Decolonizing the Nation-State : Zionism in the Colonial Horizon of ModernityI am grateful to Santiago Slabodsky not only for reading this piece and making recommendations, but also for engaging in a discussion of his recommendations. I am also grateful to him for over ten years of conversion on Zionism, Judaism, anti-Semitism, and Decolonial Thinking, as well as for letting me read his chapter on Theodor Herzl from his forthcoming book Decolonial Judaism (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2014).

2014 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nation State ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Forthcoming Book ◽  
Theodor Herzl

Whitechapel Boy

Race & Class ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 67-74
Author(s):  
Chris Searle
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Western Front ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Forthcoming Book ◽  
East End

Excerpts are provided here from a forthcoming book to mark the centenary of the poet Isaac Rosenberg, who died in France on the Western Front in 1918. The author, who was able to interview Rosenberg’s contemporary Joseph Leftwich, explains Rosenberg’s experiences of anti-Semitism, including in the army, and his roots in London’s working-class, Jewish East End.

Beyond the Nation-State

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dmitry Shumsky
Keyword(s):  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Jewish State ◽  
Zionist Movement ◽  
Theodor Herzl ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
State Of Israel

The Jewish nation-state has often been thought of as Zionism's end goal. This bracing history of the idea of the Jewish state in modern Zionism, from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century until the establishment of the state of Israel, challenges this deeply rooted assumption. In doing so, the book complicates the narrative of the Zionist quest for full sovereignty, provocatively showing how and why the leaders of the pre-state Zionist movement imagined, articulated, and promoted theories of self-determination in Palestine either as part of a multinational Ottoman state (1882–1917), or in the framework of multinational democracy. In particular, the book focuses on the writings and policies of five key Zionist leaders from the Habsburg and Russian empires in central and eastern Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Leon Pinsker, Theodor Herzl, Ahad Ha'am, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and David Ben-Gurion to offer a very pointed critique of Zionist historiography.

The “Homogenization Process” in Romania

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 375-394
Author(s):  
Roxana Stoenescu
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Homogenization Process ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The One ◽  
Ideological Attitudes ◽  
The Relationship

"The present research examines the relationship between the development of the nation state and homogenization efforts in Romania. On the one hand, this requires examining the establishment of ideological and dictatorial power practices that emerge from the historical context of capitalist and imperialist developments. On the basis of which the national conceptions of a closed “body” evolved, and thus certain groups, experienced because of their “otherness” compared to the national similarities, social exclusivity. Thus, the racial ideological attitudes and the resulting homogenization and repression policies of the dictatorships of the 20th century emerged. The aim of this work is to show how the homogenization process took place in Romania. Keywords: dictatorship, total rule, nation, anti-Semitism, homogenization, modernization, Romania."

An Immoral Dilemma: The Trap of Zionist Propaganda

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 69-78
Author(s):  
Moshé Machover
Keyword(s):  
American Indian ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Modern Sense

Political Zionism is based on the fallacy that there exists a single nation encompassing all the world's Jews. How can Zionism claim that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, since the only attribute shared by all Jews is Judaism, a religion and not an attribute of nationhood in any modern sense of the word? Jews can belong to various nations—a Jew may be French, American, Indian, Argentinian, and so forth—but being Jewish excludes other religious affiliations. Thus, this essay argues, the Zionist claim that all the world's Jews constitute a single distinct national entity is an ideological myth, invented as a misconceived way of dealing with the persecution and discrimination suffered by European Jews, in particular. Indeed, from its earliest iterations and up to the present day, Zionism—a colonizing project—has been fueled by an inverted form of anti-Semitism: if, as it claims, Israel acts on behalf of all Jews everywhere, then all Jews must be collectively held responsible for the actions of that state—clearly an anti-Semitic position.

Nathan Birnbaum

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jess J. Olson
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Young Generation ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Central European ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Theodor Herzl ◽  
European Jewish ◽  
Anti Jewish

Nathan Birnbaum (b. 1864–d. 1937), also known by the pseudonym Mathias Acher (“another Mathias”), was a journalist, theorist of Jewish nationalism, and political activist. Birnbaum was a pioneer in the emergence of both secular Jewish nationalism and Orthodox political organization. Deeply affected by his exposure to rising anti-Semitism in fin-de-siècle Vienna and alienated by what he would term “assimilation mania” (Assimilationssucht), Birnbaum’s ideology was shaped early by two themes that developed throughout his career: belief that there was an intrinsic, unique Jewish identity, and that this identity could be activated as a solution to the oppression afflicting European Jews. Birnbaum’s early work integrated models of central European nationalism filtered through the writings of Moses Hess, Peretz Smolenskin, and Leon Pinsker. In the wake of anti-Jewish violence in Russia in 1882, Birnbaum and other Jewish students at Vienna University founded Kadimah, the earliest Jewish nationalist organization in central Europe. He cultivated an important presence among central European Jewish nationalists, and he was a significant influence on a young generation of “cultural” Zionists. In the early 1890s, he coined the term “Zionism” (Zionismus) to describe Palestine-oriented Jewish nationalism. When Theodor Herzl arrived in Zionist circles in 1896, he sidelined Birnbaum along with nearly everyone else who had preceded him in the movement, but Birnbaum’s opinion on the nature of authentic Jewish identity was already evolving. He eventually became an internal, and ultimately outside, critic of Zionism, concluding that an organic Jewish identity already existed in the folkways, Yiddish language, and communities of eastern European Jews. As an extension of this, he led in organizing the first conference of the Yiddish language in 1908. In the aftermath of the conference, Birnbaum deepened his engagement with the Yiddish language and eastern European Jewish culture and increasingly turned his thoughts to issues of spirituality and religion. After the outbreak of the First World War, Birnbaum announced himself a “ba’al teshuva,” a penitent returnee to Torah-observant Judaism. He was embraced by the Agudah, and his skills as a journalist and activist were put to use in Agudah organizing. Now Birnbaum revolutionized his understanding of the foundation of Jewish identity. Maintaining the ideal of Jewish authenticity as the only route to Jewish cohesion, Birnbaum rejected his earlier ethno-nationalist understanding of Jewish identity, replacing it with Orthodox religious observance and belief in the Torah. He aligned himself with a Hasidic religiosity that was an organic extension of his admiration for eastern European Jewry. A transformation that earned him respect in the Orthodox world and derision among the secular nationalists he had left behind, Birnbaum considered his change consistent with his views on Jewish authenticity. As the situation of European Jewry declined in the late 1920s and 1930s, Birnbaum felt vindicated in his dim view of the possibility of Jewish life outside of a religious identity, and wrote in this vein for the rest of his life. He died in Scheveningen, The Netherlands, in 1937.

“The Jewish Question” in the Pages of Contimporanul

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (Special Issue) ◽  
pp. 73-86
Author(s):  
Emilia Faur
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Question ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Religious Discrimination ◽  
Main Claim ◽  
Ideological Position ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
Anti Semitism

"“The Jewish Question” in the Pages of Contimporanul. It is my interest to investigate how one of the Romanian leading interwar avant-garde magazines, Contimporanul (1922-1932), tackled the “Jewish question”. In this respect, I will consider the various standpoints the contributors took on the matter, presenting it in all its facets and complexity, as both a political and a cultural phenomenon. The analysis of the numerous articles covering the “Jewish question”, its causes and consequences, is meant to illustrate the sensibility Contimporanul demonstrates in regard to the “Jewish question”. Finally, I will conclude that, as in all matters covered, the magazines’ ideological position is democratic – For its contributors’ main claim is that the young Romanian state should prove itself to be united, modern, democratic based on the principles of integration and plurality, and not a nation-state based on ethnic and religious discrimination. Keywords: Contimporanul, cultural and political anti-Semitism, anti-Semitic movements, democracy, modernity "

Re-thinking Recent German History

1952 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-345
Author(s):  
Hans Kohn
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Development ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
German History ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Full Professorship ◽  
Sacred Values ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Vital Forces

Friedrich meinecke, the Dean of German historians, celebrated* in October 1951, the month of his eighty-ninth birthday, the fiftieth anniversary of his appointment to a full professorship. In his reply to an adress by theFreie Universität Berlin, of which he is one of the founders andEhrenrektor, Professor Meinecke called our time great because of its concern with the “highest and most sacred values of mankind, the liberty, honor, right and dignity of the individual,” a struggle which draws “all the vital forces of Western civilization” closer together, labor and the middle class, Catholics and Protestants. This emphasis on individual liberty and on the unity of Western civilization has rarely been heard among German historians. Perhaps Meinecke's personal evolution is one of the hopeful signs in Germany. For he came from the strictest conservative Old-Prussian background: his upbringing was satiated with anti-liberalism, anti-semitism and a fervent Bismarckism. In his younger years he praised the German “ascent” from the cosmopolitanism of a Kant or Goethe to the nation-state of a Ranke and Bismarck. As an old man he began to ask himself whether Ranke had not misled German historiography and the German intellectual development. As far back as 1924, in an introduction to a new edition of Ranke'sPolitisches Gespräch, he pointed out that Ranke's concept of the powerful states as the embodiment of God's thoughts and ideas ennobled and sanctioned their elemental struggle for power. This glorification of the State became even more dangerous when later German historians abandoned the objective

THE POLITICS OF ARENDTIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY: EUROPEAN FEDERATION ANDTHE ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 417-446 ◽  
Author(s):  
WILLIAM SELINGER
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
European Politics ◽  
European Federation ◽  
Nation State ◽  
International History ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Methodological Choice

Hannah Arendt'sThe Origins of Totalitarianismis a distinctively international history. It traces Nazism to a “collapse of the nation-state” across Europe, brought on by European anti-Semitism and European imperialism, rather than to specifically German developments. This essay recovers the political meaning of that methodological choice on Arendt's part, by documenting the surprising intersection between Arendt's involvement in political debates over postwar European reconstruction, where she made an intellectual alliance with Resistance groups across Europe and strongly argued for European federation, and her involvement in historiographical debates over the sources of Nazism. I show the explicit connection that Arendt drew between an internationalist historiography of Nazism and the need for an internationalist European politics, in a series of essays she wrote in the mid-1940s. I then argue that this connection continues to play a prominent role inOriginsitself, sharply differentiating Arendt from other prominent theorists of Nazism.

scholarly journals Xenophobia and anti-Semitism in the Concept of Polish Literature

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Tomasz Kamusella
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Cultural Policy ◽  
National Policy ◽  
National Language ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Polish Literature ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Spatial Terms

In today’s Central Europe ethnolinguistic nationalism is the region’s standard normative ideology of statehood creation, legitimation and maintenance. This ideology proposes that in spatial terms, the area of the use of national language X should overlap with the territory of nation-state X, in which all members of nation X should reside. In terms of cultural policy, this means that only works written by “indubitable” members of nation X in language X can be seen as belonging to culture X. This self-limiting pattern of ethnolinguistic “purity” (homogeneity) excluded from 20th century Polish literature much of traditional Polish-Lithuanian culture and numerous authors writing in other post-Polish-Lithuanian languages than Polish. Democratization that followed the fall of communism in 1989 partly transcended this ethnolinguistic exclusion, but the old national policy has been back since 2015.

scholarly journals « Contre tous les youpins du monde » : la ville de Québec au temps de l’antisémitisme (1890–1914)

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 41-66
Author(s):  
Guillaume Durou
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
Quebec City ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Charles Maurras ◽  
The Church ◽  
Difficult Transition

In 1912, Charles Maurras mentioned in the Parisian publication l’Action française “the importance of anti-Semitism in Quebec City.” A city founded on a strong ethno-linguistic duality, Quebec City’s character changed considerably at the turn of the 20th century. Industrialization, immigration, the predominant conception of the nation-state and the magisterium of the Church upset a city that seemed to be experiencing a difficult transition. Ridden with anxiety, a certain elite is attacking a vulnerable minority on a daily basis. Thus a noisy anti-Semitism takes shape, regularly feeding a chimerical representation of the Jew which, by the effect of imbalance between reality and the imaginary, between truth and lies, generates nocuous tensions.En 1912, Charles Maurras mentionne dans l’Action française de Paris « l’importance de l’antisémitisme à Québec ». Ville fondée sur une forte dualité ethno-linguistique, Québec voit au tournant du XXe siècle son visage changer considérablement. L’industrialisation, l’immigration, la conception prédominante de l’État nation et le Magistère de l’Église bousculent une Cité qui paraît mal vivre la transition. Rongée par l’angoisse, une certaine élite s’en prend alors quotidiennement à une minorité vulnérable. Ainsi prend forme un antisémitisme tapageur nourrissant régulièrement une représentation chimérique du Juif et qui, par effet de déséquilibre entre la réalité et l’imaginaire, entre le vrai et le leurre, génère de funestes tensions.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document