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"Emotion lies at the heart of all national movements, and Zionism is no exception. For those who identify as a Zionist, the word connotates liberation and redemption, uniqueness and vulnerability. Yet for many, Zionism is a source of distaste if not disgust, and those who reject it are no less passionate than those who embrace it. The power of such emotions helps explain why a word originally associated with territorial aspiration has survived for so many years after the establishment of the Israeli State. Zionism: An Emotional State expertly demonstrates how the energy propelling the Zionist project originates from bundles of feelings whose elements have varied in volume, intensity, and durability across space and time. Beginning with an original typology of Zionism and a new take on its relationship to colonialism, Penslar then examines the emotions that have shaped Zionist sensibilities and practices over the course of the movement's history. The resulting portrait of Zionism reconfigures how we understand Jewish Identity amidst continuing debates on the role of nationalism in the modern world"--
"Zionism and Technocracy is important reading for anyone seriously interested in the development of the Yishuv during the last decades of Ottoman rule."--Choice "... stimulating and well written... " --Shofar "A pioneering work on the most important aspect of early Zionist history, well researched, well written, highly to be recommended." --Walter Laqueur "Taut and well-written with a fresh approach, Penslar's painstakingly researched study fills an important gap in the literature on the early Yishuv." --The Jerusalem Post Magazine "Penslar has written one of the first 'social histories' of an important aspect of Zionism." --David Sorkin "... Penslar presents an alternative perspective of th...
Shylock's children tells the story of Jewish perceptions of this economic difference and of its effects on modern Jewish identity in Europe.
Throughout much of European history, Jews have been strongly associated with commerce and the money trade, rendered both visible and vulnerable, like Shakespeare's Shylock, by their economic distinctiveness. Shylock's Children tells the story of Jewish perceptions of this economic difference and its effects on modern Jewish identity. Derek Penslar explains how Jews in modern Europe developed the notion of a distinct "Jewish economic man," an image that grew ever more complex and nuanced between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries.
A historical reevaluation of the relationship between Jews, miltary service, and war Jews and the Military is the first comprehensive and comparative look at Jews' involvement in the military and their attitudes toward war from the 1600s until the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Derek Penslar shows that although Jews have often been described as people who shun the army, in fact they have frequently been willing, even eager, to do military service, and only a minuscule minority have been pacifists. Penslar demonstrates that Israel's military ethos did not emerge from a vacuum and that long before the state's establishment, Jews had a vested interest in military affairs. Spanning Eur...
Covering topical issues concerning the nature of the Israeli state, this engaging work presents essays that combine a variety of comparative schemes, both internal to Jewish civilization and extending throughout the world, such as: modern Jewish society, politics and culture historical consciousness in the twentieth century colonialism, anti-colonialism and postcolonial state-building. With its open-ended, comparative approach, Israel in History provides a useful means of correcting the biases found in so much scholarship on Israel, be it sympathetic or hostile. This book will appeal to scholars and students with research interests in many fields, including Israeli Studies, Middle East Studies, and Jewish Studies.
The lively essays collected here explore colonial history, culture, and thought as it intersects with Jewish studies. Connecting the Jewish experience with colonialism to mobility and exchange, diaspora, internationalism, racial discrimination, and Zionism, the volume presents the work of Jewish historians who recognize the challenge that colonialism brings to their work and sheds light on the diverse topics that reflect the myriad ways that Jews engaged with empire in modern times. Taken together, these essays reveal the interpretive power of the "Imperial Turn" and present a rethinking of the history of Jews in colonial societies in light of postcolonial critiques and destabilized categories of analysis. A provocative discussion forum about Zionism as colonialism is also included.
A fascinating analysis of how Jews fit into scholarly debates about Orientalism.
With its combination of voices from both scholarship and leadership and its unique assessment of antisemitism in Canada and the struggle against it, Contemporary Antisemitism offers new perspectives on one of the world's most ancient and diffuse hatreds.
From the prizewinning Jewish Lives series, a masterful new biography of Theodor Herzl by an eminent historian of Zionism The life of Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) was as puzzling as it was brief. How did this cosmopolitan and assimilated European Jew become the leader of the Zionist movement? How could he be both an artist and a statesman, a rationalist and an aesthete, a stern moralist yet possessed of deep, and at times dark, passions? And why did scores of thousands of Jews, many of them from traditional, observant backgrounds, embrace Herzl as their leader? Drawing on a vast body of Herzl’s personal, literary, and political writings, historian Derek Penslar shows that Herzl’s path to Z...