The invention of a Nation : Zionist thought and the making of modern Israel / Alain Dieckhoff ; translated from the French by Jonathan Derrick.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dieckhoff, Alain.

Language:

English

French

Subjects (All):

Zionism--History.

Zionism.

History.

Jews--Identity.

Jews.

Jewish nationalism--History--20th century.

Jewish nationalism.

Physical Description:

xi, 297 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, [2003]

Summary:

Alain Dieckhoff recounts the tortuous process through which the Jews reacted to the challenge of modernity, tracing two contradictory paths -the path of assimilation (bourgeois or socialist) and that of nationalism.The book provides a comprehensive overview of the various ideologies that constitute Zionism, ranging from Marxist-Zionism to National Religious Zionism to that of the far-right Abba Achimeir. Unlike other studies of the topic, this book makes explicit the debt the Zionists owed to French thinkers and European ideologues, notably those associated with the French Revolution and the Enlightenment.

Contents:

Introduction: Zionism as the political invention of a nation 1

Chapter 1. The political beginnings of Zionism 13

The Messengers of Zion: towards Messianic realism 13

The constraints of anti-Semitism 23

Theodor Herzl, the herald of the state 29

Chapter 2. Socialist Zionism: from community to state 50

Praise of Anarchist prophecy 51

Illusory Marxism, or the poverty of theory 58

Dionysian Zionism: belief in Pantheism 66

Class, nation, state: the Holy Trinity of Socialist Zionism 80

Chapter 3. Hebrew, the language of the nation 98

Language as a political issue 98

The paradoxes of the Haskala 105

Hebrew, the womb of the nation 110

The crisis of the intelligentsia and the rise of Zionism 119

Chapter 4. From condemnation to praise: Orthodox Jewry and Zionism 128

Religion and nationalism 128

Three responses to the shaking of tradition 133

The guardians of the City of God 138

For the political sovereignty of God 144

Under the banner of religious nationalism 151

The Rav Kook and the mystique of paradox 161

Chapter 5. By blood and fire: The diehard nationalism of the Zionist Right 175

Vladimir Zeev Jabotinsky, Father of the Zionist Right 175

Liberalism within strict limits 177

National messianism 190

Saving the self of the individual and of the nation 195

Organic nationalism 200

Force at the heart of politics 212

Politics is a struggle 217

1930-1949: The Generation of Revolt 225

Deliverance through violence 227

Right-wing revolutionaries 230

The totalitarian temptation 241

Chapter 6. Political life through Zionism: a precarious victory 248

The political as a sign of the fall 251

The state at the heart of Jewish political modernity 257

The search for rational politics 262

Postscript: Israel at the dawn of the twenty-first century: between neo Zionism and post Zionism 269

Three forms of post Zionism 273

In defence of Zionism 281.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0231127669

OCLC:

49226419