Zionist Idea Research Articles

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Ha-Mizrah/al-Sharq: A Zionist Newspaper in Damascus during the Reign of Faysal in 1920

During the span of 22 months stretching from the entry of Fayṣal b. Husayn into Damascus in October 1918 until his expulsion at the end of July 1920, 42 newspapers and 13 journals appeared in Syria, more than half of them in Damascus. During this time, in which the press had a critical role in expressing and shaping public opinion in Syria, it became clear to the emissaries of the Zionist institutions in Damascus that they, too, needed to turn to this medium in order to spread their message. Hence, they argued that there was a need to publish a newspaper reflecting a moderate and calming outlook that would draw Arabs and Jews nearer to and increase their understanding of the Zionist idea. The result of their activities in this area saw the founding of a bilingual, Hebrew and Arabic, newspaper, called ha-Mizrah/al-Sharq (‘The East’). An examination of the only extant copies of the three issues that were printed before the newspaper ceased publication provides us with a deeper observation into the Zionist activities in Damascus during the reign of King Fayṣal.

Zeal for Zion: Christians, Jews and the Idea of the Promised Land (review)

Reviewed by: Zeal for Zion: Christians, Jews and the Idea of the Promised Land Dan Cohn-Sherbok Zeal for Zion: Christians, Jews and the Idea of the Promised Land, by Shalom Goldman. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009. 367 pp. $35.00. Zionism is normally viewed as a Jewish political cause. This is the picture presented by such works as Arthur Hertzberg’s 1959 anthology, The Zionist Idea, which makes no mention of Christian precursors of the Zionist idea. Recently, however, a number of works have focused on Christian Zionism, such as Stephen Sizer’s Christian Zionism: Road Map to Armageddon. Goldman’s informative and lucidly written volume supplements such studies by providing an illuminating account of Christian engagement with Zionism through six narratives set in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The first three chapters, dealing with the period before the creation of the Jewish state, relate the stories of three personal and political relationships: the poet Naphtali Herz Imber and the British diplomat and journalist Laurence Oliphant; the Zionist leader Theodor Herzl and the Anglican cleric William Hechler; and the Hebrew University professor Joseph Klausner and the Hebraist Herbert Danby. The next three chapters, set in the twentieth century, focus on organizational issues. Chapter Four tells the story of the Vatican’s engagement with the State of Israel. Chapter Five deals with three modern literary figures: Jorge Luis Borges, Robert Graves, and Vladimir Nabokov and their support for the State of Israel. The final chapter focuses on modern Christian Zionism. These six chapters are preceded by an extensive discussion of Zionism as a political movement which treats such themes as the notion of the promised land, the Anglican communion, and the Protestant churches’ view of the return to Zion, the United States and the restoration of the Jews, early scholarship on Christians and Zionism, Zionism and the Jewish-Christian relationship, and evangelicals, fundamentalists, and Israel. This material serves as a helpful background to the studies which follow. Yet it would have been better to have a sweeping survey of the history of Jewish and Christian Zionism from its early origins to the establishment of the Jewish state. This would have enabled the reader to place the figures mentioned in subsequent chapters into a coherent chronological context. [End Page 164] Yet despite the diffuse nature of Goldman’s narrative, the detailed accounts of diplomats, thinkers, poets, and scholars are illuminating. The discussion of Laurence and Alice Oliphant’s encounter with Naphtali Herz Imber, for example, gives a fascinating insight into the thought-world of early supporters of a Jewish homeland. Similarly, the chapter dealing with Theodor Herzl and his Christian associates fills in the gaps of most historical accounts of Herzl’s involvement with William Hechler and others. Again, the final chapter which deals with Jewish settlers and Christian Zionists from 1967 to 2007 affords an insightful overview of the growing Christian Zionist movement and its involvement with Israeli politics. Although Goldman does not seek to provide an historical overview of the Christian involvement with Zionism, his book nonetheless adds an important dimension to the understanding of Christian-Jewish encounter in the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Dan Cohn-Sherbok University of Wales Copyright © 2012 Purdue University

Jewish cultures, identities and contingencies: reflections from the South African experience

The article traces the major streams of Jewish immigration to South Africa, the cultural baggage brought by the newcomers, and the evolution of a South African Jewish cultural identity contingently shaped within the specifics of South African society but influenced by global trends. Even though South African Jews faced the assimilatory impulses of a frontier society, the divided nature of the country's white Afrikaans- and English-speaking population encouraged Jewish distinctiveness and provided a comfortable place for ethnic expression and an abiding support for the Zionist idea. Despite changes in the new South Africa, Jewish identity remains strong, with an ongoing religious revival that dates back to the 1970s. Buttressed by a dispensation that celebrates cultural and religious diversity, the Jewish community is grappling with its past in apartheid South Africa while finding its place within a new multicultural framework. Nation building remains in its infancy.

Do Zionists Read Music from Right to Left? Abraham Tsvi Idelsohn and the Invention of Israeli Music

Music is widely recognized as a central component of Israeli national identity, yet the putative Jewishness of Israeli music remains a subject of enduring cultural controversy and ideological confusion. I argue in this article that the roots of Israeli music's distinctive national character can be traced to the pre-World War I activities of Abraham Tsvi Idelsohn, the pioneering Zionist scholar and ideological progenitor of a revolutionary new concept of Hebrew music. In his early writings, Idelsohn called repeatedly for a rejection of Diasporic Jewish music and the recovery of an authentic ancient Hebrew music for the reborn nation in its homeland. However, his two most influential early publishing projects, a songbook for Jewish schools and massive compendium of liturgical and folk melodies, reveal a more complicated cluster of attitudes towards European music, Diaspora Jewish culture, and the Arab Middle East. Analyzing Idelsohn's aesthetics, I discuss his different strategies for reconciling ideological purity alongside cultural cosmopolitanism in Hebrew national culture. I conclude that Idelsohn's aesthetic categories relied strongly on the semantic power of language to determine music's cultural meaning. This move allowed Idelsohn to link his model of a new Hebrew national music to the very European (and European Jewish) culture he ostensibly rejected. I close by discussing how Idelsohn's legacy exposes a deeper continuity in Israeli culture that cuts across the perceived ruptures of 1917 and 1948 to link the early Zionist idea of "Negation of the Exile" to contemporary concerns about Israeliness, music, and national identity.

Zionism between Raw Force and Eros: Berdichevski's Passionate Relation to the Jewish Political Revolution

This article deals with the relation of Micha Yosef Ben Gurion (Berdichevski)—one of the central formulators of the Zionist idea and of modern Hebrew literature—to the Zionist political sphere. As a wordly Jewish intellectual, Berdichevski attempted to establish a kind of Zionism that would allow Jewish individuals to engage in it as an act of their desires. In exploring how his carnal inclinations affected his vision of the political, I argue that Berdichevski's perception fails qualitatively by transposing its guiding sensual approach to the formulation of the new Jewish political sphere. As this article will show, Berdichevski's relation to the Jewish political revolution reveals a sometimes limited perception regarding the possibilities of freedom inherent in political activity and often contradicts his own aspiration to nurture the liberty of Jewish individuals.

The Moscow State Yiddish Theater: Jewish Culture on the Soviet Stage (review)

JEFFREY VEIDLINGER. The Moscow State Yiddish Theater: Jewish Culture on the Soviet Stage. Jewish Literature and Culture. Indiana- Michigan Series in Russian and East European Studies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Pp. xi + 356.The Moscow State Jewish Theater (GOSET) played significant role in the lives of Moscow theater lovers for both Jews and non- Jews alike. As result of this institution, actors and directors of the theater became national celebrities. Solomon Mikhoels, the director and leading actor of GOSET, was considered by contemporaries to be an informal leader of Soviet Jewry in the 1940s. Yet, until now, the history of Moscow's State Jewish Theater has not been thoroughly researched, and many gaps remain in our knowledge of its repertoire, staff, financial records, and the public reception of its performances. Consequently, Jeffrey Veidlinger's new book is welcome study of Moscow's State Jewish Theater in all its complexity.Veidlinger suggests that the history of Moscow's Jewish theater can serve as a window into Soviet Jewish life (p. 15). ^Vhile one can argue what kind of window the history of the GOSET opens (the of Soviet Jewish elite or Jewish masses, Jewish actors or viewers, or those JeAvs who never heard of the theater) , it is true that the theater was very important in both Soviet Jewish history and in the formation of Soviet Jewish identity.Veidlinger's book also presents insights into the development of Jewish culture in the Soviet Union. He correctly argues that the history of JeAVS in the Soviet Union was neither story of persecution nor story of voluntary assimilation but rather something in the middle, something expressed in compromise of subtle shading. Veidlinger then suggests that during the entire era of the Jewish theater (which was theoretically designed to bring Soviet ideas to the Jewish masses), Jewish -writers and artists Avere able to promote their own culture within the conditions of Soviet nationality policies (p. 3). Veidlinger shows that almost every performance of the theater had Jewish subcontext, although it was sometimes not clearly visible. He argues, for example, that the first director of the GOSET, Alexander Granovsky, was trying to promote Zionist ideas when lie staged the play 137 Chisren\i HuMeJ by Avrom Vevyorke. He argues that the number 137 refers to the famous psalm about .Jewish longing for Jerusalem (p. 76). The problem with this hypothesis is that it is difficult to prove or disprove. Even if Granovsky understood this metaphor himself, it is not certain that the actors, to say nothing about whether the viewers of the performances did. Veidlinger does not provide us with the insights of the artists themselves regarding this matter. Therefore, although this idea is quite interesting, it is not entirely convincing. The analysis of the audiences' reception of these hidden ideas also needs elaboration. Although Veidlinger says that the majority of .Jewish men had some education in Jewish matters and that the audience was more sensible to these sorts of subtexts because of the nature of the totalitarian regime (pp. 147 - 48), it is likely that only very small minority of theatergoers were able to understand these hidden meanings. …

The Invention of a Nation: Zionist Thought and the Making of Modern Israel (review)

Reviewed by: The Invention of a Nation: Zionist Thought and the Making of Modern Israel Harold M. Waller The Invention of a Nation: Zionist Thought and the Making of Modern Israel, by Alain Dieckhoff, translated from the French by Jonathan Derrick. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. 297 pp. $30.00. Israel is one of the few states to be founded on the basis of an idea. Precisely because the Jewish nation did not live in its traditional homeland for nearly two millennia, it was necessary to invent the idea of the state. That process required commitment to what was a revolutionary concept over 100 years ago and to the organizational structure that would do the political work. An understanding of contemporary Israel requires knowledge of the ideas that motivated the builders of the state and of the political process leading up to 1948. Alain Dieckhoff admirably provides a guide to the former. Actually Dieckhoff combines two books into one. The first is basically an intellectual history of Zionism and Zionist thought up to 1948. It is a worthy successor to earlier efforts of this genre, notably those by Arthur Hertzberg and Shlomo Avineri, as well as those by Walter Laqueur, David Vital, and Ben Halpern. Is there a need for another book like this? It should be especially valuable to readers of the original French version, but fills a need for English readers as well. Dieckhoff most impressively incorporates modern scholarship from diverse disciplines into his erudite analysis of Zionist ideas. As a result he presents much more than a routine recital of the giants of Zionist thought. The second book is much shorter, just the two final chapters. In it he analyzes the state of contemporary Zionist ideology in an attempt to relate today's Israeli politics to the great debates of the Zionist past. This part, while warranting our attention, would be more valuable were it more fully developed. It is certainly a project that deserves fuller treatment. The first part of the book reflects careful and thorough scholarship and deep knowledge of both major and minor works of Zionist thought. Throughout this part, the author stresses both historical and intellectual context in order to assist the reader in understanding how and why Zionist ideas developed. There is not much that is radically new here, but his synthesis is both valuable and effective. Moreover, he simplifies the subject (though his work is hardly simplistic) by collapsing categories in order to facilitate comparisons between the various thinkers and to explicate the connections to contemporary political concerns. Thus he has fewer chapters than the earlier books on the subject, limiting himself to the more general political Zionism of Herzl and then the three specific types: socialist, religious, and nationalist Zionism. He adds a valuable chapter on the significance of the Hebrew language, which is not typical in books of this type, stressing the critical role that the revival of Hebrew played in the development of Zionism during the decades leading up [End Page 191] to independence. Dieckhoff's approach facilitates the understanding of Israeli politics since 1948 because the intellectual origins of all three political camps are treated in depth. Other scholars have demonstrated the significance of the three camps, so Dieckhoff's work meshes nicely with the existing literature in that sense. From a contemporary vantage point it is difficult to separate ideology from politics in the Israeli experience. The ideological parties trace their roots to the Zionist politics of the early 20th century. But today it is relevant to ask whether they have remained ideological parties. If not, the study of Zionist thought declines in utility. That is precisely one of the key issues: the relevance of Zionism to contemporary politics. It can be argued that the traditional Zionist parties retain a commitment to Zionism as an idea. But they seem to have moved away from connections with their traditional ideological positions. It is evident that the parties have changed, which is hardly surprising in an intensely active political system, but not because of the emergence of some grand ideological innovation by a major thinker. Indeed, it is the response to real-world events that has...

The Americanization of Zionism, 1897-1948 (review)

The Americanization of Zionism, 1897-1948, by Naomi Cohen. Hanover and London: Brandeis University Press, 2003. 261 pp. $35.00. In The Americanization of Zionism, Naomi Cohen expands on a theme that has previously been explored both by herself and by scholars such as Ben Halpern and Melvin Urofsky: from its earliest years, has been shaped by uniquely factors that set it apart from traditional ideology of European Zionism. in United States was fashioned according to the needs of Jews in America, including their desire not to differ too much from the stand of government and the demands of public opinion (p. 1), she contends. This meant jettisoning such concepts as inevitability of massive antisemitism in diaspora and personal obligation of every Zionist to settle in Palestine. Most Jews have always regarded United States as their home, never believed that substantial antisemitism will erupt here, and never seriously considered relocating to Middle East. Nor would they want what Cohen calls American public opinion to suspect that they regard United States as a country that will eventually persecute them and drive them out. Cohen explains at start that The Americanization of does not purport to be a synthetic history of Zionism (p. 2). Rather, she presents eight separate episodes, some revolving around key events, others around key individuals, that illustrate her central theme. Every chapter features same crisp writing style and high level of scholarship that made her earlier books sparkle. It is impossible to finish any single section of book without gaining some fresh insight or new information. The book begins with a study of earliest U.S. Zionist monthly, The Maccabaean, exploring how it presented Zionist ideas to fledgling Zionist movement and how, in turn, it reflected perspective of emerging movement. Subsequent chapters deal with such disparate topics as unsuccessful attempt to build a Conservative synagogue in Jerusalem in 1930s, efforts by Jewish social worker Maurice Hexter to influence British policy in Palestine, conflicts between Zionists and State Department over immigration to Palestine during 1930s, ill-fated Jewish Conference, and 1940s debates over within Conservative Judaism's Jewish Theological Seminary. Her chapter on Reform Judaism's evolution from anti-Zionism to non-Zionism (that is, support for a Jewish refuge although not a sovereign state) brings into sharp focus multiplicity of factors at work in shaping that movement's attitude towards Palestine. England's Balfour Declaration, soon endorsed by U.S. government, legitimated Zionism in eyes of Reform rabbis (p. 62). If they did not have to fear dual loyalty accusations, Reform leaders could feel comfortable with idea of Palestine as a refuge for downtrodden European Jews, even if they were slow to embrace notion of Jewish territorial sovereignty. Later, rise of Nazism cemented Reform's acceptance of idea of Palestine as a haven for European masses. Self-preservation was also a factor: Reform rabbis had to face reality that by interwar years, most Jews were nationalist-minded eastern European immigrants (p. 62) (or their offspring) to whom a strongly anti-Zionist brand of Reform Judaism would not appeal. …

American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise (review)

Reviewed by: American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise Pamela S. Nadell (bio) Shulamit Reinharz and Mark A. Raider (eds.) American Jewish Women and the Zionist EnterpriseWaltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2005 On November 29, 1948, Hebrew University student Zipporah Porath wrote home to New York: I can't believe this year. So much has happened, but the most important thing by far is the birth of the state. I've been part of it and it will forever be part of me. I guess that means I am telling you I intend to see this war through and then remain on, whatever happens. This is now my home. (p. 362) These words close a valuable collection documenting, for the first time, the range of American women's contributions to Zionism. Following Brandeis University's 1999 conference "Untold Stories: American Jewish Women in the Yishuv and Early State of Israel" (convened to mark Israel's fiftieth anniversary), sociologist Shulamit Reinharz, a pioneering figure in women's studies, teamed up with historian Mark A. Raider, author of The Emergence of American Zionism (1998), to edit the proceedings. What began as a publication of conference papers wisely evolved into a far more significant book. In compiling American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise, the editors added an array of primary and secondary sources, a number of them previously published, to extend their historical sweep, reaching back to the pre-Herzlian Zionism of Emma Lazarus and forward to the prime ministership of Golda Meir. By bringing all these together in a single volume, they dramatically convey the range and depth of American women's Zionist involvements, commitments, and activities. [End Page 250] The book, which is divided into four sections, opens with portraits of three visionaries: Emma Lazarus (by Arthur Zeiger, first published in 1958), Henrietta Szold (by Allon Gal), and Marie Syrkin (by Carole Kessner, also previously published). Accompanying their portraits are excerpts from their writings: Emma Lazarus's poem "The Banner of the Jew," a letter by Henrietta Szold, and a 1947 essay advocating partition by Marie Syrkin. By publishing these women's intellectual contributions to the development of Zionism alongside each other, the editors demonstrate that women were not only Zionist activists but also shapers of the Zionist idea. These and the other original voices included in the book's final section, "Women Report and Remember: Documentary Portraits," make for compelling reading. In addition to Zipporath Porath's spellbinding account of the siege of Jerusalem during the War of Independence, the documentary portraits include Golda Meir's record of her astonishment at having to prove her value to Kibbutz Merhavyah, and Ruth Halprin Kaslove's memories of her mother, Hadassah president Rose Luria Halprin, whose activism propelled her, in the 1930s, to move her family to Palestine and from there to travel to Berlin for Youth Aliyah, where she was spied upon by the Gestapo. In another memoir, Lois Slott recounts her insider's view, from her perch as a stenotypist (a job one might have to explain to undergraduates) for the American Section of the Jewish Agency, of the dramas leading up to the new nation's birth and of the young men scurrying around the U.S. buying up arms for the coming war. These captivating voices enrich the collection, not only for a general audience but especially for students, who may well find it assigned in modern Jewish history classes. They will also benefit from the useful time line tabulating landmark dates in the history of American Jewish women, Zionist affairs, American and world Jewish affairs, and general world history, to which, in the interest of full disclosure, I note that I contributed. The book's second section considers an array of American Jewish women's Zionist organizations. Going beyond the best known of the women's Zionist organizations, Hadassah (analyzed by Mary McCune for its membership success and by Mira Katzburg-Yungman for its early contributions to the Yishuv), the volume includes essays on Mizrachi Women, Pioneer Women, Hadassah-WIZO Canada, and the International Council of Jewish Women. The inclusion of religious and socialist groups underscores the diversity of women's Zionist activism and demands...

The Workers' Health Fund in Eretz Israel: Kupat Holim, 1911-1937 (review)

Reviewed by: The Workers' Health Fund in Eretz Israel: Kupat Holim, 1911-1937 Sandy Sufian Shifra Shvarts . The Workers' Health Fund in Eretz Israel: Kupat Holim, 1911-1937. Rochester Studies in Medical History, no. 2. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2002. xvi + 340 pp. Ill. $85.00, £60.00 (1-58046-122-0). This book is the English translation of the original Hebrew, Kupat Holim Clalit: Itzuva vehitpatchuta kegorem hamirkazi beshirutei habriut be Eretz Israel, 1911-1937 (General Health Fund: Its shape and development as a central factor in the [End Page 735] health services of Eretz Israel, 1911-1937), published in 1997. The book, consisting of ten chapters, focuses on the formative years of Kupat Holim, a health-care institution that eventually became the major medical provider-insurer of the state of Israel. Presenting its development as a sequence of starts, stops, and frequent delays, Shifra Shvarts charts the persistent issues of membership and recruitment, balancing ideological principles with fiscal responsibility, and negotiating institutional relationships. She shows that the organization proved flexible and responsive to the constantly changing social and economic conditions of the Jewish community in Palestine (Yishuv). The work fits squarely into the scholarly literature on the Yishuv that investigates the interaction of Zionist ideas and the process of state-building.1 It can also be situated within a growing but still understudied literature on health issues in modern Jewish history, and it certainly contributes to that scholarship on health-care organizations and management. Head of Health Systems Management at Ben Gurion University, Shvarts is among no more than a dozen scholars who work on health issues during the late Ottoman and British Mandate periods of Palestine. She is considered a senior scholar in this cohort, an expert on the dynamics of public health and medical care in the Yishuv as well as their ramifi-cations in the state period of Israel. She explores the development of Kupat Holim not only as a historical case study but as one of contemporary import, used to understand the nature and politics of health-care delivery in Israel, its constraints and possibilities, at the turn of the twenty-first century. One of the many public needs of Zionist laborers in the process of settlement was for medical services. To respond to this need despite political and ideological tensions, various nonpartisan health funds for Jewish rural workers were established in the early twentieth century, including the Health Fund of the Federation of Agricultural Workers in Judea, and later the health funds of the Galilee and Samaria. After World War I the funds were reorganized along Labor Party lines, but they eventually merged to become Kupat Holim in 1920. The organization's mission, as Shvarts explains, was to serve as the "emissary of the organized working public in the Federation of Labor in matters of health in Israel" (p. 1). The health funds adapted both the Jewish diasporic tradition of linat tzedek (community responsibility for tending to the sick)—reworking it to fit the Zionist notion of self-sufficiency—and the European idea of compulsory insurance, to local conditions. The particular needs and profile of the pioneers during this time, Shvarts points out, distinguish the historical emergence of Kupat Holim from other European cases. As both an insurer and a provider of care, it extended its medical services to laborers and their family members. Bringing services to the sick person and stimulating mutual aid formed the ideological bases of the health fund, principles that reflected the social and political views of [End Page 736] the second Zionist wave of immigration. Their translation into practice was often difficult to fully achieve or uphold; this circumstance constituted one of the organization's many dilemmas. Other dilemmas included continual deficits and governance woes. Membership dues were difficult to collect, and expansion efforts, including employer contributions and the parallel tax, repeatedly failed. The quintessential dilemma of balancing or minimizing expenditures without impairing the quality of service was repeatedly faced. Distinguishing between members and nonmembers for medical service also posed a consistent problem. Attempts to make members of the workers' federation (Histadrut) mandatory members of the health fund were not successful until 1937, which deeply...

Forgotten Prophet. William Henry Hechler and the rise of political Zionism

Reverend William Henry Hechler was of outstanding significance for the mediation of Theodor Herzl’s Zionist ideas to the German and English aristocracy from 1896 to 1904. In spite of this he has for the most part been left overseen, and therefore almost forgotten. Intending to reverse that trend, this article presents a brief biographical sketch of William Hechler, and discusses his relation to Theodor Herzl and the emerging Zionist movement. It highlights their different personalities and the incommensurability of their fundamental ideas. Further, Hechler’s most central publication, The Restoration of the Jews to Palestine (1882), is presented in its historical context and in regard to its posthumous reception. Consequently previous readings of this document are questioned and subsequently dismissed. Instead a new picture of this hitherto almost unknown document will emerge. Finally William Hechler’s prophetical endeavours are briefly outlined, critically reviewed and cautiously re-dated to the midst of the 1890s. Thus, the article promotes an alternative perspective on the spread and success of the young Zionist movement: By focusing on Hechler’s ability to transform Herzl’s political message into a semi-political or religious one, the way is paved for another understanding of the breakthrough and acceptance of Zionism.

Jews: The Essence and Character of a People (review)

Bqok Reviews ,Book Reviews 137 Jews: The Essence and Character of a People, by Arthur Hertzberg and Aron HirtManheimer . San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998 (c); 1999 (p), 294 pp. $25.00. Jews: The Essence and Character ofa People demonstrates its authors' great erudition but is not intended for a scholarly audience. In Jews Arthur Hertzberg and Aron HirtManheimer offer their contribution to the modern publishing tradition of distilling the essence of the Jewish experience into a single volume. I have found some of these attempts, especially Robert Seltzer's magisterial, 900-page Jewish People, Jewish Thought (1982), far more successful than others. Another, Thomas Cahill's The Gifts ofthe Jews,' How a Tribe ofDesert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels (1998), spent many weeks on best-seller lists, and its author toured Jewish book fairs. These affIrm the wide appeal of such books. Hertzberg and Hirt-Manheimer's contribution falls closer to Cahill than to Seltzer, and presumably its authors hope for a similarly large audience. The authors are superbly qualified to present their assessment of the Jewish experience. Senior author Arthur Hertzberg (whose name appears in a larger font on the title page) has had a long and distinguished career blending service to the Jewish community with scholarship and university teaching. A pulpit rabbi and former vicepresident ofthe World Jewish Congress, he has also seen two ofhis books, The French Enlightenment and the Jews and an edited collection of readings on The Zionist Idea, become classics. When Aron Hirt-Manheimer, editor ofthe Union ofAmerican Hebrew Congregations' quarterly Reform Judaism, suggested their collaboration, the men agreedthatHertzberg's "viewpointand scholarship would drive the arguments put forth in this book" (p. xvii). They also agreed upon their thesis: that they can define the Jewish character which, even though it evolved over millennia, "has remained essentially the same since the time, some four thousand years ago, ofthe founding patriarch, Abraham" (p. 2). Given this argument, one which attributes the essence ofthe Jews to God's having chosen this people and to Jews' encounters with those who sought to oppress and destroy them, it is not surprising to read that a number ofAmerican and European publishers refused to publish this book. The authors contend these publishers feared "the wrath ofthe Jewish establishment" (p. 2). I find it equally plausible that discerning editors rejected the authors' attempt to sweep across the most salient and determinative features of Jewish history, theology, and culture in less than 300 pages. Surely some pre-publication readers shared my concern that, in traversing the path from Abraham to the fiftieth anniversary ofthe birth ofmodern Israel, Jews presents an idiosyncratic interpretation 138 SHOFAR Winter 2001 Vol. 19, No.2 of the Jewish experience, one resting on the authors' biases, not on the plethora of Jewish Studies scholarship. Attempting to distinguish Jews from the field ofsimilar books, Hertzberg and HirtManheimer assert that the authors of other works make the mistake of writing "about Jews from a modem perspective looking backward" (p. 4). Yet I would contend that Hertzberg andHirt-Manheimermake the same mistake. The modem Jewish experience, especially the Holocaust and Zionism, drives their reading ofthe Jewish past and their interpretation of the Jewish character. For example, the Holocaust figures in most chapters. The authors discuss its implications for Jewish self-understanding of the concept of the chosen people. They use a joke about German Jews reading a Nazi newspaper to reflect upon the character trait of Jewish divisiveness. They show Hitler and Goebbels parroting canards circulated in antiquity against the Jews. They introduce their discussion ofmedieval Spanish Jewry with the fall of France in 1940. Each ofthese examples appears in a different chapter. They suggest that Jews too reads the past through a modernist lens. While Jews cannot appeal to the scholarly reader and should not interest those well versed in Jewishhistory and culture, several features recommend this book above others of this geme. First, Jews is stylistically imaginative. When Hertzberg recounts his personal experiences, the authors speak in the singular voice of the memoirist. We thus hear Hertzberg tell an archbishop in the Vatican that the only Polish words he remembers are the words for "dirty Jew." We see...

Tendencies of the Zionist Movement in Lithuanian Republic (1918 - 1940)

The Zionism movement, as elswhere in the world, was not a united movement in Lithuania. It was divided between competing political factions, more or less influential at different periods, debating means and ends, and its relation with the Lithuanian state. The main goal of the Zionists was to prepare Jews for emigration to Palestine, and to foster the Hebrew language and national culture. The General Zionists and Zionist Socialists had the biggest influence on Lithuanian Jewish communities in the period of 1918 - 1940. The primary Zionist support for Jewish cultural work and national upbringing was through Jewish schools and the press. The prosperity of the Zionist press in the interwar period was weighty proof, that Lithuanian Jewry supported Zionist ideas. The greatest achievement of the Lithuanian Jewish national minority, which was kept up in the whole interwar period, was the independent educational system. The dominant part of the Jewish educational system was the Tarbut school network. There were a whole complex of the historical and political factors, which comprised the environment in which the Zionist movement flourished in Lithuania in the interwar period.

Deutsche-jüdische Symbiose—oder Die mißglückte Emanzipation (review)

144 SHOFAR Winter 2000 Vol. 18, No.2 Although Jewish Nietzscheanism may have been rather limited, Nietzscheans ofJewish heritage were at least as abundant as their Christian counterparts. Robert C. Holub Department of German University of California at Berkeley Deutsche-jiidische Symbiose-oder Die mi6g1iickte Emanzipation, by Julius H. Schoeps. Berlin: Philo, 1996. 418 pp. OM 64.00. This is not a monograph but a collection of Schoeps's essays about German-Jewish relations from 1750 to the present. While any such collection must inevitably lack the force ofa more clearly focused book-length study, the author has nevertheless attempted to impose a sort ofunity on these variegated studies. Schoeps thus identifies a single conviction shaping his research-namely, the beliefthat"Germans and Jews on German territory, especially in the last three hundred years, have had a common history" (p. 9). Moreover, he has organized his pieces into three categories, the first dealing with Jewish emancipation, the secondwith German antisemitism, andthe third with Zionism. These themes, he believes, exist in a dialectical relationship with one another, with "emancipation as thesis, modem antisemitism as antithesis, and Zionism as synthesis" (p. 11). Unfortunately, Schoeps's Zionist dialectic of failed emancipation contradicts his hope for a common German-Jewish history which would renew the Deutschejiidische Symbiose under a different name. After all, it is only from a Jewish (rather than a German) perspective that Zionism can be understood as a fmal synthesis ofopposing forces. Schoeps's collection is thus ultimately less about any attempted symbiosis between Germans and Jews than about the failure of Jewish emancipation itself. That emancipation, Schoeps suggests, was conditional upon the willingness of German Jews to give up the particular rituals which set them apart, and embrace what amounted to a "Christianity without Christ" (p. 39). In this context, Reform Judaism was invented as a kind of Jewish "Church" hardly distinguishable from the Protestant denominations (pp. 80-81). During the Frankfurt Assembly, its temporary Jewish vicepresident Gabriel Riesser thus saw Judaism as merely one more German "confession," and assimilation as just another aspect of the larger process of national consolidation around the Prussian state (pp. 110, 119). The failure ofthe Revolution of 1848 made Jewish integration more problematic. Conservative reactionaries joined nationalist revolutionaries in denouncing the project of conversion and demanding instead the long-delayed unification of Germans in opposition to the Jews. A key chapter, "The Flight into Hate," thus carefully delineates the well-known transmutation of Judeophobia into antisemitism, tracing the way in Book Reviews 145 which the image of the Jewish parasite was superimposed on the older picture of the demon Jew. Richard Wagner played a particular role in that transformation by denouncing even converted Jewish artists for allegedly poisoning German culture with their alien spirit (pp. 181-82). Adumbrating Hitler, Wagner vilified the Jews for their technically proficient but ultimately sterile mastery of German forms. Nor was it any accident that the sage ofBeyreuth first published his essay on "Judaism in Music" only a year after the failure at Frankfurt. It was just these increasingly shrill attacks, Schoeps believes, that caused the Zionist seed to finally germinate. To be sure, he concedes that Zionism arose as a variant of German nationalism. But by including an essay delineating the effect of Dreyfus's ceremonial degradation on Theodor Herzl's tum to Zionism, Schpeps ultimately implies that the triumph of the Zionist idea cannot be found within the German cultural sphere alone (pp. 345-346). It is thus precisely here that the book-as a book-goes awry. However interesting the individual essays, any coherent study of the origins of Zionism cannot limit itself to German conditions. Conversely, if this volume is supposed to be about the failure of Jewish assimilation in Germany (a very different topic altogether), it probably should not have ended with a discussion of the Zionists. This is because most German Jews not only wanted to remain Germans, but would have done so but for the improbable rise ofNational Socialism. It thus seems to me (if not to commentators like Goldhagen) that the failure of emancipation was far from inevitable. The very fact that Prussiaand its tradition ofGerman-Jewish symbiosis ruled until 1933...

"The Unknown Variable Hidden Underground" and the Zionist Idea: Rhetoric of Place in an Israeli Kibbutz and Cultural Interpretation

Abstract This article examines the rhetoric of place in an Israeli kibbutz. Members of this kibbutz identified the story of its settlement with what they called the "Sidriyot story" (the "Jujube story"). The aggregate of the stories collected in the kibbutz creates a narrative of the local culture in which the ethos of Zionist-socialist settlement in all its complexity is expounded. The analysis of the stories as told by the generation of the founders and the kibbutz-born generation uncovers the polyphonic life of the narrative and its "dialogic narration." In the narration the jujube becomes a key symbol that by its nature contains a whole slew of simultaneous meanings and ambiguities. It relates to the main values and problems of the society, such as the conquest of the soil and building of the settlement, uprooting and planting, Jews and Arabs, nature and culture, and more. In this way the stories exemplify the importance of local legends for cultural interpretation.

The Invention of the Mizrahim

This essay examines the paradoxical effects on Arab Jews of their two, rival essentialist nationalisms-Jewish and Arab. It shows how the Eurocentric concept of a single 'Jewish History" cut non-Ashkenazi Jews offfrom their origins, even while the Zionist idea that Arabness and Jewishness are mutually exclusive gradually came to be shared by Arab nationalist discourse. The emergence of a new, hybrid iden- tity of Mizrahim, as a product both of Israel's assimilationist policy and of resistance to it, is discussed. Finally, the author proposes an interdisciplinary framework-Mizrahi studies-as a way of going be- yond hegemonic Zionist discourses while at the same time making a strong link to the Palestinian issue.

Zionist photography, 1910–41: Constructing a landscape

Abstract Jewish photography in Palestine—Eretz-Israel in Jewish tradition and concept—from the beginning of the twentieth century to the founding at mid-century of the state of Israel, is rooted in the history of establishing the Zionist idea and the cultural and political consequences of that undertaking.1 This paper is based on research submitted as a Masters thesis in Communication, under the tutelage of Professor Ycshayahu Nir, Hebrew University, Jerusalem. I wish to thank the Smart Family Institute for Communication Research and the Institute for Research of the History of JNF Land and Settlement, for their respective research grants, and staff members of the University and National Library, and the Central Zionist Archive in Jerusalem, who provided excellent technical assistance Zionism paved the way from the idea of constituting a Jewish national homeland in Eretz-Israel to the reality of a Jewish state. One means of furthering this endeavour was the use of propaganda.2 Zionist propaganda was the ideological mentor to a society in transition. This society, faced with serious demographic, political and geographical challenges, needed strengthening, confirmation and continuing ideological sustenance in order to build a new history and homeland. To this end photographs were used to show the local landscape in terms of 'building a land', by depicting the positive effects of human activity on the countryside. These photographs were distributed in an ideologically and institutionally controlled way and played a role, as did literature, theatre, music, the plastic arts and motion pictures, in forging the Zionist myth.

Reflections of/on Zionism in Recent Hebrew Fiction: Aharon Megged's Foiglman and Ruth Almog's Dangling Roots

68 SHOFAR Fall 1994 Vol. 13, No. 1 REFLECTIONS OF/ON ZIONISM IN RECENT HEBREW FICTION: AHARON MEGGED'S FOIGLMAN AND RUTH ALMOG'S DANGLING ROOTS by Rachel Feldhay Brenner Rachel Feldhay Brenner is an Assistant Professor in the Hebrew and Semitic Studies Department at the University ofWisconsin-Madison, where she teaches Modern Hebrew Literature. She has published Assimilation and Assertion: The Response to the Holocaust in Mordecai Richler's Writing (Peter Lang, 1989) and A. M. Klein, The Father of Canadian jewish Literature: Essays in the Poetics of Humanistic Passion (Mellen, 1990), as well as numerous articles on the representations of the Holocaust in Jewish Canadian and in Israeli literatures. She has completed a manuscript on intellectual responses to the Holocaust and is now at work on a study of the artist's self-representations in Modern Hebrew Literature. . . . a political ideal which is not grounded in our national culture is apt to seduce us from loyalty to our own inner spirit and to beget in us a tendency to find the path of glory in the attainment of material power and political domination, thus breaking the thread that unites us with the past and undermining our historical foundation. Ahad Ha·Am' The tradition of justice ... makes it clear that ... [i)ndependence of one's own must not be gained at the expense of 'Ahad Ha-Am, "TheJewish State and the Jewish Problem," The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader, ed. Arthur Hertzberg (New York: Atheneum, 1986), p. 268. Zionism in Recent Hebrew Fiction 69 another's independence.... A regenerated Jewish people in Palestine has not only to aim at living peacefully together with the Arab people, but also at a comprehensive cooperation with it in opening and developing the country. Manin Buber Contemplating his relationship with Foiglman, his late friend, Arbel, the protagonist-narrator in Megged's novel, admits: Foiglman's spirit haunts me and harrows me. It gives me no peace.... He follows me like a shadow.... He walks around my house, sits on the couch, stands in the kitchen. He refuses to come out of me. When I lie down, and when I rise and when I am on my way. In the nights I dream about him. Sometimes r see him appear at my door ... his face white as a sheet, his arms stretched out as if asking why. (I' 255).3 Mira, the protagonist-narrator in Dangling Roots, admits her incomprehensihle sense of affinity with Levadovi, her long dead greatgrandfather : For years, the man has been in my thoughts, until he became very close to me, practically pan of my soul ... like my shadow ... attached to me with the root of his spirit (DR 13).' r still do not understand this man, whose great-granddaughter r am, though sometimes I feel as if he were my soul's twin (200). r felt as if he had planted himself inside me, as if he were reincarnated in me ... (216) Let us recall that Foiglman is a Yiddish poet and a European intellectual, a Holocaust survivor of Majdanek and Auschwitz. The memories of the Holocaust and the consciousness of the destroyed people and culture haunt FOiglman and alienate him in the now "Jew-free" Europe and estrange him even from his fellow survivors. Encouraged and sponsored by Arhel, Foiglman makes an attempt to establish himself in Israel by presenting his poetry to Israel's cultural environment. Unfortunately , his poems, even in the Hehrew translation, do not entice Israeli 2Manin Buber, "The Meaning of Zionism," in A Land of Two Peoptes: Martin Buber on Jews and Arabs, ed. Paul R. Mendes-Flohr (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 183. 3Aharon Megged, Foigllllan (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1987), p. 255. My English translation of the quotations is based on Marganit Weinber-Rotman's unpublished translation ofthe novel. Page numbers preceded by Fare 10 the Hebrew text. 'Ruth Almog, Dangling Roots (Jerusalem: Keter, 1987). All the quotations from the novel are in my translation. Page numbers preceded by DR are to the Hebrew text of the novel. 70 SHOFAR Fall 1994 Vol. 13, No. 1 readership. Thus, Foiglman's plan to integrate into the Israeli society and...

The conflict between Zionism and Traditionalism before World War I

The seeds of conflict between traditional Judaism and secular-political Zionism were inherent in the Zionist idea itself. The conflict between adherents of traditional Judaism who variously opposed the movement or affiliated themselves with it and secular nationalists who variously perceived religion as synonymous with the spirit of the ghetto and therefore an anathema, or sought to incorporate, in varying degrees, aspects of the Jewish traditional past into the new culture of the renascent homeland shaped the development of the Zionist movement.1