Alternative voices in Zionist historiography1

Abstract

In contrast to the image popularized by the post‐Zionist polemic in Israel, Zionist historiography in its formative age between the 1930s and the 1960s did not share a unified view of the Jewish past. Various historians researched Jewish history from the nationalist point of view as well as that of a scientific research project, with the goal of understanding and describing the Jewish past. This complexity in the view of the Jewish past became even more evident in the second generation of Zionist historiography. An inquiry into the Zionist view of the past as reflected in the education system of Eretz Israel during this period also reveals that alongside the formation of an activist Zionist approach that aspired to transform history into a nation‐building enterprise, educators also taught Jewish history from a pedagogical point of view.