Abstract
This dissertation considers the interplay between childhood, militarism, and whiteness in Israeli culture. Based on a year and a half of fieldwork in Israeli teachers’ colleges, schools, and activist circles, as well as over fifty interviews with parents, activists, and educators, I construct a working definition of telescopic temporality; a concept working off of Mikhail Bahktain’s chronotope, which describes the collapse of narrative spacetime between child and soldier. The blurring of the semantic shadows of children and soldiers is an important aspect of Israel’s bid for admission to Paulain whiteness, a racialized extension of Boyarin & Boyarin’s term for the innovation of inclusivity proposed to Christianity by St. Paul. Childhood in Israel stands in for the Hegelian concept of bildung which describes a capacity for progress and development. Israeli teachers, parents, and activists participate in telescopic temporality as part of maintaining Israel’s Pauline whiteness — our bid for admission to personhood.