Home
Israel in the Making

Israel in the Making

Stickers, Stitches, and Other Critical Practices

by Hagar Salamon

Published by: Indiana University Press

Imprint: Indiana University Press

304 Pages, 152.00 × 229.00 mm, 40 b&w illus., 1 table - 40 Illustrations, black and white - 1 Tables, black and white

Paperback
9780253023087
Published: March 2017

£31.00

Buy

Hardcover
9780253022806
Published: March 2017

£72.00

Buy

Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

The brilliant kaleidoscope of everyday creativity in Israel is thrown into relief in this study, which teases out the abiding national tensions and contradictions at work in the expressive acts of ordinary people. Hagar Salamon examines creativity in Israel's public sphere through the lively discourse of bumper stickers, which have become a potent medium for identity and commentary on national and religious issues. Exploring the more private expressive sphere of women's embroidery, she profiles a group of Jerusalem women who meet regularly and create "folk embroidery." Salamon also considers the significance of folk expressions at the intersections of the public and private that rework change and embrace transformation. Far ranging and insightful, Israel in the Making captures the complex creative essence of a nation state and vividly demonstrates how its citizens go about defining themselves, others, and their country every day.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Studying Israeli Folklore

Part One: Folklore in the Israeli Public Arena
Part One Invitation: Bumper Stickers as a Podium in Motion
1. Folklore as an Emotional Battleground: Political Bumper Stickers
2. "We the people": "Ha'Am" in the Turbulent Sphere of Israeli Roads
3. Kinetic Cosmologies: Sovereign and Sovereignty
Part One Recapitulation: Public Interaction on the Move

Part Two: Expressions in the Intimate Arena of Embroidery
Part Two Invitation: Embroidering Identity—Needlework and Needle-Talk
4. Embroidering Their Selves: Femininity and Embroidery in a Jerusalem Women's Group
5. Life Story as a Foundation Legend of Local Identity
6. The Intimate Career of a Transitional Object: Needlepoint Embroideries
Part Two Recapitulation: Needle Texts—Knowledge, Passion, and Empowerment

Part Three: Between the Public and the Private—The Mirrors of Ambivalence
Part Three Invitation: Emplacing Israeliness—Shifting Performances of Belonging and Otherness
7. The Floor Falling Away: Dislocated Space and Body in the Humor of Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel
8. What Goes Around, Comes Around: Rotating Credit Associations among Ethiopian Women in Israel
9. "David Levi" Jokes: The Ambivalence over the Levantinization of Israel
Part Three Recapitulation: Between Longing and Belonging—The Folkloric Expressions of Ambivalence

Closing Words: The Birth of Public Enunciation from the Spirit of Everyday Life
Bibliography
Index

Hagar Salamon is Max and Margarethe Grunwald Chair in Folklore at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is author of The Hyena People: Ethiopian Jews in Christian Ethiopia.

Written with a high awareness of folkloristic theory, the book will appeal not only to scholars interested in the evolving modern culture of Israel, but also to folklorists interested in critical and practice theory applied to traditionalized activities.
(Choice)
A richly researched book that meaningfully weaves together material culture study and narrative discourse, traditional and popular cultures, and politics and play, Israel in the Making is a multi-layered contribution to many adjacent fields.
(Journal of American Folklore)
Hagar Salamon's book is among a number of fascinating postmodern responses to the traditional concept of folklore. Its present-tense title, Israel in the Making, already liberates folklore from its frozen image and its association with ethnic groups and the past. A look at the contents reveals its presentation of a wider definition of what is folk and what is lore than has been the standard. The book deals with contemporary Israeli folklore, which is dynamic, constantly changing and far from a matter of the past.
(Nashim)