The Changing Israeli Self-Image

Each year on May 7th, my father would remind the entire family that it was the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s surrender. A slight smile would spread across his face, as if at that very moment the Nazi army had suffered defeat and announced unconditional surrender. Sometithmes my mother would hand him a small piece of cake, and together they would celebrate the triumph of light over darkness, the forces of justice over the multitude arms of absolute evil.

My grandfather died in a labor camp in Transnistria. My parents survived the Holocaust. Through convoluted means, they avoided deportation to a labor camp and remained in the ghetto in Czernowitz for most of the war. Each day was fraught with life-threatening moments and a struggle to find food.  Their harsh experiences shaped their worldview, prompting them to see the world as a stage ruled by collective rather than individual forces. Indeed, their wartime ordeals could readily provide the foundation for a gripping thriller: My father joined forces that sought to open a new path in the Alps to rescue Jews from Europe, and my mother sailed on an illegal immigrant ship for over a month in the Mediterranean Sea. The ship docked at the Tel Aviv port on the day the United Nations voted to establish Israel. The weary refugees disembarked and joined in the communal dancing.

Yet when the Holocaust was discussed at home, they downplayed their own experiences, some of which only came to light years later. The main issue was the unfolding of the war and the genocide of Jews. An essential part of their self-perception was being part of the Jewish people. Any threat or harm to Jews somehow became a personal affront to them.

When they arrived in Israel, their sense of collective belonging seemed to deepen further. Establishing a new state and struggling for its existence created a profound feeling of being part of the future society. My father joined the Palmach, the military force fighting to establish a Jewish state, and my parents became members of a kibbutz—mainly an expression of the collective Israeli society. When they  later moved to Jerusalem, their sense of belonging, of sharing a common fate, did not fade. The living conditions were not easy. With three children, we lived in a tiny two-bedroom apartment, without enough space for three beds in the children’s room. Yet taking part in a significant historical process eased every difficulty. My father established the first art history department in Israel, and my mother worked as a mathematics teacher. Our family saw itself as an integral part of its environment. The deepest frame of reference to the world was being Jews and Israelis; there was hardly room for anything else

I cannot pinpoint exactly when the first cracks appeared in our self-perception relying so heavily on the collective. Perhaps it was in the mid-1970s. In my family, the sense of pride and elation following the Six-Day War was replaced by deep reservations about Jewish settlement in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip. The profound fear that gripped us when the Yom Kippur War suddenly broke out instilled doubt about the survivability of the Israeli state and imbued the lives of non-Israeli Jews with a certain charm. Additionally, the deep-seated tension between Ashkenazi Israelis and Sephardi Israelis that emerged abruptly eroded our sense of identification with the collective Israeli spirit.  The rise of the Likud to power in 1977 presented a fait accompli to Israelis with a social background like my family’s: the group they perceived themselves to be part of was only one segment of Israeli society, comprised of other parts they completely disagreed with. The sense of belonging previously so natural and intuitive became an issue that needed to be intellectually addressed in order to reach conclusions.

Around those years, Israel began transitioning toward a more capitalist society. As it drew closer to the United States, principles such as individualism and self-fulfillment became part of the Israeli mindset. We were already living in an upscale neighborhood in Jerusalem, where most residents were educated and financially well-off. My father, a professor of art history, taught at prestigious universities in the United States. We traveled to the United States and Europe, encountered novel ideas, and experienced the pleasures of the West. At that time, Israeli entrepreneurs launched start-ups inspired by free-market principles; ideas of economic efficiency shaped local businesses, and the capitalist West emerged as an ideal to emulate.

My parents continued, of course, to see themselves as Jewish-Israelis. But in the personal, internal space where discussions about the sense of belonging take place, there was a little less room for the collective. Now, personal fulfillment and professional success were spreading, gradually pushing aside being part of Israeli society. In 1994, when the General Federation of Laborers, which had been a central force in building Israel, underwent a transformation and lost a significant part of its power, my mother said indifferently that the workers’ organization was corrupt and didn’t care about the workers anyway.

On November 4, 1995, the process of focusing on the personal self was momentarily halted. The assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin held up a mirror to Israeli society, forcing it to acknowledge that it had, in fact, split into two parts now separated by a deep chasm. On one side stood a group that saw itself as part of the Western world and wanted Israel to be a modern liberal state.  At that time, this group consisted of many Ashkenazi Israelis. On the other side was a group that wanted Israel to be a society with traditional religious values, and some of its members also aspired to dominate Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip. This group was made up primarily of Sephardi Israelis, and a small group of religious Ashkenazi settlers.

My parents, who had survived the Holocaust and experienced the wars in Israel, were shocked that an Israeli Jew could assassinate a prime minister in Israel. Possibly, this was the moment when they internalized that the Israel they felt a part of had changed beyond recognition and perhaps no longer existed in its original form. I believe the shock of Rabin’s assassination eventually intensified people’s focus on their personal lives and their gradual disengagement from the public sphere. The capitalist spirit, which had been gaining momentum, enabled some Israelis to achieve phenomenal success but it has also distanced them from the communal identity. The emphasis on personal fulfillment, even if unconscious, widens the gap between individuals.

The transformation of Israeli society is an ongoing process, reshaping the sense of belonging to Israel. Today, many young people work in high-tech companies or aspire to join them. This sector of Israeli society has been flourishing over the past decades and is often regarded as the backbone of Israeli prosperity. Various companies offer their employees opportunities to make use of their talents and enjoy a comfortable lifestyle. Yet being part of the high-tech sector implies a different kind of connection with one’s environment. Employees engage in intense competition with their peers, sometimes advancing, sometimes being laid off. Employers in this sector embrace values of individualism, self-fulfillment, and, at times, teamwork among individuals driven primarily by personal ambition. This work setting—often blurring social tensions—now includes both Ashkenazi and Sephardi Israelis.

One should not assume that high-tech workers do not feel Jewish or Zionist. On the contrary, the war that followed the events of October 7th showed that many were willing to sacrifice their lives for their country and to demonstrate for the values they believe in. However, the meaning of being a Zionist now includes words like “quality of life,” “highly skilled workers,” and “land value”— words entirely foreign to the spirit of the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, who said that the State of Israel “must be built with hard work, dedication, and the collective effort of all Jews, united in purpose and spirit.”

Arguably, the recent threat to Israeli democracy is one outcome of the widening gap between individuals in Israel. Capitalist society allows many to achieve major accomplishments that would not have been possible in another social structure and creates more comfortable lives. However, its form of government, democracy, is more vulnerable to threats which necessitate collective actions to fend them off.

Intimate Solitude (Academic Studies Press, September 2024) is a novel that traces the changing nature of Israeli society over the past half-century. Set in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, it explores the meaning of friendship, intimacy, and loyalty within a society gradually embracing capitalist values.

An expanded version of this post appeared on the blog of Academic Studies Press.