Walter P. Zenner

Middleman Minorities in the Syrian Mosaic: Trade, Conflict, and Image Management

In this article, an aspect of the “middleman minority” situation will be explored: How do individuals of different minorities interact when they are competing within a single social field. The case that will be used here is that of the competition of Christians and Jews in Late Ottoman Syria for certain positions attached to the government and for key roles in international trade. Image management in the present instance includes stigmatization of ones rivals. The implications of this case for other studies of minorities is considered.

Jewish/gentile intermarriage: An interpretation

In the interpretation of the significance of intermarriage which follows, I plan to set intermarriage as it exists today into a historical and culture framework. This essay is speculative and programmatic in nature, it does not document each jot ant title. However, it does suggest some avenues for further research.To add some dimensions to the overly statistical interpretation of intermarriage, I will contrast modern intermarriage with Jewish/Gentile mingling in pre-modern times. Intermarriage will also be viewed as part of general Jewish/Gentile interaction in an individualistic society. Despite the general patterns which suggest that Jewish/Gentile intermarriage is part of a general amalgamation of the “Euro-American” (or white) population in the United States, I will suggest some signs that differences in mating strategies and other aspects of ethnicity remain.

Alex Weingrod. Israel: Group Relations in a New Society. Pp. vi, 82. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, for the Institute of Race Relations, London, 1965.

one social problem-the integration of immigrants into Israeli society, with some attention to the related problems of social mobility and Jewish-Arab relations. The major sections of this book refer to the dominance of Israeli society by &dquo;veteran&dquo; (pre-1948) residents of European descent and of the reactions of post-1948 immigrants, both European and Middle Eastern, to this situation. Weingrod demonstrates the European dominance in the educational, economic, and political spheres. While there are opportunities for mobility, the present patterns seem likely to persist for the foreseeable future. Weingrod sees a stabilized pluralistic society with a dominantly European-American orientation as the outcome, rather than complete assimilation or Levantinization. I find myself in essential agreement with Weingrod’s conclusion, even though we differ somewhat with regard to emphasis. A problem for students of the Israeli scene is the search for a suitable analogy. There is a tendency to think of Israel as a &dquo;melting pot&dquo; or as to compare the problem of the relations between Middle Eastern and European Jews in terms of a White-Negro race relations model. In fact, the latter situation is similar to the jockeying for position found among &dquo;old&dquo; and &dquo;new&dquo; immigrants in the United States forty-odd years ago. The status of the Arabs is analogous to that of &dquo;national minorities&dquo; in Eastern Europe. Weingrod provides us here with the outlines of such