Abstract
This article seeks to revisit the “Mizrahi” stance in the field of Mizrahi critical legal studies. Taking advantage of Rogers Brubaker’s differentiation between “group” and “groupness”, the article demarcates the gap between the view of Mizrahiness commonly held by critical Mizrahi researchers and activists, and the view of Mizrahiness characterizing ordinary Mizrahi men and women. While the former view Mizrahim as a discriminated-against minority group, the latter usually do not relate to themselves as members of one minority among the others found in Israeli society(Palestinians, labor migrants, refugees, LHTB sub-groups, etc.); and do not hinge their lives on the Mizrahi struggle. On the contrary, they view themselves as rooted in the Jewish collective, fully and actively tied to the State, and experience their life course as an open horizon. The article’s main argument states that the Mizrahi critique of the law should not ignore these findings; even more, that it should embrace them. Such a step will free the Mizrahi critique to take a more humble, attentive and empathic position that would balance between the Mizrahi identity of ordinary people, essentially the same as the accepted national-Jewish identity, and the Mizrahi-critical stance demanding social justice for Mizrahim as well as for other minority groups. This move will allow the Mizrahi Critical Legal Studies to formulate a legal activism intrinsically tied to the community in whose name it battles and by which it is supported. It will likewise assist Mizrahi Critical Legal Studies to establish a critical stream amenable to turn its gaze upon the critical approaches currently dominating academic legal studies international. The mission guiding this move is to update and challenge those the oriesin the presence of social realities that refuse to categorize themselves according to the liberal-critical logic in Israel and the world. Doing so promises to broaden and deepen Mizrahi Critical Legal Studies’ unique theoretical contributions to the academic-legal field.
Translated title of the contribution | Between ‘Group’ and ‘Groupness’: A Revised Glance at the Mizrahi Stance in Mizrahi Critical Legal Studies |
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Original language | Hebrew |
Pages (from-to) | 37-58 |
Number of pages | 22 |
Journal | משפט וממשל |
Volume | כ"ג |
Issue number | 1-2 |
State | Published - 2022 |
IHP Publications
- ihp
- Discrimination
- Equality
- Group identity
- Israel -- Ethnic relations
- Israel -- Social conditions
- Law -- Israel
- Law and socialism
- Minorities
- Minorities -- Israel
- Mizrahim
- Social groups
- Social justice