Zionist perceptions of Nazareth, Jewish perceptions of Jew and Arab in Upper Nazareth

Jean-Klein, Iris E. F. (1988) Zionist perceptions of Nazareth, Jewish perceptions of Jew and Arab in Upper Nazareth. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

This thesis explores cultural discourse among Jews of Upper Nazareth in Galilee. The discourse is provoked by the fact that they have to share their living space, even their country - the Jewish state - with Arabs who are also citizens of this state. Although the discourse is ostensibly about Jewish-Arab relations, it is conducted internally between the Jews and, the thesis will show, is even largely about relations between Jews, not between Jew and Arab. -- The construction of Upper Nazareth was begun in 1956; its site was deliberately chosen so as to be on a hill immediately overlooking the ancient Arab city of Nazareth, Christian and Moslem, and the thesis first looks, in detail, at the ideological issues that come to the fore among the pioneering Jews who build, develop, and settle Upper Nazareth. -- As political and economic relations between Jews and Arabs of the two Nazareths changed (with Arabs coming to live in Upper Nazareth), so, among the Jews, the difference between Us (Jews) and Them (Arabs), instead of being self-evident, became ambiguous. Here the thesis concentrates on the changing constructions of cultural Self among the Jews of Upper Nazareth. Our analysis demonstrates how the constituting of Self is inextricably entwined with its reciprocals - the constituting Other (Arab) and also with Jewish otherness in Upper Nazareth. -- The analysis concludes by showing how questions about Self and Other are seen, by the Jews of Upper Nazareth themselves, also to raise questions concerning apparent contradictions between two founding principles of the State of Israel: Zionism and democracy. The questions are, in large part, intractable. Yet in response to them, and to changing demographic profiles, the Jews of Upper Nazareth, so aggressively secular in the early years of the town, increasingly make use of the ancient Jewish religious tradition, although without necessarily any concomitant religiosity.

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