Book Smart

Evolving Nationalism: Homeland, Religion and Identity in Israel (Cornell University Press, 2010)

Nadav Shelef, Harvey M. Meyerhoff Assistant Professor of Israel Studies and Assistant Professor of Political Science

Nadav Shelef’s first book draws on a puzzle he encountered while writing his dissertation. Examining major Israeli nationalist movements over the last 80 years, he noticed fundamental changes in the answers these groups gave to three critical questions: Where is the “Land of Israel?” Who ought to be Israeli? What should the Zionist national mission be?

Many other books in this field delve deeply into one aspect of Israeli nationalism — borders, religion and state, inclusion in a national identity. Shelef’s analysis shows how multiple factors work together as moving parts in a complex system. By focusing on the mechanisms of change, Shelef’s work enters into a broader discussion about what it means to be a nation.

In a world where many contradictions occur at once, complexity helps Shelef and his students navigate the difference between politics and political science. Unlike politics – in which an opinion cannot be objectively defined as right or wrong — political science uses empirical evidence to assess propositions about the world.

“In my class on the Arab-Israeli conflict, I try to teach my students that you can’t tell what someone will think based on their name or where they’re from,” Shelef says. “That’s the virtue of doing political science. It leads you to make certain conclusions based on evidence and the logic of the arguments, not where you’re from.”

Shelef tells his students that there are no “good guys” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: advocates for each side systematically exclude inconvenient parts of the story to further their aims. In this way, he says, political groups talk past each other, rather than engage in real conversation.

“They’re not engaged in analytical arguments, so they don’t care about evidence; there’s no amount of evidence that can convince them that they’re wrong. Letting everybody understand the selectivity in their own arguments, not just everybody else’s arguments, blunts the edge of the fervent belief that this is the only way in which things can be seen.”

Despite this difficulty, Shelef wants to encourage people to be engaged in the world. The emotion and personal experiences that motivate political groups may not be truly right or wrong, but that doesn’t make these beliefs any less valid. Embracing the inconvenient evidence, the doubt, helps harness these emotions before they overtake a conversation.

“There’s this really constructive place between ‘It’s too complicated; we can’t even start to understand it’ and ‘I already know everything I need to know,’” Shelef says. “It’s exciting to see people beginning to think like political scientists, trying to critically evaluate the world and say, ‘We don’t understand what’s going on here. Let’s figure it out.’ I see students do that, try, succeed at understanding a phenomenon that puzzled them before… it warms my heart.”