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19 - On Jewish Nationhood and Nationalism: A Historical Survey from Antiquity to the Establishment of the State of Israel

from Part II - Transnational and Religious Missions and Identities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2023

By
Allon Gal
Edited by
Cathie Carmichael ,
Matthew D'Auria  and
Aviel Roshwald
Cathie Carmichael
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Matthew D'Auria
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Aviel Roshwald
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
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Summary

Genuine, refined, and updated scholarship in recent decades has gradually refuted the view of nationalism as a strictly modern phenomenon. That view in general had tended to interconnect nationalism with the industrial revolution and capitalism. According to this approach, the objective emergence of national markets combined with subjective manipulations by interested capitalists served to mold, often invent, nationalism; the conspicuous political expressions of this modern process are – per the modernists – the national states of western Europe. By contrast, my approach criticizes this dogmatic, often Marxist and Eurocentric, view, and is closely related to the new keen scholarship, which explores nationalism and nationhood, also beyond Europe, deep into antiquity, and aspires to avoid dogmas which ignore the rich, variegated, and eventful history of ethnopolitical identities. The Jewish nationalist case, as we shall see, conspicuously fits into the meaningfully nuanced long history category.

Keywords

Jewish historynationhood and nationalismethosthe Biblehumanistic valuesZionismIsrael
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Nationhood and Nationalism , pp. 417 - 436
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Further Reading

Bar-Levav, Avriel (ed.), Peace and War in Jewish Culture (Jerusalem and Haifa: Shazar Center and University of Haifa, 2006) [in Hebrew].Google Scholar
Barak-Erez, Daphne, Reading Law in the Bible: On Biblical Justice and Israeli Law (Rishon LeZion: Miskal, 2019) [in Hebrew].Google Scholar
Gal, Allon, Leoussi, Athena S., and Smith, Anthony D. (eds.), The Call of the Homeland: Diaspora Nationalisms, Past and Present (Leiden: Brill, 2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hellinger, Moshe (ed.), Jewish Political Tradition throughout the Ages (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2010) [in Hebrew].Google Scholar
Novak, David, Jewish Justice: The Contested Limits of Nature, Law and Covenant (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2017).Google Scholar
Novak, David, Jewish Social Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).Google Scholar
Sands, Philippe, East West Street: On the Origins of “Genocide” and “Crimes against Humanity” (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2016).Google Scholar
Scott, James C., Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tamir, Yael, Liberal Nationalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).Google Scholar
Walzer, Michael, Menachem Lorberbaum, and Noam J. Zohar (gen. eds.), The Jewish Political Tradition, 3 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000–2018).Google Scholar
Zakovitch, Yair, The Bible: A Divine Revolution (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, Magnes Press, 2019) [in Hebrew].Google Scholar
Zipperstein, Steven J., Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha’am and the Origins of Zionism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).Google Scholar

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