Israel Studies Roundtable Lunch with Prof. Hizky Shoham: Toward a Shared Folkloric Civil Sphere in Israel?

This talk develops the idea of a “Folkloric Civil Sphere”: an everyday arena in which Jewish-Arab solidarity can emerge through shared conventions of language, food, music, leisure, and public life. Rather than overcoming ethnonational differences, it asks how existing cultural symbols and practices might be transformed from below to foster cross-ethnic solidarity in Israel.

Prof. Hizky Shoham of Bar-Ilan University heads the Program for Hermeneutics and Culture and co-directs the Center for Cultural Sociology. He is also a research fellow at the Kogod Institute at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. His theoretical work explores the meanings of everyday practices, and his empirical research focuses on the anthropological history of Zionism, the Yishuv, Israel, and world Jewry, with particular attention to cultural processes that emerge from below with minimal institutional involvement. His most recent book is A Moving Feast: The Bar and Bat Mitzvah across Jewish Cultures (Berlin, De Gruyter, 2025).

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