Under Quarantine

Immigrants and Disease at Israel’s Gate

By Rhona Seidelman

Rutgers University Press

Under Quarantine is the riveting story of Shaar Ha’aliya, a central immigrant processing camp opened shortly after Israel became an independent state. This historic gateway for Jewish migration was surrounded by a controversial barbed wire fence. The camp administrators defended this imposing barrier as a necessary quarantine measure - even as detained immigrants regularly defied it by crawling out of the camp and returning at will. Focusing on the conflicts and complications surrounding the medical quarantine, this book brings the history of this place and the remarkable experiences of the immigrants who went through it to life. Evocative and bold, Under Quarantine shows that we cannot fully understand Israel until we understand Shaar Ha’aliya. The gate of arrival for nearly half a million immigrants - a space of homecoming, conflict, exclusion and welcoming - here was the country’s crucible.

With uncompromising care and sensitivity, Rhona Seidelman unpacks the 'great story' of 'Aliah to the newly created Israel and puts the medical dimension of migration at the center. An essential chapter in the history of the Mizrahim.'

Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, author of The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History

An important contribution to the ever-growing body of Jewish and Israeli studies literature, Jewish immigration studies, and health and immigration scholarship. In particular, it facilitates a broader multidimensional perspective on a specific locus in its historical as well as current contexts. AJS Review

Immigrants and Quarantine at Israel’s Founding with Rhona Seidelman Infectious Historians Podcast

Rhona Seidelman is Assistant Professor of History and the Schusterman Chair of Israel Studies at the University of Oklahoma, Norman.

Contents
Introduction: Barbed Wire
1          Confines
2          Structure
3          Meaning
4          Memory
Conclusion: Under Quarantine
Epilogue: The Shaar Ha’aliya Memorial for Migrants and Medicine
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index

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