From Ben-Gurion to Venezuelan Converts

This study analyzes the development of the unique Law of Return (LOR) of the State of Israel. The LOR is aimed at enabling the immigration of all Jews to Israel and can be viewed as an expression of Israel’s ethno-religious self-definition. The analysis includes amendments made to the LOR since its implementation in 1950 to today, and how different groups of Jewish immigrants have been affected by the law. Moreover, this paper introduces a case study that so far has not received the scholarly attention it deserves; the exodus from Venezuela and the particular case of nine Venezuelan converts to Judaism in accordance with the Conservative branch of the religion. The research uncovers that the LOR contains a core contradiction. While it should be assumed that everyone is treated equally before the law, discrepancies in the treatment of different individuals and groups of people with regard to the LOR continue taking place. The differences in treatment are due to the fact that terms such as ‘Jew’ and ‘Jewish convert’ are subjective in accordance withWeber’s theory on ethnicity and the terms have been given different meanings by Jewish religious law, the Supreme Court, and the legislative power. While recognizing that the definition of these terms form the identity of the State of Israel, which is heavily contested between Orthodox religious and secular forces since its establishment as a Jewish State – this study offers suggestions for approaches to dealing with the randomness of the LOR. These consist of two main points: clarifying who should be responsible for verifying the question of who is a Jew, and listing a set of criteria that a person should meet in order to be eligible for the LOR.

Lyric, Nation, and Dialogism

This article introduces, for the first time, the marginalized writings of Israeli-statehood-generation poet Maxim Ghilan (1931–2005), who lived in self-exile in Paris as a result of his political activism. By investigating the relationship between lyric poetry and nationalism, the article introduces Ghilan’s early poetry, followed by a close analysis of his groundbreaking and understudied poem “In Enemy Land,” written upon his return to Israel. Ghilan’s poetry overturns nationalist discourse by revisiting the events of 1948 and evoking the dual notion of return, namely, the Israeli Law of Return and the Palestinian Right of Return. In an effort to contribute to New Lyric Studies, the article offers a new form of lyric reading, the “trans-national lyric,” a hyphenated form of transnationalism used to emphasize crossing over and moving beyond the nation. The trans-national lyric dismantles the lyric speaker’s sovereign position and consequently uncovers the silent — and silenced — dialogic voices that are an inseparable part of the genre. The article concludes with an analysis of lyric address and the ethical role of reading, whereby readers are implicated in the process of forced remembering and historical revision.

How the Law of Return Creates One Legal Order in Palestine

The prevailing discourse in Israeli academia on justifying the values of Israel as a “Jewish and democratic state” takes the form of a debate involving questions of group rights of a national minority, as in any liberal democracy. The framework of this discourse relies on three interconnected, hegemonic assertions. These assertions assume the applicability of equal individual rights, put aside the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as irrelevant for the “Jewishness” of the state as it belongs to a different rule of recognition, and conceptualize the Green Line based on majority-minority relations with Jewish group rights, including the Law of Return, as not leading to discrimination against individuals. I contend that these assertions are invalid and that colonialism is the relevant framework of Israel’s constitutional identity in Palestine (the Green Line, the West Bank including Jerusalem and Gaza). I argue there is one Constitution in Palestine based on one conception of sovereignty, regardless of any rules of recognition where the Law of Return, together with the value of “preserving a Jewish majority,” constitutes its very essence that targets the Palestinians as such. The Article presents a case-law study regarding family life between spouses and their children in Palestine. This case-law reveals an unfamiliar phenomenon. Unlike the plurality of written laws that characterize colonial regimes, the Israeli legal system introduces a unique model in which racial domination is created mostly by decisionism of the Court, out of the written laws and regardless of any rule of recognition.

ОРГАНИЧЕСКОЕ ЗЕМЛЕДЕЛИЕ В РОССИИ – БЛАГО ИЛИ КАТАСТРОФА?

Organic farming (OF), which is being actively introduced in Russia, cannot be an alternative to intensive agriculture and, because of its inherent unsolvable problems and non-compliance with the laws of agriculture, will not become such an alternative. OF will not provide for compliance with the Law of Return, and its productivity will be limited by the Law of Minimum. OF always will be accompanied by the shortage of phosphorus and potassium. OF introduction will not provide environmentally "clean" products. Moreover, it will be unable to produce enough products for the population of Russia. The claim of OF proponents that natural ores, which are supposed to compensate for nutrient removal, are safe is unsubstantiated. Indeed, why is a chemical element from a mineral fertilizer dangerous, whereas the same from a natural ore is safe? Can the properties of the element change so dramatically? They can, according to OF proponents logics, which thus denies the laws of Nature and science. The symbiotic rhizobia use 20.17 MJ to produce one mole of nitrogen, whereas technical nitrogen is obtained at the cost of 1.56 MJ, i.e. the latter is 12.93 times cheaper in energy terms. Therefore, the argument that OF provides for "gratuitous" nitrogen is false.

Loving Judaism through Christianity

This contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium on xenophilia examines the life choices of two Jews who loved Christianity. Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik, born into an ultra-Orthodox, nineteenth-century rabbinic dynasty in Lithuania, spent much of his life writing a Hebrew commentary on the Gospels in order to document and argue for the symmetry or symbiosis that he perceived between Judaism and Christianity. Oswald Rufeisen, from a twentieth-century secular Zionist background in Poland, converted to Catholicism during World War II, became a monk, and attempted to immigrate to Israel as a Jew in 1958. Rufeisen, while permitted to move to Israel to join a Carmelite monastery in Haifa, was denied the right to immediate citizenship of Israel which the Law of Return guarantees to all bona fide Jews. And this particular Soloveitchik has largely been forgotten, given the limits of Jewish interest in the New Testament and of Christian attention to rabbinic literature. This article explores the complex and vexing questions that the careers of these two men raise about the elusive distinctions between Judaism and Christianity, on the one hand, and, on the other, between the Jewish religion and Jewish national identity.

LABOR INSERTION POLICIES OF RETURNING COLOMBIAN MIGRANTS BETWEEN 2012 AND 2018

The article aims to analyze if the linkages between migration policies and labor related measures for returnees in Colombia since the approval of the Law of Return, 2012. In order to do so, the authors use a documentary analysis methodology derived from a desk review of labor market information, employment and migration policies. This process considers aspects related to the design of differentiated programs for the returnee population and the existence or development of monitoring mechanisms. The article considers the context of emigration and return in Colombia, the labor profile of Colombian migrants in host countries, as well as the recent dynamics of the labor market in Colombia, discussing some structural factors such as unemployment and informality and the need to consider these aspects in the interventions created for the socioeconomic integration of returnees. The authors list and analyze the main activities on issues of employability and entrepreneurship as presented by the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Labor in their management reports to demonstrate the existence and extent of inter-institutional coordination mechanisms. The article concludes with the need to collect and disseminate information on the evidence of the labor insertion of returnees in order to collect and propose technical inputs from different actors that could be included in the programs or policies aimed at doing so.

Presenting Ethnicity: Israeli Citizenship Discourse

In 1950, Israel enacted the Law of Return and 2 years afterwards passed its Citizenship Law. These measures reflected the Zionist goal of encouraging Jewish immigration to Israel/Palestine, so citizenship was mostly limited to Jews. In other words, an ascriptive/ethnic classification was at the foundation of Israeli citizenship. This article explores the construction of the citizenship laws in relation to various forms of categorization—biological descent, cultural belonging, racial classifications, and voluntary affiliation. It asks how the Israeli citizenship policy was presented and which mechanisms were employed in order to justify the incorporation of all Jews, including those from Arab countries, while attempting to exclude non-Jews. After analyzing official state policies and parliamentary debates in Israel regarding the citizenship laws, I present the mechanisms employed to present the ethnic immigration policy. Those mechanisms include emphasizing the positive and democratic sides of allowing Jewish immigration; repeatedly avoiding the usage of racial terminology; highlighting the willingness to incorporate non-Jewish residents; and employing security justifications when prohibiting non-Jewish immigration. Being the Jewish State, Israel wanted to favor Jews in its immigration and naturalization policies. However, being also committed to democratic values and principles, it desired to disassociate itself from racial attitudes.