ISRAELI IDENTITY, PROBLEMS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE COLLECTIVE IDENTITY OF AN IDEOLOGICAL SOCIETY
In: The annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Volume 370, p. 116-123
ISSN: 0002-7162
Israeli collective identity has developed from some basic ideological-revolutionary premises & faces now, with growing diff'iation & stabilization, many new problems. The central problem in Israel as in other modern ideological societies has been the extent to which commitments to broader values & to collective responsibility can be maintained in the wake of the weakening of specific ideological commitments which often become manifest in 2 major, often interconnected, ways-in the narrowing of the scope of wider cultural & soc orientation, & in the growth of cleavages & conflicts in the central symbolic sphere. On the other hand, there exist within the Israeli cultural scene some trends & forces which tend to counter the tendencies to erosion. Among the most important are the relatively flexible relationship to diff traditions & the relative lack of overall cultural splits between diff camps. It is important to note that, until now at least, the changing Israeli identity has been able to absorb, to some extent, tensions & problems developing from the growing technologization & professionalization. The extent to which a continuous peaceful transformation of Israeli identity will be able to overcome the eroding tendencies analyzed above is perhaps the most crucial problem facing Israeli society. HA.