Deborah Golden

Belonging Through Time Nurturing National Identity Among Newcomers to Israel from the Former Soviet Union

This article addresses the links between national identity, temporal order, and the re-socialization of migrants. Anchored in an ethnographic account of encounters between Israeli Jews and migrants from the former Soviet Union, it looks at ways in which temporal re-ordering was rendered crucial to the moral transformation required of the newcomers. A close look at these encounters reveals that at the heart of this re-socialization project lay the endeavour to link the lives of the newcomers with the life of the Israeli nation-state by persuading them to bracket off their present circumstances in favour of a shared, imagined, past and future.

Storytelling the Future: Israelis, Immigrants and the Imagining of Community

This article addresses the links between national identity, temporal order, and the re-socialization of migrants. Anchored in an ethnographic account of encounters between Israeli Jews and recent migrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union, it looks at ways in which temporal re-ordering was rendered crucial to the moral transformation required of the newcomers. These encounters reveal not only the ways in which Israeli oldtimers endeavored to persuade the newcomers to bracket off their present circumstances in favour of a shared, imagined future, but also how the newcomers sought to contest the use of the future for making meaning of the present. Finally, the paper examines how a more general argument about the modern states control over time, and the challenges currently being posed to such control, is worked out in the Israeli case [Israel, Soviet migrants, Israel, nationalism, time, future].

Nourishing the Nation: The Uses of Food in an Israeli Kindergarten

Increasing numbers of people spend much of their waking lives within institutions of one sort or another. Nevertheless, whereas food and food-related occasions within domestic contexts have been studied extensively as prime sites for the transmission of social and cultural knowledge, little scholarly attention has attended to the uses and meanings of food in institutional contexts. Of such contexts, early education settings are particularly interesting, because it is during early childhood that strong links are forged between food, eating occasions, and a sense of social identity. This article, based on an ethnographic account of an Israeli kindergarten, addresses the question as to what cultural, social, and political knowledge was imparted through the preparation, consumption of, and conversation about food at an Israeli kindergarten. Various food-related events are described in terms of their contents, structure, mode of sociability, and the didactic use to which such occasions were put. The article argues that this food-complex served to mark and underpin the centrality of the Israeli state as a prime arena of allegiance and social identity and, further, that this process was related to, and reinforced by, class dynamics, as these were articulated in this particular kindergarten.

Childhood as protected space? Vulnerable bodies in an Israeli Kindergarten

This paper addresses some of the complexities surrounding the endeavour to create a protected space for children. Based on an ethnographic account of a kindergarten in a small town in the north of Israel during 2001, it explores notions of vulnerability and danger, protection and exposure, as these found expression in daily life at the kindergarten. The paper describes, and links, two sets of ethnographic data: first, the routine ways in which the teacher constructed the childrens bodies as ever vulnerable to harm of all sorts, unless well taken care of; and second, the way in which a suicide bomb attack was presented, and mediated, by the teacher to the children. The paper argues that a close look at these two different stances on death and danger reveals a ‘discourse of vulnerability’ at the kindergarten.

On the Alert in an Unpredictable Environment

A fundamental tenet of much sociological, psychological and educational literature assumes that the creation of a predictable environment is crucial for nurturing a sense of well-being, as well as for generating a sense of trust in the wider social order. Still, the ways in which the environment is structured, and the very importance attached to the notion of predictability, will vary in different cultural contexts. Findings from an ethnography of daily life at an Israeli kindergarten over the 2001 school year show how the teacher, albeit unwittingly, shaped an environment that was inherently unpredictable. This unpredictability, in turn, served to mobilize personal resources and social practices among the children as a means not only of coping with the unpredictability, but of turning it to their advantage. Studies of Israeli Jewish youth reveal that the resources that are appropriate for successfully managing in an unpredictable environment are indeed salient and positively valued also at later stages in life. It is argued that socialization into an unpredictable environment at an early age reflects an enduring and characteristic facet of Israeli culture with regards to child-rearing.

Teaching Traumatic History to Young Children: The Case of Holocaust Studies in Israeli Kindergartens

Recently, the Israeli Ministry of Education initiated a mandatory nationwide curriculum for Jewish kindergarten children focusing on the study of the Holocaust. This initiative raises general questions regarding the inclusion of sensitive historical issues in curricula for young children. In this article, we use the new Holocaust curriculum as an instructive case through which to address the broader questions about what might constitute an appropriate and acceptable curriculum in early childhood. We discuss the initiative from three disciplinary perspectives: a developmental sciences perspective, an anthropological/cultural perspective, and a learning sciences perspective. As we demonstrate, these three perspectives not only represent different disciplines but also highlight different aspects of this issue, thus exposing the complexities of this discussion. We show that understanding these perspectives separately and then trying to combine them may enable a richer and more complex look on the broader questions that this specific curriculum raises. We conclude with an endeavor to integrate the three perspectives, all of which should be taken into account when constructing a curriculum for young children.

Mothering and the work of educational care – an integrative approach

This article, through looking at mothers’ modes of engagement with their children’s education, proposes an integrative analytical approach to the study of the making of mothers, mothering, and motherhood. The article presents and brings into dialogue four different bodies of anthropological and sociological literature: mothering as a form of care work, anthropological work on child-rearing in different cultural settings, sociological studies of the class negotiation of home–school boundaries, and the theoretical and empirical literature on consumption in post-industrial society. Bringing together ideas of care, culture, class, and consumption into one analytical framework is crucial for attending to, in holistic fashion, the complex ways in which mothering, in different social–cultural contexts, is perceived and practiced.

Immigration and Justice: The Allocation of Goods to Newcomers from the (Former) Soviet Union in Israel1

This paper looks at ways in which notions of membership and of just allocation were articulated in the everyday practices of a voluntary organization set up in the early 1990s to distribute clothing and household goods to newcomers from the (former) Soviet Union in Israel. Based on an ethnographic account of the distribution centre, this paper describes its underpinning ideology and demonstrates the implications of this ideology for the rules governing the allocation of goods. The paper analyzes three inter‐related axes around which notions of rules of just allocation were equivocally interpreted and implemented. The first of these axes related to the discourse of justice deemed most appropriate to the newcomers; the second to the status of the newcomers; and the third to the creation of social categories—primarily defined in ethnic terms—and the hierarchical relationships between them.

3.6 Working Backwards: A Methodological Autobiography

This essay gives an account of two ethnographic research projects in which the author has been engaged over the years, with a focus on issues of interpretation. Through tangible descriptions of the unfolding of these research projects – each study in itself and the interconnections between them – the processes by which certain issues and modes of understanding emerge as worthy of attention are addressed. Particular attention is drawn to the quality of wandering that characterizes ethnographic research – wandering that is sometimes purposeful, at other times aimless; sometimes smooth, at other times jerky. Ethnographic research – like life itself – unfolds, quite often without preplanning; even if preplanned, there are always unintended consequences. Making sense of this unfolding most often takes place after the fact. In this regard, what can be called the “methodological autobiography” that lies at the heart of this essay, like the act of research, shares this same characteristic of working backwards and hence, in itself, serves to demonstrate the act and art of interpretation.

On the (Im)Possibility of taking Care

February 14th 2001 was another routine day at preschool, or so I thought. It had been a long session reading and discussing “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein (“Once there was a tree and she loved a little boy. And every day the boy would come and he would gather her leaves … ”). By 10:30 the children were clearly getting tired of talking about generosity and began to fidget. A group of girls seized a pause in the discussion to rush over and hug the teacher, successfully bringing the proceedings to a final halt. The teacher was called to the telephone; her assistant brought in the children’s bags. The children, by that time very hungry, pounced on their bags, dug in deep for their food and drink. Silence, apart from the sound of energetic munching.