Eliezer Ben-Rafael (born 1938 in

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to ...

) is an Israeli sociologist. He is Weinberg Professor of Sociology, emeritus, at

Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) ( he, אוּנִיבֶרְסִיטַת תֵּל אָבִיב, ''Universitat Tel Aviv'') is a public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Locate ...

. Ben-Rafael is known for his work on the

kibbutz A kibbutz ( he, קִבּוּץ / , lit. "gathering, clustering"; plural: kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1909, was Degania. Today, farming h ...

, on language and

ethnicity An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...

in Israel, and on

globalization Globalization, or globalisation (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), see spelling differences), is the process of foreign relation ...

and Jewish identity. He is editor of a series on Jewish identities for Brill Publishers. Ben-Rafael is a former president of the International Institute of Sociology and former Chair of the Israeli Association for the Study of Language.

Childhood

Eliezer Ben-Rafael was an hidden child in Belgium during the Holocaust.

Work on Kibbutz Reform

In the early 1990s, Ben-Rafael was asked by the members of the

movement to chair a working group, "The Kibbutz at the Turn of the Century Project," to explore potential paths to the future for kibbutzim, many of which were failing both economically and failing to retain or attract members. Ben-Rafael was Chair of the Ben-Raphael Committee, a committee appointed by the

Cabinet of Israel The Cabinet of Israel (officially: he, ממשלת ישראל ''Memshelet Yisrael'') exercises executive authority in the State of Israel. It consists of ministers who are chosen and led by the prime minister. The composition of the governm ...

to produce a series of recommendations on structuring a process by which those kibbutzim that so chose could transition to a more market-oriented economic model. The recommendations were accepted by the government in 2004.

Books

*
The Metamorphosis of the Kibbutz
'' Ben-Rafael, E. & Shemer, O. (eds.) Brill, 2020 *
Confronting Allosemitism in Europe: The Case of Belgian Jews
'' Brill, 2014

References

1938 births Belgian Jews Living people Belgian emigrants to Israel Israeli Jews Israeli people of Belgian-Jewish descent Israeli sociologists Academic staff of Tel Aviv University {{Asia-sociologist-stub