מאמרי אורח

פני כחודש, ביום רביעי ה 8 במאי 2024, ציינה האקדמיה הישראלית למדעים מאה שנים להולדתו של גדול הסוציולוגים הישראלים – שמואל נח אייזנשטדט. פרופ' פנינה מוצפי-האלר, אשר הציגה בכנס, כותבת על מפגשיה עם האיש מאז היותה סטודנטית צעירה שהגיעה ללימודי סוציולוגיה עם שאלות בוערות של זהות, ומציעה לבדוק דרך מפגשים אלה את השפעתו הישירה והעקיפה של האיש על כתיבתה, ועל הסיכויים של שינוי אפיסטמי במחקר על החברה הישראלית בצילו. 

לפי מוצפי-האלר, הכנס היה מסוג האירועים שאקדמאים עושים כדי לכבד זה את זה. הכנס התנהל באנגלית אך לאור "המצב" אורח הכבוד השבדי לא הגיע ונשא את הרצאתו בזום. גם הקהל באולם היה מצומצם מאוד. יושב ראש הוועדה המארגנת, פרופ' סמי סמוחה, כתב בסופו של הכנס שהמספר הקטן של הנוכחים היה צפוי, מאחר וחלק מהסוציולוגיה הישראלית בעשורים האחרונים נכתבה כנגדו ובצילו ומפני שהחוקרים היום רחוקים שני דורות מאייזנשטדט, ומאמצים תפיסות דיסיפלינריות שונות.

מוצפי-האלר טוענת שסגנון הכתיבה האישי-רפלקסיבי ששימש אותה בהרצאה הזו הוא תרגיל של חשיבה פמיניסטית שהיא מבקשת להדגים. בכתיבה כזו האישי הוא פוליטי והאתגר המוצע הוא להרהר על אופיו של מה נחשב לידע לגיטימי בסוציולוגיה הישראלית הפוזיטיביסטית עד היום. 

ההרצאה פורשת דמות מרתקת של איש שההרצאות שלו וכתיבתו רחבת היריעה היו פואטיות בעיניה, אך גם אדם ששלט ביד רמה באנשים ובשיח הסוציולוגי בישראל. אל מול הרמה וההיקף של כתיבתו של אייזנשטדט התעצבה סוציולוגיה ביקורתית בישראל, אם כי גברית לא פחות מקודמתה. 

מוצפי-האלר מציעה כמה תובנות לגבי הכשלון של אפיסטמולוגיה פמיניסטית לחדור למיינסטרים של החשיבה הסוציולוגית העכשווית – אפיסטמולוגיה שמוצפי-האלר מבקשת לקדם.

הרצאתה המלאה של מוצפי-האלר מתוך הכנס:

His Sociology is Poetic: Reflecting on Eisenstadt’s impact on my work

Presented in a conference held on May 8, 2024

THE LEGACY OF SHMUEL NOAH EISENSTADT

In this presentation, I will share my engagements with Eisenstadt’s work (or, as we call him, Sheen Noon, henceforth S.N.) and with the man himself, rather than focusing on the theoretical aspects of his intellectual legacy, as discussed in earlier panels. This kind of exploration is rare in our small Israeli professional community that expects to hear about the distinguished scholar’s work and theoretical contributions without reflexively positioning the author of such a review and her subject, each within our respective social and epistemological webs of networks. A reflexive concern with how sociological knowledge is constructed is often viewed as an unhealthy self-absorption, time-wasting, or, at best, a petty annoyance to be avoided in celebrated centrist events such as the one we are engaged in today.  

My effort in this lecture might sketch some of the advantages of shifting at least part of our attention from the fascination with the man’s work to more significant epistemic questions of the process of production of knowledge that explore the man and the community that he so powerfully shaped during his long career. 

However, given the time limitation, I will only partially analyze the larger shifting contexts within which any academic career must be evaluated. Instead, I will remain focused on my understanding of how I read S.N. I will do this through my encounters with the man and with the impact it had on me, a recently-retired Mizrahi feminist anthropology professor who had been, since the very early formative years of my professional career, a student and an avid reader of S.N.

I present this exploration as an exercise in feminist epistemology. It views academic knowledge production as a process shaped by struggles for legitimizing social theory. In my closing remarks, I will offer insights based on such a critical, deeply political feminist epistemology, an approach that I hope to introduce into the mainstream sociological imagining of Israeli scholars here and beyond.

Throughout this exercise of reflection about my encounters with S.N., I wish to pose the profound question–to what extent has Israeli scholarship been able to go beyond the legacy of a man who is often portrayed as the 'high pope' of the modernist institutional school of Israeli sociology? Or, to put it differently, does such a towering influence explain the failure of feminist epistemology to penetrate mainstream sociology, relegating it to the limited Gender Studies Ghetto?

I will begin in the early 1970s. Eisenstadt was at the height of his power and had dominated the Department of Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Anthropology was taught by two young lecturers, Uri Almagor and Yitzhak Eilam, who had both earned their degrees from Manchester University. I was a full-time science student who studied 40 hours a week of Physics, Chemistry, and biology. Although I did well in these classes, I wouldn't say I enjoyed it. One day, I found myself in a large lecture hall listening to S.N. I can't recall why I was there, but I was captivated. The lecturer spoke about issues that deeply concerned me, having arrived at the prestigious university from a developing town. Although I didn't have the analytical tools to evaluate his arguments, I found them absolutely beautiful. The man was a briliant orator. I knew then that I needed to hear more from this man. I switched to studying Sociology, and that very year, I became a research and teaching assistant for a young, untenured anthropology lecturer, Yitzhak Eilam. 

As Eilam's assistant, I was introduced through weekly field research carried out among newly arrived immigrants from Georgia to the magic of doing ethnography. I also studied with other faculty members, including Uri Almagor, Lea Shamgar, Don Handelman, Eric Cohen, and Reuven Schapera. Tamar Rappoport was a PhD student at the time. To support myself financially, I worked as a research assistant, a go-for, and a data analyst for many of these young lecturers. I was enthralled by what I heard in their lectures even though no one spoke at the time about gender (the only two women lecturers who were not PhD at the time were Ms. Lea Shamgar and Mrs. Pnina Morag-Talmon)  and Mizrahim (known then as Eidot HaMizrah) were defined as a "problem"  to be “solved” by “desocializing” them of their ungainly “traditionalism” and then  “resocialize” them into the presumably modernist Israeli melting pot. Modernization theory and functionalism are the reigning, unquestioned doctrines of these days. Eisenstadt was the man with the power to define research terms and the fate of these young fledgling faculty members. Tamar Rappaport, who hired me as a research assistant (I read the interviews other assistants had carried out and was expected to find and note key themes in such scripted interviews),[she] saw the spark in my eyes and said that S.N. lectures were poetic. I agreed wholeheartedly.

The distance between an avid undergraduate student that I was and the Professor was huge, even though we met daily at the university swimming pool. We were "regulars" at the pool, and he frequently asked me to read the time on the giant clock fixed at the other end of the pool. And yet, we never exchanged greetings when our paths crossed outside the pool, on the small campus path. 

I had a dim grasp of how academic hierarchy worked then. But I recall that Yitzhak Eilam referred to Eisenstadt as "HaChakham BaAdam, "the wisest of men." Eilam admired S.N. greatly. He tried several times and failed to convince S.N. to join us on ethnographic field trips to Ashkelon, where the new community of Georgian Jews had settled. I remember several such visits to S.N.'s elegant home in Rehavya, where Eilam eagerly pleaded with his esteemed Professor to leave his desk and accompany us "in the field ." But alas, the Professor was always too busy. Shula, the Professor’s wife, and his young daughter joined us once. I also knew that Eilam was under tremendous pressure in those years because a decision was made not to grant him tenure at the Hebrew U. 

Towards the end of my three-year B.A. studies, I decided to apply for graduate studies in the U.S. Eilam thought I should study in England. Still, when he realized that I was set on studying in the U.S. and not in England,  he did his best to secure recommendation letters for me from Eisenstadt and Yosef Ben David, two distinguished, internationally well-known professors whose letters, he knew, would be considered seriously in my application file. Eilam told me how he “cornered” the distinguished professors in the upper-middle-class neighborhood supermarket they all shopped in, insisting in these informal settings that they provide their references. In fact, in 1977, while awaiting a response to my U.S. university application, I took several graduate-level classes with Ben David and Eisenstadt. I remember reading the comparative work of S.N. with great wonder, discovering a grande view of sociological analysis that linked the civilizations of China and India, Judaism, Christianity, and Hinduism. It was more than poetry; it was a large-scale intellectual grande novel. 

I began my graduate studies at Brandeis University in the Fall of 1978, right before the critique of Modernist perspectives arose at Haifa University. At that time, I was determined to avoid researching Israeli society and instead pursued fieldwork in Botswana. In my 1997 essay, I discussed my decision to steer clear of studying Israeli realities. As a young Mizrahi feminist scholar, I found it challenging to reconcile my conflicted emotions with the male-centered, institutional-dominant views prevalent in Israeli sociology. When I left to begin my PhD in the Fall of 1978, Eilam, a 42-year-old non-tenured lecturer, died following a long and tragic period of depression, which I witnessed but did not understand fully.

According to comprehensive reviews of his work, S.N.'s influence declined in the early 80s. The emergence of critical sociology in the U.S. and opening a competitive sociology department headed by Yonathan Shapera at Tel Aviv University were cited as crucial factors in such decline. But the man did not just fade away as these reviews of the ‘decline’ in his influence might suggest. His work expanded and grew not only in its geographic scope but also in its theoretical sophistication. It would be too simplistic to assume that his work remained locked into his early vulgar functionalist perspective. Moreover, as I will show next, S.N. has returned, again and again, to modify and think anew about his analysis of Israeli changing realities. 

One of the critical lessons gained during my 1980s studies at Brandeis University was understanding how academic politics could shape lives and works. We read Geertz’s Work And Lives, published in 1973. I wrote a paper reviewing Adam Kuper's book Anthropology and Anthropologists (1983). During our graduate seminars, we discussed the impact of Branislav Malinowski's A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term (1983).). Despite graduating with my anthropological degree and completing 15 months of fieldwork in rural Botswana, I soon realized that the concept of the anthropologist as simply a collector of social facts and then fitting them into preconceived categories was a myth that was beginning to unravel. The literary turn and postmodernist challenge to positivism were emerging but had yet to influence my PhD thesis. Within that era of the late 1980s and early 1990s and during shifts and paradigmatic transitions, I felt confident in my ability to analyze academic texts and assess the arguments' legitimacy. I would evaluate how theoretical frameworks were supported and determine if the empirical data used to support claims was valid.

While writing my dissertation as a Brandeis student, I was granted a graduate student affiliation at Harvard’s Center For International Affairs (CFIA). In the corridors of that Center, I ran into Eisenstadt, who held a position as a distinguished visiting professor, shifting between Harvard and his Hebrew University Jerusalem life. After several brief encounters in the elevator and hallway, I introduced myself to him in Hebrew. He was polite. He invited me into his office, where we had a long chat, but he froze when I mentioned my visits to his house with Yitzhak Eilam. He made it clear that he didn't want to discuss Eilam's untimely death, and no, he did not invite me, as the accepted practice in that American academic circle, for lunch. Later, when I landed a three-year non-tenured teaching position at the Program for Social Studies at Harvard under David Landes, I didn't try to contact him. I spent six years teaching in Boston and publishing my work on Africa after earning my PhD.

When I returned to Israel in 1995, I was determined to study Israeli society from a feminist perspective. I had a lot of literature to catch up with. I read Uri Ram’s edited monumental book החברה הישראלית: היבטים ביקורתיים" published in 1993 and his "The Changing Agenda of Israeli Sociology: Theory, Ideology, and Identity." Eisenstadt was a primary target in Ram's analysis, which portrayed a binary division between mainstream sociology – focused on institutions and modernity – and critical sociologists, who emphasized power dynamics and political struggles that shaped knowledge. 

I became a member of the Van Leer Forum in 1995, and together with others, I helped establish Mizrahi democratic Rainbow (Keshet Democratit Mizrahit). With Yehuda Shenhav, Yossi Yona, Aziza Khazzoom, and Adriana Kemp, among others, we read Foucault, Gayatri Chakraborti Spivak, Homi Bhabha, and Pierre Nora. We sought to develop a "Mizrahi-centered perspective" on Israeli society. The group published a series of annual essays, beginning with Mizrahim BeYisrael in 2002. Two years after Mizrahim In Israel was released, in 2004, S.N. published Tmurot BaHevra HaYisraelit, where he presented a revised framework for analyzing Israeli realities.

In 2003, Eisenstadt expressed interest in learning about our Forum just before releasing his updated book. He had an office at the well-respected Van Leer Institute and lived nearby. However, it's worth noting that he contacted Yehouda Shenhav and invited him to his house. Yehouda then relayed the request to our group and asked for our thoughts, which we provided.

Eisenstadt continued to write and present at academic forums in Israel and abroad until he passed away in 2010. I remember attending two of his presentations when he was in his late 80s, and despite being frail, I was impressed with how he lectured without any notes.

Deborah Kalekin, a Haifa University Sociologist, wrote one of the brief commemorative texts after S.N.'s death in November 2010. She noted, and I quote 

[quotes are translated from the Hebrew text that appeared in Bulletin of the Israeli Sociological Association | Volume No. 1(42) | November 2010]

 Prof. Eisenstadt never abandoned his view that functional structuralism is the only way to understand sociology, but in the years that followed, he realized that there was no justification to treat the assumption that immigrants from Mizrahi communities suffer from innate cultural retardation as an indisputable truth. In the mid-1980s, Eisenstadt admitted, in his keynote lecture at a conference of the Israeli Sociological Society, that "we got many of our analyses wrong. 

Anthropologist Shlomo Shoked wrote in the same commemorative Bulletin that he was disappointed with how S.N. responded to his critics. Shoked indicated that he received a letter from his esteemed Professor (in June 2000) in response to the publication of his article "On the sin we Had not sinned in the Study of Eastern Jews," in which he criticized what he called “the flogging of the "postcolonialists" and the self-righteousness of the ‘critical sociologists’ against the ‘establishment’ paradigm”. 

S.N. wrote back: "Thank you very much for the interesting article, with which I agree. And don't get excited about all these new currents" and concluded in English: "They say what they say, let them say it."

My stance in this final segment is less judgmental. I see S.N. as a man who provided a model of an intellectual who never stops thinking and developing. On a personal level, as an academic who recently retired, I found him to be an inspiring role model for shaping a fulfilling life of work and thought in what some consider the third phase of life. I plan to continue swimming every day!"

In a broader sense, S.N. established a standard that Israeli scholars have attempted to match for years. Various groups of critics have arisen in response to his impressive scholarship. Some of these critics faced the challenges of establishing a new sociology in Tel Aviv while competing with the established Hebrew University. Some came back with academic qualifications from overseas, brought radical theoretical frameworks, and had to prove themselves vis-a-vis his internationally established scholarship. We all used his theories as an anchor, against which we sharpened and clarified our views and analyses. We have all benefited from the high bar he set for us.

This brings me  back to my blend of feminism which focuses of  several  intersecting lines of inequality. In my feminist epistemology, I insist on starting with the untold stories of those who are disempowered and on the multiple intersecting axis of their marginalization. In this regard, Eisenstadt's modernization stand shares a male-centered analysis with the more critical latecomers. They all relegate gender inequality to the separate marginalized sphere of Gender Studies, under-funded programs; they do not begin with the silenced and disenfranchised perspectives. An incomplete social analysis fails to document the intricate details of everyday lives and micro-processes.. Engaged public sociology must search for creative ways to bring in the perspective of those who are remote from power.

In my attempt to write in a way accessible to a broader readership, I find comfort in rereading S.N. This urge finds its ancestry in that first and lasting impression I had when I heard S.N.'s poetic and evocative lecture.

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