Reconsidering Israel-Diaspora Relations

In this era of globalization, Jewish diversity is marked more than ever by transnational expansion of competing movements and local influences on specific conditions. One factor that still makes Jewish communities one is the common reference to Israel. Today, however, differentiations and discrepancies in identification and behavior generate plurality and ambiguities about Israel-Diaspora relationships. Moreover the Judeophobia now rife in Europe and beyond as well as the spread of the Palestinian cause as a civil religion make Israel the world’s "Jew among nations.” This weighs heavily on community relations - despite Israel’s active presence in the diaspora. In this context, the contributions to this volume focus on Jewish peoplehood, religiosity and ethnicity, gender and generation, Israelophobia and world Jewry, and debate the perspectives that are most pertinent to confront the question: how far is the Jewish Commonwealth (Klal Yisrael) still an important code of Jewry today?

Eliezer Ben-Rafael is a Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Tel-Aviv University. His areas of research are cleavages in Israel, identities and linguistic landscape. A Landau Prize winner, he was President of the International Institute of Sociology. He is on the board of several journals and co-founder of the Klal Yisrael Project.
Judit Bokser Liwerant is Full Professor of Political Science at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and Distinguished Visiting Professor at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is a Member of the Mexican Academy of Science, and National Research Fellow. She is also Director and Editor of the Mexican Journal of Political and Social Science.
Yosef Gorny is Professor Emeritus of Jewish history at Tel-Aviv University. His main fields of interest and research are the history of the Jewish modern national and ethnic movement; Zionism in the diaspora and in Eretz Israel (Palestine); the Labor Movement; the Jewish-Arab conflict; the Bund in Eastern Europe; American Jewry and the State of Israel. His recent research deals with the Jewish press during World War II in Palestine, the USA, England, and Soviet Russia. Yosef Gorny is also a co-founder of the Klal Yisrael Project.