Israel, diaspora, and the routes of national belonging
- ISBN: 9780802085108
- Editorial: University of Toronto Press
- Fecha de la edición: 2004
- Lugar de la edición: Toronto. Estados Unidos de Norteamérica
- Colección: Cultural spaces
- Encuadernación: Rústica
- Medidas: 23 cm
- Nº Pág.: 317
- Idiomas: Inglés
Many diasporic Jews are committed to Israel, but is diasporic nationalism necessarily tied to territory? Over the course of four years, Jasmin Habib was a participant observer on tours of Israel organized for diaspora Jews as well as at community events focusing on Israel and Israel-diaspora relations. During this time, Habib conducted extensive interviews with tourists and community members. The result is a startlingly honest, theoretically rich, and detailed documentation of tour narratives and tourist interactions at a range of Israeli archaeological, historical, and military sites. In this first ethnographic account of North American diaspora Jews imagining and experiencing Israel, Habib blends anthropological, historical, and cultural studies theories together in an analysis of diaspora nationalism. Reflecting on her personal history as a peace activist of mixed Jewish and Palestinian parentage, Habib also looks at community events in North America that celebrate the attachment and sense of obligation to Israel and Israeli Jews, and shares community members' ruminations on the conflict between Israel and Palestine. What emerges from this exploration of the organized 'tour of Israel' is Habib's provocative contention that much of the existing literature about North American Jews and their relationship to Israel perpetuates an official silence surrounding the destructive aspects of nationalist sentiments. As a result of this silence, Habib argues, Jewish studies has been unable to assert disciplinary autonomy from Zionist theory, nor have modernism and nation-building been interrogated as analytical categories in these new geopolitical contexts.