Ten years have passed since the publication of Israeli Society: Critical Perspectives, a collection of essays by prominent Israeli sociologists which has proven to be a turning point in the academic study of Israeli life. Addressing the Jewish state’s most intractable problems, including its ethnic and social divisions, its military policies, the treatment of women, and the Palestinian question, Israeli Society presented not only a wide range of subjects and a prestigious group of contributors, but also a sweeping new critique—one consistently wary of, if not downright hostile to, the State of Israel and its national ethos. Uri Ram, the book’s editor and a sociologist at Ben-Gurion University, explained its unifying principle:

While such claims might once have seemed exaggerated, in the past few years they have proven surprisingly accurate: In the space of a decade, “critical” sociologists have moved from the fringes of the academic establishment to the center, and their views have come to dominate the social sciences, which are now a powerful engine of radical ideology on Israeli campuses.

The significance of this trend should not be underestimated. Over the past two decades, the number of Israelis earning degrees in the social sciences has doubled, with sociology one of the most popular disciplines.² More than five thousand students receive their B.A. in the social sciences each year, and more than two thousand go on to receive advanced degrees. Many of these graduates end up working in the government and non-profit sectors, and having a significant impact on public policy. Yet during their most formative years, many of Israel’s future leaders are exposed almost exclusively to the radical outlook that dominates the field.

In this essay I intend to explore how critical sociology became the leading school of thought in the study of Israeli society. As I will make clear, the scholars of this school are so dedicated to advancing their ideology that they have come to focus far more on rewriting Israel’s history than on examining the issues of greatest concern to Israeli society today. Their proclivity for myth-smashing, coupled with their commitment to imported theoretical models, precludes any serious discussion of the unique aspects of Israeli life, and causes them to downplay, or even distort, historical facts.

These problems are so acute that they call into question the credibility of sociological research in Israel. Although criticism is no doubt an essential research tool—a fact of which the traditional sociologists were well aware—its employment in the service of ideology not only delegitimizes what was once a prestigious academic discipline, but also alienates sociology from the society it purports to study. Given the field’s role in shaping a society’s self-perception, and the impact its students have on Israeli public life, “critical sociology” is something supporters of the Jewish state cannot afford to ignore.

 

Long before the rise of critical sociology, critical analysis was an integral part of social research in Israel. The founders of Israeli sociology, far from feeling beholden to the political establishment, did not hesitate to voice their objections to government policy. Yet unlike today’s critical sociologists, who reject the very idea of a Jewish nation state, Israeli sociologists in the 1950s and 1960s maintained a commitment to the core beliefs of Zionism, as well as a critical independence of thought and research.

Scholarly interest in Jewish society in the land of Israel began before the founding of the state, in the period of the British Mandate. While most scholars who wrote on the topic were based in Europe, several of those in Mandatory Palestine offered a valuable insider’s perspective, including the sociologist and demographer Arthur Ruppin, who arrived in 1908; the anthropologist Shlomo Dov Goitein, who came in 1923; and the political scientist Siegfried Landshuth, who came in 1936. The creation in 1947 of the Hebrew University’s Department of Sociology produced the first generation of scholars who observed Israeli society from within, devoting their energies to analyzing its unique aspects. These were depicted, for example, in Samuel Noah Eisenstadt’s Israeli Society (1967) and in Social Stratification in Israel (1968), a collection of articles he edited; Joseph Ben-David’s Agricultural Planning and Village Community in Israel (1964); Moshe Lissak’s The Elites of the Jewish Community in Palestine (1981); and two books jointly authored by Lissak and Dan Horowitz, Origins of the Israeli Polity (1978) and Trouble in Utopia: The Overburdened Polity of Israel (1989).³

Radical perspectives, too, found expression in those early years, although they were far from dominant. During the pre-state period, two scholars with a “cosmopolitan” outlook were appointed professors of sociology at the Hebrew University: One, Arthur Ruppin, was head of Brit Shalom (“The Peace Association”); the other, Martin Buber, was a founder of Ihud (“The Union Association”); both groups opposed the idea of exclusive Jewish sovereignty, calling instead for the establishment of a binational state. Their influence, however, was limited: Ruppin died in 1943, before the university’s Department of Sociology was officially established, and Buber, the first head of the department, retired in 1950 and was succeeded by Eisenstadt.

The first generation of Israeli sociologists, especially Eisenstadt, echoed David Ben-Gurion’s belief in the authority of the state and its institutions, and advocated a centralized government.⁴ In this they were no different from scholars in other disciplines, though their studies adopted a more objective tone.⁵ “While it is true that no sociologist praised Ben-Gurion the way several Israeli writers had done,” writes Michael Keren of the Institute for Study of the Jewish Press and Communications at Tel Aviv University, “the field of sociology was undoubtedly permeated by his views on the authority of the state.”⁶ Yet despite what critical sociologists claim today, the early sociologists hardly served the establishment blindly.⁷ Eisenstadt and Judith Shuval, for example, argued in the 1950s that Israel’s “melting pot” policy had failed to achieve its goals, as evidenced by the socio-economic divide that persisted between Ashkenazim and Sephardim well into the second generation.⁸ Aryeh Simon, Leah Adar, and Sarah Smilansky took issue with the policy of “uniformity” in Israeli education, arguing in a series of articles in 1956 and 1957 in Megamot (“Trends”), the leading Hebrew-language journal of sociology and psychology, that standard teaching and testing methods were inappropriate for Sephardi students because of their cultural background.⁹ Moshe Lissak and Judah Matras also demonstrated that Israeli society was highly stratified, in spite of claims to the contrary by the country’s leaders. They described how social and demographic factors such as ethnicity, length of time in Israel, and level of religious observance affected social status.¹⁰ Clearly, the sociologists’ identification with the Zionist ethos did not prevent them from examining government policy critically and proposing alternatives.

Those years, moreover, were a period of rich academic pluralism, with journals such as State, Government, and International Relations and Megamot offering a variety of outlets for scholarly work. It was common, for example, for these journals to publish opposing viewpoints side by side, a practice which is surprisingly rare today.¹¹ Universities throughout the country established sociology departments, research methods became increasingly sophisticated, and Israeli sociology achieved international recognition.

Yet all this changed in the 1970s. The work of two scholars in particular, Yonatan Shapiro of Tel Aviv University and Sammy Smooha of Haifa University, redrew the boundaries of sociological discourse, giving it a sharply anti-establishment tone that grew only more strident with time.