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20 - Zionism

from IV - Jewish Peoplehood

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Zachary Braiterman
Affiliation:
Syracuse University
Martin Kavka
Affiliation:
Florida State University
Zachary Braiterman
Affiliation:
Syracuse University, New York
David Novak
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Summary

Like run-down modern architecture in Tel Aviv, Zionism comes increasingly into view as time bound and untidy with each passing year. A complex ideological form, Zionism historically reflected and responded to all early twentieth-century political currents (liberalism, nationalism, socialism, colonialism, and fascism) and cultural styles (art nouveau, expressionism, modernism, Bauhaus). We view these currents today from perspectives that reflect and respond to situations and contexts that are specific to the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, understanding that historical distance necessarily modulates its “object.” My purpose in this chapter is to examine Zionism in light of postmodernism and postcolonialism at a juncture when the imagistic dimension of human reality is seen as a basic given and when the rightness of Zionism, the claim to Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel, and the claim to sovereignty tout court are no longer taken for granted. Zionism and discourse about Zionism today have been stressed by more than one hundred years of conflict between Jews and Arabs, more than forty years of occupation in the West Bank, some twenty years of post-Zionist criticism, and by our current post–9/11 time when the poisoned overlap between Islam and the West has caused no small panic against and in support of Israel.

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The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy
The Modern Era
, pp. 606 - 634
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

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