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Babel in Zion
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 328

Babel in Zion

The promotion and vernacularization of Hebrew, traditionally a language of Jewish liturgy and study, was a central accomplishment of the Zionist movement in Palestine. Viewing twentieth-century history through the lens of language, author Liora Halperin questions the accepted scholarly narrative of a Zionist move away from multilingualism during the years following World War I, demonstrating how Jews in Palestine remained connected linguistically by both preference and necessity to a world outside the boundaries of the pro-Hebrew community even as it promoted Hebrew and achieved that language's dominance. The story of language encounters in Jewish Palestine is a fascinating tale of shifting power relationships, both locally and globally. Halperin's absorbing study explores how a young national community was compelled to modify the dictates of Hebrew exclusivity as it negotiated its relationships with its Jewish population, Palestinian Arabs, the British, and others outside the margins of the national project and ultimately came to terms with the limitations of its hegemony in an interconnected world.

German as a Jewish Problem
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 411

German as a Jewish Problem

The German language holds an ambivalent and controversial place in the modern history of European Jews, representing different—often conflicting—historical currents. It was the language of the German classics, of German Jewish writers and scientists, of Central European Jewish culture, and of Herzl and the Zionist movement. But it was also the language of Hitler, Goebbels, and the German guards in Nazi concentration camps. The crucial role of German in the formation of Jewish national culture and politics in the late nineteenth century has been largely overshadowed by the catastrophic events that befell Jews under Nazi rule. German as a Jewish Problem tells the Jewish history of the Germ...

Oriental Neighbors
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 288

Oriental Neighbors

Focusing on Oriental Jews and their relations with their Arab neighbors in Mandatory Palestine, this book analyzes the meaning of the hybrid Arab-Jewish identity that existed among Oriental Jews, and discusses their unique role as political, social, and cultural mediators between Jews and Arabs. Integrating Mandatory Palestine and its inhabitants into the contemporary Semitic-Levantine surroundings, Oriental Neighbors illuminates broad areas of cooperation and coexistence, which coincided with conflict and friction, between Oriental and Sephardi Jews and their Arab neighbors. The book brings the Oriental Jewish community to the fore, examines its role in the Zionist nation-building process, and studies its diverse and complex links with the Arab community in Palestine.

Intimate Alien
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 302

Intimate Alien

A voyage of exploration to the outer reaches of our inner lives. UFOs are a myth, says David J. Halperin—but myths are real. The power and fascination of the UFO has nothing to do with space travel or life on other planets. It's about us, our longings and terrors, and especially the greatest terror of all: the end of our existence. This is a book about UFOs that goes beyond believing in them or debunking them and to a fresh understanding of what they tell us about ourselves as individuals, as a culture, and as a species. In the 1960s, Halperin was a teenage UFOlogist, convinced that flying saucers were real and that it was his life's mission to solve their mystery. He would become a profes...

Desert in the Promised Land
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 423

Desert in the Promised Land

“A complex and fascinating portrait of Israel . . . .an engaging book that combines anthropology, culture, and history.” —Anita Shapira, author of Ben-Gurion: Father of Modern Israel At once an ecological phenomenon and a cultural construction, the desert has varied associations within Zionist and Israeli culture. In the Judaic textual tradition, it evokes exile and punishment, yet is also a site for origin myths, the divine presence, and sanctity. Secular Zionism developed its own spin on the duality of the desert as the romantic site of Jews’ biblical roots that inspired the Hebrew culture, and as the barren land outside the Jewish settlements in Palestine, featuring them as an oas...

Teaching the Arab-Israeli Conflict
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 739

Teaching the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Whether planning a new course or searching for new teaching ideas, this collection is an indispensable compendium for anyone teaching the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Land and Power
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 468

Land and Power

This book traces the history of attitudes toward power and the use of armed force within the Zionist movement—from an early period in which most leaders espoused an ideal of peaceful settlement in Palestine, to the acceptance of force as a legitimate tool for achieving a sovereign Jewish state. Reviews "A rich and sophisticated work that nicely complements more conventional political-historical studies of the Arab-Israeli conflict. . . . Shapira sifts through a vast body of material, ranging from essays, poems, and memoir literature to the unpublished minutes of political party and youth group meetings. Shapira interprets these sources with sensitivity and insight . . . and writes with powe...

Impossible Exodus
  • Language: en

Impossible Exodus

Between 1949 and 1951, 123,000 Iraqi Jews immigrated to the newly established Israeli state. Lacking the resources to absorb them all, the Israeli government resettled them in maabarot, or transit camps, relegating them to poverty. In the tents and shacks of the camps, their living conditions were squalid and unsanitary. Basic necessities like water were in short supply, when they were available at all. Rather than returning to a homeland as native sons, Iraqi Jews were newcomers in a foreign place. Impossible Exodus tells the story of these Iraqi Jews' first decades in Israel. Faced with ill treatment and discrimination from state officials, Iraqi Jews resisted: they joined Israeli political parties, demonstrated in the streets, and fought for the education of their children, leading a civil rights struggle whose legacy continues to influence contemporary debates in Israel. Orit Bashkin sheds light on their everyday lives and their determination in a new country, uncovering their long, painful transformation from Iraqi to Israeli. In doing so, she shares the resilience and humanity of a community whose story has yet to be told.

Defining Neighbors
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 307

Defining Neighbors

How religion and race—not nationalism—shaped early encounters between Zionists and Arabs in Palestine As the Israeli-Palestinian conflict persists, aspiring peacemakers continue to search for the precise territorial dividing line that will satisfy both Israeli and Palestinian nationalist demands. The prevailing view assumes that this struggle is nothing more than a dispute over real estate. Defining Neighbors boldly challenges this view, shedding new light on how Zionists and Arabs understood each other in the earliest years of Zionist settlement in Palestine and suggesting that the current singular focus on boundaries misses key elements of the conflict. Drawing on archival documents as...

Arab Christians in British Mandate Palestine
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 232

Arab Christians in British Mandate Palestine

Recent conflict in the Middle East has caused some observers to ask if Muslims and Christians can ever coexist. History suggests that relations between those two groups are not predetermined, but are the product of particular social and political circumstances. This book examines Muslim-Christian relations during an earlier period of political and social upheaval, and explores the process of establishing new forms of national and religious identification. Palestine's Arab Christian minority actively engaged with the Palestinian nationalist movement throughout the period of British rule (1917-1948). Relations between Muslim and Christian Arabs were sometimes strained, yet in Palestine, as in ...