The Origins of the Redemption in Occupied Suburbia? Rabbi Shlomo Riskin and the Jewish-American Makings of the West Bank Settlement of Efrat, 1973-2014

• In Event: American Jewry and Israel

Abstract

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Efrat, located in the Gush Etzion [Tree of Zion] region of the West Bank, is one of the most recognizable settlements in the occupied territories today. Unlike most projects of the native Israeli settler movement at the time, the city was primarily founded by and for Jewish-American immigrants in the aftermath of the 1973 war. Yet, little is known of the unique history and discourses surrounding the establishment and growth of this settlement over the past four decades.
Efrat is the product of a dynamic and shifting quadrilateral relationship between Jewish-American immigrants, the Israeli government, the native Israeli settler movement, and local Palestinian communities. It is framed by the professional and personal partnership between Moshe Moshkowitz, a son of the pre-1948 Gush Etzion settlements, and the New York –based modern Orthodox rabbi Steven (Shlomo) Riskin, a relationship which allowed Efrat to emerge within the Israeli geographic, strategic, and economic landscape while retaining the distinctly American character of its new township.
This paper’s objective is to analyze settler discourses at Efrat. Reflecting its mixed Israeli-American parentage, biblical imperatives to live in the whole of the land of Israel were balanced alongside an American vision of pioneering, adventure, and building new, utopian, suburbanized communities in the occupied territories that would serve as a “city on a hilltop” to Israel and the United States. Inspired by Etan Diamond’s theoretical framework in his 2001 study And I Will Dwell in Their Midst, this discussion will explore how Jewish-American settlers not only saw their activities as fulfilling a religio-political agenda, but as transplanted yuppies engaging in concepts of “religious pioneering on the suburban frontier” and the “sacrilization of Jewish suburban space” in the occupied territories since the 1970s.
Drawing on archival materials, the periodical press, and interviews never before brought to light, this article highlights Efrat's story for the first time in the scholarly literature, aiming to lend new insights into the historical processes that allowed Efrat to emerge as the most well-recognized “city on a hilltop” in the occupied territories today.

author

• Sara Yael Hirschhorn, University of Oxford