Strong ethnicity: The case of us-born Jews in Israel

This chapter presents the possibility that alongside expressions of depressed ethnicity that adopts the identity politics of empowerment, as in the case of Mizrahim in Israel, attention should also be paid to strong ethnicity: ethnicity that rests not only upon the distinctiveness of the immigrant, but also on the global and ideological resources that he possesses and which become a cultural message that he seeks to implement within his immediate environment as well as in wider society. US-born Jewish immigrants in Israel are a diverse group. North-American immigrants in Israel find themselves within a society that holds American culture in high esteem. Mizrahi ethnicity developed in relation to the dominance of the imagined ethnic model of Ashkenazim in Israel, American ethnicity developed in relation to the dominance of the reality of US superpower status and of the major Jewish center from which these Jews relocated to Israel.