AP/JWST 3261 3.00

Creating Israel: The Zionist Idea, 1870-1948

One of the most consequential and controversial events of the twentieth century is the emergence in 1948 of the State of Israel, the first Jewish state since antiquity, under the auspices of the Zionist movement. Drawing on both religious tradition and the concepts of secular modern nationalism, it promised to remedy Jews’ political and social ills– above all, antisemitism, assimilation, and the lack of self-determination – by undoing their 2000 year “exile” from their ancient homeland. Its goals and methods to establish a Jewish national home in Ottoman (later, British) Palestine and radically to reshape Jewish culture and identity met with both fervent support and vehement opposition among Jews and non-Jews.

By reading major voices for Zionism and their critics, we study the context for the emergence of Zionism as a Jewish national movement in the 19th century, arguments for and against it made in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the conflicts and debates among Zionist thinkers over their ideas and visions. We also examine efforts to realize these ideas. Topics include ideological antecedents to Zionism; Jewish nationalist and anti-nationalist alternatives to Zionism; Zionism as a secular rebellion against tradition; Zionism as messianic movement; the rejection of Diaspora Jewish culture and the creation of a new, Zionist culture; the revival of Hebrew; the place of Arabs and “Arab Jews” in Zionist culture; the movement for a bi-national Arab-Jewish state; the Palestinian critique of Zionism; historians’ controversy over the 1948 Arab-Israeli War; the relationship of Israel to the Jewish Diaspora.