“Major Themes in Israeli Society & Culture as Reflected and Refracted in Its TV Programs”

Final Project Guidelines

To demonstrate and apply what you have learned in class this semester, you will do an analysis of an Israeli television series exploring major themes in Israeli society and culture. The focus should be on the societial dynamics and divisions we have studied, including shifting terms of collective memory. You will need to explore 6 themes, each one represented on a separate slide. In general, the themes I’m intending you highlight are the societal ones we’ve been exploring in the 3 units of the course:

Unit I, “An Old/New Nation”, within which we covered such topics as Zionist collective memory and the Zionist Revolution, the New Hebrew Man, the repudiation of the Diaspora, revival of Hebrew culture, “Ingathering of the Exiles”, Melting Pot ethos, blindness or myopia vis-a-vis the indigenous Arab population, the impact of the Holocaust;

Unit II (“Israeli Society United and Divided”) where we’ve been looking at the various societal divides or cleavages—national (Palestinian Israeli vs. Jewish Israeli), Mizrahi vs. Ashkenazi, religious-secular, “right wing vs. left wing”, territorial maximalist vs peace camp, gender issues, shift to individualism, political polarization, etc.;

Unit III, “Growing Up in Israel/Israel Growing Up”, in which the focus will be on what it’s like growing up in Israel, recent societal stresses and transformations in terms of collectivism vs. individualism, the impact of new waves of aliyah, etc.

A preliminary slide should contain a synopsis of the TV series, while the following slides should demonstrate the ways the TV show you select reflects and refracts Israeli society as we have learned about it from our readings in the three textbooks (Israel: An Introduction; The Israelis: An Ordinary People in an Extraordinary Land; My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel), our “outside” readings, films, lectures, class discussions, and extracurricular events.

Each of the subsequent six slides should contain a header with the theme title, a clip from a television show, a relevant quote or quotes from our readings, and bullet points of your analysis. A more detailed paragraph, which you will not project to the class, but will comprise the narrative of your full analysis should appear in the slide notes and will be the basis for my evaluation of your work. A sample slide and a template for your project, in case you want to use it, are found in D2L, along with a grading rubric for this finnal project.

• You may use for free a trial version of the Camtasia software that will allow you to record clips: https://www.techsmith.com/download/camtasia/

Israeli TV Shows (with English subtitles)

Amazon Prime

“Srugim”

“The Baker and The Beauty”

“Mekimi”

“A Touch Away”

Netflix

“Mossad 101”

Shtisel”

“Hostages”

“Fauda”

“Hashoter Hatov” [The Good Policeman]

“When Heroes Fly”
“Shadow of Truth”

Hulu

“Prisoners of War”

“False Flag”

HBO

“In Treatment”

“Our Boys”

Uploaded to MSU MediaSpace:

“Arab Labor” https://mediaspace.msu.edu/media/1_rwctzjzp

For an overview of some of the above shows, see https://www.jweekly.com/2019/03/26/israeli-tv-to-stream-when-youre-done-with-shtisel/