What is Modern Israel? - Hardcover

Rabkin, Yakov M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0745335829 ISBN 13: 9780745335827

Publisher: Pluto Press, 2016

Synopsis

Usually, we think of the state of modern Israel, as well as the late nineteenth-century Zionist movement that led to its founding, as a response to anti-Semitism which grew out of cultural and religious Judaism. In What Is Modern Israel?, however, Yakov M. Rabkin turns this understanding on its head, arguing convincingly that Zionism, far from being a natural development of Judaism, in fact has its historical and theological roots in Protestant Christianity. While most Jewish people viewed Zionism as marginal or even heretical, Christian enthusiasm for the Restoration of the Jews to the Promised Land transformed the traditional Judaic yearning for ‘Return’—a spiritual concept with a very different meaning—into a political project.
 
Drawing on many overlooked pages of history, and using on a uniquely broad range of sources in English, French, Hebrew, and Russian, Rabkin shows that Zionism was conceived as a sharp break with Judaism and Jewish continuity. Rabkin argues that Israel’s past and present must be understood in the context of European ethnic nationalism, colonial expansion, and geopolitical interests rather than—as is all too often the case—an incarnation of Biblical prophecies or a culmination of Jewish history.

About this title

About the Author

Yakov M. Rabkin is professor of history at the University of Montréal, Canada. He is the author of A Threat from Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0745335829
• ISBN 13: 9780745335827
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240