In my Intro to Islam class we recently read Al-e Ahmad’s Gharbzadegi (West-struckness). In this he discusses Islam’s reliance on the West, primarily with their machinery. The problem of this lays fundamentally within the leaders who are western-educated, and the only way to fix this is to go back to religion and to teach Muslims how to operate the machines, rather than having to reach out to foreigners.
Reading this prominent text led me to wonder whether or not Israel ever encountered anything like this. They have such a rich culture but where did it come from? Since many of the people in Israel in 1948 (when it became a state) were pioneers from such various places, the culture really seemed to start out as a combination of many cultures. While people emigrated from so many countries, Israel had a few major countries where their first citizens hailed from. Russian, Polish, and German cultures predominantly influenced Israeli culture; however, the nearby Arab culture also influenced the new state. Obviously, this is only a vague description of Israel’s cultural roots.
Of course, within Israel there are now both Jews and Palestinians, which both seem to identify with their own culture (in reference to their respective religions).
Forgive me for my lack of knowledge in the history of Israeli culture, but this is a primary formation at least.
Since Israel was not a state until 1948, my assumption would be that they did not reject the influential cultures. While they probably wanted to hone their own culture, the cultures that influenced them are what enabled this to happen. This contrasts with Islam because it already had a culture of its own before it interacted with Western influences.
Now of course many of the Middle Eastern cultures overlap with each other, but each country still seems to maintain its own identity. In fact, just last night I was at a dinner with Syrians and Lebanese friends and they both seemed to identify each other in particular ways based on their separate cultures. Maintaining a culture’s identity while also sharing characteristics with another seems like a challenge that many cultures and/or religions seem to struggle with, as the possibility of dying out sometimes seems close. While a Syrian family owned the restaurant we were at, I believe many of the foods served there are also a part of Israeli culture, such as falafel, hummus, tabouli, and baklava. For me, this reinforced how such close proximity enables several cultures to share so many similarities. Luckily, these are all some of my favorite foods, so in the end I really appreciated this sense of sharing between the Middle Eastern cultures.
Although, with this my Turkish friend was also at this dinner (I know, there were so many ethnicities at one table) and he was very proud of his heritage. Like many other Turkish individuals, he would have been very offended if someone mistook him for being Greek. With this being said, it is only to some extent that cultures in the same area can overlap. This leads us to maintaining cultural identity while also embracing others. Unfortunately, that is such a complex subject on its own that it would call for a separate blog entry.
Anyway, I wish I knew more about the influences on Israeli culture in the beginning of its statehood as well as the attitudes the first Israelis had towards the formation of their culture, so please enlighten me if you know more about this topic.
