Heritage centres in Israel

This article explores the role of communal museums as constructors of identity and as political agents in Israeli society. Their avowed target is to act as realms of memory and through that function they provide focal points for the construction of ethnic entities. As the Israeli heritage centres declare communities according to non-Jewish political borders they provide the basis for new identities. As educational centres outside the hegemonic culture they vie for a re-formulation of that culture. For that they glorify the community’s past based on its history in the Diaspora, but also very much on Zionist accomplishments

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Diaspora · Ethnic group · Ethnology · Hegemony · Identity (music · Judaism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Museums and Cultural Heritage