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1948 to 1967: From Defensive War to Preemptive War

Reuven Firestone

in Holy War in Judaism: The Fall and Rise of a Controversial Idea

The War of Independence was considered by virtually all Jews everywhere as a war of defence against Arab armies and irregulars who attempted to destroy the nascent Jewish state. Its success after the ... More

The War of Independence was considered by virtually all Jews everywhere as a war of defence against Arab armies and irregulars who attempted to destroy the nascent Jewish state. Its success after the horrors of the Holocaust spawned an upsurge in messianic expectations that soon subsided under the pressure of building a state apparatus where none had existed previously. Much of the ideological fervour that drove the revolutionary movement of Zionism subsided in the face of the need for institution building and the absorption of masses of Jewish refugees from the Holocaust and Muslim lands in the Middle East and North Africa. The old ethos of avoiding war at all costs broke down during this period as well as punitive and pre-emptive military acts were carried out by Israeli forces against Arab militaries and civilian populations. Under the auspices of the military rabbinate, the Orthodox Jewish community begins to consider the sanctity of various portions of the traditional Land of Israel.Less

Zionist Anthologies

in Aesthetics of Renewal: Martin Buber's Early Representation of Hasidism as Kulturkritik

The discourse among cultural Zionists regarding anthologies can be divided into four phases. In the first phase (ca. 1895–1907), the first few anthologies of Jewish literature were published prior to ... More

The discourse among cultural Zionists regarding anthologies can be divided into four phases. In the first phase (ca. 1895–1907), the first few anthologies of Jewish literature were published prior to the First Zionist Congress in Basel (1897) and were primarily directed to the Jewish youth in Russia and Poland. The second phase (ca. 1908–14), preceding the First World War, witnessed the beginning of a systematic approach to anthologizing under the intellectual guidance of Bialik. The third phase (ca. 1916–25) witnessed attempts, in particular in the West, to modify and amplify Bialik's conception of ingathering, and the fourth phase began during the Fourth Aliyah (1924–28), when eighty thousand, mostly East European, Jews emigrated to Palestine. Among them was Nahman Bialik, in 1924, who, once there, became increasingly attuned to the sensibilities of the Jewish settlers, the Yishuv. In the ancient homeland, the anthology became the principal medium for the reconsideration of cultural memory.Less

Ingathering the Exiles of the Past?: Bringing Archives to Jerusalem

Jason Lustig

in A Time to Gather: Archives and the Control of Jewish Culture

This chapter follows the history of the Jewish Historical General Archives in Jerusalem, founded in 1939 and opened in 1947, which in 1969 changed its name to the Central Archives for the History of ... More

This chapter follows the history of the Jewish Historical General Archives in Jerusalem, founded in 1939 and opened in 1947, which in 1969 changed its name to the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People. This archive sought to bring Jewish archives from all over the world to Jerusalem under the banner of what they termed the “ingathering of the exiles of the past.” Its leaders, including Alex Bein and Daniel Cohen, who spearheaded the effort to gather materials from Europe, hoped to draw upon the legacy of European Jewry and thereby place Jews around the world within a sphere of Israeli cultural hegemony. In this archive, one finds an extension and intensification of the Gesamtarchiv’s dream of a total archive of Jewish life—and a powerful instance showing both its possibilities and the problems of fundamentally reframing the Jewish past.Less

Exile Ingathering: An Exposition

Alan Gamlen

in Human Geopolitics: States, Emigrants, and the Rise of Diaspora Institutions

Chapter 3 examines Phase 1 of the process in which post-colonial states sought to gather their ethnic constituents into the process of independent nation-state building. It began during the turbulent ... More

Chapter 3 examines Phase 1 of the process in which post-colonial states sought to gather their ethnic constituents into the process of independent nation-state building. It began during the turbulent disintegration of the nineteenth-century European empires, and culminated in the wake of the collapsed Soviet empire of the 1990s. To explain these exile ingathering strategies, the chapter introduces the notion of ‘regime shock’: a new concept denoting moments disruption to prevailing configurations of territoriality, sovereignty, and/or citizenship that define a specific place, and which lead to the questioning and redrawing of the lines of social and political membership, along with changes in the structure of authority.Less