Federalism and multiculturalism as a vehicle for perception change in israeli-jewish society

This paper explores the possibilities of federalist and multicultural theory as a basis to generate perception change within Israeli-Jewish society. In an innovative course, student subjects were exposed to the narratives of a variety of subgroups, participated in a workshop, and studied various examples of federalism and multiculturalism as an alternative to Israel's historic melting pot model. Their opinions on Israeli society and cultural outlook were analyzed based on qualitative methods and consensus theory (which is being introduced as a measurement of attitudinal change). The data indicates that the course was able to generate empathy for the "other," encourage the students to identify commonalities between disparate subgroups and to consolidate the consensus and change some opinions toward a more federalist multicultural viewpoint. Based on this experiment, we suggest that there is a foundation to consider a federalist multicultural model as a vehicle to reduce social tensions in Israel and elsewhere.