Israeli Cinema—Moving Images of a Society in Flux

Tuesdays 12:50 – 1:40

Thursdays 11:45 – 1:40

Mondays (screenings) 12:50-15:50

Professor Motti Inbari

Office: 106 Walker Hall

email: minbari@ufl.edu

Films and nations are both relatively recent innovations in human experience (and this is, of course, particularly true of the Israeli nation), and both have, in their relatively brief existence, become omnipresent in our lives, shaping the ways in which we understand, view, and represent reality.

Film has a unique ability to act both as a reflection of a given (national) culture, and at the same time as a catalyst stimulating further development of that culture. Throughout the semester, we will view Israeli cinema as a means for understanding Israeli society, its changing culture, and its image of itself from a range of perspectives.

Requirements:

Students will be required to attend screenings of the films and to participate in class discussion (attendance is, of course, required for this).

The course will not be reading intensive. You requested to prepare a mid paper that will be based on your readings and on your analyses of the films. The paper (together with attendance and participation, which are required for its completion) will constitute 45% of the final grade.

In your final exam, you will take on a broader issue in Israeli society and the manner in which it is reflected and addressed in more than one film. The final paper will constitute a further 45% of the final grade.

The extra 10% will be constituted from the class participation.

Films and Readings:

Birth of a Nation—Israel’s “Heroic Period”

Monday August 29 Films:

Pre-state shorts from the Spielberg Archive

“First Film of Palestine” (excerpts)

“Springtime in the Holy Land”

“Gateway to Freedom”

Tuesday, September 6

Creating a State: Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer

Readings:

Pierre Sorlin, excerpts from “How to See an Historical Film”

Anita Shapira, “The Fashioning of the ‘New Jew’ in the Yishuv Society”, in Major Changes Within the Jewish People in the Wake of the Holocaust, ed. Yisrael Gutman, Jerusalem, 1996, pp. 427-41.

Micha Yosef Berdichevsky, “Wrecking and Building”, in The Zionist Idea, ed. Arthur Hertzberg, NY 1977, pp. 293-95.

The Impact of the Holocaust on Israeli Society

Films:

Monday, September 11:

The Summer of Aviya

Monday, September 18:

Because of That War

Readings:

Tom Segev, The Seventh Million—The Israelis and the Holocaust, New York, 1991, pp. 3-11; 153-85; 255-320

Yehiam Weitz, “Shaping the Memory of the Holocaust in Israeli Society of the 1950s”, in Major Changes, pp. 497-518.

The “Ingathering of Exiles”—immigration and Ethnic Relations in Israel

Film:

Monday, September 25:

Salah Shabbati

Monday, October 9:

James’ Journey to Jerusalem

Readings:

Goldberg, Harvey, “The Changing Meaning of Ethnic Affiliation”, in The Jerusalem Quarterly, Number 44, Fall 1987, pp. 39-50.

Sammy Smooha, “Class, Ethnic and National Cleavages and Democracy in Israel”, in Israeli Democracy Under Stress, ed. Ehud Sprinzak and Larry Diamond, Boulder, Colo., 1993, pp. 309-42.

Zeev Rosenheck, “The Political Dynamics of a Segmented Labour Market—Palestinian Citizens, Palestinians from the Occupied Territories and Migrant Workers in Israel”, Acta Sociologica 46:3, pp. 231-249

The Contentious Triangle—Arabs and Jews in a Contested Land

Film:

Monday, October 16:

Behind the Walls (Me-Ahorei ha-Soragim)

Readings:

Israel Kolatt, “The Zionist Movement and the Arabs”, in Essential Papers on Zionism, ed. Jehuda Reinharz and Anita Shapira, New York, 1996, pp. 617-47.

Calvin Goldscheider, Cultures in Conflict—The Arab Israeli Conflict, Greenwood Press 2002, pp. 59-118.

Gilead Morahg, “The Arab as ‘Other’ in Israeli Fiction”, Middle East Review, 22, 1 (1989), pp. 35-40.

War and its Impact on Israeli society

Films:

Monday, October 23:

Kippur

Monday, October 30:

G’mar Gavi’a (Cup Final)

Readings:

Segev, The Seventh Million, pp. 387-418.

Susan Hattis Rolef, “The Domestic Fallout of the Yom Kippur War”, in Revisiting the Yom Kippur War, ed. P. R. Kumaraswamy, Frank Cass, 2000, pp. 177-94.

Menahem Begin, “The Wars of No Alternative and Operation Peace for Galilee (August 8, 1982), in The Israel-Arab Reader—A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict, ed. Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin, Penguin 1984, pp. 652-56.

“The Kahan Commission Report”, in The Israel-Arab Reader, pp. 670-75

Religion, Society, and State—An Uneasy coexistence

Films:

Monday, November 6:

Ha-Hesder (Time of Favor)

Monday, November 13:

Medurat ha-shevet

Readings:

Charles S. Liebman, “Religion and Democracy in Israel”, in Israeli Democracy Under Stress, pp. 273-92.

Yaron Tsur, “The Religious Factor in the Encounter between Zionism and the Rural Atlas Jews”, in Zionism and Religion, ed. Shmuel Almog, Jehuda Reinharz and Anita Shapira, Brandeis, 1998, pp. 312-29.

David Horovitz, A Little Too Close to God—The Thrills and Panic of a Life in Israel, New York 2000, pp. 242-85.

A Foundering Founding Ideology?—New Generations in a New Society

Films:

Monday, November 20:

Late Summer Blues

Monday, November 27:

Nina’s Tragedies

Monday, December 4:

Mars Turki (Clean Sweep)

Readings:

Baruch Kimmerling, The Invention and Decline of Israeliness—State, Society, and the Military, UC Press 2001, pp. 89-172.

Lilly Weissbrod, Israeli Identity—In Search of a Successor to the Pioneer, Tsabar and Settler, Frank Cass 2002, pp. 71-105.