"Kawkab - Remarkable Bedouin Women" offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of seven Bedouin women. All live in the Negev, all are active in transforming the reality of a society in transition, where tradition, culture, and religion are deeply intertwined, yet vulnerable to the winds of change. The narratives are told in first-person accounts, allowing each woman to share her own journey. The three accounts in Part I are the stories of three women who pursued higher education and strived to realize abilities and rights that they were taught to confine to the privacy of their homes.
Part II presents the poignant chronicles of two women who after suffering loss and bereavement and managed to rebuild their lives as widows of fallen soldiers, despite the social stumbling blocks they encountered. The two stories in Part III highlight the courage and leadership of women working in the shadows, places where the light of an advanced society does not penetrate, and from which they lead change. Each woman brings her unique, one-time voice, a voice that echoes that of other women. The life story of these Bedouin women reveals their childhood and youth in the wilderness of the Negev, their marriage, parenting, struggle for education, and personal development alongside crises, pain, distress, disappointments, and great expectations. They do not expect someone to clear the path for them. It is they, alone, who raise the torch of the quiet revolution, a torch no one can extinguish.
Part IV is theoretical, and presents knowledge gained through research, anchoring the questions raised in the stories within the growing corpus of knowledge centered on Bedouin society in Israel.
Professor Smadar Ben-Asher, expert educational psychologist, is a Senior Lecturer at Kaye Academic College of Education, an External Lecturer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and a faculty member of the Mandel Center for Leadership in the Negev. Ben-Asher's research in social psychology investigates the exclusion of minority groups, bereavement, loss, and personal and social crises. Together with Emda Orr she co-authored, The familiar and the alien: Social representations in Israel (2007, The Ben-Gurion Institute). Ben-Asher is also author of The Kishon affair clear and murky (2016, MOFET Institute and Hakibbutz Hameuchad, Red Line Series), and Kawkab (MOFET Institute, 2020, Hebrew; Minerva, 2023, Arabic).
