A new interpretation of the roots of Israeli culture

In Tangled Roots: The Emergence of Israeli Culture, Israel Bartal traces the history of modern Hebrew culture prior to the emergence of political Zionism. Bartal examines how traditional and modernist ideals and Western and non-European Jewish cultures merged in an unprecedented encounter between an ancient land (Israel) and a multigenerational people (the Jews). Premodern Jewish traditionalists, Palestinian locals, foreign imperial forces, and Jewish intellectuals, writers, journalists, and party functionaries each affected the Israeli culture that emerged. As this new Hebrew culture was taking shape, the memory of the recent European past played a highly influential role in shaping the image of the New Hebrew, that mythological hero who was meant to supplant the East European exilic Jew.

Features

• A critical revision of most contemporary politicized histories of Jewish nationalism
• An examination of the history of modern Hebrew culture prior to political Zionism

"In tax administration," writes the author, "all countries can learn from each other." This revealing case study of the development of Israel's tax system--a system which has dealt with the full panoply of problems that tax administrators must face and which is further characterized by heavy taxation--offers a wealth of noteworthy examples for other countries.

Harold C. Wilkenfeld presents a detailed account of the historical and economic realities that forged Israel's elaborate tax structure from the Ottoman period to the present day. He scrutinizes such areas as the crises that Israel's tax administration faced shortly after the State achieved its independence, the problems which had to be solved, the formulation of administrative policy, the interplay of a developing civil service and a developing citizenry. All of these areas are viewed in the context of an evolving economy and a continuing external conflict.

The author presents practical guidelines for countries interested in advancing the effectiveness of tax administration. For instance, many of the Israeli administration's tactics against tax evasion may be transplantable to other nations. Likewise, a number of the technical solutions to administrative problems of both direct and indirect taxes can certainly and readily be adapted to conditions in a number of developing countries.

Taxes and People in Israel comes as a welcome addition to a field which offers few critical, historical studies of the entire tax system of a country. It will be of considerable interest to tax administrators and ought to be read by every new head of a tax administration. It should also prove a valuable source to public administrators, lawyers, sociologists, economists, and anyone concerned with giving fiscal advice to the developing countries.

The African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem are often dismissed as a fringe cult for their beliefs that African Americans are descendants of the ancient Israelites and that veganism leads to immortality. But John L. Jackson questions what “fringe” means in a world where cultural practices of every stripe circulate freely on the Internet. In this poignant and sophisticated examination of the limits of ethnography, the reader is invited into the visionary, sometimes vexing world of the AHIJ. Jackson challenges what Clifford Geertz called the “thick description” of anthropological research through a multidisciplinary investigation of how the AHIJ use media and technology to define their public image in the twenty-first century.

Moving far beyond the “modest witness” of nineteenth-century scientific discourse or the “thick descriptions” of twentieth-century anthropology, Jackson insists that Geertzian thickness is an impossibility, especially in a world where the anthropologist’s subject is a self-aware subject—one who crafts his own autoethnography while critically consuming the ethnographer’s offerings. Thin Description takes as its topic a group situated along the fault lines of several diasporas—African, American, Jewish—and provides an anthropological account of how race, religion, and ethnographic representation must be understood anew in the twenty-first century lest we reenact old mistakes in the study of black humanity.

Palestinian prisoners charged with security-related offences are immediately taken as a threat to Israel's security. They are seen as potential, if not actual, suicide bombers. This stereotype ignores the political nature of the Palestinian prisoners' actions and their desire for liberty.

By highlighting the various images of Palestinian prisoners in the Israel-Palestine conflict, Abeer Baker and Anat Matar chart their changing fortunes. Essays written by prisoners, ex-prisoners, Human rights defenders, lawyers and academic researchers analyse the political nature of imprisonment and Israeli attitudes towards Palestinian prisoners. These contributions deal with the prisoners' status within Palestinian society, the conditions of their imprisonment and various legal procedures used by the Israeli military courts in order to criminalise and de-politicise them. Also addressed are Israel's breaches of international treaties in its treatment of the Palestinian prisoners, practices of torture and solitary confinement, exchange deals and prospects for release.

This is a unique intervention within Middle East studies that will inspire those working in human rights, international law and the peace process.

The Two Houses of Israel: State Formation and the Origins of Pan-Israelite Identity bridges the gap between the biblical narrative of the great united monarchy ruled by David and Solomon and archaeological and historical reconstructions of a gradual, independent formation of Israel and Judah. Based on a thorough examination of the material remains and settlement patterns in the southern Levant during the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age and on a review of the relevant historical sources, this book provides a detailed reconstruction of the ways in which Israel and Judah were formed as territorial polities and specifically how the house of David rose to power in Jerusalem and Judah. Omer Sergi further situates the stories of Saul and David in their accurate social and historical context in order to illuminate the historical conception of the united monarchy and the pan-Israelite ideology out of which it grew. Sergi provides a new history of the early Israelite monarchies, their formation, and the ways in which these social and political developments were commemorated in the cultural memory of generations to come.