The first edition of this book was originally published in 2008 in the SUNY series in Israeli Studies, edited by Russell Stone.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
2008, 2017 State University of New York
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Marketing, Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Woods, Patricia J., 1967 author.
Title: Judicial power and national politics : courts and gender in the religious-secular conflict in Israel / Patricia J. Woods.
Description: Second edition. | Albany, New York : State University of New York Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016005726 | ISBN 9781438462073 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Political questions and judicial powerIsrael. | Judicial reviewIsrael. | Israel. Bet ha-mishpa ha-gavoha le-tsede.
Classification: LCC KMK2244 .W66 2017 | DDC 347.5694/012dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016005726
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Preface to the Second Edition
As I write this preface, sitting in my quiet apartment in Gainesville, Florida, the world is awash with religion and politics. The European Court of Justice recently upheld the rights of member states of the European Union to fire workers for participating in their own cultural customs, such as wearing headscarves in a Belgian case. In a French case, the preliminary ECJ decision was in favor of the woman engineer who was fired for wearing a head scarf. Switzerland revoked the right of two Muslim children to opt out of a local custom, a school handshaking practice seen as important for Swiss identity, and, by some accounts, Swiss nationalism. Gender has been held up by member states as one of the critical banners under which they are flying their anti-headscarf and pro-handshaking policies. Meanwhile, the Quran burning, which happened several years ago in this, my hometown, has dissipated. It was overwhelmed, ultimately, at the local level, by the broad counter-response of an ecumenical network of local mosques, churches, and synagogues. I am uncertain the extent to which this local development made its way into the international press. But, as I write this preface, that, at least, has settled down. As a native of this county in Florida (since age 11being counted as native is an issue everywhere), I have friends and former classmates who stood on both sides of that line in protests. And I have had many students come back from the Middle East (either from family visits, or from time served there) reporting that my hometown is now famous, world-wide, for this act of one local church, which houses some friends with whom I graduated from high school and think of very highly in almost all other contexts.
As citizens, we as a society disagree vehemently even with our friends and family. We disagree on how to be religious. On whether to be secular. On where rights start and stop. Having been a nearly silent member of an academic list serve for the sociology of Islam for a couple of years, I found myself posting my most strident (and well-allocuted, I should say!) posts upon the decision of the European Court of Justice to limit the rights of Muslim citizens of Europe to the free exercise of their religious freedom in states that are co-signatories to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in which religious freedom is a primary tenet.
As a former Catholic (as a child), and practicing Buddhist (Tibetan), I come to the religious-secular conflict in Israel as an outsider. I have lived for several years in Israel, primarily in Haifa, Jerusalem, and for shorter periods in Tel Aviv. I also spent one summer in the West Bank, in Birzeit, studying Palestinian Arabic at Birzeit University, and taking the service taxis from Ramallah to Jerusalem regularly during the years of the Oslo Peace Process. During that time, such things were relatively easy, although they still involved checkpoints and Uzis. But they also involved the free flowing of both Hebrew and Arabic in places in which, now, one would not hear the minority language spoken out loud in someone elses neighborhood. I used to traipse through Damascus Gate into the Old City of Jerusalem to go to my favorite pasty shop for pistachio baklawa. In my opinion, it is the best baklawa in the country; but everyone has their best-baklawa-in-the-country shop (followed closely by their best-falafel-in-the-country spot, and so forth). This is a practice that decidedly crosses Arab-Jewish lines. And I would walk easily from there to the Western Wall of the Temple Mount without thinking twice about it. I would hear more Arabic as I began walking, and more Hebrew as I came closer to the Western Wall. I would stop at Abu Shukris caf at the bottom of the hill as the Via Dolorosa turns left, and half-way between Damascus Gate and the Western Wall, to have some fresh cut vegetables, hummus, falafel, and a bit of Arabic coffee with hel . The last time I visited Jerusalem, however, one did not hear Hebrew in the Muslim quarter of the Old City, nor Arabic as one approached the Western Wall. When I visited my old pastry shop near Damascus Gate, I almost felt like a traitor, as an American who could easily move across borders that were now off-limits to many people on all sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The economy of the Old City seemed depressed by the lack of a free-flowing of people and languages. I wanted to come home with a banner saying, Jerusalem needs tourism! But, when I brought my daughter to Haifa when she was six years old, I would not take her to Jerusalem much as I longed to go.
I have friends living in Carmel and Denia and Kabbabir in Haifa; in Nazareth; in Akko; and those living on Masada Street in Haifa, which is a purely integrated neighborhood not only ethnically but religiously as well. It tends to be a very happy and also a modest neighborhood. One does not usually talk about working class in Israel because of its dedicated history of Labor Zionism, an offshoot of the softer forms of socialism that were popular in the late-19th century in some circles in Europe. In Haifa, some neighborhoodsand, in some ways, the city as a wholeare dedicated to the old imperatives of simplicity, which allow Arabs and Jews to unite on a common everyday way of life, which, to me as outsider, is always inspiring. Not everyone feels that way. But Haifa is one of the most integrated of Israels larger cities along Arab and Jewish lines. As an immigrant country, Israel is plural in many ways. I also have friends in Jerusalem, also on both sides of the line, so to speakformer mentors, former graduate school classmates, and the like. Israel is an astoundingly plural place. That is a part of its diversity that one does not often hear about in the press.
