The Men We Loved: Male Friendship and Nationalism in Israeli Culture

by Danny Kaplan

Some semi-public, exclusive male settings, most noticeably in the military, encourage the production of intimacy and desire. Yet whereas in most instances this desire is displaced through humor and aggressive gestures, it becomes acknowledged and outright declared once associated with sites of heroic death. In his provocative study of interrelations between friendship in everyday life and national sentiments in Israel, the author follows selected stories of friendship ranging over early childhood, school, the workplace, and some unique war experiences. He explores the symbolism of friendship in rituals for the fallen soldiers, the commemoration of Prime Minister Yzhak Rabin, and the national infatuation with recovering bodies of missing soldiers. He concludes that the Israeli case offers an extreme instance of a much broader cultural declaring the friendship for the dead epitomizes the political “blood pact” between men, taking precedence over the traditional blood ties of kinship and heterosexual unions. The book underscores nationalism as a homosocial-based emotion of commemorative desire .

190 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 2006

Reviews

[Naftoli · Rating 5 out of 5]

This sociological work by Danny Kaplan is a must read for anybody interested in the study of friendship, gender studies, militarism, nationalism, Jewish ethnography, or Israeli culture. While it is the first book I've read by Kaplan, he has already impressed me as a scholar's scholar. His insights vis-a-vis male frienships/bonding and its foundational importance to Israeli culture are poignant, penetrating, and powerfully illuminating. Further, his ability to weave the ancient Biblical text with modern narratives is revealing of a society which is obviously very old yet very young: an amalgamation of time, wisdom, and contemporary experience. Everybody who knows me personally can attest that I am no fan of militarism but this book conveys the topic with such integrity that I found myself identifying with it - not that militarism is a lofty goal but that militarism has become the fabric of a society that must fight for its right to exist from day to day, hour by hour, minute to minute.

As an aside, Kaplan used semi-structured interviews to examine the experiences of his informants. I also have experience with semi-structured interviews having used this methodology for my undergraduate work in anthropology and my graduate work in comparative religious studies. Unless you have undertaken this method, you may not realize how much work it entails though it bears copious fruit as evidenced by the reflective responses gleaned from informants. This research strategy encourages the informants to tell the interviewer what the informants think is important as opposed to the myopic use of questionnaires often utilized within the field of psychology. I would like to publicly praise Kaplan for his effective use of the semi-structured interview method and the thoughtful responses that this strategy has yielded. Mr. Kaplan is definitely an incisive and erudite social scientist. My hope is that he continues to add and publish his research on themes located at the interstices of culture and in the liminal places of society where he is best able to provide clarity and understanding.