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Zionist Thought


A Zionist Who’s Who A Zionist Who’s Who
Thursday, January 20, 2011 by Yehudah Mirsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

The state of Israel, like the Zionist movement in all its forms—political, cultural, artistic, religious—was an astounding collective creation. The famous names are known, as are the slightly less famous.  But what about all the others?
Where Have All the Prophets Gone? Where Have All the Prophets Gone?
Tuesday, January 18, 2011 by Aryeh Tepper | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Writing in 1911, Martin Buber declared that "the nature of the prophets" lives within the Jewish people. A hundred years later, do any Jews still believe this?
The Cosmopolitans The Cosmopolitans
Friday, November 26, 2010 by Yehudah Mirsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

How many flavors does Zionism come in? The usual answer is three. Naturally, the reality is more complicated than that. And, in a period when Zionism is in serious need of defending and new thinking, some scholars have been complicating it still further.
The Non-Zionist The Non-Zionist
Monday, November 8, 2010 by Yehudah Mirsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

The YIVO Institute in New York recently marked the 150th birthday of perhaps the most eminent among its founders: the historian and nationalist ideologue Simon Dubnow (1860-1941). Massively influential in its time, Dubnow's historical writing has been overshadowed by the work of later generations of scholars. In the meantime, the cause he championed—Diaspora Jewish nationalism—was throttled by the Holocaust.  Yet the man and his ideas may be ripe for rediscovery.
The Impresario of Zionism The Impresario of Zionism
Wednesday, April 28, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Theodor Herzl, father of modern political Zionism, was born in Budapest 150 years ago next Sunday, May 2. He died at age forty-four in Vienna, four-and-a-half decades before the establishment of the state of Israel. Herzl came into maturity with no particular Jewish learning, no Hebrew, and scant ties to his community. Yet with his top hat, white gloves, and tails, this broadminded Central European journalist with a utopian streak came to be the foremost revolutionary of the modern Jewish world. The basics outlines of Herzl's life are fairly well known. Born into a comfortable, assimilated family, he considered law but settled...
The Messianic Aliyah The Messianic Aliyah
Monday, March 15, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Today marks the rededication of the Hurva (literally, "ruin") Synagogue, once the jewel in the crown of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. Its history, and the debates over that history, open a window onto a fascinating chapter with powerful reverberations today. In 1700, days after arriving from Poland, a Jewish pietist purchased an abandoned plot known since the 15th century as "the Ashkenazi courtyard," hoping to build a synagogue. When his followers proved unable to keep up their payments, the Arab creditors reduced the site to rubble. In the 19th century it arose again, magnificently, thanks to the...
Are We One? Are We One?
Wednesday, March 3, 2010 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

The hate-fest known as "Israeli Apartheid Week," now taking place in cities around the globe, is bound to affect the morale of Diaspora Jews, if in different ways. Some may be induced to lower their pro-Israel profile, others to dissociate themselves from the Jewish state and its policies, still others to affirm their solidarity ever more resolutely. We have come a long way since the 1967 Six-Day War. Before that watershed event, Diaspora Jewish life was not noticeably animated by a vigorous commitment to Israel's cause. But the country's spectacular victory in war, in tandem with the energies released by the...
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Editors' Picks
Thinking about the Unthinkable Louis René Beres, John T. Chain, U.S. News. Iran should never have been allowed to proceed toward full and illegal nuclearization; if the intolerable becomes real, what can Israel do?
Home as Found Sam Munson, Tablet. The Israeli writer Yoram Kaniuk lived the bohemian life of 1950s America to the hilt, only to find what he needed on returning to Tel Aviv; his latest book tells the raucously turbulent story.
Blocking Palestinian Statehood John Bolton, Wall Street Journal. For the General Assembly to recognize Palestinian "statehood" does not automatically mean UN membership, but it would be damaging nonetheless. Here's how it can be prevented.
Young Rabbis and Israel Daniel Gordis, Commentary. That some rabbinical students (and their elders) are turning against the Jewish state is a deeply distressing fact; the question is why.
Two Sisters Daniel Johnson, Standpoint. Comparing Jacqueline and Gillian Rose, the former a vociferous and overrated campaigner against Israel, the latter a formidable and underrated figure in Jewish and Christian thought.
Holding Firm Alana Goodman, Contentions. When it comes to Israel, the "progressive" Left is increasingly out of sync with American attitudes—and, in the main, with the attitudes of the Jewish community.    
Light on the “1967 Lines” Yaacov Lozowick, Ruminations. Relinquishing Israeli control of most of the West Bank is one thing: relinquishing a military presence is something different.
Between the Lines Jonathan Neumann, Standpoint. An in-depth report on life in the Jewish settlements of the West Bank, and the people who live it.
The New Faces of Religious Zionism Maayana Miskin, Israel National News. A sector of the Israeli population once relatively uniform has grown both religiously and politically diverse, much more so than is commonly credited.
Making Israel Pay Jonathan S. Tobin, Contentions. Even as he acknowledges that the real challenge in the Middle East is whether Arab societies can make the transition to freedom, the President has dealt Israel a telling diplomatic blow.