Jewish and Arab Childhood in Israel: Contemporary Perspectives

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Edited by Einat Baram Eshel, Wurud Jayusi, Ilana Paul-Binyamin, Eman Younis

This book is a result of the growing public and academic interest in the variety of childhoods that take place side by side in the multicultural state of Israel, despite its tiny geographical dimensions.

In a collection of groundbreaking articles, the book describes various features of Israeli childhoods – in the present and recent past – in both Arab and Jewish societies.

The first section of the book – ‘Childhood and Environment in Israel’ – addresses the various spaces in which childhood practices occurred and still occur in Israel – the intimate home environment, the educational environment, playgrounds, and many others. The second section – ‘Childhoods and Power Structures in Israeli Literature’ illuminates the perceptions and images of childhood, and describes the extensive and heterogenic variety of childhood representations in Jewish and Arab literature.

Scholars of culture, society, education, and literature – Jews and Arabs – have joined forces to encourage in-depth thinking about perceptions of childhood in the diverse Israeli society, the status of children in Arab and Jewish societies, and the resources invested to nurture them from a global aspect (as individuals with universal duties and rights) and/or a local point of view (as a national asset, as designers of the nation’s future, or, alternatively, as a burden, nuisance or threat).

Year first published: 2021