Understanding Zionism

Understanding Zionism PDF Author: Anne Perez
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506481175
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Understanding Zionism is a detailed introduction to the background and development of the Zionist movement, its various streams, and its impact on government and society in Israel. The book serves as a primer for Christians of all backgrounds--from those keenly interested in Zionism to those who are entirely unfamiliar with the term--to understand basic concepts, historical turning points, and the political and social stakes of Zionism. The first half of the book focuses on the history of Zionism, how it formed and how it shaped the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. It explores how different and competing political, cultural, economic, and strategic streams emerged within the Zionist movement and became institutionalized in the New State of Israel. Special attention is given to the important period between Word War I and World War II when the map of the Middle East changed and Jews of Europe faced the rise of Nazism and genocide. The second half of the book explores broader themes related to Zionism. This includes the origins, influences, and theological emphases of Christian Zionism; the various forms of opposition to Zionism and the contentious questions regarding differences and similarities between anti-Zionism and antisemitism; and current hopes and frameworks for the future of Zionism, especially regarding a peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. The book closes with a brief overview of Christianity in Israel/Palestine and how Christians may relate to Zionism in the context of faith, fellowship, and national identity more broadly.

Understanding Zionism

Understanding Zionism PDF Author: Anne Perez
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506481175
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Get Book Here

Book Description
Understanding Zionism is a detailed introduction to the background and development of the Zionist movement, its various streams, and its impact on government and society in Israel. The book serves as a primer for Christians of all backgrounds--from those keenly interested in Zionism to those who are entirely unfamiliar with the term--to understand basic concepts, historical turning points, and the political and social stakes of Zionism. The first half of the book focuses on the history of Zionism, how it formed and how it shaped the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. It explores how different and competing political, cultural, economic, and strategic streams emerged within the Zionist movement and became institutionalized in the New State of Israel. Special attention is given to the important period between Word War I and World War II when the map of the Middle East changed and Jews of Europe faced the rise of Nazism and genocide. The second half of the book explores broader themes related to Zionism. This includes the origins, influences, and theological emphases of Christian Zionism; the various forms of opposition to Zionism and the contentious questions regarding differences and similarities between anti-Zionism and antisemitism; and current hopes and frameworks for the future of Zionism, especially regarding a peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. The book closes with a brief overview of Christianity in Israel/Palestine and how Christians may relate to Zionism in the context of faith, fellowship, and national identity more broadly.

The Jewish Enlightenment

The Jewish Enlightenment PDF Author: Shmuel Feiner
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812200942
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
At the beginning of the eighteenth century most European Jews lived in restricted settlements and urban ghettos, isolated from the surrounding dominant Christian cultures not only by law but also by language, custom, and dress. By the end of the century urban, upwardly mobile Jews had shaved their beards and abandoned Yiddish in favor of the languages of the countries in which they lived. They began to participate in secular culture and they embraced rationalism and non-Jewish education as supplements to traditional Talmudic studies. The full participation of Jews in modern Europe and America would be unthinkable without the intellectual and social revolution that was the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment. Unparalleled in scale and comprehensiveness, The Jewish Enlightenment reconstructs the intellectual and social revolution of the Haskalah as it gradually gathered momentum throughout the eighteenth century. Relying on a huge range of previously unexplored sources, Shmuel Feiner fully views the Haskalah as the Jewish version of the European Enlightenment and, as such, a movement that cannot be isolated from broader eighteenth-century European traditions. Critically, he views the Haskalah as a truly European phenomenon and not one simply centered in Germany. He also shows how the republic of letters in European Jewry provided an avenue of secularization for Jewish society and culture, sowing the seeds of Jewish liberalism and modern ideology and sparking the Orthodox counterreaction that culminated in a clash of cultures within the Jewish community. The Haskalah's confrontations with its opponents within Jewry constitute one of the most fascinating chapters in the history of the dramatic and traumatic encounter between the Jews and modernity. The Haskalah is one of the central topics in modern Jewish historiography. With its scope, erudition, and new analysis, The Jewish Enlightenment now provides the most comprehensive treatment of this major cultural movement.

The Crisis of Zionism

The Crisis of Zionism PDF Author: Peter Beinart
Publisher: Melbourne Univ. Publishing
ISBN: 0522861768
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
A dramatic shift is taking place in Israel and America. In Israel, the deepening occupation of the West Bank is putting Israeli democracy at risk. In the United States, the refusal of major Jewish organisations to defend democracy in the Jewish state is alienating many young liberal Jews from Zionism itself. In the next generation, the liberal Zionist dream, the dream of a state that safeguards the Jewish people and cherishes democratic ideals, may die. In The Crisis of Zionism, Peter Beinart lays out in chilling detail the looming danger to Israeli democracy and the American Jewish establishment's refusal to confront it. And he offers a fascinating, groundbreaking portrait of the two leaders at the centre of the crisis: Barack Obama, America's first 'Jewish president', a man steeped in the liberalism he learned from his many Jewish friends and mentors in Chicago; and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister who considers liberalism the Jewish people's special curse. These two men embody fundamentally different visions, not just of American and Israeli national interests, but of the mission of the Jewish people itself. Beinart concludes with provocative proposals for how the relationship between American Jews and Israel must change, and with an eloquent and moving appeal for American Jews to defend the dream of a democratic Jewish state before it is too late.

Christian Zionism

Christian Zionism PDF Author: Faydra L. Shapiro
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 162564292X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Christian Zionism has received no small amount of criticism from observers who take issue with the movement's pro-Israel politics or its theology. What if we listened seriously to what Christian Zionists and Jewish partners said about Jews, Judaism, and Israel? Christian Zionism is a vibrant contemporary movement that--agree or disagree--has more than just political implications. Christian Zionism has also brought an unprecedented number of Jews and Christians into contact and dialogue, in houses of worship, community centers, rallies, and, of course, in Israel. As such, Christian Zionism is a useful case that allows us to think about contemporary Jewish-Christian relations in new ways. While some would argue that this is really "just" about pro-Israel alliance building, Christian Zionism: Navigating the Jewish-Christian Border shows how this movement significantly engages basic questions of identity and the borders between Judaism and Christianity. Christian Zionism serves as one chapter in the history of two religious communities--and the fraught relationships between them--facing together the globalized world of the twenty-first century.

The Question of Zion

The Question of Zion PDF Author: Jacqueline Rose
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400826527
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
Zionism was inspired as a movement--one driven by the search for a homeland for the stateless and persecuted Jewish people. Yet it trampled the rights of the Arabs in Palestine. Today it has become so controversial that it defies understanding and trumps reasoned public debate. So argues prominent British writer Jacqueline Rose, who uses her political and psychoanalytic skills in this book to take an unprecedented look at Zionism--one of the most powerful ideologies of modern times. Rose enters the inner world of the movement and asks a new set of questions. How did Zionism take shape as an identity? And why does it seem so immutable? Analyzing the messianic fervor of Zionism, she argues that it colors Israel's most profound self-image to this day. Rose also explores the message of dissidents, who, while believing themselves the true Zionists, warned at the outset against the dangers of statehood for the Jewish people. She suggests that these dissidents were prescient in their recognition of the legitimate claims of the Palestinian Arabs. In fact, she writes, their thinking holds the knowledge the Jewish state needs today in order to transform itself. In perhaps the most provocative part of her analysis, Rose proposes that the link between the Holocaust and the founding of the Jewish state, so often used to justify Israel's policies, needs to be rethought in terms of the shame felt by the first leaders of the nation toward their own European history. For anyone concerned with the conflict in Israel-Palestine, this timely book offers a unique understanding of Zionism as an unavoidable psychic and historical force.

Defining Neighbors

Defining Neighbors PDF Author: Jonathan Marc Gribetz
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140085265X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
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 well as newspapers and other print media from the final decades of Ottoman rule, Jonathan Gribetz argues that Zionists and Arabs in pre–World War I Palestine and the broader Middle East did not think of one another or interpret each other's actions primarily in terms of territory or nationalism. Rather, they tended to view their neighbors in religious terms—as Jews, Christians, or Muslims—or as members of "scientifically" defined races—Jewish, Arab, Semitic, or otherwise. Gribetz shows how these communities perceived one another, not as strangers vying for possession of a land that each regarded as exclusively their own, but rather as deeply familiar, if at times mythologized or distorted, others. Overturning conventional wisdom about the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Gribetz demonstrates how the seemingly intractable nationalist contest in Israel and Palestine was, at its start, conceived of in very different terms. Courageous and deeply compelling, Defining Neighbors is a landmark book that fundamentally recasts our understanding of the modern Jewish-Arab encounter and of the Middle East conflict today.

The New Christian Zionism

The New Christian Zionism PDF Author: Gerald R. McDermott
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830894381
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Christian Zionism is often seen as the offspring of premillennial dispensationalism. But the authors of this work contend that the biblical and theological connections between covenant and land are nearly as close in the New Testament as in Old. Written with academic rigor, this provocative volume proposes a place for Christian Zionism in an integrated biblical vision today.

Historical Dictionary of Zionism

Historical Dictionary of Zionism PDF Author: Rafael Medoff
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135966494
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
The Jewish attachment to Zion is many centuries old. Although the modern Zionist movement was organized only a little more than a century ago, the roots of the Zionist idea reach back almost 4,000 years, to the day that the biblical patriarch Abraham left his home in Ur of the Chaldees to settle in the promised land The Historical Dictionary of Zionism is an excellent source of information on Zionism, its founders and leaders, its various strands and organizations, major events in its struggle, and its present status. By showing the movement's strengths and weaknesses, it also acts as a corrective to overly idealistic comments by its supporters and the wilder claims of its opponents. A much more realistic understanding is offered in the Introduction, which presents and explains the movement; the Chronology, which shows its historic progression; the Dictionary, which includes numerous entries on crucial persons, organizations and events; and the Bibliography, which points the way to further reading.

Comprehending Christian Zionism

Comprehending Christian Zionism PDF Author: Göran Gunner
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1451489641
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
The question of the Christian Zionism—the religious and political support of the state of Israel—is fiercely debated within theology and the church, as well as in the wider political and social arenas. Examination of the issue is, however, highly relevant and crucial, as it cuts across a wide array of constitutive features and beliefs of Christian life, from interpretation of scripture to religious and political ethics. Comprehending Christian Zionism brings together an international consortium of scholars and researchers to reflect on the network of issues and topics surrounding this critical subject; these essays are the fruit of several years of collaboration by the special working group on Christian Zionism. The volume includes essays from Christian scholars around the globe, as well as Jewish and Palestinian contributors to provide interfaith contextual dialogue. Taken together, the volume provides a lens on the history of Zionism within Christian theology from a variety of locations and perspectives and offers a constructive, multidimensional path for assessment and introspection around the meaning of Zionism to Christian faith and practice.

A Short History of Christian Zionism

A Short History of Christian Zionism PDF Author: Donald M. Lewis
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830846980
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Christian Zionism influences global politics, especially U.S. foreign policy, and has deeply affected Jewish–Christian and Muslim–Christian relations. With a fair-minded, longitudinal study of this dynamic yet controversial movement, Donald M. Lewis traces its lineage from biblical sources through the Reformation to various movements of today.