Routledge Handbook on Contemporary Israel

This Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of contemporary Israel, accounting for changes, developments and contemporary debates. The different chapters offer both a historical background and an updated analysis of politics, economy, society and culture.

Across five sections, a multidisciplinary group of experts, including sociologists, political scientists, historians and social scientists, engage in a wide variety of topics through different perspectives and insights. The book opens with a historical section outlining the formation of Israel and Jewish nationalism. The second section examines contemporary institutions in Israel, their developments and the contemporary challenges they face in light of social, economic, political and cultural changes. The third section explores geopolitics and Israel’s foreign relations, exploring conflicts, alliances and foreign policy with neighbors and powers. The fourth section engages with Israel’s internal divisions and schisms, highlighting questions of identity and inequality while also outlining processes of integration and marginalization between groups. The final section explores matters of culture, through the social and demographic shifts in contemporary music, poetry and cuisine, along with the struggles for inclusion and the impact of globalization on Israeli culture.

The Routledge Handbook on Contemporary Israel is designed for academics along with undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses on Israel, Israeli politics, and culture and society in modern Israel.

Guy Ben-Porat is Professor at the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University, Israel. He is the author of Global Liberalism, Local Populism: Peace and Conflict in Israel/Palestine and Northern Ireland (2006) and Between State and Synagogue: The Secularization of Contemporary Israel (2012). He is also the co-author of Policing Citizens: Minority Policy in Israel (2019).

Yariv Feniger is Associate Professor in the Department of Education at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and a fellow in the Education Policy Program at the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel. His areas of research include social and educational inequality, education policy and comparative education. His last co-authored book on education inequality and education policy was published in 2019.

Dani Filc is Professor at the Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University, Israel. His fields of research include Israeli politics, populism and the health care system. Among his publications are Hegemony and Populism in Israel, Circles of Exclusion: The Politics of Health-Care in Israel and The Political Right in Israel: The Many Faces of Israeli Populism.

Paula Kabalo is Associate Professor at the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the study of Israel and Zionism, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. She is the head of the Azrieli Center for Israel Studies. Her most recent book Israeli Community Action: Living Through the War of Independence was awarded the AIS Shapiro Prize for 2020. Her research focus is on the history of citizen associations and civil society in Israel and the interrelations between David Ben-Gurion and the wider public.

Julia Mirsky is Professor at the Department of Social Work, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. Her research focuses on the psychological aspects of migration. She has published extensively on this subject and supervised numerous MA and PhD students. At Ben-Gurion University, she serves as the Samuel and Miriam L. Hamburger Chair in Integration of Immigrant Communities and heads the Center (in progress) for Research and Education on Migrants’ Lives.