1 Checkpoints of History: Israeli Identities and the Limits of Multiculturalism Elana Gomel Adia Mendelson-Maoz’ Multiculturalism in Israel: Literary Perspectives (Purdue University Press, 2014) surveys and analyzes the literary output of several minority communities in Israel: Palestinian citizens of Israel; Jews of non-European origin (the Mizrahim); Russian speakers; and Ethiopian-Israelis. The reason for choosing these specific groups is to apply the conceptual framework of multiculturalism to the Israeli situation and to argue that the “hegemony” of the Zionist literary tradition has suppressed a richness and diversity of many heterogeneous cultural identities. Bringing to the fore a wealth of material, the author introduces the English-speaking reader to a plethora of unfamiliar writers and texts. However, her theoretical framework is hardly adequate to the task she sets herself. Indeed, most articulations of multicultural theory refer to the Anglo-American context in which minorities are numerically submerged in a larger, homogenous population. Conversely, added together, the groups Mendelson-Maoz discusses constitute a majority of Israel’s inhabitants,and, apart from being a “majority-minority” state, which is only a distant demographic possibility for the US, Israel is crisscrossed by such a complex web of religious affiliations, political positions, ethnic origins and social stratifications that the very concept of multiculturalism as set out in the book’s introduction, is strained beyond usefulness. And yet, paradoxically, it is precisely that uneasy mismatch between the book’s theoretical project and its practical criticism that constitutes its greatest strength. Mendelson- Maoz’ study sets out to apply a familiar theory to an unfamiliar (to its non-Israeli readers) reality. Instead, it inadvertently exposes the limits of multiculturalism as a theoretical project, and points to a new way of articulating identity and difference. The book’s theoretical platform is discussed in the introduction section, where Mendelson-Maoz integrates the two approaches informing her study: multiculturalism and postcolonialism. The first focuses on “group rights” and envisions society as a mosaic of distinct ethnic and cultural communities; the second, developed by such theoreticians as Homi Bhabha, Commented [u1]: Is this what you meant? Commented [EG2R1]: Yes