Cultures within Cultures in Israel: Jewish and Arab Cultures and the Work-Family Interface

The goal of this chapter is to explore the possibility that the members of different subgroups or cultures in Israel may differ in their work-family experiences. I briefly review the unique Israeli context and the limited number of empirical studies that have examined this issue. Within the overall Israeli culture, there are several relatively distinct cultural groups, including secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews and Muslim, Christian, and Druze Arabs. The largest differences appear to be between Israeli Jews and Arabs. An interesting finding is that the Arabs, a group that tends to hold more traditional values, may cope better with work-family demands, which some scholars have speculated is due to the support they receive from their extended family. It is important to note that there is also substantial variation within each cultural and/or ethnic subgroup. For example, Israeli orthodox Jews may be more similar in their values to Israeli Arabs than to secular Jews.