Description:

 “Unmixing the Holy City: Coexistence and Segregation in Early 20th Century Jerusalem”

Michelle Campos,  Associate Professor of Modern Middle Eastern HIstory, University of Florida

Over the past decade, the question of Jewish-Arab residential mixing in Israel has been the subject of fierce contestation in Knesset legislation, rabbinical responsa, popular culture, public demonstrations and acts of vigilantism. While some features are undoubtedly products of this current political moment, other aspects have deep historical roots in the end of the Ottoman Empire and the birth of territorial Zionism. This lecture examines the decades-long transformation of Jerusalem from a multiethnic, multi-religious Ottoman city to the thoroughly sectarianized and nationalized city it became by the eve of the 1948 war. Throughout, Jerusalemites were forced to mediate countervailing communal, economic, theological, and political pressures in a shared urban space.