You Can’t Pick Your Family

Abstract

Familism is a model of a social organization that assigns the family an important role in individual and collective identity. This article proposes a historical analysis and interpretation of the Seder celebrations of Jewish Israelis, in order to explore what is unique about Israeli familism-that it imagines the entire nation as an extended family. This ritual continues to be widely practiced today by Jews of every sector-secular, traditional, and religious. As a result, it has a significant presence in Israeli popular culture. The focus is on two questions: (1) who celebrates? That is, what forum convenes around the table? (2) How is it celebrated? That is, what ritual is conducted during the festive gathering? The historical and ethnographic analysis shows that over the course of the twentieth century, the extended family became the preferred forum for celebration, and that the conformist reading of the Haggadah and the other parts of the ceremony continue on the whole to follow the Orthodox rules, even in secular families. This mode of celebration is analyzed here as an expression of the political image of the entire Jewish people as one large extended family and as a demonstration of the extensive use of Jewish familism in the construction of Jewish identity in Israel today.

Deep Conventionality, or, Tracing the Meanings of Conventional Rituals

“…"-an interjection that has become "as much of a ritual as those set forth in the Haggadah" (Joselit, 1994, p. 227). These jokes, along with other expressions of impatience and boredom, expose the conventionality of the sacred ritual and introduce a sense of the ritual's meaninglessness into the performance itself (Shoham, 2014).…”

“…A good example is the classic complaint that punctuates the reading of the fixed text of the Haggadah during the Passover Seder ritual: “When do we eat?”—an interjection that has become “as much of a ritual as those set forth in the Haggadah” (Joselit, 1994, p. 227). These jokes, along with other expressions of impatience and boredom, expose the conventionality of the sacred ritual and introduce a sense of the ritual’s meaninglessness into the performance itself (Shoham, 2014).…”

Parenting and Children's Resilience in Military Families

“…The family, however, is an equally demanding Israeli "institution," and it too has great expectations of its members. Due to its high marriage and birth rates, and low rates of divorce and single parenthood relative to most Western countries, researchers have long recognized Israel as "a (traditional) familybased society" (Shoham, 2014 ). The confl ict that arises between these two institutions does so in practical ways: because of the soldier's presumed and expected total dedication to the army, for instance, his wife is, for the most part, left to shoulder most domestic and childcare responsibilities.…”

The experience of late life remarriage and its meaning for older Arab Muslim widowed men in Israel

“…It has also been studied in societies located between tradition and modernity, such as India (e.g., Samanta & Varghese, 2019) and Israel, which value self-determination alongside familism (Koren & Eisikovits, 2011). Familism is a form of social organization that grants the family an important role in individual and collective identity (Shoham, 2014), enabling the state to rely on the responsibility of family members for each other (Keating, 2022).…”