Elvis in Jerusalem: Post-Zionism and the Americanization of Israel [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Is VAPID Americanization bad for Israel? Is national unity a pejorative? According to Segev, social collectivism is dead, Americanism is thriving in Israel. Private parties now supplant group celebrations. If Paul Newman were to reprise his role as Ari Ben Canaan from the 1961 film, "Exodus," he might portray a capitalist in Ramat Aviv Gimmel, and not a committed Kibbutznik. Segev feels that more Israeli's pay homage to the Elvis statue at an Elvis Diner on the road to Jerusalem, than to a Herzl statue that stands outside of Herzliya, that beachside bastion of prosperous capitalism. Personally, aside from this post-Zionist's thesis, the book is worth reading if only for the bounty of tidbits of Israeli social history and the voices of Israel's scholars that are included. Segev smartly uses a recurring theme of statues, and the reader is left with a fresh look at the future of Israeli society.

Tom Segev, PhD historian turned journalist, produces a series of fantastic commentaries for this extremely short work. Those familiar with Segev's other work will notice that Elvis lacks one of the trademarks of his previous works: extensive (almost mindnumbing) footnotes.

After reading Segev's three other mammoth works (One Palestine, Complete; 1949: The First Israelis; and The Seventh Million), I was immediately struck by the simplicity of the book. Using his journalistic skills he produces a fascinating look into the changing society that is modern Israel.

While his other works may have broken new ground with his theses, this book mostly rehashes many of the ideas he writes about in his other books. Nevertheless I found the book immensely interesting. He writes it almost as if it is a non-fiction black comedy, weaving in obscure stories into a rich history.

As far as readability goes, this is probably Segev's best. It may not be for those who are beginners to the subject, but if you have already read a bit about Israel, the Palestinians, and the Middle East in general, it will give you a whole new insight into Israel.

ELVIS IN JERUSALEM is less about the "Americanization" of Israeli society than it is about the "de-Zionization" of Israeli culture.

Segev, one of the foremost Israeli "New Historians" (i.e. revisionists) sees the liberation of Israel from its drab, early, khaki-colored socialist-collective Pioneer culture as necessarily a good thing, and treats the resultant influx of American products, values, norms and even language as an amicable step toward globalization and Israeli normalization.

Segev is correct, to an extent. The severe and essentially narrow views of Israel's founders have fallen further and further out of step as the State of Israel has matured. As early Zionist philosophies have withered, pluralism has flourished. Where Ben-Gurion and his fellows wanted to create a socialist "New Hebrew" human being and a parochially secular yet all-Jewish state out of the disparate elements of European, Oriental and New World Jewry, Israel today embraces a diversity of practices, and has re-embraced Yiddish and Ladino culture, as well as that of Jews from other lands.

As the State has grown politico-emotionally there has been an increasing tendency to treat with the resident Arabs---Israeli Arabs and Palestinians both---on a more evenhanded basis. This is all to the good.

Segev addresses (but of course cannot resolve) the inherent contradictions of living in a democratic, secular State in which Jewish clergy or Zionist philosophers control certain key social structures. These contradictions affect all Israelis, no matter their ethnicity or faith, and create the dynamic tensions which drive Israeli society forward (or back, depending on one's views).

Segev views the American model as key. He revels in an open, pluralistic, multicultural society, but seems too close to the issue to see that these elements can also cause profound social schisms as they do in the U.S.. He never acknowledges the "Wal-Mart-ization" of this consumer culture, the substitution of instant gratification and cheap junk for quality and bedrock values, as in the least destructive.

Segev seems to view most Israeli schisms as overwhelmingly political ("Palestine" versus "West Bank" for example) or religious ("Who is a Jew?"), rather than directly addressing the sea change in Israel from Pioneer Culture to Organization Man Culture, which, in effect, is the same sea change that has altered the American social fabric.

Segev's "New History," in which he questions and debunks the accepted institutional mythos of the re-establishment of the Jewish Homeland, is thought-provoking. It would have been better and stronger had Segev bothered to document the majority of his statements and sources.

Although Elvis, a Melungeon of Sephardic Jewish descent, has long since left the building, Segev provides the American reader with a view of an Israel profoundly altered from the day of CAST A GIANT SHADOW, a modern, vibrant, complex and confused place full of living, breathing human beings.