Cultural Pluralism and the Israeli Nation-Building Ideology

Abstract

This article focuses attention on the attitude of the establishment toward the Jewish Middle Eastern culture during Israel's early years of independence. I use the term "Middle Eastern" to refer to Jewish immigrants who arrived to Israel from Asian and African countries. I argue that Israeli leadership, from the early 1950s onwards, has regarded Western tradition and culture as the "significant other," as the frame of reference to which they want Israel to be associated. In Israel the value of preserving individual liberties was considered secondary by the founding fathers of the state who advocated collectivist ideas. The dominance of these collectivist ideas, which was further strengthened by the linkage between religion and state, made Israel different from other Western democracies. The aspiration was to create "a Jewish-Israeli life style," which really meant to create a unified, Western life-style. David Ben-Gurion declared that "[W]e shall not shut ourselves up in our shell. We shall be open to take in all the cultures of the world, all the conquests of the spirit." But in practice some cultures were rejected during the formative years and efforts were made to curtail their legitimacy, maybe because they were not perceived at that time (the 1950s) as consistent with the spirit of the Israeli-Jew. Consequently, Israel does not fit the normative characterization of a liberal democracy that is assumed to take a neutral or impartial stance regarding different conceptions of the good.

Keywords: cultural pluralism, nation building, Israel, Middle Eastern culture, discrimination, Ben-Gurion

JEL Classification: 700