Contested and Ambivalent Belonging in Modern Israel: Questions of Ethnicity and Citizenship

Catalog description

This course explores how belonging in Israel is shaped by deep ambivalence and contestation—within the state and in its relationship to the Jewish diaspora. We examine how ethnicity, religion, race, and migration histories intersect to produce inclusion, exclusion, and layered forms of citizenship. Drawing on ethnographic, historical, and sociological texts, students will analyze the lived experiences of diverse communities, including Mizrahim, Palestinians, Ethiopian and Russian Jews, and diasporic visitors or returnees. The course also probes Israel's evolving stance toward global Jewry—embracing, instrumentalizing, or distancing itself from diasporic Jewish identities—while many Israeli citizens carry their own diasporic pasts. Through critical engagement with these dynamics, the course offers tools to think beyond binary framings of belonging and to understand how nationhood, memory, and identity are continuously negotiated in the Israeli context.