Israel in the making : stickers, stitches, and other critical practices / Hagar Salamon.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : studying Israeli folklore -- Folklore in the Israeli public arena -- Invitation : bumper stickers as a podium in motion -- Folklore as an emotional battleground : political bumper stickers -- "We the people" : "Ha'am" in the turbulent sphere of Israeli roads -- Kinetic cosmologies : sovereign and sovereignty -- Recapitulation : public interaction on the move -- Expressions in the intimate arena of embroidery -- Invitation : embroidering identity -- needlework and needle-talk -- Embroidering their selves : femininity and embroidery in a Jerusalem women's group -- Life story as a foundation legend of local identity -- The intimate career of a transitional object : needlepoint embroideries -- Recapitulation : needle texts -- knowledge, passion, and empowerment -- Between the public and the private -- the mirrors of ambivalence -- Invitation : emplacing Israeliness -- shifting performances of belonging and otherness -- The floor falling away : dislocated space and body in the humor of Ethiopian immigrants in Israel -- What goes around, comes around : rotating credit associations among Ethiopian women in Israel -- "David Levi" jokes : the ambivalence over the levantinization of Israel -- Recapitulation : between longing and belonging : the folkloric expressions of ambivalence -- Closing words : the birth of public enunciation from the spirit of everyday life.

The brilliant kaleidoscope of everyday creativity in Israel is thrown into relief in this study, which teases out the abiding national tensions and contradictions at work in the expressive acts of ordinary people. Hagar Salamon examines creativity in Israel's public sphere through the lively discourse of bumper stickers, which have become a potent medium for identity and commentary on national and religious issues. Exploring the more private expressive sphere of women's embroidery, she profiles a group of Jerusalem women who meet regularly and create "folk embroidery." Salamon also considers the significance of folk expressions at the intersections of the public and private that rework change and embrace transformation. Far ranging and insightful, Israel in the Making captures the complex creative essence of a nation state and vividly demonstrates how its citizens go about defining themselves, others, and their country every day.

Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on May 08, 2017).

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