course – not as a political leader …
11. In this it is selectively flexible – notably in the case of hundreds of thousands of Russian immigrants whose status as Jews, if it were subjected to the rigorous scrutiny applied, for example, to people converted outside Israel by non-Orthodox rabbis, would cause serious difficulties.
12. National Religious schools were at first established in recognition of the existence of a religious wing to Zionism at the founding of the state and before. Their curriculum is more religious than that of state secular schools, and it is a reality that their pupils tend to achieve less and to come from poorer backgrounds. They are run by the Ministry of Education, unlike the schools of the ultra-Orthodox and Shas, which are funded by the Ministry but managed independently.
13. As is the case for Kymlicka's (Citation1995) own book. The architecture of multicultural rights is perfectly harmonious in the early chapters of his book, but when he then goes into specific issues he repeatedly falls back on the need to take local context into account. This is fine, but undermines – unsurprisingly – the universalistic aspirations of the model.