conflict & communication online, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2014
www.cco.regener-online.de
ISSN 1618-0747

Benyamin Neuberger & Keren-Miriam Tamam
The image of the Amish in the New York Times versus the image of the Haredim in Haaretz (1980-2010)

This article compares the newspaper coverage of the relationship of two ultra-religious groups, the Amish community in the USA and the Haredi community in Israel, with their respective states. Although the Amish are sometimes called ‘American Haredim” in Israel, there are major differences between the two groups and their representation in the media. Nevertheless, they share enough similarities to allow for a comparison.
Basically, the different coverage of the two communities in the New York Times and in Haaretz seems to reflect major differences in the standing of these groups in their respective societies and differences in their attitude towards the state. While the Amish accept the United States as a land of freedom, the Haredim do not regard Israel as a truly Jewish state. While the Amish dialogue with the state is about civic liberties and the rule of law, the Haredi struggle derives from a different perception of the character of the state. The Haredi attitude towards the wider society and the state is to a large extent conflictual, and thus miles away from the Amish approach of Gelassenheit.

The authors:
Benyamin Neuberger is professor emeritus in Political Science at the Open University of Israel. He holds BA and MA degrees in Political Science, Economics and African Studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a Ph.D. degree in Political Science from Columbia University in New York. For more than 30 years he taught at the Open University of Israel and at Tel Aviv-University. As a visiting professor he also taught at the University of Pennsylvania, at Haverford College, the University of Cape Town, and the University of Swaziland. In 2003–05 he was Senior Associate Member of St. Antony’s College at Oxford University, and a visiting scholar at the Yarnton Centre for Jewish and Hebrew Studies/Oxford. In 2011 he was a visiting scholar at Brandeis University, and in 2012 Snowden Fellow at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College/Pennsylvania. He has published widely on nationalism, ethnicity, religion and state, Africa and Israel.
Address: The Open University of Israel, 1 University Road, Ra'anana 43107, Israel.
eMail: bennyn@openu.ac.il

Dr. Keren-Miriam Tamam has a PhD. in Media and Middle Eastern Studies (The Hebrew University, 2010). She also holds two M.A. degrees. The first in Middle Eastern Studies (Tel Aviv University, 2003), the second in Media and Journalism (The Hebrew University, 2006). Since 2000 Dr. Tamam is involved in various researches on different aspects regarding covering “the other” in different political conflicts. Since 2006 she has taught in the academia.
eMail: tkeren@mscc.huji.ac.il