This week was unusually busy for me. On Tuesday I took the train from Tel Aviv to Haifa to present a paper (in English, of course) at Haifa University’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology. This was lots of fun. My friend U. teaches there, and he and a few of his colleagues took me to lunch, showed me around campus a little, and introduced me to some of the graduate students there. There is a very interesting archaeology museum on campus with the remains of an ancient Phoenician boat, and since the university is high up in the hills, the social science building provides some beautiful views. On a clear day, you can see the border with Lebanon.
The next day (Wednesday) I took the bus from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to present another paper at a history seminar at the Hebrew University. This was a trip not only across Israel (less than an hour by bus) but also across disciplinary boundaries. Most of my work is historical sociology, so I think of history as a kindred discipline. Still, I didn’t feel quite as at home here among the historians as I did in Haifa among the sociologists. For that reason it was an especially nice surprise to see my friend T. at the seminar. She’s an HU graduate student who was the G. M. Student Fellow last year at the University of Wisconsin. It’s always comforting to see a familiar face in a new place.
I wanted to make a good impression on my Israeli colleagues, especially in Jerusalem, where I will be teaching during the second term, but I was dissatisfied with my weak replies to some of the questions in Haifa and especially in Jerusalem. Maybe I’m a little rusty; I haven’t presented a paper since last fall. Still, the experiences were good overall, and the questions and criticism were useful and valuable, especially for the paper I presented in Jerusalem, which I’m now revising for publication. In any case, they certainly made a good impression on me – their questions were all extremely smart and incisive.
I’m pleased that I’m starting to learn my around Israel (the bus and train system), seeing more of the country outside Tel Aviv, and making contacts with colleagues here. Though I’m enjoying the flexibility that comes from having no teaching obligations at the moment, I have also felt a little isolated and detached from academic life – suffering, to use the jargon of my profession, from insufficient social integration. These trips to Haifa and Jerusalem helped to re-integrate me a little.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Three Photos
Here are a few photos I’ve taken recently. The first one is a funny poster hanging on the door of a café on Dizengoff Street where I often go. It’s obviously a parody of the American military recruiting posters from the First World War where a pointing Uncle Sam says “I Want You!” But this version says drushim ovdim, literally “hiring workers” (help wanted). Here it’s workers that Uncle Sam wants, not soldiers. Perhaps he’s assembling an Industrial Reserve Army. I’m probably reading way too much into this poster, but I found the implied analogy between workers and soldiers sociologically interesting.
Here’s some more Americana in Israel: graffiti of Elvis near my apartment building. Elvis haMelech, even here.
And finally here are my friends U. and A.K. and their colleague S., all Israeli sociologists, during a night out on the town. U. is beckoning A. to come to Israel with the promise of a nice cold beer. Let’s hope it works.
Here’s some more Americana in Israel: graffiti of Elvis near my apartment building. Elvis haMelech, even here.
And finally here are my friends U. and A.K. and their colleague S., all Israeli sociologists, during a night out on the town. U. is beckoning A. to come to Israel with the promise of a nice cold beer. Let’s hope it works.
Obama, Israel, and the Paranoid Style in American Politics
Dear chaverim v’mishpocha, sorry for the long hiatus since my last post. As Mark Twain warns in The Innocents Abroad, it’s easier to begin a travelogue than to keep it going: "At certain periods it becomes the dearest ambition of a man to keep a faithful record of his performances in a book; and he dashes at this work with an enthusiasm that imposes on him the notion that keeping a journal is the veriest pastime in the world, and the pleasantest. But if he only lives twenty-one days, he will find out that only those rare natures that are made up of pluck, endurance, devotion to duty for duty’s sake, and invincible determination may hope to venture upon so tremendous an enterprise as the keeping of a journal and not sustain a shameful defeat." "If you wish to inflict a heartless and malignant punishment upon a young person," he adds, "pledge him to keep a journal a year." Rest assured, I'm not so young anymore, and my hiatus was only that and not a defeat.
Let me pick up where I left off: with the Wisconsin primary. While I voted for Clinton, I was not terribly upset to see Obama win big in the Badger State. What does upset me – what increasingly angers and disgusts me, in fact -- is the smear campaign being waged against Obama, based on innuendo, insinuation, and outright lies, that he is anti-Israel, un-American, and some kind of crypto-Muslim fifth columnist (as if Muslim Americans cannot be loyal Americans). What offends me even more is that the campaign appears to be aimed especially at Jewish voters in an effort to manipulate Jewish votes. (This just in: I’m not so easily stampeded.) Now, lest this smear campaign be seen not as an attempt to manipulate Jewish voters, but rather as an attempt by the shadowy and supposedly omnipotent “Israel Lobby” to manipulate the American public, I want to point out that the Israeli press (where I have been learning about this campaign) has done a nice job of exposing and debunking it. Here are a few examples:
Obama and the Jewish question
Yedioth Ahronoth interview with Obama
Obama: Not only Likudniks can be pro-Israeli
Obama tells Jewish leaders: I have never been a Muslim
On the other side of the Atlantic, the leaders of nine national Jewish American organizations and seven Jewish members of the United States Senate forcefully condemned the smear campaign against Obama in January. (“If ever there was a concentrated deployment of American Jewish power for a single cause,” quipped The Forward, “this was it.”)
My friend and colleague Jeff Weintraub has also shed valuable light on the smear campaign:
Obama and Israel
Jewish organizations denounce an ugly e-mail slander campaign against Obama
Why Obama is good for the Jews
And so too has The Forward:
Nader, Obama and Israel
Both the smear campaign against Obama and the invocation of the “Israel Lobby” by the far left and the far right to account for wars and policies they don’t like suggest a distressing revival of what Richard Hoftstadter called the paranoid style in American politics. Like former Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy, its adherents today ask, “How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this government are concerting to deliver us to disaster?” As Hofstadter showed, this paranoid style has a long history. In the nineteenth century it was Catholics who were accused of delivering America to disaster. In the twentieth century it was Communists. Today, it’s Muslims (or, more accurately, a Presidential candidate who is mistakenly believed to be a Muslim) and Jews.
Let me pick up where I left off: with the Wisconsin primary. While I voted for Clinton, I was not terribly upset to see Obama win big in the Badger State. What does upset me – what increasingly angers and disgusts me, in fact -- is the smear campaign being waged against Obama, based on innuendo, insinuation, and outright lies, that he is anti-Israel, un-American, and some kind of crypto-Muslim fifth columnist (as if Muslim Americans cannot be loyal Americans). What offends me even more is that the campaign appears to be aimed especially at Jewish voters in an effort to manipulate Jewish votes. (This just in: I’m not so easily stampeded.) Now, lest this smear campaign be seen not as an attempt to manipulate Jewish voters, but rather as an attempt by the shadowy and supposedly omnipotent “Israel Lobby” to manipulate the American public, I want to point out that the Israeli press (where I have been learning about this campaign) has done a nice job of exposing and debunking it. Here are a few examples:
Obama and the Jewish question
Yedioth Ahronoth interview with Obama
Obama: Not only Likudniks can be pro-Israeli
Obama tells Jewish leaders: I have never been a Muslim
On the other side of the Atlantic, the leaders of nine national Jewish American organizations and seven Jewish members of the United States Senate forcefully condemned the smear campaign against Obama in January. (“If ever there was a concentrated deployment of American Jewish power for a single cause,” quipped The Forward, “this was it.”)
My friend and colleague Jeff Weintraub has also shed valuable light on the smear campaign:
Obama and Israel
Jewish organizations denounce an ugly e-mail slander campaign against Obama
Why Obama is good for the Jews
And so too has The Forward:
Nader, Obama and Israel
Both the smear campaign against Obama and the invocation of the “Israel Lobby” by the far left and the far right to account for wars and policies they don’t like suggest a distressing revival of what Richard Hoftstadter called the paranoid style in American politics. Like former Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy, its adherents today ask, “How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this government are concerting to deliver us to disaster?” As Hofstadter showed, this paranoid style has a long history. In the nineteenth century it was Catholics who were accused of delivering America to disaster. In the twentieth century it was Communists. Today, it’s Muslims (or, more accurately, a Presidential candidate who is mistakenly believed to be a Muslim) and Jews.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
P.P.S. to Election Day
I am indeed being “foreignized rapidly and with facility”: only a few weeks of living here and I'm nearly as pushy as the sabras (native-born Israelis). While standing in line at my neighborhood supermarket, I became increasingly annoyed at the guy in front of me who wasn’t moving forward, so in typical Israeli fashion I pushed my way past him. That brought him back to Earth. “Slichah!” (excuse me) he protested. I shrugged and gestured to him to go ahead. If I’d been a little quicker with my Hebrew, I would have said “Atah tzarich hazmanah?” (you need an invitation?). Or, as my father likes to say, he who snoozes loses. I can only imagine what a holy terror I will seem to polite Midwesterners when I return to the Galut with my newly acquired minhagim (customs).
On the other hand, I don’t want to give the impression that life in Israel is all pushiness. People here are at the same time very warm and friendly. Just today a high school teacher sitting on the bus next to me struck up a very pleasant conversation with me. As I noted in an earlier post, there seems to be less “civil inattention” here, which can manifest itself in different ways. It means that people are less inhibited about offering their opinions and advice (even when it’s unsolicited), but they are also more open to engaging in dialogue with strangers. Perhaps these habits and customs reflect the fact, as George Mosse was once jokingly informed, that Israel is not so much a polis as a shtetl.
Speaking of the polis, Wisconsin's primary is today. I'm waiting eagerly for the results.
On the other hand, I don’t want to give the impression that life in Israel is all pushiness. People here are at the same time very warm and friendly. Just today a high school teacher sitting on the bus next to me struck up a very pleasant conversation with me. As I noted in an earlier post, there seems to be less “civil inattention” here, which can manifest itself in different ways. It means that people are less inhibited about offering their opinions and advice (even when it’s unsolicited), but they are also more open to engaging in dialogue with strangers. Perhaps these habits and customs reflect the fact, as George Mosse was once jokingly informed, that Israel is not so much a polis as a shtetl.
Speaking of the polis, Wisconsin's primary is today. I'm waiting eagerly for the results.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Sociology on Israeli TV
Tonight I tuned into the channel 10 evening news program to watch an interview with my friend and colleague A.K. A.K. teaches in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University, and she has written an important new book about citizenship, migrant workers, and the Israeli labor market. (Sorry, fellow Anglophones, the book has not been translated from Hebrew into English.) Even though I could only understand a few words of the interview, I still watched intently and enthusiastically. Aside from the admittedly silly thrill of seeing a friend on TV, I was impressed that Israeli TV provides a forum (however brief) for sociologists to share their research findings with the broader public, and I think A.K. was engaged in a valuable public service. As Emile Durkheim noted more than a century ago, “writers and scholars are citizens; it is thus evident that they have the strict duty to participate in public life…. We must be above all … educators.” “It is our function,” he added, not to “govern” our contemporaries but to “help our contemporaries to know themselves.” Yasher koach, A.K.!
Friday, February 15, 2008
Tocqueville in Israel
"The great advantage of the Americans," wrote Alexis de Tocqueville, "is that they have arrived at a state of democracy without having to endure a democratic revolution, and that they are born equal instead of becoming so." Tocqueville knew about the American Revolution in 1776, of course, but his point was that it was merely a change in political arrangements and not a social revolution. In contrast to Europeans, he argued, Americans arrived at a "state of democracy" without having to violently dispossess a privileged class and dismantle a feudal society based on caste inequality. That difference, he argued, was crucial to the success of democracy in America. The absence of a feudal past allowed Americans, in the words of Claus Offe's recent commentary on Tocqueville, to "enter into a stable and virtuous circle" in which democratic institutions and democratic "habits of the heart" supported and reinforced each other. But past conditions in Europe made instead for a vicious circle in which violent revolt and bloody revolutionary excess set the stage for a return to despotic rule. After all, anyone who has to dismantle a despotic and inegalitarian society has already been formed by it and therefore in all likelihood lacks the "habits of the heart" that are conducive to and even necessary for democratic liberty. (That lesson is arguably being driven home once again by the violence in present-day Iraq, where Saddam Hussein and his Baathist supporters were violently dispossessed by an American "revolution from above" – a revolution that did little to cultivate the "habits of the heart" necessary for democratic self-government there.) In short, as Claus Offe sums up Tocqueville's line of reasoning, "in Europe … the demos must be educated 'to' democracy, while the American people are educated 'by' democracy."
Tocqueville pointed to three sets of factors that shaped the viability of democracy in America and elsewhere: the most important was habits and customs, followed by laws and institutions, and lastly external conditions. When it comes to external conditions, America and Israel obviously differ greatly. Tocqueville emphasized, for instance, that Americans lacked powerful and hostile neighbors and therefore fear of war and conquest, which clearly cannot be said about Israel (which makes the success of democracy in Israel that much more remarkable). However, when it comes to the interplay between habits and institutions, an interesting comparison is possible with David Ben-Gurion's brand of "constructive" (as opposed to revolutionary) socialism.
On the one hand, just as Tocqueville believed that the absence of a feudal past allowed Americans to arrive at a state of democracy without a violent revolution, Ben-Gurion believed that the absence of a fully developed capitalist system in Jewish Palestine allowed socialist Zionists like himself to build socialism there without revolutionary class warfare. As Shlomo Avineri put it in his book The Making of Modern Zionism, the emergent Jewish working class and the socialist Zionist movement that mobilized and spoke for it would "naturally become the hegemonic factor" in Palestine, "not through class warfare, but through creating its own economy" along "public and cooperative lines." Ben-Gurion seems to have expected a virtuous circle similar to the one Tocqueville described: to build and to be built in the Land of Israel, as the old slogan goes. Just as the absence of a feudal past made America the preeminent bourgeois society, so the absence of a fully developed capitalist system in Jewish Palestine would enable it to become the exemplary socialist society. (As my previous post about the education strikes in Israel suggests, this hope did not pan out, at least in the long run.)
On the other hand, Ben-Gurion was keenly aware that Jewish immigrants to Palestine were not blank slates, that they brought with them habits of the heart from their former host societies that were detrimental to the political project of socialist Zionism and which would have to be negated if the project was to succeed. He understood Jewish Palestine as a product of creative destruction, constituted by a negation of the Exile and a break with the past. "The very realization of Zionism," Ben-Gurion wrote in 1933, "is nothing else than carrying out this deep historical transformation occurring in the life of the Hebrew people. This transformation does not limit itself to its geographical aspect, to the movement of Jewish masses from the countries of the Diaspora to the renascent homeland – but in a socioeconomic transformation as well: it means taking … uprooted, impoverished, sterile Jewish masses, living parasitically off … an alien economic body and dependent on others [in Europe] – and introducing them into primary production, in industry and handicraft – and making them economically independent and self-sufficient [in Palestine].” In this way, the Land of Israel not only "provides for all her children," but "revives them, [and] makes them into citizens” (emphasis added). In short, Ben-Gurion insisted that in some ways the project of building socialism in Jewish Palestine did require the dismantling of the Old Regime, a regime that existed twice, in things and in minds, in the institutions that immigrants left behind but also in the habits and customs they brought with them; it was necessary not only to take the Jewish people out of Exile, but to take the Exile out of the Jewish people.
Tocqueville pointed to three sets of factors that shaped the viability of democracy in America and elsewhere: the most important was habits and customs, followed by laws and institutions, and lastly external conditions. When it comes to external conditions, America and Israel obviously differ greatly. Tocqueville emphasized, for instance, that Americans lacked powerful and hostile neighbors and therefore fear of war and conquest, which clearly cannot be said about Israel (which makes the success of democracy in Israel that much more remarkable). However, when it comes to the interplay between habits and institutions, an interesting comparison is possible with David Ben-Gurion's brand of "constructive" (as opposed to revolutionary) socialism.
On the one hand, just as Tocqueville believed that the absence of a feudal past allowed Americans to arrive at a state of democracy without a violent revolution, Ben-Gurion believed that the absence of a fully developed capitalist system in Jewish Palestine allowed socialist Zionists like himself to build socialism there without revolutionary class warfare. As Shlomo Avineri put it in his book The Making of Modern Zionism, the emergent Jewish working class and the socialist Zionist movement that mobilized and spoke for it would "naturally become the hegemonic factor" in Palestine, "not through class warfare, but through creating its own economy" along "public and cooperative lines." Ben-Gurion seems to have expected a virtuous circle similar to the one Tocqueville described: to build and to be built in the Land of Israel, as the old slogan goes. Just as the absence of a feudal past made America the preeminent bourgeois society, so the absence of a fully developed capitalist system in Jewish Palestine would enable it to become the exemplary socialist society. (As my previous post about the education strikes in Israel suggests, this hope did not pan out, at least in the long run.)
On the other hand, Ben-Gurion was keenly aware that Jewish immigrants to Palestine were not blank slates, that they brought with them habits of the heart from their former host societies that were detrimental to the political project of socialist Zionism and which would have to be negated if the project was to succeed. He understood Jewish Palestine as a product of creative destruction, constituted by a negation of the Exile and a break with the past. "The very realization of Zionism," Ben-Gurion wrote in 1933, "is nothing else than carrying out this deep historical transformation occurring in the life of the Hebrew people. This transformation does not limit itself to its geographical aspect, to the movement of Jewish masses from the countries of the Diaspora to the renascent homeland – but in a socioeconomic transformation as well: it means taking … uprooted, impoverished, sterile Jewish masses, living parasitically off … an alien economic body and dependent on others [in Europe] – and introducing them into primary production, in industry and handicraft – and making them economically independent and self-sufficient [in Palestine].” In this way, the Land of Israel not only "provides for all her children," but "revives them, [and] makes them into citizens” (emphasis added). In short, Ben-Gurion insisted that in some ways the project of building socialism in Jewish Palestine did require the dismantling of the Old Regime, a regime that existed twice, in things and in minds, in the institutions that immigrants left behind but also in the habits and customs they brought with them; it was necessary not only to take the Jewish people out of Exile, but to take the Exile out of the Jewish people.
Election Day
My brother and I have different political views, but despite that (or maybe because of that) we like to talk about politics anyway. In an e-mail message my brother sent me two weeks ago, he asked if there was much news or speculation in Israel about the U.S. Presidential primaries. In the media, there is quite a bit. I hear references to it on the radio when I'm riding the bus to ulpan in the morning, I see Israeli journalists and pundits discussing the primaries on TV here, and it's covered in the newspapers too. (You can read the Israeli coverage in English by going to Haaretz.) That's what I expected. After all, the U.S. Presidential election will have important consequences not just for Americans, but for the rest of the world as well, including Israel.
Being (I hope) a good sociologist, I decided to supplement these observations with another tried and true sociological method: asking people. In my conversations with ordinary people, I encountered more indifference than I expected. This was especially true among the Israeli students I asked at Tel Aviv University. There could be many reasons for this indifference. It might reflect their age (in the U.S. I know that younger people are less likely to vote), where they are in terms of their life course (students), the broad bipartisan support for Israel in the U.S. (which means they are not overly concerned about which party takes the White House in 2008), or the fact that Israelis have plenty of political problems of their own to worry about (the Winograd Commission, the continuing rocket attacks from Gaza, etc.). Among the Israelis who did express an opinion to me, most supported Clinton. This may partly reflect her name recognition and the popularity of her husband here, though a taxi driver told me he disliked Bill Clinton because he blamed the Oslo peace process for strengthening Palestinian terrorists and in some way contributing to the current violence against Israelis. (Clearly, this was a right-wing view, but it means that the Clintons are not universally popular here.) One of my ulpan teachers expressed some support for Giuliani before he dropped out of the Republican primaries. Again this may have reflected name recognition (she heard of him but perhaps not many of the other Republican candidates) and also awareness that Giuliani is staunchly pro-Israel. I had an interesting conversation with her about Giuliani; I told her that I lived in New York when he was mayor, and I tried to explain why I could not support him for President. Unsurprisingly in these conversations, Israelis based their opinions entirely on the candidates' foreign policies with no regard for their domestic policies. And of course why should they care about the candidates' domestic policies? They don't live in America.
Wednesday of this week was election day for me. My absentee ballot for the Wisconsin primary arrived last week, and after spending a few days agonizing over whether to vote for Clinton or Obama I had finally made up my mind. (My vote went to Senator Clinton, though I'd be happy to vote for Obama if he gets the nomination.) According to the sternly worded instructions that accompanied the ballot, my signature had to be witnessed by an adult United States citizen. Dutifully, I took the ballot with me to the ulpan on Wednesday morning and asked my former UW sociology student and now fellow ulpan student G. to do the honors. She was pleased to learn afterwards that I "voted for her girl."
With Wisconsin's primary election only six days away, there was no time to waste; I was determined to mail my ballot that very day. The ballot came with a note informing me that I could mail it from the American Embassy or Consulate Office free of charge. As soon as the ulpan finished for the day, I took the bus to the city center and marched resolutely down HaYarkon Street to the American Embassy to perform this quintessential ritual of democratic citizenship. I felt elated to see Old Glory flapping in the Mediterranean breeze as I approached. The sight made me feel reassured and invigorated, not unlike the aborigines that the French sociologist Emile Durkheim described in the presence of their totem. My more cynical friends will scoff at this shameless upwelling of emotion – patriotism is unfashionable among academics – but as Mark Twain observes in The Innocents Abroad, the sight of one's flag at home is tame compared to what it is in a foreign land. To see it abroad is "to see a vision of home itself and all its idols, and feel a thrill that would stir a very river of sluggish blood!"
Getting into the American Embassy was not nearly so sublime an experience. What I found when I arrived was a little knot of Israelis trying to push their way inside to get travel visas. In my experience, I have found that Israelis are congenitally incapable of forming a line for anything. They couldn't form a line if their lives depended on it. They have no conception of a line. One of my fellow ulpan students told me that she once asked her Israeli boyfriend why he and his friends didn’t form a line, and the answer was: "What's a line?" Like Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court, I tried to introduce American customs here. But I soon learned that if you try to form a line in Israel by standing in an orderly fashion behind the person in front of you, it will be in vain because the next person to arrive will simply push his or her way to the front. I could see this lesson replicated at the American Embassy. The guard standing outside the embassy entrance would periodically corral the unruly Israelis into some semblance of a line, but it was like the work of Sisyphus. As soon as he had succeeded, the next person to arrive would cut in front of everyone else and go straight to the door, forcing him to begin his thankless efforts all over again.
The pushing did not stop once we got inside. As I approached the metal detector and reached into my pockets to empty their contents for the security guard, the young woman behind me threw her things into the bin before I could. By now, I had about reached the limits of my patience. Being a visitor, I have been more deferential here than I would be at home. But heartened by the Stars and Stripes and emboldened by the fact that I was now on my own turf, I was not about to let this woman get away with an act of such brazen and audacious chutzpah. Without hesitation, I grabbed the bin and dumped my own things into it. "Atem b'yachad?" (Are you together?) the perplexed guard asked. Testily and in unison we both answered "Lo!" The guard resolved this Solomonic conundrum by waving the woman through and making me take my mobile phone outside to the "storage office." There I was charged ten shekels for the privilege of having my phone temporarily taken away and being made to go to the back of the line (such as it was) to re-enter the embassy. Though chastened by this defeat, I was consoled by the discovery that there was a separate office for "American citizen services," which enabled me to bypass the unruly crowd still pushing each other out of the way to get travel visas next door. At the risk of reinforcing ethnic stereotypes, I have to say that I thought seven years of living in New York had taught me to be pushy – just ask all the polite Midwesterners I have inadvertently offended in Wisconsin – but Israelis put New Yorkers to shame in this department.
And my ballot? After all this consternation and exasperation, it was safely delivered into the hands of the appropriate official and sent on its way home. I guess sometimes you have to push to make your voice heard.
P.S. I attended the plenary session of the Israel Sociology Society conference at Tel Aviv University on Wednesday evening, the only part of the conference that was conducted in English. There was less pushiness here – apparently sociologists are a better-behaved lot – except the usual stampede at the end of the session to buttonhole the distinguished speakers. The speakers talked mainly about various aspects of globalization. This was in keeping with the theme of the conference, "A Place for Sociology," which cleverly lent itself to a variety of meanings. Of course, conferences are only partly about research; they are also an occasion for socializing with colleagues and friends (renewing social solidarity in Durkheimian terms), and this was no exception. I kibitzed briefly with my friends A.K. and U., whom I hadn't seen for a while; H.H. (B.H.'s mother – it's a sociology dynasty); and a few of the sociologists that I met in Haifa when I went with U. and A.K. to Y.'s birthday party a few weeks ago. (Y. is the author of The Struggle over the Soul of Economics, a book about the demise of the once influential institutionalist school of economics pioneered by John R. Commons at the University of Wisconsin, which coincidentally I happened to read last summer.) I would have liked to have joined A.K. and the plenary session speakers for dinner afterwards, but I bowed out to return home and study for the final exam of my ulpan. As the wise King Solomon might have said, to everything there is a season, a time to push and a time to go home.
Being (I hope) a good sociologist, I decided to supplement these observations with another tried and true sociological method: asking people. In my conversations with ordinary people, I encountered more indifference than I expected. This was especially true among the Israeli students I asked at Tel Aviv University. There could be many reasons for this indifference. It might reflect their age (in the U.S. I know that younger people are less likely to vote), where they are in terms of their life course (students), the broad bipartisan support for Israel in the U.S. (which means they are not overly concerned about which party takes the White House in 2008), or the fact that Israelis have plenty of political problems of their own to worry about (the Winograd Commission, the continuing rocket attacks from Gaza, etc.). Among the Israelis who did express an opinion to me, most supported Clinton. This may partly reflect her name recognition and the popularity of her husband here, though a taxi driver told me he disliked Bill Clinton because he blamed the Oslo peace process for strengthening Palestinian terrorists and in some way contributing to the current violence against Israelis. (Clearly, this was a right-wing view, but it means that the Clintons are not universally popular here.) One of my ulpan teachers expressed some support for Giuliani before he dropped out of the Republican primaries. Again this may have reflected name recognition (she heard of him but perhaps not many of the other Republican candidates) and also awareness that Giuliani is staunchly pro-Israel. I had an interesting conversation with her about Giuliani; I told her that I lived in New York when he was mayor, and I tried to explain why I could not support him for President. Unsurprisingly in these conversations, Israelis based their opinions entirely on the candidates' foreign policies with no regard for their domestic policies. And of course why should they care about the candidates' domestic policies? They don't live in America.
Wednesday of this week was election day for me. My absentee ballot for the Wisconsin primary arrived last week, and after spending a few days agonizing over whether to vote for Clinton or Obama I had finally made up my mind. (My vote went to Senator Clinton, though I'd be happy to vote for Obama if he gets the nomination.) According to the sternly worded instructions that accompanied the ballot, my signature had to be witnessed by an adult United States citizen. Dutifully, I took the ballot with me to the ulpan on Wednesday morning and asked my former UW sociology student and now fellow ulpan student G. to do the honors. She was pleased to learn afterwards that I "voted for her girl."
With Wisconsin's primary election only six days away, there was no time to waste; I was determined to mail my ballot that very day. The ballot came with a note informing me that I could mail it from the American Embassy or Consulate Office free of charge. As soon as the ulpan finished for the day, I took the bus to the city center and marched resolutely down HaYarkon Street to the American Embassy to perform this quintessential ritual of democratic citizenship. I felt elated to see Old Glory flapping in the Mediterranean breeze as I approached. The sight made me feel reassured and invigorated, not unlike the aborigines that the French sociologist Emile Durkheim described in the presence of their totem. My more cynical friends will scoff at this shameless upwelling of emotion – patriotism is unfashionable among academics – but as Mark Twain observes in The Innocents Abroad, the sight of one's flag at home is tame compared to what it is in a foreign land. To see it abroad is "to see a vision of home itself and all its idols, and feel a thrill that would stir a very river of sluggish blood!"
Getting into the American Embassy was not nearly so sublime an experience. What I found when I arrived was a little knot of Israelis trying to push their way inside to get travel visas. In my experience, I have found that Israelis are congenitally incapable of forming a line for anything. They couldn't form a line if their lives depended on it. They have no conception of a line. One of my fellow ulpan students told me that she once asked her Israeli boyfriend why he and his friends didn’t form a line, and the answer was: "What's a line?" Like Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court, I tried to introduce American customs here. But I soon learned that if you try to form a line in Israel by standing in an orderly fashion behind the person in front of you, it will be in vain because the next person to arrive will simply push his or her way to the front. I could see this lesson replicated at the American Embassy. The guard standing outside the embassy entrance would periodically corral the unruly Israelis into some semblance of a line, but it was like the work of Sisyphus. As soon as he had succeeded, the next person to arrive would cut in front of everyone else and go straight to the door, forcing him to begin his thankless efforts all over again.
The pushing did not stop once we got inside. As I approached the metal detector and reached into my pockets to empty their contents for the security guard, the young woman behind me threw her things into the bin before I could. By now, I had about reached the limits of my patience. Being a visitor, I have been more deferential here than I would be at home. But heartened by the Stars and Stripes and emboldened by the fact that I was now on my own turf, I was not about to let this woman get away with an act of such brazen and audacious chutzpah. Without hesitation, I grabbed the bin and dumped my own things into it. "Atem b'yachad?" (Are you together?) the perplexed guard asked. Testily and in unison we both answered "Lo!" The guard resolved this Solomonic conundrum by waving the woman through and making me take my mobile phone outside to the "storage office." There I was charged ten shekels for the privilege of having my phone temporarily taken away and being made to go to the back of the line (such as it was) to re-enter the embassy. Though chastened by this defeat, I was consoled by the discovery that there was a separate office for "American citizen services," which enabled me to bypass the unruly crowd still pushing each other out of the way to get travel visas next door. At the risk of reinforcing ethnic stereotypes, I have to say that I thought seven years of living in New York had taught me to be pushy – just ask all the polite Midwesterners I have inadvertently offended in Wisconsin – but Israelis put New Yorkers to shame in this department.
And my ballot? After all this consternation and exasperation, it was safely delivered into the hands of the appropriate official and sent on its way home. I guess sometimes you have to push to make your voice heard.
P.S. I attended the plenary session of the Israel Sociology Society conference at Tel Aviv University on Wednesday evening, the only part of the conference that was conducted in English. There was less pushiness here – apparently sociologists are a better-behaved lot – except the usual stampede at the end of the session to buttonhole the distinguished speakers. The speakers talked mainly about various aspects of globalization. This was in keeping with the theme of the conference, "A Place for Sociology," which cleverly lent itself to a variety of meanings. Of course, conferences are only partly about research; they are also an occasion for socializing with colleagues and friends (renewing social solidarity in Durkheimian terms), and this was no exception. I kibitzed briefly with my friends A.K. and U., whom I hadn't seen for a while; H.H. (B.H.'s mother – it's a sociology dynasty); and a few of the sociologists that I met in Haifa when I went with U. and A.K. to Y.'s birthday party a few weeks ago. (Y. is the author of The Struggle over the Soul of Economics, a book about the demise of the once influential institutionalist school of economics pioneered by John R. Commons at the University of Wisconsin, which coincidentally I happened to read last summer.) I would have liked to have joined A.K. and the plenary session speakers for dinner afterwards, but I bowed out to return home and study for the final exam of my ulpan. As the wise King Solomon might have said, to everything there is a season, a time to push and a time to go home.
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