ETHNIC GENERATIONS: Evolving Ethnic Perceptions among Dominant Groups

ETHNIC GENERATIONS: Evolving EthnicPerceptions among Dominant Groups

Orna Sasson-Levy*Bar Ilan University

This study suggests that generational affiliation is significant in explaining distinctive ethnic

perceptions among dominant groups. In Israel, the Ashkenazim, Jews of European descent,

constitute the political, social, and economic elite. In-depth interviews with two generations of

Ashkenazim showed similarities in ethnic perceptions, but also revealed important differences

among the two generations. For the older group, Ashkenaziness is both an ethnicity-free norm

of Israeliness and a product of European culture performed by both the marking and unmarking

of cultural boundaries. The younger group, on the other hand, self-identifies as Ashkenazi, but

interprets Ashkenaziness as a thin ethnicity and primarily a position of social power. This evolu-

tion in ethnic perceptions is explained by the historical specific interface of three factors: domi-

nant discursive orders of the era, state institutions and policies, and the encounter with the

“other.”

INTRODUCTION

Despite the clear tendency of sociological studies of ethnicity to focus on the collectiveidentities of subjugated groups, over the last two decades, sociologists have shifted theirfocus to the identity of dominant groups. Research on dominant groups, primarilywhites, claims that their ethnic identity is unmarked, invisible, and often confoundedwith national identity and interests1 (Doane 1997; Twine and Gallagher 2008). Thegoal of critical whiteness studies is to expose the dominant groups’ ethnic identity as aspecific social-historical construct, thereby, to use Bhabha’s term (1998:23), challengingthe “tyranny of the transparent.”

Contemporary studies of ethnicity have gone further and by exploring within-group distinctions, they aim to deconstruct the homogenous image of dominantethnic groups (McDermott and Samson 2005). To understand the complexity ofethnic groups, researchers should examine within-group differences, explore thefactors that contribute to these differences, and investigate how subjects from similarsocial locations self-identify differently (Lamont 2000; Lacy 2007). Studies show thatdifferences in gender (Frankenberg 1993), socioeconomic class (Doane 1997; Buck2001), and sexuality (Berube 2001) shape different perceptions of ethnicity in domi-nant groups. I propose that generational affiliation is another crucial structural vari-able for the analysis of the deconstruction of the homogeneous and static view ofdominant groups.

*Direct all correspondence to Orna Sasson-Levy, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bar Ilan

University, Ramat Gan, 4731032, Israel; e-mail: [email protected]

The Sociological Quarterly ISSN 0038-0253

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The Sociological Quarterly 54 (2013) 399–423 © 2013 Midwest Sociological Society 399

Ethnic inequality has existed in Israel from its very inception. On the eve of Israeliindependence, the vast majority of the 600,000 Jews living in the country were fromEastern and Central Europe, known as Ashkenazim. After the Declaration of the State(1948), the national ethnic profile changed dramatically. Over the next decade,Israel absorbed over a million immigrants from more than 20 countries (from Europe,North America, Middle East, Asia, and North Africa). Despite significant heterogeneityin social and economic structures among the immigrants, a binary social structureemerged. Ashkenazim had greater political power, income, and occupational and edu-cational attainment than the immigrants from Muslim countries, known as Mizrahim(Khazzoom 2005). Nearly 50 years later, the massive immigration of the 1990s againaltered the contours of the Israeli ethnospace. Yet, the prominence of ethnicity as anaxis of social inequality (alongside class, gender, and nationality) persists; so does thestatus of Ashkenaziness2 as a category that confers advantages and privilege (Semyonovand Lewin-Epstein 2011).

For the purpose of this article, a distinction should be made between Ashkenazimas individuals and Ashkenaziness as a social category. Ashkenazim are Jews whose fami-lies originated from Europe, while Ashkenaziness is the local and contemporary socialcategory associated with Western culture and an elite social status. Hence, Ashkenazi-ness is a new social category whose features are very different from those that charac-terized the Ashkenazim in Eastern and Central Europe before World War II.3 Thiscategory can include individuals of European and non-European origin, since in orderto receive “Ashkenazi benefits,” one does not need European roots, it is sufficientto behave in a way that is perceived as Ashkenazi (Khazzoom 2003:488). Furthermore,Ashkenaziness, as a privileged social category, does not refer to all those of Europeandescent, particularly not those of lower classes, religious communities, and recent Ash-kenazi immigrants. Exposing the diverse and dynamic constructions of Ashkenazinessis a step toward challenging it as a status symbol and turning it from an invisiblemarker into a visible one.

In this article, I posit that generational differences are a key factor in understandingdifferences in self-perception of dominant ethnic groups. Based on 33 in-depth inter-views with Ashkenazim, I demonstrate that adults and younger people perceive theirethnic identity very differently. The expressions of ethnic identity of the older genera-tion, aged 60 to 75, ranged from denial of Ashkenazi ethnicity and self-identifying as ageneric “Israeli,” to portraying their ethnicity as a local manifestation of Western Euro-pean culture. Although the older interviewees are descendents of either Central/EasternEurope (9) or Western Europe (5), they mostly consider Western European cultureas their dominant cultural model. Thus, similar to whites in the United States, theyperceive their identity as unmarked and confounded with the national identity, or asWestern (see also Perry 2001). Surprisingly, the younger generation, aged 17 to 34,clearly acknowledged being Ashkenazi, but understood their Ashkenaziness as a “thin”ethnicity (Cornell and Hartman 1998) not based on shared European culture. Rather,they interpreted their Ashkenaziness as a position of power in Israeli society. For theyounger generation, to be an Ashkenazi is more a matter of status than ethnicity.

Ethnic Generations Orna Sasson-Levy

400 The Sociological Quarterly 54 (2013) 399–423 © 2013 Midwest Sociological Society

My contention is that the intergenerational differences in ethnic perceptions can beexplained by three key factors: the dominant discursive order of the era, state institu-tions and policies, and the encounter with the other, which also changes from oneperiod to the next. The differential interface of these three factors—discursive orders,state institutions, and the meeting with the other—shape the subjective perceptionof ethnicity and generate intergenerational differences in ethnic identity within thehegemonic group.

GENERATIONAL ANALYSIS OF ETHNICITY

The perception of ethnicity as an essentialist identity rooted in birth origin and pos-sessing historical and cultural depth (Isaacs 1975) has disintegrated in the face of his-torical and anthropological studies which show that ethnic identities once thought tobe centuries old are relatively recent and the consequence of historical transformations(Jenkins 1994). Ethnic identities have come to be seen as the product of specific social-historical structuring that evolves and changes in the context of power relationswith other groups and the state (Omi and Winant 1994). A cognitive shift in sociologyhas further deconstructed ethnicity, defining it not in terms of objective commonali-ties, but in terms of personal beliefs, perceptions, understandings, and identifications(Brubaker, Loveman, and Stamatov 2004:31). Cognitive sociology perceives ethnicitynot as a thing in the world, but a perspective on the world (Brubaker et al. 2004:32),manifested, as Barth (1969) has argued, in practices of classification and categorizationthat include both self-classification and the classification of (and by) others.

John Comaroff (1996) proposed a similar definition arguing that ethnic identities“are not things but relations,” most often relations of inequality.” “The making of anyconcrete ethnic identity,” argued Comaroff (1996:166) “occurs in the minutia of every-day practice, most notably in the routine encounters between the ethnicizing and theethnicized.” Based on the cognitive and relational conceptualization of ethnicity, thecurrent research analyzes symbolic boundaries marking as an important means of cre-ating and preserving ethnic identities and groups (Cornell and Hartman 1998; Lamontand Molnár 2002). This conceptualization and associated methodology are especiallypertinent to the study of dominant groups, as their ethnic identity is often hidden andunmarked (Doane 1997). Hence, critical whiteness studies assert that ethnicity lies ingroup relations, that is, how groups “do ethnicity” through boundary-making that dis-tinguishes the dominant group from other groups (Twine and Gallagher 2008).

Since the early 1990s, whiteness has been framed not as a cultural identity, but as aracial (although not racialized) social category characterized by a privileged position insociety (Frankenberg 1993; Roediger 1994; Lewis 2004). Early research focused on theunique status of whiteness as the “unmarked marker”—identified with a “neutral” uni-versalism while serving as a criterion against which all other groups are marked andracialized (Dyer 1997). Consequently, critical whiteness studies often seek to “color”the seeming transparency of white positioning to expose its perceived neutrality andreveal its heterogeneity, specificity, and localness (Frankenberg 1997). Later researchers,

Orna Sasson-Levy Ethnic Generations


including Ruth Frankenberg who established the concept of whiteness as an invisiblecategory, modified this position, arguing instead that whiteness is invisible primarily towhite people, while quite visible to the “other” nonwhite groups. The nonwhite groups,from their inferior position in the social hierarchy, are keenly aware of the color andprivileges of whiteness (2001). Frankenberg (2001:73) herself argued that to claim,“Whiteness is invisible” is to “repeat the gestures of hegemony.” To expose the ethnicityof dominant groups as a specific social and historical construct, current researchhas focused on within-group variations revealing the heterogeneity of ethnic and racialidentities among subjects located in similar social and economic positions (Lamont2000; Lacy 2007; Shoshana 2007). In this context, I suggest that generational differencesare crucial for differentiating ethnicity in hegemonic groups.

Generational analysis has been re-embraced in sociological research following thedownfall of metacollective identities (Corsten 1999). Since the old collective identitieshave disappeared, the concept of generations has offered an alternative identity andallows for the deconstruction of entrenched social narratives (Herzog 2007). KarlMannheim (1952/1970), originator of generational theory, insisted that generations arenot purely demographic categories of people born at the same time, but socioculturaland subjective units. For Mannheim, a generation contains two related and essentialelements: 1) “The generational site,” which is a common location in historical time,and 2) “The generational actuality,” a distinct and shared consciousness of that histori-cal experience. Both location and consciousness are necessary for the generation tofunction as a structuring process of social life (Corsten 1999; Gilleard 2004). White(1992) extended Mannheim’s definition, contending that unlike cohorts, generationsare “joint interpretative constructions.” Generational consciousness needs an event orpractice (located in time) that shapes the discourse and sets the boundaries of the gen-erational field (Gilleard 2004). For this reason, Mannheim believed there could be birthcohorts who might not share a framework of experience and not become a generation(Corsten 1999).

Based on Bourdieu’s (1977) work, Eyerman and Turner (1998:93) furtherexpanded Mannheim’s conceptualization and redefined a generation as, “a cohortof persons passing through time who come to share a common habitus,4 hexis, andculture, a function of which is to provide them with a collective memory that servesto integrate the cohort over a finite period of time.” Their definition focuses on theconcept of a shared or collective cultural field (of emotions, attitudes, values, and dis-positions) emerging at a particular moment in history, and a set of embodied practices(such as sports or leisure activities). This definition is particularly relevant to the studyof ethnic generations since ethnic boundaries often involve classifications that empha-size the body, visibility, and cultural habitus.

This article and others (see Wyatt 1993) demonstrate how cohorts become genera-tions when they undergo transformative events and share a consciousness that distin-guishes them from those who have not experienced the events. Yet, generations are nothomogeneous. Mannheim suggested the concept of “generational units” to distinguishgroups of people who do not only share the same experiences, but also develop similar



ways of reacting in response to the generational problems (Corsten 1999:254). There-fore, I did not study the generation as a whole, but only considered the generationalunit of middle-class Ashkenazim. I assume that the ethnic perceptions of generationalunits occur within a historical process and in response to historical events, manifestedin shared cultural fields and common embodied practices.

Ethnicity is researched through generational analysis, mainly in the context ofimmigration, by comparing ethnic identities and practices of a first generation ofimmigrants with the offspring of the second and third generation (Xue Lan and Grant1992; Rumbaut and Portes 2001; Levitt and Waters 2002). Few generational analysesfocus on the ethnicity of dominant groups. To explore the factors that shape the ethnicperceptions of the dominant group in a specific historic period, I use Hanna Herzog’s(2007) analysis of generation. Following Mannheim, Herzog (2007) argues that inIsrael generations are shaped and differentiated from each other by three main experi-ences: the generational site, the state and its institutions, and the encounter (or con-flict) with the [Palestinian] “other.” Although these parameters are useful, I believe animportant factor is missing from Herzog’s analysis—the dominant discursive order ofthe time. Corsten suggests, “It is clear that the identification patterns of interpretationand validation in social processes is dependent of their localization in discursive prac-tices” (1999:261). I agree, but prefer the term “discursive orders” to emphasize theimportance of dominant discourses in shaping ethnic identities, beyond localized dis-cursive practices. Hence, I will argue in this article that the defining experiences thatmold the ethnic perceptions of dominant groups are the dominant discursive order ofthe time, the state and its national institutions, and the encounter with the most visible“other” of the time. The shifting relationships between these three components createdifferent perceptions of ethnicity among members of the dominant group.

ETHNICITY IN ISRAEL

Until the 1990s, Israeli society was characterized by the dichotomy between Jewsand Arabs, and within Jewish society, between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim. Researchshowed that state projects and policies, such as the absorption policy, the land alloca-tion policy, and school integration programs, created two ethnic groups of differentsocial status and established ethnic stratification in Israel (Shohat 1997; Khazzoom2003; Shenhav 2006). Immigrants from diverse societies such as Morocco, Iraq, andIran became a single cultural group with similar socioeconomic features; the “Mizra-him” were relegated to the lowest rungs of Israeli Jewish society and occupying its geo-graphical periphery. Immigrants from Germany, Poland, and other European countriesbecame the “Ashkenazim,” a population group largely residing in financially establisheddistricts in the center of the country and belonging to the middle and upper class.

Over the last two decades, this binary structure changed significantly because oflarge-scale immigration from the former Soviet Union (over 1 million immigrants)and Ethiopia, and an influx of close to 300,000 migrant workers (Cohen 2009).This mass immigration has complicated the contours of Israeli ethnospace, but the



prominence of ethnicity as an axis of social inequality (alongside class, gender, andnationality) has persisted, along with the higher status of Ashkenaziness as a categorythat confers advantages and privilege.5 The Ashkenazim were, for the most part, theupper and middle classes of Israeli Jewish society, while the Mizrahim generally occu-pied the lower echelons, and the Arab citizens of Israel were at the bottom of the hier-archy (Haberfeld and Cohen 2007). Israeli men of European origin (not former SovietUnion immigrants) enjoy the highest socioeconomic ranking, as reflected in housingvalues, family income, and level of education (Dahan et al. 2002; Adler, Lewin-Epstein,and Shavit 2005; Semyonov and Lewin-Epstein 2011). In 2010, for example, Arab maleemployees earned 32 percent below the average wage; Mizrahi male employees earned7 percent over the average wage, whereas Ashkenazi male employees earned 33 percentabove the average wage (Swirski and Konor-Attias 2011). Moreover, the representationof Ashkenazi men in the higher echelons of politics, university faculties, the economicelite, and the media is much higher than their proportion of the population (Avraham,First, and Elefant-Loffler 2004; Shenhav 2006). This correlation between ethnic affilia-tion and socioeconomic status has not changed in the past 50 years and continuesin the second, third, and even fourth generation (Semyonov and Lewin-Epstein 2011;Haberfeld and Cohen 2007). There has been definite progress in the levels of educa-tion, employment, income, and especially political representation of Mizrahim inIsrael. However, this progress has not been accompanied by the closing of the afore-mentioned gaps both because Ashkenazim have enjoyed a higher rate of social mobility(Lissak 2000) and because of the general rise in inequality in Israel as the result of aneoliberal economic policy, welfare cutbacks, privatization processes, and the weaken-ing of the trade unions (Cohen 2006). As these data attest, the social-cultural categorydefined as Ashkenazi is the dominant ethnic group in Israel, which, according to Doane(1997:376), is “the ethnic group that exercises power to create and maintain a patternof economic, political, and institutional advantage, which in turn results in the unequal(disproportionately beneficial to the dominant group) distribution of resources.”

Thus far, research on ethnicities in Israel has concentrated on oppressed groups,mainly Mizrahim, immigrants from Ethiopia, and the Former Soviet Union (Shohat1997; Al-Haj 2002; Shenhav 2006; Mizrachi and Herzog 2012). However, the researchon Ashkenaziness is still in its infancy and is limited in scope. Most of the scholarshipto date has concentrated on the invisibility of Ashkenaziness as a social category andattempted to decipher the processes that led to the perception of Ashkenaziness as theuniversal norm in everyday life in Israel (Chinski 2002). There is a dearth, then, of phe-nomenological research that examines how Ashkenazim create, confront, and changeethnic identities.

METHODOLOGY

This qualitative study explores perceptions of Ashkenaziness from the perspective ofthose who are defined as Ashkenazi. Thirty-three interviews were conducted with Jewsof European descent: 18 with Ashkenazi seniors and 15 with Ashkenazi young adults.



The group of seniors consisted of 12 women and 6 men aged 60 to 75. Fifteen of themwere born in Israel, one man was born in Germany in 1934, another man was bornin Hungary in 1947 (both immigrated to Israel as young children), and one womanwas born in 1947 in Poland and immigrated when she was 1 year old. Nine of the oldergroup are of Eastern/Central European descent, and five are of Western Europeandescent. Today, 8 of them live in kibbutzim (rural collective communities), and theremaining 10 live in the urban center of Israel. Currently, they can all be classified asmiddle class.

All the interviewees of the older group were born between 1934 and 1948 (forma-tive pre-State era). The eldest in this group belonged to the group known in Israel as“Dor Tashakh,” the 1948 generation, who grew up in the pre-State period. The War ofIndependence was their foundational experience, even for those who did not partici-pate in it. This group is part of a “canonical generation” whose personal stories con-verge with formative national events and become a “model for worthy behavior”(Ben-Ze’ev and Lomsky-Feder 2009:1048). Others in this group were born just beforeor after Israel’s establishment, when the existence of a sovereign state was already a fact.Nonetheless, I consider these interviewees as one generation because their similaritiesexceed their differences. All the members of the older group received a very ideologicalsocialization during a period when all aspects of life—health, education, sports,agricultural settlement—were run by political parties or movements affiliated withpolitical parties (Horowitz 1993). Therefore, they share a generational consciousnessthat was highly nationalistic and politicized, with Ashkenaziness as one of its maincharacteristics (since the bulk of the Jewish population then living in Palestinewas Ashkenazi) (Segev 1984). The “we-sense” (Corsten 1999) was very strong in thisgeneration.

The younger interviewees included 5 men and 10 women, aged 17 to 34, nine fromthe Gush Dan urban center and four from rural communities. The youngest subjects inthis group were high school students, and the oldest were young adults who had com-pleted their studies and were in the early stages of their professional careers. One wasborn in the United States and moved to Israel as a teenager, the rest were born in Israel,and all come from middle-class families. Born between 1973 and 1990, the youngerinterviewees grew up in a different country—a bigger Israel, with the occupation ofthe Gaza Strip and the West Bank as integral to the national identity, and two wars inLebanon and two intifadas defining life as an ongoing battle/state of emergency. Theirsociety is also more ethnically and culturally complex, and its generational conscious-ness is more fragmented than that of the previous generation.

The interviews were conducted between 2005 and 2007 by graduate sociologystudents at Bar-Ilan University.6 Each interview opened with the same three questions:What is your ethnic identity? When did you become aware of it? How is your ethnicidentity expressed? The dialogue then continued to the role of ethnicity in family life,social relationships, professional life, and so on, at the discretion of the interviewersand the interviewees. To protect the interviewees, I use pseudonyms instead of theirreal names. All the interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed.



The analysis of the interviews was conducted in two stages: First, I read the inter-views, extracting major themes that revealed ethnic perceptions. Next, when I realizedto my surprise that the younger interviewees held different perceptions of Ashkenazi-ness, I reread the interviews to better understand the ethnic themes in the specific his-torical context of each generation.

Clearly, a sample of 33 participants is not considered a representative sample nor isstatistically large enough to generalize the large and heterogeneous Ashkenazi popula-tion in Israel. However, as Small (2009) and Charmaz (2006) have argued, statisticalrepresentativeness is an irrelevant criterion for qualitative research. Instead, researchextrapolation should be “based on the validity of the analysis rather than the represen-tativeness of the events” (Mitchell 1983:190). Hence, I do not pretend to make generalstatements about Ashkenazim in Israel, or about the two different generations of Israe-lis. Rather, the inductive analysis of the interviews allow me to compare the genera-tions, reveal how the subjective meaning of ethnicity can change from one period toanother, and identify some of the mechanisms through which generational affiliationand ethnic perceptions are related.

INTERGENERATIONAL SIMILARITIES

Although the focus of this article is intergenerational differences, the ethnic percep-tions shared by both generations are important indicators of the ethnic order in Israel.When comparing the two groups, three important similarities were repeatedly found.First, many of the interviewees in both groups mentioned skin color as a marker ofethnicity. The hegemonic discourse in Israel discourages overt references to skin color,since this is associated with concepts of race and racism, which are reserved for discus-sions of Nazi racial theory and the trauma of the Holocaust (Herzog, Sharon, andLeykin 2008). However, parallel to the hegemonic discourse that rejects the mention ofskin color, there is a covert discourse in which tall, light-skinned Ashkenazim are seenas superior and as a physical ideal (Frankel 2006). Therefore, the concepts of blackand white, or dark and light, indicate different social positions. This is expressed in thewords of Dina, a 71-year-old teacher from a northern kibbutz, who spoke of Jewishimmigrants from Ethiopia:

I feel the different identity when I see the Ethiopians; they are not part of us, reallynot. The Ethiopians are a “foreign element” here. In what sense? The situation theycame from, their skin color . . . It’s a problem. They don’t fit in.

Dina mentions skin color as a major element of Ethiopians’ strangeness. In a differentway, Dana a 28-year-old woman from a homogeneous Ashkenazi community inthe Galilee, used skin color to describe the positioning of a classmate from a mixedAshkenazi–Mizrahi family: “We would laugh at Kobi, who was black. We laughed athim because he was the only one who was different. Everyone was Ashkenazi, and hewas half-Ashkenazi.” Yulia, 22 years old, demonstrated that black and white dichoto-mies are applied to Ashkenazim as well, “Ashkenazim . . . I don’t know, I think that



we’re different in regard to food, and in the aspect of skin color, this is how we can beidentified, we’re white, light, and that is what Ashkenazim are.”

The range of skin tones in Israeli society is exceedingly diverse, from very light to verydark, for both Ashkenazim and the Mizrahim. There are more Mizrahim than Ashkena-zim at the darkest end of the spectrum, yet appearance is not a reliable indicator of one’sethnicity. Thus, the frequent mention of skin color by both generations is not only about“skin color,” rather Ashkenazim use skin color references to differentiate themselves fromMizrahim and to establish a social hierarchy (Mizrachi and Herzog 2012).

A second shared aspect is that both groups applied the Orientalist discourse whendiscussing ethnic differences.7 In their interviews, the older Ashkenazim associatedthemselves with ambition, higher education, success, emotional restraint, rationalism,good manners, secularism, high culture, leftist political orientation, middle- to upper-class status, and emotional aloofness. At virtually the opposite extreme, Mizrahinesswas identified with loudness (mentioned very frequently), emotionalism, passivity,excitability, maudlin music, dishonesty, feelings of oppression and inferiority, religiousobservance, and traditional gender relations. Many Ashkenazim also associated Mizra-hiness with close family ties and emotional warmth.

The list of “ethnic characteristic” collected from the younger generation’s inter-views was shorter, but echoed the same views as the older interviewees emphasizingthe ambitions and success of Ashkenazim and thereby hinting at the failure of Mizra-him. This intergenerational similarity supports the argument, made by Shohat (1997)and Khazzoom (2003), that Orientalism has a stable and lasting effect on Israeli ethnicdiscourse.

Concurrently, both generational groups do not seem to hold strong essentialistconceptions. They both use cultural and social definitions of Ashkenaziness and believethat people can “change their ethnicity.” Interviewees of both groups expressed thenotion that by exhibiting the proper cultural behaviors individual Mizrahim canbecome Ashkenazi. Hence, both groups depict a common structure, in which distinc-tions between “east” and “west” are stable, but by changing their behavior people canmove between categories (see Khazzoom 2003).

These three shared notions of ethnicity—the importance of skin color, the use ofOrientalist discourse, and the depiction of the ethnic structure as stable with dynamicpotentials for ethnic movement of individuals—seem to be enduring characteristicsof the ethnic order in Israel. However, the two generations differed in how they self-identified and in their interpretation of Ashkenaziness.

THE OLDER GENERATION: BETWEEN TRANSPARENT ANDWESTERN ETHNICITY

When asked about their ethnic identity, the older interviewees typically answered inone of two ways: They defined themselves as either culturally neutral, to use Rosaldo’sterm, “postcultural,”8 or they described their ethnicity as an expression of WesternEuropean culture.



Most of older generation interviewees expressed the first option and did not articu-late feelings of identification with an ethnic group. When asked about ethnic identity,Dina, 71 years old, answered, “I am Jewish, secular, and Israeli. That is how I definemyself.” Michael, 61 years old, answered, “My ethnic identity? Israeli. First of all, I amthe son of Jewish parents, so my primary ethnic identity is Jewish.” Leah, 70 years old,said, “I am a Sabra [Israeli born], I am not attached to anything other than that.” Inthese answers, the interviewees present themselves as generic Israeli Jews, seeminglynonethnic, universal, and unified. The interviewees regarded themselves as benchmarksof Israeliness, representing the Israeli and/or Jewish collective as a whole. Based onthese answers, it would seem that Ashkenazim do not have a strong sense of ethnicbelonging or identity. Yet, the lack of ethnic consciousness does not indicate that eth-nicity is not a relevant category in their lives. In an ethnicized social system, all actorsare ethnicized, including those who do not perceive themselves as such (Lewis 2004).However, the visibility of culture varies according to social status: Cultural invisibilityis a characteristic of individuals who hold full citizenship and institutional power inthe nation-state (Rosaldo 1989:198–9). Similar to dominant groups in other societies,Ashkenazi ethnic identity is hidden and confounded with national interests and iden-tity (Doane 1997). Therefore, the older generation of Ashkenazim did not manifesttheir ethnic identity in shared cultural traits, but maintained it as a privileged positionthrough marking and unmarking of symbolic cultural boundaries.

ASHKENAZINESS AS A WESTERN EUROPEAN CULTURE

The second expression the older interviewees used for self-identifying was presentingthemselves as belonging to Western European culture by marking cultural boundaries.For example, Niza, 70 years old, recalled the early days of her kibbutz:

The Yekkes (German Jews) brought with them Bach, Beethoven, and Goethe. Mymother used to tell the stories of how Enzo would walk around reciting Dante, andZami would recite Goethe, and they would compete who remembers more. And athome, my mother would recite Pushkin.

Portraying oneself as belonging to the Western European tradition was often accompa-nied by the well-known Orientalist distinction between “the West and the rest.”Shimon, who was born in Germany and moved to Israel in 1940, explained:

I speak European languages, English and German. It’s true I also studied Arabic,but this is really something special. I read European literature. I am certainly cultu[cultured] . . . As a whole, we belong to the community of Europeans, in every-thing; in music, food, clothes. We are Western Europeans. I don’t wear a galabieh orTarbush. It’s not that I mind if someone else does.

In his words, Shimon not only marks cultural boundaries through defining his ownWestern cultural capital, he marks the other culture as well—the “other,” the Mizrahim



wear galabiehs or a tarbush, meaning they belong to an Arab culture. David, born inHungary in 1947, marked habitus differences when he spoke about mourning customs:

We keep the pain inside. Everything is pent up and very quiet. The Mizrahim letit all out. At funerals, they scream, they wail, they even throw themselves on thecoffin. You rarely see that among the Ashkenazim.

Yael, 70 years old, from a kibbutz in the center of the country, repeated this rational-emotional dichotomy:

I think in their [the Mizrahim] approach, everything comes from the heart, notthe head. As an Ashkenazi woman, it doesn’t work for me. We tend to use ourheads—to think. For them, the heart comes first. They first see what their heartfeels and then they act.

It is unnecessary to expound here on the similarity between these Ashkenazi imagesand the Orientalist discourse described by Edward Said (1978). However, this markingof cultural boundaries was accompanied by an opposing discourse that seeks to blurthem. Many interviewees saw Mizrahim as engaging in Ashkenazi habitus and viceversa. Often, the interviewees cited a family member—a son-in-law or spouse—whowas Mizrahi in origin, but Ashkenazi in behavior. Yael, aged 70, said:

Then we have Eitan. Eitan is my son-in-law, He’s our Mizrahi . . . but he is totallyAshkenazi. Although he comes from a Mizrahi home, he is very Ashkenazi in hisattitudes. His parents also, you know, it is like they are not Mizrahi; they think andthey are not loud and crude. There is nothing Mizarahi in Eitan’s mentality, exceptthat he will not eat pork and he fasts on Yom Kippur. But that’s it. Nothing else. Hekeeps these even though his parents are not religious; but they always kept theseand he wants to respect them; it’s in his blood.

For Yael, both being loud and crude as well as a degree of traditionalism signifiesMizrahiness. When she says, “it’s in his blood” she presents Mizrahiness as an essential-ist identity. Yet, she is proud that her son-in-law crossed ethnic boundaries; to her theseboundaries are fluid and flexible.

The interview with Rafi, a 60-year-old doctor from an affluent neighborhood,demonstrates the dual practice of the marking and unmarking cultural boundaries.Rafi began the interview with a universal nonethnic description of himself, “How do Idefine myself? As an Israeli, living in the state of Israel.” In this sentence, he blurs ethnicdistinctions and portrays Israeliness as a homogeneous identity. However, toward theend of the interview, he described his wife’s family making clear cultural distinctions:

I married an Iraqi woman. When I visited her aunts or uncles they would be sittingout in the yard with pickle tins, and chickens wandered around between us. They



lived the way they did in Iraq. There is a huge gap between Suzanne and her family. . . because she became “Ashkenazified.” Sure, there can be an Ashkenazi Moroccan!An Ashkenazi Moroccan is someone who loves to eat gefilte fish, no, cholent [tradi-tional Ashkenazi dishes]! I see guys like that sitting next to me at a concert, or aplay, or demonstrating with me at left-wing rallies, against the right—not the otherway around . . .

In his quote, Rafi engages in a dual discourse, a “double speak.” When describinghis wife’s family members, he uses typical Orientalist discourse to establish culturalboundaries. Yet, he blurs these same boundaries when he detaches the culture fromthose who practice it. Rafi presents his Mizrahi spouse as Ashkenazi, yet clarifies thatshe integrated into his Ashkenazi family only after (or because) she adopted Ashkenaziculture. He does not hold an essentialist concept of culture, but neither does he thinkthat all cultures are equal. Rather, Rafi portrays a hierarchy in which it is only possibleto “progress” from an inferior culture to a more advanced one (Balibar 1991).

Ethnic talk has a dual nature for the older generation. This generation distancesitself from Mizrahim by marking boundaries which preserve the cultural hierarchybetween those perceived as Western and others. Concurrently, the seniors erase the cul-tural boundaries, which allow Ashkenaziness to remain transparent and unmarked.Combining the two practices—hierarchal cultural visibility and erasure of ethnicdifferences—preserves the privileged status of Ashkenaziness as the universal norm, the“unmarked marker.”

HEGEMONIC ETHNICITY IN THE ERA OF NATION-BUILDING

As previously mentioned, I posit that generational ethnic perceptions are molded inthe interface of three factors that characterized the era: discursive orders, state institu-tions, and the encounter with “the other.”

The “double speak” of the Ashkenazi seniors reflects the tension between the twodominant discourses of their era: the Zionist “ingathering of the exiles,” and a WesternEurocentric discourse. The older generation grew up during nation-building, when acomplete identification with the state and the Zionist ideology was self-evident amongchildren of the elite. For them, personal and national identities merged. Leah, born in1936, said:

We grew up in a very historically important period, and essentially, we built thecountry. We were little children and too young to have any real duties [. . .], but weknew and saw everything. The arrival of the British, Black Sabbath, and the War ofIndependence.

Note that Leah speaks in plural terms, demonstrating that her generation “do notonly have something in common, they have a (common) sense for the fact that theyhave something in common” (Corsten 1999:258). The dominant discourse of the era



was the Zionist discourse, calling for the building of a national home for the Jews. As afounding principle that conferred legitimacy on the Jewish state, Zionism embracedthe principle of “kibbutz galuyot”—the ingathering of the exiles. According to this prin-ciple, the amalgamation of different Jewish groups would create a new uniform Israeli-ness, which would create equality among Jews. This principle required shedding ofprevious identities (vestiges of the diaspora) and adopting a uniform modern Israeliidentity (Raz-Krakotzkin 1993/4; Shohat 1997). Ethnic identities were to gradually dis-appear in favor of ethnic homogenization, the creation of one people with no ethnicdivisions (Shenhav 2006). Under such circumstances, the hegemony of the Ashkenazimwas not legitimate and had to be concealed and camouflaged. This was a primaryreason for Ashkenazi invisibility and their renouncing of ethnicity as a major stratify-ing principle of Israeli society.

However, the social reality did not constitute an ethnic melting pot, but rather wasstructured along a Western-Ashkenazi vision that merged with Eurocentric moderniza-tion. Indeed Zionism imagined itself, from its inception, as a Western movement andin contrast to the Orient (Chinski 2002; Shenhav 2006). The Zionist movement origi-nated in Europe, and adopted the European notion of nationalism. In his utopiannovel, Altneuland (Old New Land), the Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl (1960 [1902])described the Orient as barbarian, dirty, and backward, confirming Said’s (1978) con-tention on the European Orientalist perceptions of the East. A Jewish state, he believed,would bring Western technological and cultural progress to the Middle East. Thisvision of the state as Western is not limited to Ashkenazim, but creates identificationbetween Ashkenazim and the state, solidifies their power, and preserves their privilegedstatus.

The dual ethnic discourse of the seniors, which both denies Ashkenaziness whileupholding it as representative of the preferred Western identity, reflects the duality ofZionist discourse itself, which upholds a melting pot ideology for the Jews and concur-rently maintains Eurocentric perceptions. A minority of seniors, those who identifiedthemselves as Ashkenazi, said that they became aware of their ethnic identity in thewake of the mass immigration of Jews from Arabic-speaking countries in the early1950s. During the years 1947 through 1952, the Jewish population in Israel more thandoubled, growing from 600,000 to over a million and a half. The large wave of immi-grants who arrived immediately after the founding of the State of Israel was comprised,in almost equal parts, of Holocaust survivors from Europe and refugees from Muslimcountries in the Middle East (mainly Iraq). Immigrants from North African countries(mostly from Morocco) immigrated during the latter half of the 1950s and the early1960s. By then, the residential dwellings of the central cities were occupied, and manyimmigrants were directed to the more distant (formerly Arab) towns of the coastalplains (Adler et al. 2005). Other immigrants were settled in tent camps and publichousing put up on the outskirts of Jewish towns and in development towns builtmainly in the 1950s for their settlement.

When old-time Ashkenazim met the Jewish immigrants from Muslim countriesfor the first time, they viewed them as the incarnation of “otherness.” They described



feelings of strangeness, alienation, and even detachedness toward these newcomers (seeSegev 1984; Horowitz 1993). As Zila, who was born in 1935 in Jerusalem, said:

When did I find out I am an Ashkenazi? I think I realized it during the War of Inde-pendence [1948], when immigrants from Yemen and Morocco arrived, we noticedthat their color is a bit different. I had never heard of these ideas before that.Neither at home nor at school were there any (Mizrahim).

The Mizrahim were seen as a homogeneous group of, premodern, religious, nonpro-ductive people unsuitable for the life in modern Israel. The encounter with this “com-plete other” threatened the homogenous Zionist image. The most convenient recoursewas to disregard ethnicity as a principle of stratification and develop a nonethnic self-perception. Hence, during the state-building process, the meeting of the Ashkenazimwith the Mizrahi “other” encouraged the self-identification of Ashkenazim as noneth-nic and at the same time shaped their self-identification as Western Europeans.

The argument that “today, there are no Ashkenazim and Mizrahim,” meaning thatethnic discrimination no longer exists and that nowadays “Ashkenazi” and “Mizrahi”distinctions have no significance, is often heard in public Israeli discourse. For the mostpart, the seniors interviewed for this study shared this outlook. They self-identified in anonethnic manner. However, contrary to this popular discourse and contrary to mypersonal expectations, this is not borne out by the responses of the young interviewees,who directly identified themselves as Ashkenazim and thereby reinforced the impor-tance of ethnicity in the Israeli social construct.

THE YOUNGER GENERATION: ASHKENAZINESS AS PRIVILEGE

The transition from a collectivist society to a society that encourages individualismwith increased globalization processes has exposed Israelis to a host of other culturesand diverse discursive orders (Ram 2005). These historical and cultural changes haveclearly affected the ethnic perceptions of young people. Contrary to the popular argu-ment that the younger generation is purely “Israeli” (chiefly because of mixed mar-riages between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim), many of the young interviewees (10 out of15) stated outright that they are Ashkenazim, and for them Ashkenaziness is visible.Nira, 34 years old, from a wealthy Jerusalem family, said: “I’m Ashkenazi from all sides.I have two grandfathers from Germany, one from Cologne and the other from Butow;and two grandmothers, one from Lithuania and the other from Russia.” Guy, 25 yearsold, from Tel Aviv, said, “How do I see myself? As an Ashkenazi. My parents are Ash-kenazi.” Omer, 17 years old, replied, “First of all, I’m Ashkenazi. My mother is Roma-nian and my father is German. My grandfather, my great grandfather, and my father’sgrandfather were killed in the Holocaust.” Omer considers his Ashkenaziness signifi-cant in several ways: It connects him to the previous generation (whose membershe lists), shows his European origin, and as the ultimate proof of Ashkenaziness, hecites the family connection to the Holocaust. Unlike Omer, Maya, 22 years old, whose



parents are German and Yugoslav, considers Ashkenaziness as a preferred choice, “I seemyself as an Ashkenazi. Even if my mother says, ‘You’re not a hundred percent,’ becausethe Yugoslavs are not considered Ashkenazi . . . My family is from Europe. That’s Ash-kenazi in my eyes.”

Unlike the seniors, the younger interviewees do not see themselves as representinggeneric Israeliness, but belonging to a specific ethnic group. From this finding, wemight have concluded that Ashkenaziness has become a self-aware identity and lost itshegemonic power. For example, Baruch Kimmerling (2001) argued that the Israelisecular Ashkenazi middle class has gone from absolute social-cultural dominanceto being one of many groups. Awareness of Ashkenazi identity among the youngergeneration may thus be attributed to the new diminished status of Ashkenazim as adefensive minority.

Yet, the notion of Ashkenazim as a minority was not raised by the younger inter-viewees. Their awareness of being Ashkenazi did not emanate from a sense of a losthegemony or cultural persecution. To the contrary, they identified their Ashkenazinessas a position of social power. Contrary to the claims of Doane (1997:380), growing cul-tural visibility does not necessarily indicate that a group has declined in status or feelsthreatened.

Young people seem to be more aware of their Ashkenazi identity because of a risein identity politics, especially the consolidation of publically marked and discussedMizrahi identity. In the 1990s, both the academic world and Israeli social movementschallenged the melting pot and “ingathering of the exiles” ideologies and promoted theethos of multiculturalism (Shenhav and Yonah 2008). Social movements of Mizrahiwomen, religious women, Palestinian men and women, and LGBT activists have raisedpublic awareness to a wide range of collective identities that were formerly hiddenfrom the public view. This multiplicity of cultures and identities in Israel is not new,but social heterogeneity has only grown, alongside mounting public awareness that thisdiversity deserves formal legitimacy (Kimmerling 2001; Shenhav and Yonah 2008). Therise of identity politics has received institutionalized endorsement through programsof the Ministry of Education and Israel Defense Forces policies and has raised publicawareness of ethnicity. Thus, Ashkenazim have become more introspective about theirown ethnic identity. Furthermore, the narratives of the younger generation show thatthe academic discourse on ethnicity, which rejects the naïve acceptance of melting potideology, has permeated popular discourse and encouraged reflexive inquiry into theethnic identity of hegemonic groups as well.

ASHKENAZINESS AS A THIN ETHNICITY

Although the young people, or at least some of them, are aware of their Ashkenaziness,its meaning has changed. The younger interviewees mentioned Europe as their familyorigin, but did not perceive Europe as the basis for their identity or practices, or as amajor cultural model. Clearly, they were unaware of the cultural differences betweenEastern and Western Europe. Unlike the older interviewees, none of the younger ones



mentioned European cultural artifacts such as languages, literature, music, art, oropera (if anything, they are much more attuned to American culture). Rather, for theyounger generation, Ashkenaziness was associated with higher education, knowledge,ambition, and success. Galit, 17 years old, said, “Ashkenaziness is linked to the desire toget a lot done . . . always to aim high, to do as much as possible.” Maya, 22 years old,said, “The Ashkenazim are the ones who feel it’s important to [go] study; no matterwhat . . . Going to school is important to them because they know it is part of thefuture.” Yochai explained why practices are more important than origin:

An Iraqi can also be Ashkenazi. Today, being Ashkenazi is not a matter of geogra-phy; it is a matter of personality. Having a burning desire for education and excel-lence is what Ashkenazi means in the 21st century. It has nothing to do with skincolor or ethnic roots.

Their perception of Ashkenaziness was, thus, limited to a small collection of symbols,contexts, and images. Ashkenaziness does not disappear, but has become a “thin ethnic-ity,” that is, an ethnicity not preserved in the manner commonly portrayed in the litera-ture (Cornell and Hartman 1998). According to this view, Ashkenaziness is a thin andfluid identity: a set of practices related mainly to status and not necessarily connectedto European descent or culture. Guy, 25 years old, of Tel Aviv used a beautiful image ofa cellophane paper to define thin ethnicity:

It does not wrap me up like some kind of cellophane paper. My boundaries arevery easy to breach. My Ashkenaziness doesn’t bind me. I can make friends withwhoever I want because it’s my choice. I can choose the food I eat on Fridaysbecause it’s my choice. The places where I hang out depend on my friends andwhere I feel like going. In other words, I’m the one that chooses, and my Ashkena-ziness doesn’t cramp my style. I didn’t grow up in a home that confined me tobeing Ashkenazi.

Ashkenaziness, in Guy’s view, is not a set of traits, cultural tastes, or fixed customs towhich he is committed, but a fluid identity that can be chosen, in part or as a whole.This perception of Ashkenaziness as a constructed identity, shared by both generations,is not surprising considering that Jewish ethnic identity has contained a strong anties-sentialist strand, as demonstrated by the Westernization of European Jews by the end ofthe 19th century (Khazzoom 2003). Presenting contemporary Ashkenaziness as a fluididentity, easy to mimic, includes the potential for crossing ethnic boundaries: Mizra-him can choose to “do Ashkenaziness” and thus enjoy its advantages. However, whilesome Mizrahim perform perfectly as Ashkenazim, the performance of Ashkenazifica-tion is not accessible to everyone. Ashkenaziness is identified in Israel with light skin.Therefore, despite the variety of skin tones in Israel, skin color still constitutes a barrierto movement between ethnic identities. Moreover, Ashkenazification does not offer a“sure path” to social advantage since the crossing ethnic boundaries is often described



in Israel as an imperfect performance of Ashkenaziness, involving failure and shame(Sasson-Levy and Shoshana forthcoming). Hence, perceiving Ashkenaziness as fluidand easy to acquire conceals its privileged status at the top of the stratification ladder,makes sure that it will not be challenged as the hegemonic group, and maintains thehierarchical ethnic order. Therefore, although some of the young people see themselvesas cultural hybrids, who can choose where, when, and how to “do” Eastern or Westernethnicity, more often than not they choose strategically to “do Ashkenaziness.”

DISCOVERING ETHNICITY THROUGH PARTICIPATIONIN STATE INSTITUTIONS

The two other factors that shape ethnic perceptions (in addition to dominant discur-sive orders) are state institutions and the encounter with the Mizrahi “other.” For theyounger generation, this encounter occurred when they entered state institutions, inparticular middle school, high school, and the army. Middle schools (seventh to ninethgrades) are a product of the educational reforms of the late 1960s that introduced inte-gration of children from different neighborhoods and population sectors in the sameschools. As an integrative framework, Israeli middle schools were meant to be an equal-izing incubator. However, research shows that ethno-social distinctions continued inthe integrated schools, manifested by hierarchical academic tracking, separate classesfor the underprivileged, and so on (Swirski 1999).

Galit, 17 years old, from Ness-Ziona, described how she became aware of her eth-nicity in middle school, mainly through ethnic jokes she had not heard or understoodbefore. Asked when she found out she was Ashkenazi, she replied:

Since when have I known? I won’t say I always knew. Sometime around middleschool it became an issue. Suddenly kids were talking about it. There were thesejokes about Moroccans. You know, racist jokes, about their being stingy and stuff.This is when I became conscious of it.

Interviewer: When you started to laugh about it, that’s when you got it?Galit: Yeah, usually I laughed, but that’s the thing . . . I wasn’t always sure it wasfunny.Interviewer: And did they tell jokes about you?Galit: About Ashkenazim? No.

Although political correctness rules apply to public discourse in Israel, ethnic jokesare quite popular. Jokes are a way of addressing subjects otherwise perceived as taboo andsilenced. Often, humor is used for humiliating, mocking, and subjugating social groups(Sev’er and Ungar 1997), and as a hidden way of preserving inequality (Billig 2001).Ethnic humor encourages crude stereotypes (Speier 1998) and marks clear boundariesbetween social groups, establishing who is in and who is out. Shifman and Katz (2005)emphasize that when dominant groups use ethnic humor against immigrants they



typically abandon their own ethnic identity and assume the role of standard-bearers forthe nation. In such cases, ethnic humor carries a dual message of “welcome to ourmelting pot, but notice that it is our ethnicity (and superiority) that defines this nation”(Shifman and Katz 2005:845). As Galit stated, members of dominant ethnic groups tendto tell jokes about weaker groups like women or blacks, but not about themselves (Davies1990). Galit’s remarks show that by deciphering the ethnic humor, she gradually deci-phers the ethnic structure of society and where she fits.

Yochai, a 26-year-old student, also traces his awareness of his Ashkenaziness tomiddle school. He explained:

Where I grew up, most of the people around me were Ashkenazi, so there was noconflict [in elementary school]. My exposure to inter-ethnic conflict was only inmiddle school and high school. It was always tense. There was a sense of bias, ofAshkenazim discriminating against the Moroccans.

Here Yochai, like some of the other younger interviewees, describe the integrationefforts in school as a form of deception. They claim that schools fail to bridge theethnic gaps and are busy trying to conceal them. The Ashkenazi students, those withtheir eyes open, saw who stayed in school and who dropped out after 10th grade. Theysaw the economic disparity between themselves and the Mizrahim, and saw the cliquesformed in school by the Ashkenazi students. Middle schools were the place ethnic iden-tities were discovered and exacerbated.

Hence, interpreting Ashkenaziness primarily as a power position results fromdiscovering one’s ethnicity in institutions where the social hierarchy is clearly visible.When young people move from their homogeneous neighborhood elementary schoolto an integrative middle school, they encounter the ethnic “other” for the first time.Ethnic encounters in an integrative school or the army sharpen ethnic differences,strengthen the self-perception of belonging to social elite, and perpetuate stereotypes.Ironically, by participating in “melting pot” institutions (where the state has tried toestablish ethnic integration), Ashkenazim first become aware of their ethnic identity.

The young interviewees were indeed more aware of the ethnic stratification inIsrael and the preferential ranking of the Ashkenazim than the seniors. They related totheir privileged position in an ambivalent manner, but did not deny its existence. Guyexplained, “I think that [Ashkenaziness] is identified in society as something thatis advantageous, and not part of a minority . . . The Ashkenazi starts from a highervantage point—better schooling, a better financial situation.” Einav, 31 years old, wasaware and ambivalent about the Ashkenazi advantage in Israeli society:

The Ashkenazim are an elitist group here. They’re the ones who rule the universi-ties, the medical profession, the media . . . It’s, like, “we established the state andyou should say thank you.” You see it in the media, in the government. I don’t feelcomfortable with that kind of elitism. I don’t like this sense that we are discrimi-nating against others.



Einav is aware of the unequal structure of Israeli society (“The Ashkenazim are anelitist group here.”) and knows very well where she fits. For her generation, Ashkenazi-ness is not a weak category. Ashkenazim are not on a par with other groups, they enjoymajor advantages, as Yahav, 26 years old, from Givatayim, said:

The most interesting question you should be asking me is whether I’m happy to beAshkenazi. It’s racist to say such a thing even about yourself, but the bottom lineis yes. I’m happy I’m Ashkenazi [because] it means you don’t have to live withthe question of whether I have the same opportunities as everyone else . . . I don’tthink I will ever have to be in a situation in life where I have to say that I didn’t getaccepted into something or achieved something because of my ethnicity, or wheremy parents were born, or the color of my skin, or the color of my eyes.

The young interviewees, more than the older generation, see Ashkenaziness as a posi-tion of power and privilege. Their Ashkenaziness is not a matter of European originor visible culture, but a source of empowerment, a form of symbolic capital to be con-verted into other types of capital.

DISCUSSION

The study of ethnic identity of dominant groups and the factors that change and varythese identities is still in its early stages. In Israel, such research is almost nonexistent.One of the major obstacles for such research is the invisibility of the dominant ethnicidentity. Breaking down the dominant group into components such as status, gender,place of residence, and generation helps to expose the ethnic structure and make itmore visible. In this article, I suggest that analyzing intergenerational differences cancontribute to a better understanding of the structure and meaning of ethnic hierarchiesand their evolution.

I recognize that the sample used in this article is not statistically ample to generalizethe heterogeneous Ashkenazi population in Israel. Yet, the comparative analysis of theinterviews reveals the dynamic nature of subjective meaning of ethnicity and allowsme to identify some of the mechanisms that link generational affiliation with ethnicperceptions among the dominant group.

Although, as I presented, the two generations shared some ethnic perceptions,my research revealed basic differences in how they self-identify and interpret theirhegemonic ethnic identity, which alludes to the dynamic character of ethnic identities.For the older group in this study, Ashkenaziness was perceived as both an ethnic-neutral norm of Israeliness and a product of Western European culture. Members ofthe younger group self-identified as Ashkenazim, but for them Ashkenaziness wasmainly a signifier of power and privilege in Israeli society.

Among both generations, the awareness of being Ashkenazi and Ashkenaziness(as a subjective identity) were linked to historical events, dominant discursive orders ofthe time, state institutions, and the nature of the encounter with the “other.” The older



generation molded its ethnicity-free (but, ultimately Western) consciousness in a pri-marily Ashkenazi society, which embraced a melting pot ethos alongside a Eurocentricmindset. Meeting immigrants from Arabic-speaking countries in the 1950s was a first,emotionally fraught, encounter with non-European Jews which spurred contemplationof their own ethnic identity. Dominant discourses, state institutions, and the encounterwith the “other” in the era of nation-building formed the generational ethnic identityof the dominant group.

The younger generation has not conserved the illusion of the invisibility of Ash-kenaziness. By their participation in state institutions—state schools and the army—aimed at ethnic integration, they have become conscious of their ethnic identity.Ironically, even when the state tried to blur ethnic identities, its policies ultimatelydefined and even honed them.

The intergenerational differences in ethnic perception among the dominant groupreveal a gradual development of local Ashkenaziness, less rooted in European Ash-kenazi Judaism than in the actions of state institutions and dominant discourses. Thus,21st-century Israeli Ashkenaziness is not only distinct from Ashkenaziness in Europebefore World War II, it is also different than Ashkenaziness in the nation-building era.In contemporary Israel, Ashkenaziness is a localized historical ethnic construct mainlycharacterized by the power it grants.

The historical process described in this article can be conceptualized as a transitionfrom the hegemony of Ashkenazim to the hegemony of Ashkenaziness. In the past, theAshkenazim were the hegemonic group, and Ashkenaziness became the model every-one had to adopt and follow. Among the younger generation, the Ashkenazim appearless hegemonic, but Ashkenaziness as habitus continues to grant social benefits andentitlement. The shift from Ashkenaziness as ethnicity to Ashkenaziness as habitus andstatus, grants more mobility to groups for which this was not previously possible. AsAshkenaziness became detached from European culture and more localized, its defini-tion became more flexible, it became easier for Mizrahim to join the group, and useAshkenaziness as a lever for mobility. This has sparked a growing “Ashkenazification,”that is, Mizrahim adopting practices that are marked as Ashkenazi, to attain some of itsbenefits (Sasson-Levy and Shoshana forthcoming).

If young Ashkenazim perceive cultural-geographic origin as no longer importantand Ashkenaziness as a flexible and penetrable group that defines the elite in Israel, canwe still discuss Ashkenaziness as an ethnic group? If Ashkenaziness is a fluid, localized,contemporary concept with broad and flexible contours, then the ethnic structure isdynamic and amenable to change. However, if Ashkenaziness is both leverage for socialadvancement and an ethnic category that defines dominant group than ethnicity is akey organizing principle of Israel’s social stratification.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank the students from the seminar course, “Ashkenaziyut and the Sociologyof Ethnicity in Israel,” who shared the interviews they conducted with me; Yuval Yonai,



who allowed me to use interviews administered by his students; Yonit Lazerowitz andRo’ee Parati, the research assistants who conducted most of the interviews for thisstudy with intelligence and sensitivity. My thanks also to the members of the researchgroup on “Identities in Israeli Society,” headed by the late Prof. S.N. Eisenstadt, andto Avi Shoshana, Edna Lomsky-Feder, and Ze’ev Shavit for their helpful comments.Finally, I want to thank the two editors of The Sociological Quarterly and three anony-mous reviewers for their honest and constructive comments.

NOTES

1For a different approach to white identity in the Unites States, see Hartman, Gerteis, and Croll

(2009).2The translation of the Hebrew term “Ashkenaziyut” as Ashkenaziness is intended to preserve the

meaning of an entire social category as opposed to individuals (much like the term “white-

ness”). For other uses of the term, see, for example, Sasson-Levy (2013); Shohat (1997); Yadgar

(2011).3The ultraorthodox Ashkenazi communities in contemporary Israel maintain, to a certain

degree, the flavor of the Jewish religious communities of Central and Eastern Europe before

World War II, but even in these communities Ashkenaziness has a new meaning in the context

of the state of Israel.4Habitus, a term coined by Bourdieu (1977) refers to socialized norms or tendencies that guide

behavior and thinking. Habitus is “the way society becomes deposited in persons in the form

of lasting dispositions, or trained capacities and structured propensities to think, feel, and act in

determinant ways, which then guide them” (Wacquant 2005:316). Thus, the particular contents

of the habitus are the result of the objectification of social structure at the level of individual

subjectivity.5According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, which categorizes ethnic groups based on the

father’s country of origin, Mizrahim constitute 50 percent of Jews born in Israel between 1983

and 1985, Ashkenazim constitute 30 percent; and mixed Mizrahi—Ashkenazi families 20

percent (Cohen 2006).6Sixteen of the interviews were conducted by students in a research seminar of the Department

of Sociology and Anthropology at Bar-Ilan University (2005 through 2007); and 17, by two

research assistants during their graduate studies in sociology (2006 through 2007).7Edward Said argues in his book, Orientalism (1978), that Western European discourse con-

structed the orient through binary narratives, which represented the Orient using stereotypes

such as week, primitive, lazy, or cunning. This discourse establishes “the East” as antithetical to

“the West,” and serves to implicitly justify not only Western feelings of superiority, but also

European and American colonial control over Eastern Asia and the Middle East.8Rosaldo introduced the concept “postcultural” to define cultural invisibility and codify how the

denial of culture marks one’s place on the high end of social hierarchy (Rosaldo 1989:198–9).

See also Perry (2001).

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ETHNIC GENERATIONS: Evolving Ethnic Perceptions among Dominant Groups

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