Search

Within the Zionist movement, the sea initially served no nationalistic purpose; it was a means of transit, a conduit for ingathering the Jewish diaspora. The Zionist leadership neglected the sea as a tool, emphasizing 'Jewish work' in agriculture instead. But the sea held meaning in modern nationalism for many countries, and the pre-state Land of Israel was no exception. The Yishuv institutions began to recognize the sea's significance for the national movement in the mid-1930s and acted to impose its authority in the field. It was then that conflicts erupted over the origins of Jewish seafaring, with the right-wing Revisionist movement laying claim to the Zionist sea ethos and attacking the central institutions' initial dismissive attitude to the maritime field. This dispute, and its expressions surrounding Sea Day celebrations, can be understood within the Yishuv's broader politics and the different institutions' attempts to cement their own status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This conversation enacts a decolonial feminist intervention, especially in the realm of knowledge production. More specifically, the conversation is a real-time attempt to "disrupt fixity" by insisting that the fight for the liberation of Palestine is central to decolonial disability futures. The conversation takes up issues of ableism, including how it relates to mental health, "access washing," settler colonialism, and the decolonial present as well as futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay addresses a poignantly critical question: how did Israel enter into such an unsustainable, illegal, immoral and rather impractical position in the span of a few months following the bloody slaughter of 7 October 2023? It explains the problem triggering the move towards genocide, the fact that ethnic cleansing of Palestinians had run its course, and not enough Palestinians have departed Palestine since 1967 despite terrifying war crimes against them. The essay advances that the step-change from the decades of 'good-old ethnic cleansing' to a new level of criminality and depravity—genocide—was not a simple issue of turning up the volume; it required a mindset which sees genocide not only as an 'option', but one perceiving it as the only option. This was made possible after 7 October 2023. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses three new books that explore different aspects of Zionism and its relationship with the American Jewish community. The books examine the historical attitudes of American Jews towards Zionism, the role of emotion in diasporic Zionism, and the power dynamics between American Jewish philanthropy and Israel. The article also highlights the changing support for Israel among American Jews, with older generations being more attached to Israel compared to younger generations. Overall, these books provide valuable insights into the complex relationship between American Jews and Zionism. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Tabayyun is the property of Arab Center for Research & Policy Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article revisits the so-called ‘Jewish Question’ against the combined background of Marxist historiography and the resurgence of antisemitic and neofascist politics. It begins by analysing the critical reception of Marx’s formative essay, ‘On the Jewish Question’, and assesses its contemporary relevance in the aftermath of institutionalised antisemitism in the USSR, the monstrosity of the Shoah, the consolidation of the Israeli state, and the catastrophic ramifications of the ongoing Nakba. Despite the various defects of Marx and Engels’s reflections on the ‘Jewish Question’, their critical insights vividly anticipate the failings of liberalism, Soviet socialism, and Zionism in emancipating Jews, while also reminding contemporary Marxists about the political urgency of human emancipation. At its core, the ‘Jewish Question’ remains a universal question, extending to all oppressed peoples and classes that have been rendered abandoned and dispensable beings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the First World War drew to a close, the head of the American Red Cross’s Commission to Palestine, John Huston Finley, stepped into ongoing debates over the future of the Holy Land when he called for an international trusteeship in Palestine. Supporters and opponents of the Zionist movement – as well as the few scholars that have since engaged with Finley’s views – primarily understood Finley’s proposal as anti-Zionist. While Finley certainly presented his plan as an alternative to a Jewish state in Palestine, this article demonstrates that Finley’s proposal was much more directly a case for a British mandate that was rooted in Finley’s experiences working with the British – as well as his personal fascination with General Edmund Allenby. Finley believed and argued that Allenby’s person, character, and conduct demonstrated that the interests of ‘civilization’ could best be secured in Palestine by a British trusteeship. In his 1919 A Pilgrim in Palestine, published amidst the post-war debates over mandate assignments, Finley presented Allenby as a symbol of trusteeship’s possibilities in making an American case for British rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to assess the way annual highschool field trips in Israel's State educational system is used to inculcate national narratives. Based on copious data, it shows that knowing and loving the Land of Israel (Eretz Israel) are significant motifs that recur with high intensity in all school field trip programmememes. Concurrently, however, in view of the high frequency of national motives in these trips, integrating the national aspect has apparently become a codeword for the 'right way' to plan out and carry out field trips. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adaptation to modernity generated among the Jews different amalgamations between European and Jewish concepts and brought about diverse and often opposed ideological trends and movements. One was Zionism, built on a concoction between Jewish tenets such as Shivat-Zion (Return-to-Zion) and European nationalism and secularisation. The result, Jewish statehood, failed to eradicate or diminish the tensions between non-Jews and Jews with the old Jew-hatred now transferred to Israel. This article examines the ideological background of the Zionist idea and the interaction among its components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for a common memory creates a link between personal stories and the shared values of the nation's citizens. Flamm's story reflects an attempt to create such a link. In 1943, a group of hikers in the Galilee came upon an Arab who attempted to rob them at gunpoint. Joseph Flamm, the group's guide and an amateur wrestler, fought the Arab, subdued him and killed him. A different version of the story of this incident came up every few years. Joseph Flamm, the story's hero, played a major role in the attempt to paint the incident in nationalistic colours. His own involvement in publicizing and shaping the story enables us to examine the encounter between a personal attempt to enter the national collective memory and the political use that was made of the story. This article discusses the attempt to turn this criminal event into a national heroic event in the context of the Arab Israeli conflict. The later versions presented it as a tangible expression of national myths, among them scouting and knowledge of Israel's geography, physical heroism and defending the homeland. The last version of the story was published in the 1970s, a period that signalled a change in the Zionist ethos. The Israeli public no longer showed interest in heroic stories such as Flamm's. Therefore, despite attempts to revive the story and efforts to affix it in the collective memory, it eventually disappeared from the public eye. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Israel's settler-colonial project stands as a peculiar instance of colonial domination in the modern era, distinguished by its ideological roots in Zionism, a potent blend of mythological narratives, militaristic nationalism, and expansionist aspirations. Unlike traditional colonial powers, Israel operates without a conventional metropole, instead leveraging strategic alliances with Western powers, particularly the United States, to sustain its colonial enterprise. The endurance of this project is inextricably linked to the subjugation and fragmentation of the Arab world, which serves as a wellspring of resistance against Israel's colonial ambitions, as evidenced by the normalization of relations between Israel and various Arab regimes. Yet, Palestinian resistance has proven resilient and adaptive, persistently asserting its rights, identity, and connection to the land, while exposing the moral bankruptcy of Israel's colonial dominance. To fully grasp the complexities of Palestine's past, present, and future, it is imperative to employ a settler-colonial framework, which not only illuminates the specific dynamics at play but also sheds light on the broader implications for understanding and challenging similar structures of oppression worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In discourse that normalizes and propagates Israeli settler colonial conquest and domination, analytical attention is given to the supposed nationalist nature of the Zionist project painting Zionism as a liberatory project for persecuted Jewish peoples in Europe and beyond. To counter this discourse and its erasure of the colonized, many critical scholars have emphasized that Zionism is both nationalist and settler colonial. However, to present a decolonial alternative to the exclusive focus on Zionism as a nationalist project, critical analysis must insist that state nationalism is but one of the elements that scholars can analyze within, not alongside, the larger framework of settler colonial sovereignty. This article argues that we must examine the effects of the Zionist project and give the Palestinian experience its proper analytical weight at the forefront of the analysis, not as that which can illuminate the 'unintended consequences' of Zionism, but as that which reveals the very logic and nature of Zionism and the Zionist project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how bodily living and experiencing life as colonized subjects affects the perception of space and time. It argues that the Zionist settler-colonial trinity of control (checkpoints, ID cards, and permits) are not mere physical barriers of separation or restriction of movement and mobility. They are also a direct mechanism of colonial power that articulates how oppressive spaces are lived and consequently form the colonized perception of being-in-the-world. Based on two years of ethnographic study at Qalandia checkpoint between 2015 and 2017, the article adopts a phenomenological anthropological lens and focuses on two moments of bodily experiences related to passing the checkpoint: First, the bodily experience before reaching the checkpoint; and second, the bodily experience when crossing the checkpoint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the historical processes, socio-political contexts, and ideological tendencies that underlie the development of the Heritage Plan, Israel's official cultural heritage policy. I argue that the Heritage Plan does not merely invest in the conservation of tangible and intangible Israeli national heritage assets; in addition, it employs cultural heritage as an educational tool for creating a 'unifying national ethos' to ensure the continuous existence of Zionism – in the eyes of the policy's architects. To understand the concrete manifestations of this policy in relation to its ideological roots, I adopted a critical discourse analysis lens to examine various data materials, including official documents and interviews. My findings lead to a direct connection between the Heritage Plan and the rise of a specific ideological interpretation of Zionism, which combines Anglo-American conservative concepts with selected political-Zionist ideas. This study retraces how conservative-Zionism informed the decision-making process behind the Heritage Plan's creation and demonstrates how this ideology continues to influence the policy's current implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A lot of attention has been paid within academic and journalistic literature to how India's relationship with Israel has improved under the rule of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Looking beyond this, the objective of this article is to assess the position of Palestine and its liberation struggle within the Global Hindu Nationalist imaginary. The study's main argument, therefore, is that the broader Palestinian liberation struggle, in its pluralism, its global scope, and its interconnectivity with various struggles over the course of its history, implicitly represents a refutation of the core ideological mechanisms that underpin the Hindu Nationalist Project, including but not limited to its othering of Muslims and other non-Hindu groups as well as its more recent embrace of neoliberal capitalism. More explicitly, the articles argues that the way Hindu Nationalists construct Indian Muslim and Palestinian subjectivities as being analogous and connected through tropes of them as invaders and terrorists – in line with broader imperialist constructions of Muslim subjectivities – is a key feature of Global Hindutva's globality. To make this argument, this article first examines the literature on the historical relationship between Hindu Nationalism and Zionist settler colonialism. After this, the article analyses the overlap between Indian state and Hindutva positions on the Palestine Question before exploring practical tensions between the Hindutva outlook and the Palestinian liberation struggle. The final section of the article explores how Global Hindutva's historic and strategic alignment against the Palestinian liberation struggle manifests in both Indian foreign and domestic policy and in Hindu Nationalist mobilisations across the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes redemptive narratives constructed by Mashhadi Jewish immigrants through oral histories, memoirs, and life stories collected across generations. It examines how conceptions of religion, community, and family shaped their meaning-making around migration challenges. The first case study examines Malka Aharonoff's lamentation reconstructed from religious redemption across generations into a Zionist narrative. The second analyzes Esther Amini's published memoir, which reconciles her story with that of her immigrant parents through narrative, demonstrating its role across generations with gender as the focal point. The later cases of Aharon Namdar and Mehran Bassal present individual oral histories, capturing major migration waves from Iran, playing out the differing import and expression given to Zionism and to religion by different immigrants. The study explores how selective appropriation and cultural translation occurred between generations. It sheds light on ideological and cultural frameworks underlying immigrant perspective. By comparing narratives emphasizing collective redemption versus individual experiences, it offers insights into identity formation and the role of memory in immigrant communities dispersing over time. By demonstrating narrative's therapeutic role in processing dislocation across generations, the study sheds light on cultural transmission and identity formation within dispersed immigrant communities. It offers a fresh perspective on their migration experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the relationship between exile and migration as reflected in a case study of biblical exegesis in modern Jewish thought. I consider the place of the biblical figure of Joseph in an early text by Léon Askenazi (also known as Manitou), a North African kabbalist and French intellectual, and a key spiritual leader of Francophone Jewry in the second half of the twentieth century. The paper begins by locating Askenazi within the mass migration, or "repatriation", of the Algerian Jewish community to metropolitan France. I then examine and analyze the reinterpretation of Joseph in an early and unpublished text by Askenazi. I show how Askenazi's explication departs from a common reading of the Joseph story by recasting it as a positive diasporic narrative with direct contemporary implications. I argue that during Askenazi's early years in Paris, he sought to offer a "Josephic" model for Jewish life in postwar France, a model which also functioned as an alternative to the Zionist ethos of the negation of exile. The paper's conclusion reflects on how Askenazi's ideas may speak to conversations on religion and immigration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The journey of Byzantine scholar Manuel Chrysoloras and his stay in Florence at the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries has been celebrated as an event that decisively shaped the course of European humanism. The later return of Enlightenment humanism to Ottoman lands in the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries can be described as the return of Chrysoloras. This return is generally known in a fragmentary form as a regional phenomenon: the story of Greek, Arab, Turkish and Jewish nationalisms and of the Ottoman reforms. It is also framed historically as the evolution from a traditional and theological society to new forms of epistemic, literary, civic and national communities, while often leaving aside failures and later contradictory transformations. The present essay offers an integrative study of modern humanism in late Ottoman and post-Ottoman contexts. The migration of Enlightenment humanism to the Middle East raised a wide range of expectations, projecting a new national or imperial organization within a harmonious diplomatic relationship with Christian Europe and the Americas. Yet, the more the revivalist and reformist projects evolved, the more they involved ethnic and religious conflicts and colonial intervention. This article illuminates the rise and fall of humanism in Middle Eastern contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bulletin of Palestine Studies / Filistin Araştırmaları Dergisi is the property of Bulletin of Palestine Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article provides an introduction to the life and work of Sammy Gronemann, a German Jewish humorist and playwright. Gronemann's humor was characterized by a blend of traditional messianism and modernity, and he challenged both German and Jewish cultural norms through his wit, satire, and humanist humor. Despite facing discrimination and a sense of alienation due to his outsider status, Gronemann made significant contributions to German-Jewish literature. The article discusses the growing interest in Gronemann's work among scholars and highlights areas for future research, emphasizing the enduring fascination with his life and writings. [Extracted from the article]

Reflecting on her English translation of Sammy Gronemann's novel Tohuwabohu (originally published in German in 1920), which was released under the title Utter Chaos in 2016, Penny Milbouer's essay reconstructs the enthusiastic reception of the novel by Albert Einstein, a discerning and knowledgeable reader. Milbouer explores the resonance between Gronemann's and Einstein's perspectives on modern German Jewish identity, nationalism, and antisemitism. Her essay examines Einstein's disillusionment with American Jews' assimilationist tendencies and analyses reasons for the failure to recognize Gronemann's satire. Delving into Einstein's experiences with antisemitism in America, Milbouer describes his evolving views on Zionism, contrasting American and European Jewish identities in the "little mirror" of Gronemann's novel. Her conclusion highlights the contemporary relevance of Gronemann's satire and Einstein's warnings about the persistence of antisemitism, confirming that American Jews cannot escape confronting their identity or responding to discrimination and persecution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research provides an overview of the rise of the Zionist movement, starting from the establishment of the Jewish Colonial Society in 1891 by Maurice de Hirsch, leading to the formation of the World Zionist Organization and the creation of the Jewish National Fund in 1901. It discusses the controversial debates over the location of a Jewish homeland, including the Uganda Scheme, and the advocacy for Palestine by figures like Herzl. The impact of World War I on the Middle East was influenced by the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 and the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which supported the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine. The British Mandate in Palestine, established after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, had significant impacts on Jewish immigration, Arab displacement, and the road to statehood. The United Nations eventually issued a resolution in 1947 to divide Palestine into two states, one for Jews and one for Arabs. This was accepted by Jews but rejected by Arab states. Great Britain's actions towards the end of the mandate aimed to frustrate the establishment of the Jewish state envisioned by the United Nations plan. Drawing on primary and secondary sources from esteemed archives such as the British Library and personal accounts, this research seeks to elucidate the complex historical backdrop, contextualizing key decisions and conflicts that ultimately shaped the creation of the State of Israel. The analysis aims to provide nuanced insights into divergent perspectives held by Palestinians and Israelis regarding the resolution of this enduring conflict, rooted in a legacy of geopolitical manoeuvring and ideological fervour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The background of the conflict originates from the end of the XIXth century when the Zionist movement (Israeli) promoted the idea of building an independent state for the Jews in the geographical territory of Palestine. Zionism was fiercely met and attacked by the Arab population of the country and resulted in a clash between the two movements for the possession of Palestine. There are two peoples and one territory, hence the reason for the conflict. Both communities consider Jerusalem their capital. In just 6 days of war, Israel conquered 26,000 km2 of Arab territory on 3 fronts. It managed to defeat the superior Arab forces with offensive operations, inflicting great losses on the infantry and equipment. Israel's goals were achieved: the Gulf of Tiran was opened to navigation, terrorist attacks were minimized, and the territory was preserved from the Arab threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a new understanding of the thought of Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) by reading it as political theology. It does so by identifying a neglected connection between two seemingly disparate themes: the Jewish Question and imperial visions of islands. Using these tropes to read Herzl's utopian novel Altneuland, I identify three pillars of Herzl's political theology: redemption through technology, the centrality of Zion, and active messianism. Herzl believed in the power of technology to transform social conditions. The second pillar, the centrality of Zion, shows the founding of an ideal society cannot occur on the island but only in Palestine. Finally, Herzk offers a vision of active messianism combining Christian-imperial epistemology with the Jewish precedence of the seventeenth-century false messiah Shabbtai Zvi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The law does not possess the language that we desperately need to accurately capture the totality of the Palestinian condition. From occupation to apartheid and genocide, the most commonly applied legal concepts rely on abstraction and analogy to reveal particular facets of subordination. This Article introduces Nakba as a legal concept to resolve this tension. Meaning "Catastrophe" in Arabic, the term "al-Nakba" (...) is often used to refer to the ruinous process of establishing the State of Israel in Palestine. But the Nakba has undergone a metamorphosis; it has evolved from a historical calamity into a brutally sophisticated structure of oppression. This ongoing Nakba includes episodes of genocide and variants of apartheid but remains rooted in a historically and analytically distinct foundation, structure, and purpose. This Article therefore proposes to distinguish apartheid, genocide, and Nakba as different, yet overlapping, modalities of crimes against humanity. It first identifies Zionism as Nakba's ideological counterpart and insists on understanding these concepts as mutually constitutive. Considering the limits of existing legal frameworks, this Article goes on to analyze the legal anatomy of the ongoing Nakba. It positions displacement as the Nakba's foundational violence, fragmentation as its structure, and the denial of self-determination as its purpose. Taken together, these elements give substance to a concept in the making that may prove useful in other contexts as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted, in part, as a response to the horrific antisemitism leading to the extermination of millions of Jews in World War II. Yet, today, organisations that utilise human rights instruments to criticise Israel's laws, policies and practices are themselves being cast as antisemitic. How has the contemporary human rights regime come to be charged with antisemitism? The ostensible answer is that the meaning of antisemitism has expanded to include anti-Zionism and harsh criticism of Israel. While scholars have debated the validity of this expansion, this paper interrogates three types of abstractions: those deployed by traditional antisemites, those emanating from human rights, and those mobilised by the new antisemitism doctrine. An analysis of these abstractions helps clarify the new hostility between antisemitism and human rights. Whereas Zionism aims to protect Jews by asserting a right to Jewish difference within the context of a nation-state, human rights aim to protect Jews by promoting an egalitarian distribution of rights among the population. The crux of the matter is that the solution human rights offer to antisemitism also threatens the Zionist project, since it challenges the racialized mode of governance that this political ideology has implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is an acutely tragic time for many Jewish people who have for decades shared Eyal Rozmarin's commitment to working for peace in Israel/Palestine. Rozmarin importantly emphasizes the many ties that bind people, often unconsciously, to collectivities, especially the ways in which nation states, or birthplaces, provide identity narratives that unite, or sometimes, discomfort, us. However, it is not so uncommon for people to have fractured belongings, as life experiences complicate our ties to past identifications and attachments. In this essay I discuss the historic complexity of Jewish ties to Israel, including my own. I note that Jewish criticisms of Israel's dispossession of Palestinians, which have always existed from well before the creation of the state of Israel, are continually dismissed by allowing only one narrative to be addressed, that of political Zionism. All other attempts to criticize Israel's refusal to contemplate justice for native Palestinians is spuriously undermined as antisemitism. Yet today, more Jewish people are joining with others who are not only currently devastated by Israel's genocidal aggression in Gaza, but also demanding equal rights and freedom for everyone now residing in Israel/Palestine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Bible's central position in the Zionist movement is well-known. Most previous studies on this topic have focused on Israeli society following the establishment of the State of Israel. By contrast, this article focuses on the role of the Hebrew Bible in Jewish nationalism and early Zionist thought from the 1880s to 1948. This article examines the connection between Zionism and the Bible in the context of modern nationalism research from a cultural approach. The focus on the Bible gave Zionism the components it lacked: territory and language. Unlike other ancient Jewish texts in which national aspects were marginalized, the Bible set a model for the creation of a modern nation-state. To the Zionists, the Bible was a guide to forming the 'New Jew'. This article shows that examining the relationship between Zionism and the Bible enables better understanding of the pre-modern cultural foundations of the Jewish national movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes violence against the body of Woman Jerusalem in Ezek. 16 and 23 from a New Materialist perspective. As a methodology, New Materialism forges new paths when considering the female body and agency: namely, literal and literary bodies possess the ability to transform their literal and literary worlds, even when— especially when—these bodies become entangled in violent acts. This article therefore considers Woman Jerusalem's violated body from two perspectives. The first is the perspective of Ezekiel-the-exiled-priest and the centrality of Woman Jerusalem's body in his theological project of identity building. The second is the perspective of Ezekiel-the-iconoclast and the ability of Woman Jerusalem's body to survive his acts of violence and reemerge as an intercessor. Such continuity has profound significance for the evolving Zion tradition, which follows the body of Woman Jerusalem to the other side of exile and there reconsiders the relationship between Yahweh, Jerusalem, and her human inhabitants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the book "Decolonizing Palestine" by Mitri Raheb, a Palestinian theologian. Raheb aims to bring colonial theory into conversation with Palestinian theology and develop a contextual and decolonial Palestinian Christian theology. He argues that Western Christianity has supported settler colonialism in Palestine by weaponizing the Bible against the Palestinian people. The book explores the history of imperialism in the Holy Land, the role of Christian Zionism, the theology of land, and the biblical idea of election. Raheb's work offers a Palestinian perspective on the political history of the region and challenges Eurocentric and North American theology. [Extracted from the article]

The writer, Zohar scholar and Zionist activist Ariel Bension (1880–1932) has attracted attention of late from scholars seeking to recover an alternative vision of Zionism with Mizrahi roots in Ottoman Palestine. Yet the instrumentalization of Bension's biography for the politics of identity in present-day Israel has led to a flattening effect whereby Bension is divorced from his manifold ties to European and global Jewish culture. In this article, we demonstrate those complex transnational and multidisciplinary dimensions of Bension's life, theatrical oeuvre and thought through a reconstruction of his brief collaboration on a Hebrew musical play and film project with music scholar, composer and educator Avraham Zvi Idelsohn (1882–1938). Presenting newly discovered archival documents, we explore both the tangled array of social identities present in the early Zionist cultural elite and the emergence of a shared global Jewish imaginary in a moment of profound historical change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interest in Jewish topographies involves looking at Jewish presence in locations that help relocalize Jewish space. In this article, we argue that the task of reading Jewish identity as a diaspora community calls for a location and geography specific response, especially in aesthetic discourses that unfold Jewish identity situated outside the Eurocentric contexts. Such location-specific readings can enable a "provincializing" of the West-centric construct of Jewish identity. We argue that Malayalam author Sethu's novel Aliyah: The Last Jew of the Village is an interesting case in point. Set in the middle of the twentieth century, the novel deals with the ways in which the Jews living near Cochin, an island-city in the southern province of Kerala in India, respond to the call for a "return" to Israel. As the Jews and other communities respond to the developments around a possible return, the Jewish and non-Jewish characters in the novel all unpack a different discourse about how Jews belong to Cochin, a phenomenon that can be appreciated once one begins to understand that Jews, as a quintessential diaspora community, have had multiple histories of inhabiting geographies. Foregrounding these locations, through provincializing, might offer possibilities of challenging stereotypes in literary critiques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the unique reception of the Talmudic tale about the messiah at the gates of Rome (BT, Sanhedrin 98a) among German-Jewish intellectuals in the early twentieth century. Thereby, the article offers a new perspective on the relations between messianism, Zionism, and human agency in German-Jewish thought. In tractate Sanhedrin, Yehoshua ben Levi asks the messiah about the date of his arrival, and the redeemer answers, "Today." However, as redemption fails to arrive, the prophet Elijah explains the redeemer's words as "Today, if you will listen to my voice." The tale raises the possibility that people have an agency to act and hasten the redemption. Nevertheless, the "correct" nature of redemptive actions is missing. I argue that by repeatedly interpreting the Aggadah, German-Jewish intellectuals position themselves within the political-theological conversation about Zionism and negotiate the tension between the ethical and the political manifestations of messianic agency. On the one hand, Zionists like Martin Buber, Chaim Arlosoroff, and Arnold Zweig change the content of the tale and charge it with political potency. On the other hand, Franz Rosenzweig returns to the traditional tale to offer a counter-reading supporting an ethical mode of agency instead of a Zionist form of activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The kindergarten teachers of the Religious Kibbutz movement (RK) as a unique group are connected both to the educational approaches of the kindergartens in the general Kibbutz Movement and the state religious kindergartens. A qualitative study included semi-structured interviews with 15 RK kindergarten teachers in order to explore their self-identity. The identity of the RK kindergarten was designed to be an encounter between four axes: the connection to Jewish tradition, the kibbutz community, nature and agriculture, and a constructivist approach. The study findings brought to light the RK kindergarten teachers' unique educational approach, which includes both similarities and differences with the general kibbutz movement kindergartens and the state religious kindergartens. The study contributes to highlighting a specific group of early childhood (EC) educators, reflecting both the diverse mosaic of EC educational approaches among different groups in Israel and the potential that these groups have for enriching each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Austrian province of Moravia, Jews, most of whom spoke German, continued to participate in and support the German political community until the end of the Habsburg monarchy. Unlike in nearby Bohemia, German liberals in Moravia did not abandon the Jews as the franchise expanded and antisemitism grew. Indeed, the German Progressive Party continued to attract voters in the cities of the province and did not resort to antisemitism in order to do so. Although there were only a small number of Jews in the province—just over 40,000—they played a large role among the voters in the urban curia. After the Moravian Compromise of 1905, when German parties no longer had to compete with Czech parties, Jews often formed the majority of all voters for German parties in the small market towns of the largely Czech-speaking south and central part of the province. The perception of the need for Jewish support in elections created a situation in which the German liberals did not turn to antisemitic politics and the Jewish/German liberal alliance remained strong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zionism aimed to establish a national home for Jews in Palestine. It involved settlement of Zionist Jews in the region, despite facing resistance from many local Arabs. Was the unilateral Zionist settlement morally permissible, or was it an instance of wrongful colonialism? Three objections will be discussed here and they all stem from the Kantian ethics of state-building and the minimalistic conception of statehood that follows from it. According to the 'neutralist objection', the establishment of a national home is not a just cause for a state building project. The 'cosmopolitan' objection argues that unilateral settlement is permissible only in extreme circumstances and that typically, it violates the locals' right to self-rule. Finally, the imperialist objection argues that Zionist unilateralism exploited the wrongful colonial rule to which Arab Palestinians were subject. I will show that no Kantian objection to Zionism is decisive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses Benjamin Netanyahu's border discourse in the context of radical right-wing populism. It discusses how, in the speeches and statements appearing in his official government website, Netanyahu construes groups located spatially outside Israel's borders, mainly terrorists and migrants (the "wild beasts" and the "infiltrators"), as existential threats to Israel. The aim is to prove that, in legitimizing the militarization of borders through "security fences", so that the "other" can be excluded from the nation, Netanyahu uses the same power geometries and discursive strategies, i.e. Proximization (Cap 2013) and dehumanizing metaphors (Santa Ana 1999, Musolff 2015, Taylor 2021), typically used by right-wing populist parties and leaders. By appealing to both populism and certain interpretations of Zionism, his ethnonationalist view of borders is based on the normalization of the discourse of delegitimation and exclusion of those groups considered as a threat to the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the contended issues in Pentecostal studies is the exclusion or inclusion of African Independent Churches (AICs) as part of the Pentecostal tradition. This article resuscitates this old debate by looking specifically into the inclusion or exclusion of Zionist AICs in the Pentecostal tradition to make a theological contribution. This will be achieved by briefly discussing the Zionist AICs in the South African context. The various factors that contribute to who or what qualifies to be Pentecostal will be discussed by conceptualising Pentecostal identity. In other words, the research question to be answered is on top of which mountain do we stand to include or exclude Zionist AICs in the Pentecostal tradition? Therefore, this article will discuss the theological criteria used to include the Zionist AICs in Pentecostalism. Similarly, the theological criteria for the exclusion of the Zionist AICs will be discussed in detail. The aim and objective of this article are to attempt to answer the question are Zionist AICs Pentecostal? This will have implications for the study of Pentecostal theology in the South African context. Data was collected by reviewing and analysing literature on the AICs and their relationship with the Pentecostal tradition within a theological framework.

The first document, titled "The Soul Seeks Its Melodies: Music in Jewish Thought," discusses the historical evolution of the music motif in Jewish thought and explores the encounters between music, Jewish philosophy, and theology. The author, Dov Schwartz, presents a comprehensive conceptual framework for understanding the connection between Judaism and music. The book covers various trends in Jewish thought, including the changing evaluations of music, the role of music in Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah, and the importance of music in Religious Zionist thought. The second document, titled "Sounds of Apocalypse: Music in Poland under German Occupation," focuses on the exploitation of music in the territories absorbed into the greater German Reich and in the countries occupied during World War II. The author, Katarzyna Naliwajek, examines the role of music as a tool of propaganda, myth, and reality during this period. The book provides a comprehensive exploration of musical life under German occupation and its impact on Polish society. [Extracted from the article]