How Long Will Israel Survive?

How Long Will Israel Survive? PDF Author: Gregg Carlstrom
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190843446
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book Here

Book Description
The greatest threat to Israel may come from within, not without, as Carlstrom explains in his deft account of a nation's identity crisis..

How Long Will Israel Survive?

How Long Will Israel Survive? PDF Author: Gregg Carlstrom
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190843446
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book Here

Book Description
The greatest threat to Israel may come from within, not without, as Carlstrom explains in his deft account of a nation's identity crisis..

Will Israel Survive?

Will Israel Survive? PDF Author: Mitchell G. Bard
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 0230605214
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book Here

Book Description
While most people view the Palestinian conflict as the greatest threat to Israel's survival, it is in fact only one of the nation's long-term concerns. Aside from terrorists seeking to destroy it, Israel must contend with tensions between religious and secular Jews, the demographic issues posed by a quickly growing Arab population, internal political divisions, and disputes over the water sources that are critical to its survival. In the face of these challenges, the country's future can seem precarious. Bard paints a realistic picture of the road ahead with a hopeful message: Israel will not only survive, but will endure long into the future.

The Anatomy of Israel's Survival

The Anatomy of Israel's Survival PDF Author: Hirsh Goodman
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610390830
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Get Book Here

Book Description
The question "Can Israel survive?" has echoed loud for Israelis -- and Jews, their supporters and adversaries worldwide -- since the Holocaust. The recent upheavals in Egypt, Tunisia and beyond have raised it anew. Israeli journalist and security analyst Hirsh Goodman set out to answer it, through rigorous factual assessment of each of the challenges his country faces, and by consulting experts and participants on all sides of every complex issue. But what he learned was that this once 'essential question' has become a dangerous distraction. In this provocative and deeply informed book, Goodman shares his clarifying analyses both of recent political events and of Israel's strategic position. He shows how the country's obsession with dangers posed by outside forces has obscured the harder issues facing it from within ever since its leaders disregarded Ben Gurion's advice to leave the territories captured during the Six Day War. By yoking itself to the demographic timebomb of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel propelled itself towards an invidious choice: democracy or Jewish identity. Now, Goodman argues, Israel's survival is jeopardized more by the competence of its leaders and fissures in its social and political system than by any outside threat -- even the apocalyptic-sounding ones from Iran.

Survival

Survival PDF Author: Israel J. Rosengarten
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815605805
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Get Book Here

Book Description
Translated into English for the first time, this book is a personal story of a teenage boy in the concentration camps of the Holocaust. Israel Rosengarten writes with no historical pretension beyond the insight his own experience provides about everyday life and the horrors of the camps. His memoir begins with his deportation in 1942 to the Belgium concentration camp of Breendonk at the age of sixteen and follows his movements through a series of camps until 1945. The book concludes with the Auschwitz death march and the author's return to Belgium, only to discover that he was the lone survivor of a family of seven. Rosengarten survived his 1,000 days of incarceration through incredible coincidences, miracles, and by his fierce struggle to emerge from this atrocious nightmare.

Why Should Jews Survive?

Why Should Jews Survive? PDF Author: Michael Goldberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199792585
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 206

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the fifty years since the Holocaust, the Jewish People have felt one overriding concern: survival. The ghosts of the murdered six million, along with the living generation of survivors, have called out the unifying chant, "never again." In 1948, this concern found a second focus in the state of Israel, the ultimate refuge of Jews worldwide. But Rabbi Michael Goldberg finds that these twin pillars of Jewish identity are brittle, and have already begun to crumble; they will not be enough to support or sustain the next generation. The time has come to answer the question: Why should Jews survive? In this provocative book, Goldberg launches a bold attack on what he calls the "Holocaust cult," challenging Jews to return to a deeper, richer sense of purpose. He argues that this cult--with shrines like the U.S. Holocaust Museum, high priests such as Elie Wiesel, and rites like UJA death camp pilgrimages--is deeply destructive of Jewish identity. As the current "master story" of Judaism, Goldberg writes, the Holocaust has been used to depict Jews as uniquely victimized in human history--transforming them from God's chosen to those who manage to survive despite God's silent complicity in their persecution. This Holocaust-centered, survival-for-survival's-sake Judaism is already showing its emptiness, Goldberg contends; the generation that survived Hitler and founded Israel is dying, and the new generation seems adrift (for instance, one recent survey predicts that 70% of American Jewish marriages will be intermarriages by the turn of the century). Jews need positive reasons for remaining Jewish, he argues; they need to return to the Exodus as their master story--the story of God leading the Jews out of slavery and making with them an eternal covenant that gave the Jews a unique place in God's plan. The Jews should survive, Goldberg concludes, because they are the linchpin in God's redemption of the world. Rabbi Michael Goldberg has long wrestled with the crisis of identity facing today's Jewish community. In Why Should Jews Survive?, he provides a provocative and powerfully argued challenge to the dominant theme of modern Jewish thought.

My Promised Land

My Promised Land PDF Author: Ari Shavit
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812984641
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 482

Get Book Here

Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND ECONOMIST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “A deeply reported, deeply personal history of Zionism and Israel that does something few books even attempt: It balances the strength and weakness, the idealism and the brutality, the hope and the horror, that has always been at Zionism’s heart.”—Ezra Klein, The New York Times Winner of the Natan Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Ari Shavit’s riveting work, now updated with new material, draws on historical documents, interviews, and private diaries and letters, as well as his own family’s story, to create a narrative larger than the sum of its parts: both personal and of profound historical dimension. As he examines the complexities and contradictions of the Israeli condition, Shavit asks difficult but important questions: Why did Israel come to be? How did it come to be? Can it survive? Culminating with an analysis of the issues and threats that Israel is facing, My Promised Land uses the defining events of the past to shed new light on the present. Shavit’s analysis of Israeli history provides a landmark portrait of a small, vibrant country living on the edge, whose identity and presence play a crucial role in today’s global political landscape.

Saving Israel

Saving Israel PDF Author: Boaz Dvir
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0811766888
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 315

Get Book Here

Book Description
The incredible true story of a WWII veteran’s renegade operation to help Israel defend itself during the First Arab-Israeli War. Shortly after Israel was created in 1948, it faced the threat of invasion by five well-equipped neighboring armies. Though the United States opposed supplying arms to either side of the conflict, American World War II veteran Al Schwimmer was determined to do whatever it takes to help Israel defend herself. Schwimmer created factitious airlines, bought decommissioned airplanes from the government, and sent his pilots to pick up rifles, bullets, and fighter planes from the only country willing to break the international arms embargo: communist Czechoslovakia. Schwimmer and his team risked their lives, freedom, and US citizenship to prevent what they viewed as an imminent genocide. They evaded the FBI and State Department, gained the support of the mafia, smuggled weapons—mostly Nazi surplus—across hostile territories, and went into combat in the Middle East. This book vividly tells the story of this little-known yet historically significant mission.

Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State

Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State PDF Author: Yeshayahu Leibowitz
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674487758
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Get Book Here

Book Description
A biochemist by profession, a polymath by inclination and erudition, Yeshayahu Leibowitz has been, since the early 1940s, one of the most incisive and controversial critics of Israeli culture and politics. His direct involvement, compelling polemics, and trenchant criticism have established his steadfast significance for contemporary Israeli-and Jewish- intellectual life. These hard-hitting essays, his first to be published in English, cover the ground Leibowitz has marked out over time with moral rigor and political insight. He considers the essence and character of historical Judaism, the problems of contemporary Judaism and Jewishness, the relationship of Judaism to Christianity, the questions of statehood, religion, and politics in Israel, and the role of women. Together these essays constitute a comprehensive critique of Israeli society and politics and a probing diagnosis of the malaise that afflicts contemporary Jewish culture. Leibowitz's understanding of Jewish philosophy is acute, and he brings it to bear on current issues. He argues that the Law, Halakhah, is essential to Judaism, and shows how, at present, separation of religion from state would serve the interest of halakhic observance and foster esteem for religion. Leibowitz calls the religious justification of national issues "idolatry" and finds this phenomenon at the root of many of the annexationist moves made by the state of Israel. Long one of the most outspoken critics of Israeli occupation in the conquered territories, he gives eloquent voice to his ongoing concern over the debilitating moral effects of its policies and practices on Israel itself. This translation will bring to an English-speaking audience a much-needed, lucid perspective on the present and future state of Jewish culture.

Our Hearts Invented a Place

Our Hearts Invented a Place PDF Author: Jo-Ann Mort
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801439308
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236

Get Book Here

Book Description
"We thought we were living in a society of the future, showing how people can live together in a way that the human being is not a product of society where you have to put somebody down so that you are up.... Suddenly we [find] that people want to be more like outside, and we are disappointed." "When people say to me, 'We're so sorry to see what's going on in the kibbutzim because we are losing the most important thing that happened to the State of Israel,' I say to them, 'Listen....' The government lost interest in the kibbutz movement, and we had to find another way. The State of Israel slowly but surely became a normal state, and the pioneers finished their job. We are living in a new era. We have to make the adjustment."--from Our Hearts Invented a Place One of the grand social experiments of modern time, the Israeli kibbutz is today in a state of flux. Created initially to advance Zionism, support national security, and forge a new socialist, communal model, the kibbutzim no longer serve a clear purpose and are struggling financially. In Our Hearts Invented a Place, Jo-Ann Mort and Gary Brenner describe how life on the kibbutz is changing as members seek to adapt to contemporary realities and prepare themselves for the future. Throughout, the authors allow the members' often-impassioned voices--some disillusioned, some optimistic, some pragmatic--to be heard. "The founders [of the kibbutz] had a dream," an Israeli told the authors in one of many interviews they conducted between 2000 and 2002, "[which] they fulfilled... a hundred times." The current generation, he explains, must alter that dream in order for it to survive. After tracing the formidable challenges facing the kibbutzim today, Mort and Brenner compare three distinct models of change as exemplified by three different communities. The first, Gesher Haziv, decided to pursue privatization. The second, Hatzor, is diversifying its economy while creating an extensive social safety net and a system of private wages with progressive taxation. In the third instance, Gan Shmuel is attempting to hold on to the traditional kibbutz model. In closing, the authors address the new-style urban kibbutz. Their book will provide readers with a deeper understanding of the kibbutz--and of Israel itself--during an era of dramatic social, economic, and political change.

Israel Is Real

Israel Is Real PDF Author: Rich Cohen
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429930578
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 405

Get Book Here

Book Description
A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE A SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE BESTSELLER In AD 70, when the Second Temple was destroyed, a handful of visionaries saved Judaism by reinventing it, taking what had been a national religion and turning it into an idea. Whenever a Jew studied—wherever he was—he would be in the holy city, and his faith preserved. But in our own time, Zionists have turned the book back into a temple, and unlike an idea, a temple can be destroyed. With exuberance, humor, and real scholarship, Rich Cohen's Israel is Real offers "a serious attempt by a gifted storyteller to enliven and elucidate Jewish religious, cultural, and political history . . . A powerful narrative" (Los Angeles Times).