Xenophobia and Religious Pluralistic Attitudes Among Adolescent Arabs and Jews in Israel

• In Event: Judaism and Education

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify how Arab (N==237) and Jewish (N==460) eleventh- and twelfth-grade students in Israeli schools perceive foreigners, and what affinity their perceptions have with their defined level of religiosity, and their humanistic or pluralistic attitudes to other religions. We tested the research hypotheses using a xenophobia questionnaire ( Zieberts& Kay,2005), and a questionnaire that examines the attitudes of members of both religions and how the respondents define themselves in religious terms (Zieberts,2005). It was found that Jewish students were more xenophobic than Arab students. The results also show that among the Jewish students xenophobia is connected to religious attitudes with a monistic nature, while among their Arab counterparts it apparently stems from another source.

Author

• Zehavit Gross, Bar-Ilan University