Yehouda Shenhav

Shenhav was born in 1952.[1] He earned a B.A. in sociology from Tel Aviv University in 1977 and an M.Sc. in industrial management from the Technion in 1981.[4] He then pursued graduate study in the United States, completing an M.A. in sociology from Stanford University in 1983 and a Ph.D. in sociology from Stanford in 1985.[2][4]

His relationship with Arabic was complicated for much of his early adulthood. He has recounted being disconnected from Arabic and even disliking the language before his father, Eliyahu, who was born in Iraq, died of a heart attack during the First Gulf War after a missile fell near his residence. That event prompted Shenhav to begin studying Arabic seriously; he started at age 39 and later translated works by the late Palestinian writer Salman Natour and Lebanese writer Elias Khoury.[5]

Shenhav joined Tel Aviv University's Department of Sociology and Anthropology as an assistant professor in 1986, was promoted to senior lecturer in 1989, and became an associate professor in 1993.[4] He was appointed full professor in 2006 and later became professor emeritus.[4][2] He served as chair of the department from 1995 to 1998.[2]

Beyond his home institution, Shenhav held a series of leadership and editorial roles. He served as head of the Horowitz Institute for Social Research at Tel Aviv University from 2003 to 2005, and as head of Advanced Studies at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute from 2005 to 2010.[2] He was also a senior research fellow at the Van Leer Institute and co-director of its Forum on Israeli Culture and Society from 1999 to 2006.[4] His editorial responsibilities included serving as editor of the Hebrew journal Theory & Criticism from 2000 to 2010, editor of Theory & Criticism in Context from 2003 onward, and senior editor of Organization Studies from 2004 to 2010.[2] He also served on the editorial boards of Body & Society, Journal of Management Studies, Contexts, and Organizational Studies.[4]

Shenhav held visiting professorships at Stanford University, Princeton University, Columbia University, the University of Iowa, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.[2] His research spans social theory, sociology of knowledge, management and bureaucracies, ethnicity, race, and the political sociology of sovereignty.[2] He is also identified as a cofounder of the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow Coalition.[4]

Manufacturing Rationality: The Engineering Foundations of the Managerial Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1999) examines the roots of management styles in modern organizations and the role of engineering in their development. Reviewer Andrew Hargadon credited the book with bringing attention to engineers as overlooked political actors who helped shape modern management theory.[4]

Shenhav's Hebrew-language היהודים הערבים: לאומיות, דת ואתניות (The Arab Jews: Nationalism, Religion and Ethnicity), published by Am Oved in 2003, addresses how the category of "Arab Jews" — in contrast to "European Jews" — became untenable in Israel, how Arab Jews came to be categorized as Mizrahim, and why Mizrahi identity became associated with religion and nationalism.[6] The book argues that focusing on the 1950s in studying ethnic relations in Israel obscures the underlying circumstances of ethnic oppression, and that examining the 1940s is therefore essential.[6] Shenhav presents Mizrahi identity as heterogeneous, with broad boundaries and multiple voices, rather than simply the inverse of Ashkenazi identity.[6] The work won the Association for Israel Studies' 2004 Shapiro Award for Best Book in Israel Studies, covering books published in 2002–2003.[3] An English translation, The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion, and Ethnicity, appeared from Stanford University Press in 2006.[7] Its chapters address the "discovery" of Arab Jews; colonialism, Eurocentrism, and Jewish Orientalism; how Arab Jews came to be defined as religious and Zionist; connections between Arab Jews and Palestinians involving population exchange, return, and reparations; and Arab Jews in Zionist historical memory.[7] Shenhav described Jews from Muslim countries as understudied and potentially volatile in the political arena, while reviewer Ian S. Lustick praised the book as an important contribution to the study of Jews from Arab and Islamic countries.[4]

In 2002, Shenhav coedited מזרחים בישראל: עיון ביקורתי מחודש (Mizrahim in Israel: A Critical Observation into Israel's Ethnicity) with Hannan Hever and Pnina Motzafi-Haller.[4] The volume emerged from research at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute's Forum for Israeli Society and Culture and sought to move discussion beyond portrayals of Mizrahim solely as victims or products of the "melting pot." It traces Mizrahi resistance to the immigration period and examines its development in immigrant moshavim, educational institutions, and other settings.[8]

Beyond the Two-State Solution: A Jewish Political Essay (Polity Press, 2012) argues that returning to pre-1967 borders would not resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because it overlooks the circumstances surrounding the state's creation in 1948 and the situation of Palestinian refugees.[9] In the book, Shenhav proposes abandoning the Green Line and creating a new polity across the territory of Mandatory Palestine, with constitutional arrangements addressing the rights of both Palestinians and Jews, including settlers.[9] He also rejects what he presents as a nostalgic understanding of pre-1967 Israel, arguing that it ignores historical realities and cannot provide a lasting resolution to the conflict.[9]

In 2015, Shenhav edited הציונות והאימפריות (Zionism and Empires), published by the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, arising from a research group active at the Institute in 2010–2011.[1] The collection places Zionism within a global imperial context, and Shenhav contributed a chapter on bureaucracy, race, and the Eichmann trial.[1] That same year, he was listed as the first-named coauthor of Command of Arabic among Israeli Jews, a study coauthored with Maisalon Dallashi, Rami Avnimelech, Nissim Mizrachi, and Yonatan Mendel, and published by the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem.[10]

Shenhav also served as guest editor, under the name Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani alongside Yuval Evri, of a volume on Iraqi Jewish writers in the Hebrew-English periodical Babylonian Jewry (יהדות בבל).[11] He published a 2002 article, "Ethnicity and National Memory: The World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC) in the Context of the Palestinian National Struggle," which has been cited in discussions of how Jewish refugee claims intersected with Palestinian claims at the Camp David II summit.[12]

In 2014, Shenhav — working under the name Shenhav-Shahrabani — cofounded Maktub with the late Palestinian writer Salman Natour.[5] Based at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and created in cooperation with the Council for Culture and Arts of Mifal HaPais, Maktub's mission is to translate Arabic literature and make it accessible to Hebrew readers, and to promote the Arab voice in Hebrew.[5] The project brings Jewish and Arab translators and translation researchers together in collaborative teams; Shenhav has described translation as a form of dialogue rather than an individual craft.[5]

Discussing the project, Shenhav noted that of approximately 3,500 books published in Israel annually, around 1,250 were translations, but only six or seven were translated from Arabic — a disparity he said he hoped the project would help address.[5]

Shenhav's work has received recognition across management studies and Israel studies. His Hebrew book on Arab Jews was a co-winner of the Association for Israel Studies' 2004 Shapiro Award.[3] Reviews credited Manufacturing Rationality with foregrounding engineers' role in management history and treated The Arab Jews as an important contribution to scholarship on Jews from Arab and Islamic countries.[4]

Through Maktub, Shenhav also extended his work beyond academic publishing by developing a collaborative model in which Jewish and Arab translators and researchers work together to bring Arabic literature to Hebrew readers.[5]

Several of Shenhav's central scholarly and political arguments have drawn sustained criticism. Meyrav Wurmser, writing critically of post-Zionist interpretations of the Sephardi question, attributes to Shenhav the argument that Mizrahi Jews were not fundamentally Zionist immigrants and that the Ashkenazi establishment promoted their immigration partly to obtain cheap labor — "less to protect the Mizrahim and more to address its own need for cheap labor."[13] Wurmser disputes this reading as part of a broader anti-Zionist account of Israeli history and offers an explicit counterposition.[13]

Shenhav's contention in Beyond the Two-State Solution — that a return to pre-1967 borders cannot resolve the conflict because it leaves the events of 1948 unaddressed — is politically contested, as is his proposal for a single polity across Mandatory Palestine.[9] His distinction between Jews expelled from Arab countries and those who immigrated voluntarily has similarly been debated. In 2014, he argued that legitimate claims belonging to Jews expelled from Arab countries should not be tied to Palestinian refugee claims and accused Israel of using that linkage cynically to obstruct Palestinian rights.[14]