Non­fic­tion

The Oth­ers With­in Us: Con­struct­ing Jew­ish-Israeli Identity

Dan Bar-On
  • Review
By – January 10, 2012
In The Oth­ers With­in Us, Bar-On, a pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy at Ben Guri­on Uni­ver­si­ty of the Negev, explores the del­i­cate inter­re­la­tion­ship between per­son­al and col­lec­tive iden­ti­ty, specif­i­cal­ly, the Israeli iden­ti­ty” shaped in the ear­ly years of the State of Israel. 

Through inter­views with Israelis of three gen­er­a­tions, Bar-On shows how the most­ly sec­u­lar Euro­pean Jew­ish major­i­ty in Israel see them­selves, in rela­tion to their past and to what he calls the oth­ers” in soci­ety. The term oth­ers” refers, on one hand, to groups who seek to harm the Jew­ish peo­ple, and on the oth­er hand, to the oth­ers with­in us,” either Dias­po­ra Jews or Jew­ish immi­grants to Israel from North African or Arab coun­tries. Bar- On claims that feel­ings and atti­tudes toward oth­ers” influ­ence the devel­op­ment of per­son­al and nation­al identity. 

The Euro­pean major­i­ty sought to cre­ate a uni­form iden­ti­ty, the sabra,” with the expec­ta­tion that Jews in Israel would shed their dif­fer­ences. Today, the idea of a uni­form iden­ti­ty is dis­in­te­grat­ing. This is a com­pli­cat­ed yet sig­nif­i­cant phe­nom­e­non, one that Bar-On hopes will encour­age bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion between dif­fer­ent groups in Israeli society. 

The Oth­ers With­in Us gives the read­er mean­ing­ful insights into Israeli soci­ety. It is, how­ev­er, col­ored by the author’s polit­i­cal beliefs, and the read­er needs to be aware of this. Bib­li­og­ra­phy, index.

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