but focuses more directly on the ways settlers invoke and use Jewish tradition in routine practices for a project of social restructuring.12 As an analyst, I approach “religion” as a lived and historically specific tradition rather than as a transhistorical or universal category and defend the potentialities inherent in religious lives (Asad 2003) while looking at the construction of a distinct settler iteration of “authenticity.” In terms of Jewish observance, then, this ethnography refers to practices and modes of understanding, both oral and written, shaped in relation to canonical Jewish texts and Jewish law, including the Bible, or Tanakh (Torah and the remaining books of Neviʾim, and Ketuvim), as well as to classical rabbinic interpretations of halakhah (religious law), passed down orally and codified as the Talmud (Mishnah and Gemara). In addition to scripture and law, by “religious” I also refer to the heterodox sensibilities and practices that shape the character of devout settler place attachments as it has evolved in Kiryat Arba and Hebron. In its lived form, settlers circumvent Judaism’s admonition not to conquer and blur the core divide in Judaism’s legal tradition between hypothetical laws that are only to be implemented in the future and those intended to be observed in the present. This shift is arguably more significant than that related to messianism alone.
State, Nation, and Settler Relationships
In addition to the dimensions of religious ideology discussed above (spatial, place-based, tradition, and power), this ethnography also examines the role of the state because of the critical role it plays in creating the infrastructure for settlement and the dynamic tension between state-initiated programs and popular settler aims on the ground. Without the state overseeing the development of a large infrastructure and allocating financial resources to it, including roads, utilities, subsidies, and security measures, settlements would cease to exist. Yet it is also the case that religious settlers have their own agency and intentions that are not entirely reducible to state initiatives and programs. Exploring settlement from a state-centric perspective alone precludes understanding how state directives are being taken up or ignored on the ground by average settlers. Moreover, ideological settlers have tried to develop their own sphere of influence, pushing the boundaries of state and military authority. While the state matters, in other words, this ethnography reveals that it enables but does not directly oversee many of the routine practices of ideological settlers on the ground. In short, we are left to grapple with the paradox of a state-sponsored ideological formation that seeks in the long run to empty the state of its authority and institute theocratic rule in its place.
One prevalent view is that the local set of attachments established via settlement is a direct continuation of the Israeli nationalist project and that through settling one merely extends state control as well as expands the boundaries of the nation. In short, from a macro perspective, it is easier to claim that all settlers see their particular locale as a vehicle for participation in a wider set of national affairs. Their insistence on establishing biblical memory sites might even be viewed as a way of apprehending a more abstract political project from the vantage of direct experience: the locality is in effect a bridge to a larger polity, where being at home in a settlement translates into larger loyalties toward the nation. This is the Heimat model of national belonging, which emphasizes the local but is not averse to participation in a wider political community (Applegate 1990:13). Instead it represents a contemporary form of imagining through the vantage of one’s own deeply rooted historical reality (ibid., 3).
By contrast, I take the position that the locale in ideological settlement has evolved as a platform for breaking away from the national project. As a settler once quipped, “Do not insult me by calling me Israeli.” He intended to convey the idea that the nation’s presumed Jewish character had been diluted beyond recognition and that he was engaged in a revitalization of it. Settler sites of religious origin and biblical locales admitted into the Israeli national arena often compete with and overtake other sites of memory that have been central to the heritage of the nation. In this respect, Hebron stands in tension with the more pluralistic character of Jerusalem. It is about championing an alternate form of authority, stemming from a set of religious obligations rather than rights, a prioritizing not of territory but of critical biblical sites as anchors of memory. And this involves a form of political affiliation that moves far more easily between the local and the transnational as a way of appropriating the national than extending national rule alone. In short, I am skeptical that ideological settlement is simply a case of putting nationalism on more solid ground by adding a fervent religious layer to its comparatively secular expressions.
Fieldwork in Kiryat Arba
The idea for this ethnographic account first took shape during the 1993 period of the Oslo talks, a brief interval of optimism. At the time of the Oslo accords, which were significant for being the first formal agreements made between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), many considered themselves to be witnessing a historic turning point. It was the first time Israel and the PLO recognized one another and the first time Palestinian rule was to be granted over areas that had previously been ruled directly by the Israeli military. Oslo’s flaws, however, appeared early on. Accounts of the period point to the lack of vital decisions made over Palestinian refugees, borders, statehood, settlements, and Jerusalem as the primary reason for the failure (Beinin and Stein 2006; Golan 2013; Khalidi 2006). Others fault the negotiation process itself, which was carried out in back channels while international attention remained fixed on multilateral initiatives in Washington (Savir 2010; Khalidi 2013). Still others lay the blame at the hands of individual leaders, both Israeli and Palestinian, and their personalities (Falk 2013). On the Palestinian side, Oslo’s collapse led to the rapid deterioration of an already precarious economy, greater Israeli military interference in Palestinian lives, and the creation of a Palestinian Authority many considered corrupt. On the Israeli side, as the security situation for civilians worsened due to suicide bombings, right-wing hard-liners gained prominence. Promising the Israeli public greater security, the Likud ran on platforms that emphasized aggressive military action together with the building of an extensive security barrier. Oslo’s failure also precipitated an accelerated Israeli landgrab using the vehicle of settlement expansion (cf. Mansour 2001).
I began investigating ideological settlement in 1994, in the period just after the Oslo Accords. The period was marked by vitriolic settler protests, on the one hand, as well as several Palestinian suicide bombings within Israeli cities, on the other. The assassination of the Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin occurred in the wake of these many months of unrest. Just one day after the assassination, the owner of a studio in Kiryat Arba phoned me in Jerusalem to finalize my lease. This struck me as odd because the entire country was in a state of shock and mourning, and not once did she refer to the assassination. She proceeded, in an entirely businesslike fashion, to sort out the details of my move, emphasizing the benefit of living in a “desirable” location—the clean air, lack of congestion, lovely views, tight-knit community, and affordability. In retrospect, I imagine she was worried about finding a tenant because the tide of Israeli public opinion had turned against Kiryat Arba. Yigal Amir, Rabin’s assassin, maintained ties with settlers in Kiryat Arba, and in that period it was directly linked with his religious extremism.
I got off the armored and steel-grated bus that traveled from Jerusalem directly through the Palestinian town of Beit Jala, past the refugee camp of Deheishe into the adjacent town of Halhoul, until it stopped at the center of Kiryat Arba. It was the middle of the day and I arrived with two large overstuffed bags in order to carry out a research plan that I had conceived of in Chicago. The actual settlement felt pretty much dead and deserted except for a few kids playing in rusting playgrounds, their empty swings and ladders straining between the concrete and stone blocks of older prefab buildings. As I approached the four-story complex I would live in for much of the year, a three-year-old rode up on his faded plastic bicycle, seat low to the ground. I noticed, in spite of his refusal to say much, that he followed a few paces behind me, making a great effort to pedal fast enough to keep up. When I turned toward the entrance to the apartment building where his family lived, he broke his silence and pointedly said, “You’re secular,” referring to me as ḥilonit. It is true that I was wearing jeans rather than the long flowing skirts he was used to seeing, but it took me by surprise that even this young boy with a knitted skullcap and fringe slotted me so quickly. He carried on: “And your mother, father, sisters, and brothers are all secular