The Two Israels Revisited

In April 1962, I published an article called "The Two Israels" in Commentary Magazine. Commentary then was a liberal intellectual journal of politics and culture that featured Jewish-related topics (it later morphed into a brash voice of neo-con ideology). My article centered on the complex, often harsh relationships between the established European-origin Israelis (the First Israel) and the hundreds of thousands of new immigrants from Middle Eastern countries who had recently arrived (the Second Israel). Both groups, I wrote, viewed each other with some shock and apprehension: many among the reigning European segment feared that the influx of Arabic-speaking newcomers would spoil their dream of a "modern socialist society" and lead instead to a corrupting Levantinism; while, in turn, the Iraqi, Yemenite, and Moroccan Jewish newcomers struggling to establish themselves in their new bureaucratic-controlled environment complained bitterly of Ashkenazi prejudice and discrimination leveled against them. Paradoxically, whereas for centuries in Morocco or Iraq they had been categorized as "Jews", upon arriving in the Jewish State the immigrants found themselves labeled (or stigmatized) as "Moroccans" and "Iraqis".

More specifically, my 1962 article described how socio-economic stratification divided the Two Israels into their own separate unequal worlds. The First Israel (situated in "the veteran kibbutzim, fashionable north Tel-Aviv, and Jerusalem's elite Rehavia district") held the key economic positions and were relatively well-off, while those belonging to the Second Israel (settled by the state in peripheral "Yemenite villages and Moroccan development-area towns" or living in "Tel-Aviv slums and the old Kurdish quarter of Jerusalem") struggled in make-shift quarters and at best had modest incomes.

The European-origin Israelis were occupationally secure as government officials, army colonels, merchants, and professionals, and the immigrants were mainly "laborers, non-coms, or clerks". I wrote that this stratification pattern seemed likely to continue into the second generation: some children of privileged European-origin families might "study at MIT and the Sorbonne", whereas among the immigrants whose "children make up more than 60% of those entering grade school … less than 5% (succeed in) attending college". Not surprisingly, the same pattern applied to the political realm—European-origin Jews were the leading figures in the government (in 1962, 4 of the 14 government ministers were kibbutz members) as well as the numerous political parties, and as the Second Israel grew in number and skill many angrily asked "Why aren't our people in important positions?" and knowingly replied that discrimination was the obvious reason. Regarding intermarriage between the two groups, studies showed that "about 14 percent of all marriages" were mixed across ethnic lines, so that a relatively small number of marriages joined members of the Two Israels.

Finally, and not least important, I argued that the overall context of these unequal ties was the powerful movement to transform the Middle Eastern immigrants and their children into proper "Westerners" (whatever that might mean). The then national slogan of mizug galuyot, or "the intermixing of ethnic groups", was never really about "mixing", but rather the demand that non-Westerners should become "Western", and consequently "the schools, the army and other national institutions" were enlisted in what could correctly be called a "cultural crusade".

The picture that emerges from this brief sketch of 1960s Israel is a society that was new, raw, contentious, at certain moments proudly ambitious and idealistic, and at others, angry and conflicted. For some (primarily but not only among the First Israel) it was a heroic period of joint national purpose and successful state-building, whereas for others (particularly the Second Israel and the large number of post-1948 European immigrants) it was a harsh, frustrating time that demanded painful personal adjustments and that was frequently marked by disappointment.

What has since happened to the "Two Israels"? Is this formulation still a useful or convincing way to characterize ethnic-group relations? In this article I compare Israeli ethnicity in the present with the past, and consider the meanings and practices attributed to ethnicity especially among the second and third Israeli-born generations, the children and grandchildren of the post-1948...