The mass immigration of Jews from Muslim countries into Israel during the 1950s both historically and empirically tested the concept of klal Yisrael—the traditional-modern vision of a single Jewish collective encompassing diverse Jewish societies and cultures. The historical context of this period placed immigrants from Muslim countries in an inferior position to their European counterparts. It added an incendiary socio-economic dimension to the age-old distinction between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews. At the time, it seemed as if the gulf between the two groups would prevent any solidarity from developing within the increasingly heterogenic Israeli society. This, however, has not been the case. The current study seeks to illuminate some of the causes for this, by discussing the socio-economic foundation designed to foster socio-political solidarity at the dawn of Israeli statehood.
As it became an essential element of a modern national and democratic ideology in an Israeli state, the traditional, abstract concept of klal Yisrael evolved into an acute, conflict-saturated political problem. The mass immigration of the 1950s challenged the idea that Jews could unite under a single collective in the political, socio-economic, cultural, and identity-oriented arenas. Communities from various countries had arrived in joint territory and now faced the trial of a mutually dependent relationship under an inclusive institutional framework. European immigrants and immigrants from Muslim countries were the most obviously distinct social groups in young Israel. One of the most significant conflicts between them was economic. Unlike the Sephardic newcomers, the relatively veteran Ashkenazi citizens had been dominant in the early institutionalization processes of the State and enjoyed educational and professional advantages crucial to Israeli nation building.
Thus, the new territorial and institutional encounter between these communities transformed their cultural differences into an acute socio-economic conflict. The power dynamics that developed cultivated alienation and separatism, and a correlation was established between cultural distinction and socio-economic inequality. The State and its leadership were therefore caught in a dilemma between institutional interests on one hand, and national aspirations, meaning, the cohesion of the Jewish immigrant population into a national collective with a unified identity, on the other. The State’s institutional interests prompted dependence on the educated middle-class, which had a vital role in state building. However, national and identity-oriented interests pushed the State and its leadership to mitigate the inequality between the Ashkenazis and immigrants from Muslim countries.
The current work fits into a broader examination of how the klal Yisrael vision underwent political institutionalization, from a socio-economic perspective. It investigates the struggle of the professional elite to capitalize on its advantages during the first decade of Israeli statehood, partly by attempting to maximize wage-gaps between themselves and the rest of the working public. This struggle was met with great resistance from the government. The clash between the two sides revealed diverse, contradictory visions of the optimal socio-economic foundation for establishing collective identity in the new nation-state. Primarily, these visions disagreed on the link between culture and identity on one hand, and society and economy on the other.
The ‘absorbing’ Ashkenazi society had just been salvaged from a cruel existential war. It became approximately half the population of an immigrant state now divided into relatively veteran immigrants and recent arrivals. The more veteran immigrants and their leadership were dedicated to a Zionist national ethos that obligated them to absorb the Sephardic immigrants into their national collective. On the other hand, their economic interests fostered separatist tendencies. Along with the other half of the new society, the ‘absorbed,’ they had an urgent need to prove that the once traditional, now modern-national concept of klal Yisrael could indeed be realized within a common polity and territory-specific nation.
As aforementioned, this unprecedented challenge was accompanied by fierce conflicts among the ‘absorbers’ themselves, and between the ‘absorbers’ and the ‘absorbed.’ This particular conflict was a mostly new phenomenon, but such conflicts had characterized Zionist political culture in previous decades as well. It is important to discuss the essential nature of this conflictual political culture as we begin our discussion on the trials it faced during the first decade of Israeli statehood.
The historical process led by the Zionist Movement since the end of the 19th century depicts a nation building process rooted in aspirations toward political modernity, and the nationalization of the traditional and somewhat intangible concept of klal Yisrael. This aspiration includes fulfillment of the klal Yisrael vision in a sovereign Jewish society that comprehensively regulates the social life of its citizens. Zionists of various parties led the nation building process, and not merely by enhancing the efficiency of Jewish immigration into Eretz Yisrael, including from Muslim countries. They were also cultivating a modern political culture, both conflictual and inclusive, with the capacity to reflect the incredible diversity of Jewish immigrants in Eretz Yisrael. As early as the beginning of the 20th century, the Zionist Movement under Theodor Herzl began developing into an arena of Zionist parties (to the chagrin of its leader). A political system that included right, left, and religious-conservative wings therefore formed prior to the establishment of the society, economy, and politics it was meant to address. Zionist parties cultivated a conflictual and reflective political culture—conducting turbulent identity struggles stemming from an intense awareness that a new polity was being shaped from its bottommost foundations. The most well-known conflict regarding the educational function of the Zionist Movement was that which formed between Achad Ha’am devotees and the religious Zionists, before a substantial Jewish society had even been established in Eretz Yisrael.
The conflictual and reflective nature of the multi-party system in the Zionist Organization was also etched into the territorial political system the Zionists established in mandatory Eretz Yisrael in the beginning of the 1920s. Vehement, and at times even violent, inter-party conflicts characterized the arena of the Zionist Congress and the Jewish Agency on one hand, and that of the Assembly of Representatives and the Jewish National Council (the territorial political system called Knesset Israel, echoing klal Yisrael) on the other. One of the most significant conflicts among these entities was the class conflict between the labor movement and the bourgeois and revisionist right. In Eretz Yisrael, this primarily materialistic conflict began in the 1930s, but had originated thirty years prior, at the dawn of the century, as an ideological tension between the new Zionist labor parties and the central stream of the Zionist movement. This abstract, conceptual tension predated the establishment of a substantial Jewish ‘proletariat’ or ‘bourgeois’ in Eretz Yisrael. It should therefore also be seen as an identity-conflict in essence—a conflict over the socio-economic identity of a future political society that had yet to materialize. Reflective political thought, meaning, pre-active self-awareness on such matters, characterized not only pre-Zionist and Zionist thinkers such as Moses Hess and Theodor Herzl, but also members of
Relative to other conflicts that characterized the Jewish political society in Eretz Yisrael over the next few decades, the ethnic conflict between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews was not a central one, as Ashkenazi demographic dominance was quite evident. This significant demographic advantage was the basis of the Ashkenazis’ political, cultural, and national hegemony. Zionism had developed in Europe, much like the other notable Jewish movements of the Modern Age, but among the political aspirations of Ashkenazi Jews, Zionism was singular in acknowledging Jews from Muslim countries as part of its historical domain. However, it was precisely this inclusion or acceptance that carried the potentially combustive conflict within it. It created tension between the Zionist aspiration to become ‘one nation,’ and the notable cultural distinction between European and Muslim countries, which the power dynamic between the two Jewish communities reflected. Zionism brought together distant groups, and therefore prompted confrontation between them. This tension further intensified due to the colonialist power-relations between Europe and Muslim countries, which converted general cultural gaps into gaps between a ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ culture. There were no such issues, for instance, between the Ashkenazi Bund and Sephardic Jews.
Nonetheless, despite dramatic issues such as the shameful mistreatment of Yemenite immigrants from the first and second waves of Aliyah onward, it can be surmised that in pre-state years the Jewish ‘ethnic question’ was of secondary significance. Central conflicts included the ‘Arab question,’ class struggles (with Ashkenazis on both sides), or conflicts regarding the role of religion in national revival. A possible reason for the lesser significance of the ethnic issue during the pre-state era was the overt demographic dominance of the Ashkenazis. Whatever the cause, this state-of-affairs changed completely during the first decade of statehood, upon the establishment of a new historical reality. Immigrants from Muslim countries now comprised half of the immigrant mass that doubled the State’s population, and the majority of incoming immigrants in subsequent years.
The new status-quo induced the rapid proletarization of immigrants from Muslim countries. Additionally, it prompted the equally rapid bourgeoisfication of the relatively veteran Ashkenazis, followed by that of new Ashkenazi immigrants, and the onset of tension between the national ethos they had developed and their own socio-economic interests. Third, and as an outcome of these two factors, an overlap between ethnic and class gaps in the new society escalated class tensions between Mizrachi and European Israelis, as well as intergenerational stratification characteristic of de-colonialized countries such as Israel. Fourth, as the ruling party
Yechiel Halpern, a key
The current research will focus on seemingly prosaic conflicts between the Israeli government and Ashkenazi middle-class over the extreme egalitarian wage policy in the public sector during the 1950s. It will reveal that in terms of wage policy, a central aspect of resource distribution, the ruling party at the time protected the Mizrachi immigrants’ social standing in relation to that of European veterans. As we will discuss, it did so not only to protect its labor party status, and not merely due to electoral dependence on these immigrants. While these were significant motives, the documentation we will examine reveals that the aspiration to transform the abstract, sporadically implemented concept of klal Yisrael into a live, historic collectivity, was a central motivation behind the wage policy advanced by
Without a fight to restrain the foreboding socio-ethnic developments of the time there would be no hope of developing a unified political society with a common national identity, even if such a fight were to produce limited results. Mitigating these developments alone seemed crucial to achieving social cohesion. The immigrants from Muslim countries during this time can be likened to a rifle concealed during the first battle, and shot during the second. They had evolved from a ‘problem’ during the pre-state era into a crucial trial of the post-state Zionist nation-building enterprise. Their integration became central to whether or not the Zionists, who had just established a state, could successfully live up to the principles of the declaration of independence regarding one Jewish nation returning to its historic homeland.
Such triumphant principles would have been rendered meaningless in the event of intergenerational socio-ethnic stratification. The question was not whether a gap would develop between the Ashkenazis and the Mizrachi immigrants, but its potential severity, and whether a framework would be established in order to salvage the Mizrachi immigrants from their historically ‘inferior’ position. With its wage policy,
For more in this vein by Nathan Rotenstreich see Molad June 1951, 63–67; Molad Oct–Nov. 1951, 162–169.