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Strongholding the Synagogue to Stronghold the City: Urban‐Religious Configurations in an Israeli Mixed‐City

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Mori Ram

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This is the authors' accepted manuscript of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2017.

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Abstract

This article explores the geopolitical significance of public religious institutions and the ways in which it has corresponded to changes in their urban environment. Based on a spatial analysis and ethnography of urban synagogues in the northern Israeli mixed city of Acre that were established and constructed by communities of Jewish immigrants from North African countries, we demonstrate how significant shifts in the city's demographic pattern and landscape have affected these institutions' ascribed functions and meanings. We theorise this dynamic as ‘strongholding’, or, more specifically, strongholding the synagogue as a means of strongholding the city. The formation of the synagogue as a stronghold is enacted through a dual configuration process by which the religious legitimacy, which the synagogue bestows on those who maintain it, is interwoven into a broader urban sociopolitical struggle to claim a presence in the city.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Ram M, Aharon-Gutman M

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie

Year: 2017

Volume: 108

Issue: 5

Pages: 641-655

Print publication date: 26/10/2017

Online publication date: 11/01/2017

Acceptance date: 28/09/2016

Date deposited: 28/08/2020

ISSN (print): 0040-747X

ISSN (electronic): 1467-9663

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/tesg.12231

DOI: 10.1111/tesg.12231

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