Beyond Suspicion

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"For more than four decades, socially disadvantaged Israeli Mizrahim--descendants of Middle Eastern Jews--have continuously supported right-wing political parties. Sociologists, NGOs, and left-wing politicians tend to view Mizrahim as acting against their own interests, but Nissim Mizrachi locates the problem within the limitations of the liberal grammar with which their behavior is read. In Beyond Suspicion, Mizrachi turns the direction of inquiry upon itself, contrasting liberal grammar--which values autonomy, equality, and universal reason and morality--with the grammar of Mizrahi rootedness, in which the self is experienced through a web of relational commitments, temporal ties, and codes of collective identity. Recognizing rootedness as a fundamental need for belonging is necessary to understand both scholarly and political rifts in Israel and throughout the world"--