Beyond Suspicion: The Moral Clash between Rootedness and Progressive LiberalismA free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. For more than four decades, socially disadvantaged Israeli Mizrahim—descendants of Jews from Middle Eastern and North African communities—have continuously supported right-wing political parties. Scholars, left-wing politicians, and activists tend to view Mizrahim as reacting against their structural exclusion, or more crudely as acting against their own interests, but Nissim Mizrachi locates the source of their so-called paradoxical behavior within the limitations of the liberal grammar by which their outlook and behavior are read. In Beyond Suspicion, Mizrachi turns the direction of inquiry back on itself, contrasting liberal grammar—which values autonomy, equality, and universal reason and morality as the only authentic human choice—with the grammar of rootedness, in which the self is experienced through a web of relational commitments, temporal ties, and codes of collective identity. Recognizing rootedness as a fundamental need and desire for belonging is necessary to understand both scholarly and political rifts in Israel and throughout the world. |
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academic activists Ahuva Arab countries Arab Jew Ashkenazi Jews Ashkenazim belonging boundaries citizens of Israel college education consciousness context critical discourse critical sociology cultural defiance define discrimination discussion Druze Eliran elite ethnic example Facilitator Fahmi false consciousness focus groups Gidi Haim Hannah Hebrew hermeneutics human rights Ibrahim identified identity politics immigrants individual inequality interpretive Israel Prize Israeli Arab Jewish whole Lamont Leah liberal grammar liberal-progressive Likud lives meaning Mizrahi identity Mizrahi Jews Mizrahim and Ashkenazim modern moral Muslim narrative non-liberal ontological oppressive Palestinian Palestinian citizens participants Peace percent politics of recognition population populist position possibility primordial progressive question regard religion religious religious Zionist representation response Reut right-wing Riki Riki's rooted Mizrahi subject rooted subjects Samir Sasson secular sense Shenhav stance story structure suspicion Swirski Tariq Tel Aviv University term there's tion tradition ultra-Orthodox women Yesha Council Ziad Zionist Zuheir