Taub Center Graduate Workshop Seminars 2006-2007Fall 2006October 27 Danny Kaplan, Tel Aviv University
December 1 Rakefet Zalashik, Dorot Postdoctoral Fellow at Skirball Dept. of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, NYU The presentation reviews the attitude of Israeli psychiatrists towards Jewish immigrants from Arab countries who suffered from mental diseases. The arrival of this group of immigrants challenged local psychiatric conceptions about identity, pathology and culture. Rakefet will argue that in contrast to previous research that claimed this group was constantly labeled, stereotyped and marginalized, in the case of Israeli psychiatry, the therapeutic and theoretical discourse was more complex: in some cases the behavior of Jews from Arab countries was pathologized and medicalized, whereas in others, mental disturbances were seen as part of a cultural manifestation. Eyal Chowers, Tel-Aviv University The paper probes into the relationship between language and democracy. First it develops some theoretical insights about this relationship based on Hannah Arendt's work. In the second part, the paper examines C. N. Bialik's theory of language, particularly his celebration of the poetic voice as the medium for forming individuality, and his skepticism toward the power and vitality of words in the public sphere. The paper then explores the meaning of this rift between the individual's voice and communicative-political speech for the Zionist project.
Spring 2007February 23 Hillel Frisch, Bar-Ilan University Even though Israel's external security profile is continually in the news and the subject of numerous studies in international relations, most scholars who have written on Israel's Arab minority have analyzed its political experience almost exclusively within the framework of state-minority or majority-minority ethnic relations. Frisch will argue that policies towards Israel's Arab citizens is moderated in (the rare) times of relative geo-strategic security and hardened when Israel's regional position becomes more precarious. Derek J. Penslar, Director Jewish Studies Program, University of Toronto This talk will highlight classic Zionist historiography's elision of Jewish military prowess and service in modern history. Jewish military service did not sit easily with the acceptable forms of Diaspora Jewish heroism - hopeless rebellion or self-inflicted martyrdom. Zionist historiography presented the Hebrew warrior as sui generis, when in fact there was a rich tradition of Jewish involvement in the military throughout modern times.
April 14 Anita Shapira, Tel-Aviv University Yfaat Weiss, Haifa University Jewish and Palestinian communities in Israel share the same urban space, and the property transferred during the course of the 1948 war from the losers to victors is an enduring reminder of the event. Haifa in this regard is a compacted metaphor for the Israeli situation as a whole. The lecture focuses on one particular neighborhood in Haifa, Wadi Salib, which will make it possible to examine the picture in greater detail and accuracy. The specific instance of Wadi Salib reveals the full force of the drama, as destitute Jewish refugees took possession of the property abandoned by Arabs fleeing into exile as Palestinian refugees. But the connection between property and memory is not restricted to the various aspects of the national dispute. The Wadi Salib neighborhood, populated at the end of the 1940s and in the early 1950s by Jewish refugees and immigrants, became in 1959 the arena of the first violent protests and struggle for social justice in Israel. In so-called inter-communal relations there is also a powerful nexus among memory, property, entitlement, and rights. |
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