Ethnicity and Citizenship in the Ritual of a Synagogue of Tunisian Immigrants / עדתיות ואזרחות בבית-הכנסת של עולי טוניסיה בישראל

The paper examines the nature of the changes in ritual that occurred in an Israeli ethnic synagogue and their symbolic expressions, particularly the tension between citizenship and ethnicity. Certain events taking place in, or concerning, a particular synagogue were studied. The symbolic expression of the changes was found to be a means of communion of the worshipper with his new heterogeneous environment. The symbolic reference was now wider and the symbolic changes implied a shift in a relationship formerly obtained. In order to analyse the symbolic changes more definitely, the author developed a typology of religious changes comprising several types of symbolic changes of which the examples in this paper fall into the category of "innovation."