From Europe's East to the Middle East - (Jewish Culture and Contexts) by Kenneth Moss & Benjamin Nathans & Taro Tsurumi (Hardcover)

About the Book

"From Europe's East to the Middle East seeks to both renew and recast our understanding of the tumultuous and entangled histories of East European Jewry, the transnational movement that Zionism became, and the settler society from which the country that is contemporary Israel emerged"--

Book Synopsis

The overwhelming majority of Jews who laid the foundations of the Israeli state during the first half of the twentieth century came from the Polish lands and the Russian Empire. This is a fact widely known, yet its implications for the history of Israel and the Middle East and, reciprocally, for the history of what was once the demographic heartland of the Jewish diaspora remain surprisingly ill-understood.

Through fine-grained analyses of people, texts, movements, and worldviews in motion, the scholars assembled in From Europe's East to the Middle East--hailing from Europe, Israel, Japan, and the United States--rediscover a single transnational Jewish history of surprising connections, ideological cacophony, and entangled fates. Against the view of Israel as an outpost of the West, whether as a beacon of democracy or a creation of colonialism, this volume reveals how profoundly Zionism and Israel were shaped by the assumptions of Polish nationalism, Russian radicalism, and Soviet Communism; the unique ethos of the East European intelligentsia; and the political legacies of civil and national strife in the East European shatter-zone. Against the view that Zionism effected a complete break from the diaspora that had birthed it, the book sheds new light on the East European sources of phenomena as diverse as Zionist military culture, kibbutz socialism, and ultra-Orthodox education for girls. Finally, it reshapes our understanding of East European Jewish life, from the Tsarist Empire, to independent Poland, to the late Soviet Union. Looking past siloed histories of both Zionism and its opponents in Eastern Europe, the authors reconstruct Zionism's transnational character, charting unexpected continuities across East European and Israeli Jewish life, and revealing how Jews in Eastern Europe grew ever more entangled with the changing realities of Jewish society in Palestine.

Review Quotes

"This rich and dynamic collection makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the various connections between East European Jewish history and Jewish society, culture, and politics in Ottoman/British Palestine and, later, Israel. The volume provides a welcome overview of many of the central themes and key questions regarding the intersection between these two societies in essays by many of the most important scholars working on this fascinating chapter in modern Jewish history."-- "Scott Ury, Tel Aviv University"

About the Author

Kenneth B. Moss is Harriet and Ulrich E. Meyer Professor of Jewish History and the College at the University of Chicago. Benjamin Nathans is Alan Charles Kors Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. Taro Tsurumi is Associate Professor in the Department of Area Studies at the University of Tokyo.