The Emergence of a Mizrachi Middle Class in Israel Nissim Leon

The Emergence of the Mizrachi Middle Class examines one of the major issues in the sociology of Israel: the story of the Mizrachim (Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent), a group that has been, and is still, engaged in class-mobility efforts, and is ostensibly closing the gap between itself and the Ashkenazim (Jews of Central and Eastern European extraction). This is one of the most important social processes to have emerged in Israel in recent decades; it is changing the face of the Israeli middle class. While Israeli public discourse depicts this process as a reduction of ethnic and class disparities, the critical analysis offered in this book aims to reveal the issue’s tremendous complexity. The academically-educated Mizrachi middle class is an effective social focus for the description and critical analysis of the Mizrachi mobility process, its sources, and the accompanying social unrest. The book shows that Mizrachi mobility was not a continuous progression along orderly mobility routes, but rather a struggle full of mobility traps – a Sisyphean effort to achieve not only economic advancement, but also status and prestige in Israeli society.