Zionisms Redemptions

In this volume, Arieh Saposnik examines the complicated relations between nationalism and religious (and non-religious) redemptive traditions through the case study of Zionism. He provides a new framework for understanding the central ideas of this movement and its relationship to traditional Jewish ideas, Christian thought, and modern secular messianisms. Providing a longue-durée and broad view of the central themes and motivations in the making of Zionism, Saposnik connects its intellectual history with the concrete development of the Zionist project in Israel in its cultural, social, and political history. Saposnik demonstrates how Zionism offers lessons for a politics in which human perfectibility continues to serve as a guiding light and as a counter-narrative to the contemporary politics of self-interest, self-promotion and 'post-truth.' This is a study that bears implications for our understanding of modernity, of space and place, history and historical trajectories, and the place of Jews and Judaism in the modern world.

Zionism combined dialogues with Jewish, Christian, and secular messianisms to create a politics based in redemptive visions of its own.

After the Gulf War and amidst the ongoing “peace process,” this timely book speaks to the need to address the deeper issues of Israel and Palestine—issues that concerned Jews, Arabs, and Christians must face if the legitimate rights of the Palestinians and the moral integrity of the State of Israel are to survive the rush to a “new world order” in the Middle East.

Living 2000 years in exile the Hebrews had a 2000-year DREAM to return to their Promised Land. The MIRACLE happened in 1948 when the State of Israel was founded. Not yet the Third Temple, the DREAM period was full of anguish, tears and blood: the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust in Europe, Anti-Semitism, etc. The MIRACLE period was also, is also, full of anguish, tears and blood: Fighting five Arab nations, very well equipped, without arms, with a Western World arms embargo against Israel. Then the SIX-DAY War in 1967 when Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack against Israel. This was followed with the constant terror attacks, the Intifadah, mainly against Israeli civilians.

Accounts of the history of Zionism usually trace its origins to the late nineteenth century. In this groundbreaking book, Arie Morgenstern argues that its roots go back even further. Morgenstern argues compellingly that the Jewish community in Israel may be traced back to a large-scale wave of immigration during the first half of the nineteenth century. Inspired by an expectation for the coming of the Messiah in the year 1840, thousands of Jews from throughout the Ottoman Empire, North Africa, and Eastern Europe relocated to Jerusalem. Morgenstern describes the messianic awakening in all these lands but focuses primarily on the concept of redemption through messianic activism that prevailed among the disciples of Rabbi Elijah, the Ga'on of Vilna. These immigrants believed that the Messiah's arrival would bring about the redemption of the Jews, but also that, in order for this redemption to come about, they needed to prepare the way for the Messiah by fulfilling the commandment to dwell in the land of Israel. Morgenstern offers a dramatic account of their relocation, their efforts to renew rabbinic ordination, their reestablishment of the Ashkenazi community, and the building of Jerusalem. He also explores the crisis of faith that followed the Messiah's failure to appear as expected, and its effects on the community. Drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, Morgenstern sheds important new light on the history of messianic Judaism and on the ideological trends that preceded, and eventually gave birth to, modern political Zionism.

According to public health officials, obesity poses significant health risks and has become a modern-day epidemic. A closer look at this so-called epidemic, however, suggests that there are multiple perspectives on the fat body, not all of which view obesity as a health hazard. Alongside public health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are advertisers of the fashion-beauty complex, food industry advocates at the Center for Consumer Freedom, and activists at the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. Framing Fat takes a bird’s-eye view of how these multiple actors construct the fat body by identifying the messages these groups put forth, particularly where issues of beauty, health, choice and responsibility, and social justice are concerned. Samantha Kwan and Jennifer Graves examine how laypersons respond to these conflicting messages and illustrate the gendered, raced, and classed implications within them. In doing so, they shed light on how dominant ideas about body fat have led to the moral indictment of body nonconformists, essentially “framing” them for their fat bodies.

Based on the premise that the moral problems raised by the holocaust can be confronted only in myth, the author shows that Menachem Begin's rhetoric is based on how he views the world through the myth of holocaust and redemption through return. Demonstrates that the actions of the Begin administration, which many observers have found inexplicable, are perfectly logical when viewed from the perspective of the myth of return. Of interest to students of rhetoric, political science, the holocaust, and Zionism.

Reproduction of the original. The publishing house Megali specialises in reproducing historical works in large print to make reading easier for people with impaired vision.

Zionism was a movement of national liberation. It sought to establish a permanent home for the Jewish people where they could attain political independence and instigate a national renaissance. Some Zionists were inspired by a vision of religious redemption and the onset of the messianic age. For others it represented the construction of a perfect society. Others aspired to the more modest creation of a modern technological, capitalist state. The Hebrew Republic which came into being in May 1948 embellished all these possibilities. Today 38 per cent of all Jews live in Israel. The tragedy of Zionism was that it arose during the same period of history as Arab nationalism - and in the same land. Our perception of what it stood for and how it came about has been shaped and distorted by the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Colin Shindler explains the evolution of Zionism as a unique ideology and provides a clear and perceptive analysis of its ideas.