Shifting Ethnic Boundaries and Inequality in Israel: Or, How the Polish Peddler Became a German Intellectual

Why do racial and ethnic groups discriminate against each other? The most common sociological answer is that they want to monopolize scarce resources—good jobs or top educations—for themselves. This book offers a different answer, showing that racial and ethnic discrimination can also occur to preserve particular group identities.

Shifting Ethnic Boundaries and Inequality in Israel focuses on the early period of Israeli statehood to examine how the European Jewish founders treated Middle Eas...