Michael Brenner. In Search of Israel: The History of an Idea. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018. 392 pp.

Abstract

Reviewed by: In Search of Israel: The History of an Idea by Michael Brenner Anita Shapira Michael Brenner. In Search of Israel: The History of an Idea. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018. 392 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009419000369 Brenner is a serious scholar who writes elegantly and dispassionately, attempting to present a balanced, scholarly book on what he defines as "the history of an idea." The idea he ventures to explore is what he describes as a contradiction between the desire of Zionism to return the Jewish people to normality, to be achieved through the establishment of a state in Palestine, and the goal of this state to be "a light unto the nations." There exists a difference between themes that interest scholars of Israel outside Israel and Israeli scholars, namely that Israelis prefer to write about the history of the Zionist movement, Jewish settlement in Palestine and Israel, and Jewish-Arab relations, and are much less interested in the history of Zionism as a concept. In contrast, scholars abroad are interested in the history of ideas and tend to unearth marginal or forgotten thinkers and scholars, usually those whose works illuminate an alternative Zionist or non-Zionist approach to Jewry and its history in the past 150 years. Brenner belongs to this trend. What is normality, and how are we supposed to measure it? Was normality the elimination of the Jews' pariah status, or was it the creation of a rejuvenated people that would shed anomalies that were the result of life as a despised and persecuted minority? One of the major assumptions of Zionism was that the creation of the Jewish state would end antisemitism. This assumption was wrong; antisemitism is thriving, sometimes camouflaged as anti-Zionism. According to some of the scholars and polemicists Brenner mentions, the existence of Israel is endangering Jews in the Diaspora because they are identified with the Jewish state. Is antisemitism the result of Jews being unique, or is it the result of Jews being a weak and vulnerable minority? I believe it is the latter. Brenner thinks it is the former. The categories are not contradictory, but when they are juxtaposed, as they are in this book, the question arises of whether there is an inherent clash between the idea of normality and the idea of uniqueness. Israel's Declaration of Independence proclaims the natural right of Jews, "like all people," to a state of their own. It does not say anything about a unique state. The state was built by immigrants who came from all over the world, not by a native people. This is not unique, as all immigrant states were created by nonnatives. The problem of the Jews was that ownership of this land was and is still claimed by two peoples. But even in this, Israel is not unique. Territorial disputes and conflicts exist in other countries as well. In what way should Israel be unique? At one time, the ideal was social justice, then it was liberalism, and today many Israelis embrace Messianism, an idea supported by Christian evangelicals. However, every state is unique in its own way and has its own conflicts. The mix of religion and secularism, of ethnicity and nationalism, can be found all over the world, and in this regard, Israel is very "normal." An additional claim to uniqueness is that Israel considers itself responsible for the Jewish Diaspora. In this, too, Israel is not unique. The [End Page 254] Greeks, Armenians, and today Syrians, Palestinians, and even Russians have a Diaspora. Israel is unique in the attention it draws and the criticism it evokes. Is this the result of its uniqueness, or maybe of old antisemitism that denies Jews what is permissible to other people? I have stated all this not so much to contest the uniqueness of Israel, but to contest the claim that there is an inner tension between the ideal of "a light unto the nations" and the yearning for normality. While Brenner's book soundly presents the changes in the character of Israel's so-called uniqueness, Brenner accepts the yearning for normality as static. What does "normality" mean in the twenty-first century? The wandering...