Narration, Erziehung und die Erfindung des jüdischen Nationalismus: Ben-Zion Dinur und seine Zeit

Abstract

The debate about nationalism and nationality has in the last decade been characterised by the clash of ,primordialist' and ,modernist' positions. But is the discrepancy between the two really as large as often assumed? The paper argues that nationalism is an invented tradition where pre-national collective identities both prevailed and did not prevail. The author analyses the circumstances which determined this particular invention of tradition, what symbolic and rhetorical means were employed in its process of invention and by which social mechanisms and social agents this process was executed. In contrast to the contentions of Zionist ideology it is argued, that it was the Zionist movement which constructed the Jewish nation, and not the other way round. In this process intellectuals played a major role. The thesis is demonstrated by focusing upon the scholarly and public activities of Ben-Zion Dinur, historian and educator, who contributed to this invention of Jewish national tradition, first, by designing a new historical paradigm and, second, by implementing it in the Israeli curriculum.