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The paper offers a first comparison and critical review of the social and political theories of German-Jewish political thinker Hannah Arendt and Russian-born Zionist thinker Aaron David (A. D.) Gordon. Bringing these two thinkers into conversation sheds light on their distinctive human ontologies and competing theories of labor that led them, in turn, to critically assess modern politics. Subsequently, the analysis identifies the two thinkers' opposing conceptual trajectories as underpinning their competing perspectives on the Jewish state. Whereas Arendt's commitment to upholding neutral political spaces led her to call for safeguarding the state from the Jewish nation, Gordon's view of nations as corporeal-organic entities led him to advocate securing the Jewish nation from statist institutions. In broader terms, the analysis seeks to add to the burgeoning literature in recent years that revisits the theoretical and ideological parameters conventionally understood as underlying the historical debate about the Jewish state. The analysis shows that whereas Gordon, as a Zionist thinker, set forth an antistatist doctrine, the non-Zionist Arendt assigned a key role to the state in securing Jewish national self-determination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arab-Jewish culture witnessed a new revival during the first half of the twentieth century, but this revival was cut short as a casualty of Jewish and Arab nationalism. This article seeks to reclaim the voice of the currently voiceless Arabic literature written by Jews, focusing on the writings of the Iraqi-Jewish writer and poet Ya'qūb Balbūl (1920–2003), whose devotion to the Arab nation and Iraqi society and his Arabic literary activities and contributions, like those of other Arab-Jewish writers, artists, and intellectuals, sank unfortunately into total oblivion. One of Balbūl's short stories from the late 1930s, "Ṣūra Ṭibqa al-Aṣl" [True Copy] is the focus of this essay—the story refers to his struggle against honor killing in Iraqi society and its translation is included at the end of the article. The practice of murder for family honor has been employed by several communities in the Muslim world, where the purity of women is often used as a benchmark for the entire family's honor. Little did Ya'qūb Balbūl and other Arab-Jewish writers and intellectuals foresee at the time that ideological and political developments in Palestine would crudely foreshorten that envisioned new revival of the Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Arab symbiosis during the twentieth century. We are currently witnessing the demise of Arab-Jewish culture—a tradition that started more than 1,500 years ago is currently vanishing before our very own eyes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay attempts to situate this special issue as an intervention, from a materialist perspective, in the field of Israeli cultural studies. We interrogate the common periodizations of Israeli culture, and its contemporary characterization as "post-post-Zionist." We try to show that the latter betrays an unacknowledged failure of historical narration, present throughout Israeli cultural production. We then argue that rather than being satisfied with this failure, the goal of Israeli cultural critique today should be to search for new ways to narrate "big" history, to reassert the indispensability of relating personal experience of the present, in all its details, to the making of history. We then explain how each of the contributions to this special issue takes this task upon itself -- some more and some less explicitly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author, writer of the book "Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century," reflects upon Human Rights as they relate to Israel and Jewish history. Additional topics discussed include his gratitude towards the journal for reviewing and interpreting his book and insights on Zionism and Jewish nationalism.

Cultural anthropologist Misha Klein reflects on a Jewish Studies course, entitled Anthropology of Jews and Jewishness, taught at the University of Oklahoma. The recent explosion of interest in the anthropological study of Jews and Jewish cultures has occurred in large part because of the ways Jews provide a lens through which to examine core concepts and concerns within anthropology. As Klein conceives it, the course is an exploration of these core issues, including race, ethnicity, identity, kinship, migration, diaspora and transnationalism, gender and sexuality, religion and ritual, foodways, language, national identity, and globalization. A sample syllabus is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the nature of Jewish identity in modern-day Cuba. The study draws on the perceptions of a sample of Cuban Jews to understand how changes and shifts have affected Jewish identity. A convenience sample of 29 respondents was interviewed. We encouraged the individuals interviewed to tell their stories of what it means to be Jewish in Cuba today. We asked respondents to describe how they live their lives, in what ways they identify as Jews, and in what ways they think and act as Jews. The result was a series of personal narratives that revealed the ways in which Jewish identity is experienced and expressed in present-day Cuba. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines Israeli cinema as a critical participant in the local drama of national ideology and national identity. Israeli filmmakers have engaged in enunciating the national culture, in the context of the medium's history, political ideologies, and the tension between high art and popular culture. The historical review of Israeli films shows dramatic changes over the years from nationalistic propaganda to radical critique and post-Zionism. Israeli cinema appears now to seek a constructive and fruitful dialogue with viewers. In the recent wave of popular films, the national ideology is more conscious of its past mistakes and inherent deficiencies; its presentation of national identity is less narrow and more open to alternative types, thereby suggesting new vistas of national culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although George Eliot wrote "Daniel Deronda" with a great enthusiasm for Zionism and sympathy for the Jewish people, its hero Daniel rings hollow in the opinion of most critics. He is especially weak insofar as he is a Jew and a Zionist. Eliot meant to take a stand against "narrowness and bigotry" with "Daniel Deronda." Its favorable attitude towards Jews and Zionism gave the book notoriety and influence all over Europe; its hero Daniel discovers he is a Jew halfway through the novel, and his conversion to Jewish nationalism was meant to help foster the establishment of a "Belgium of the East," where many cultures could meet peacefully and mix harmoniously in accord with to Eliot's Utopian post-Christian relativism.

The article presents several books on Zionism. "The Jewish Radical Right: Revisionist Zionism and Its Ideological Legacy," by Eran Kaplan analyzes Zionist Revisionist thought in the 1920's and 1930's. "The Question of Zion," by Jacqueline Rose which cites that Israel's vision as a nation is related to its religious, psychological and political dictates of Zionism.

This article presents information about the book "Nationalism, Zionism and Ethnic Mobilization of the Jews in 1900 and Beyond," edited by Michael Berkowitz. This book engages diverse topics such as art, music, and radio broadcasting in the development of modern Jewish nationalism by leading scholars in their respective fields. It contains studies that challenge existing historiography, from personal struggles with nationalism to the lesser-known origins of the Balfour Declaration. It examines how nationalism has worked in theory and practice for Jews and how at times it has been fiercely resisted.