Family and Intermarriage in a Radical Israeli Jewish Organization

This paper will discuss the radicalization, political and religious, of Israelis, most of whom hail from Mizrahi working class background. The focus of the article will be an organization by the name of Lehava upon which I conducted ethnographic research. The official goal of Lehava is to prevent intermarriage in Israel between Jews and non-Jews; de facto, it expends most of its efforts on preventing Arab men from courting and dating Jewish women. Generally speaking, the Jewish family as an idealized concept plays an important role in current Jewish Orthodox worldview. It is seen as a site for holiness that enables the perpetuation of tradition in face of liberal secularism and feelings of rootlessness. Organizations like Lehava demonize the Arab and Muslim family as overly patriarchal and oppressive toward women. Interestingly they are co-opting liberal feminist discourse in order to make this argument. Given this world view, Jewish women who marry Arabs are seen as taking a step into the abyss. Lehava and similar organizations attempt to 'save' them even after marriage by encouraging them to leave their husbands. The family metaphor plays a role also in the discourse used within the organization. Many of the members, who are teenagers, are themselves coming from an endangered or in other cases disadvantaged family background. Others come from stable families, but like many teenagers are seeking meaning and a calling. The organization provides a close knit framework attempting to provide a substitute for the family. So family, as a concept informs Lehava on several levels, and since Lehava is an organization that justifies violence and power, we can see here how differing conceptions of family legitimate the use of power in the eyes of certain individuals.