Dissenter in Zion

Dissenter in Zion PDF Author: Judah Leon Magnes
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674212831
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 582

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Book Description
For nearly half a century, until his death in October 1948, Judah Magnes occupied a singular place in Jewish public life. He won fame early as a preacher and communal leader, but abandoned these pursuits at the height of his influence for the roles of political dissenter and moral gadfly. During World War I he became an outspoken pacifist and supporter of radical causes. Settling permanently in Palestine in 1922, he was a founder and the first president of the Hebrew University. Increasingly, he viewed rapprochement with the Arabs as the practical and moral test of Zionism, and the formation of a bi-national state of Arabs and Jews became his chief political goal. His life interests thus focused on the core issues that confronted and still confront the Jewish people: group survival in democratic America, the direction and character of the return to Zion, and thereconciliation of universal ideals with Jewish aspirations and needs. Dissenter in Zion draws upon a rich corpus of private letters, personal journals, and diaries to offer a moving account of an eloquent and sensitive person grappling with the great questions of the day and of an activist striving to translate private moral feelings into public deeds through politics and diplomacy. We see Magnes disagreeing with Brandeis over the leadership and direction of American Zionism and with Weizmann and Ben-Gurion over ways to achieve peaceful relations with the Arabs; defending himself against charges by Einstein that he was mismanaging the affairs of the Hebrew University; and persistently negotiating with Arab leaders, trying to reach a compromise on the eve of the establishment of the State of Israel. Dissenter in Zion also contains a biographical essay on Magnes by Arthur Goren, assessing his ideas and motives and placing him in the context of his times. It shows Magnes's profundity without covering up his weaknesses, his lifelong tactic for courting repeated defeat in favor of long-term goals that could not come to pass in his lifetime.

Like All the Nations?

Like All the Nations? PDF Author: William M. Brinner
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791497534
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
This is the first study to examine the career of one of the most prominent American Zionists. Intellectually brilliant, socially and religiously committed, Judah Magnes was an inspiring speaker, reformer, and organizer. Sixteen leading American and Israeli scholars here focus their critical attention on the social, cultural, political, and theological themes central to Magnes' life. Contributors chronicle Magnes' life from his birth in California in 1877 to his death in 1948—the year of the founding of the State of Israel, focusing successively on his youth and education, his seminal years on New York's Lower East Side, his place among the pioneers of American Zionism, his role as a founder of the first Hebrew University, and his relentless efforts to unite Arabs and Jews. Magnes was deeply committed to a Jewish renaissance, but did not see the prospering of Israel in isolation from its Arab peoples. In this insistence he was constant, and often unique. It is particularly in retrospect that we now realize the importance of Magnes' insistence that the Arab problem must be solved in order to establish a viable Israeli state. Both through the range of his involvements and the integrity of his quest, Magnes has left his mark on Jewish history. The contributors to this volume, who include two of the most diligent scholars of the man and of his times—Paul Mendes-Flohr and Arthur Goren—help illuminate the life, work, and legacy of Judah L. Magnes.

Judah Magnes

Judah Magnes PDF Author: David Barak-Gorodetsky
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0827618824
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
This comprehensive intellectual biography of Judah Magnes--the Reform rabbi, American Zionist leader, and inaugural Hebrew University chancellor--offers novel analysis of how theology and politics intertwined to drive Magnes's writings and activism--especially his championing of a binational state--against all odds. Like a prophet unable to suppress his prophecy, Magnes could not resist a religious calling to take political action, whatever the cost. In Palestine no one understood his uniquely American pragmatism and insistence that a constitutional system was foundational for a just society. Jewish leaders regarded his prophetic politics as overly conciliatory and dangerous for negotiations. Magnes's central European allies in striving for a binational Palestine, including Martin Buber, credited him with restoring their faith in politics, but they ultimately retreated from binationalism to welcome the new State of Israel. In candidly portraying the complex Magnes as he understood himself, David Barak-Gorodetsky elucidates why Magnes persevered, despite evident lack of Arab interest, to advocate binationalism with Truman in May 1948 at the ultimate price of Jewish sovereignty. Accompanying Magnes on his long-misunderstood journey, we gain a unique broader perspective: on early peacemaking efforts in Israel/Palestine, the American Jewish role in the history of the state, binationalism as political theology, an American view of binationalism, and the charged realities of Israel today.

Israel

Israel PDF Author: Monty Noam Penkower
Publisher: Academic Studies PRess
ISBN: 1644696770
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
The chapters in this volume examine a few facets in the drama of how the beleaguered Jewish people, as a phoenix ascending of ancient legend, achieved national self-determination in the reborn State of Israel within three years of the end of World War II and of the Holocaust. They include the pivotal 1946 World Zionist Congress, the contributions of Jacob Robinson and Clark M. Eichelberger to Israel’s sovereign renewal, American Jewry’s crusade to save a Jewish state, the effort to create a truce and trusteeship for Palestine, and Judah Magnes’s final attempt to create a federated state there. Joining extensive archival research and a lucid prose, Professor Monty Noam Penkower again displays a definitive mastery of his craft.

Beyond Innocence & Redemption

Beyond Innocence & Redemption PDF Author: Marc H. Ellis
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1498294898
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
After the Gulf War and amidst the ongoing “peace process,” this timely book speaks to the need to address the deeper issues of Israel and Palestine—issues that concerned Jews, Arabs, and Christians must face if the legitimate rights of the Palestinians and the moral integrity of the State of Israel are to survive the rush to a “new world order” in the Middle East.

One State, Two States

One State, Two States PDF Author: Benny Morris
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300156049
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
“What is so striking about Morris’s work as a historian is that it does not flatter anyone’s prejudices, least of all his own,” David Remnick remarked in a New Yorker article that coincided with the publication of Benny Morris’s 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. With the same commitment to objectivity that has consistently characterized his approach, Morris now turns his attention to the present-day legacy of the events of 1948 and the concrete options for the future of Palestine and Israel. The book scrutinizes the history of the goals of the Palestinian national movement and the Zionist movement, then considers the various one- and two-state proposals made by different streams within the two movements. It also looks at the willingness or unwillingness of each movement to find an accommodation based on compromise. Morris assesses the viability and practicality of proposed solutions in the light of complicated and acrimonious realities. Throughout his groundbreaking career, Morris has reshaped understanding of the Israeli-Arab conflict. Here, once again, he arrives at a new way of thinking about the discord, injecting a ray of hope in a region where it is most sorely needed.

Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation

Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation PDF Author: Marc H. Ellis
Publisher: Baylor University Press
ISBN: 1932792007
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Turmoil still grips the Middle East and fear now paralyzes post-9/11 America. The comforts and challenges of this book are thus as timely as when first published in 1987. With new reflections on the future of Judaism and Israel, Ellis underscores the enduring problem of justice. Ellis' use of liberation theology to make connections between the Holocaust and contemporary communities from the Third World reminds both Jews and oppressed Christians that they share common ground in the experiences of abandonment, suffering, and death. The connections also reveal that Jews and Christians share a common cause in the battle against idolatry--represented now by obsessions for personal affluence, national security, and ethnic survival. According to Ellis, Jews and Christians must never allow the reality of anti-Semitism to become an excuse for evading solidarity with the oppressed peoples--be they African, Asian, Latin American or, especially, Palestinian. --Archbishop Desmond Tutu, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and author of God Has a Dream

Carrying a Big Schtick

Carrying a Big Schtick PDF Author: Miriam Eve Mora
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 0814349641
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
Jewish masculinity as a diverse set of adaptive reactions to masculine hegemony and the political, religious, and social realities of American Jews throughout the twentieth century. For twentieth-century Jewish immigrants and their children attempting to gain full access to American society, performative masculinity was a tool of acculturation. However, as scholar Miriam Eve Mora demonstrates, this performance is consistently challenged by American mainstream society that holds Jewish men outside of the American ideal of masculinity. Depicted as weak, effeminate, cowardly, gentle, bookish, or conflict-averse, Jewish men have been ascribed these qualities by outside forces, but some have also intentionally subscribed themselves to masculinities at odds with the American mainstream. Carrying a Big Schtickdissects notions of Jewish masculinity and its perception and practice in America in the twentieth century through the lenses of immigration and cultural history. Tracing Jewish masculinity through major themes and events including both World Wars, the Holocaust, American Zionism, Israeli statehood, and the Six-Day War, this work establishes that the struggle of this process can shed light on the changing dynamics in religious, social, and economic American Jewish life.

American Aliya

American Aliya PDF Author: Chaim I. Waxman
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 0814343414
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Working within the context of the sociology of migration, Waxman provides primary research into a variety of dimensions of this movement and demonstrates the inadequacy of current migration theories to characterize aliya.

United States Jewry, 1776-1985

United States Jewry, 1776-1985 PDF Author: Jacob Rader Marcus
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 9780814321867
Category : Jews
Languages : en
Pages : 1002

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Book Description