The American Jewish Army that Never Was
A new work chronicles the attempts by Zionist leaders to raise an American Jewish army to fight Hitler.
Read MoreTag Archives: Cultural Zionism
In a Rothian Novel, Nicole Krauss Explores Questions of Authorship and Authority
by Miranda Cooper Discussed in this essay: Forest Dark, a novel by Nicole Krauss. HarperCollins Publishers, 2017, 304 pages. IN HER INTERVIEW for the New York Times Book Review’s “By the Book” column, responding to a question about what she sought in a novel, Nicole Krauss answered, “I want, if possible, a little bit of infinity, […]
Read MoreSeptember 1: Rav Kook
Abraham Isaac Kook arrived in British Mandatory Palestine on this date in 1919 to become Jerusalem’s chief rabbi and, two years later, the chief rabbi of Palestine. Kook (1865-1935) was a Lithuanian child prodigy who became a prominent rabbi, a father of religious Zionism (which he saw as a necessary and vital alternative to Zionism’s […]
Read MoreAugust 18: Ahad Ha’am
Ahad Ha’am (Asher Ginsberg), the founder of “cultural Zionism” who advocated for Israel to be “a Jewish state and not merely a state of Jews,” was born in a Hasidic family near Kiev on this date in 1856. Though he broke with Orthodox Judaism, he retained a deep commitment to Judaism’s ethical ideals. As a […]
Read MoreApril 2: Nathan Birnbaum
Nathan Birnbaum, who coined the term “Zionism” and was the chief organizer of the historic 1908 Czernowitz Conference for the Yiddish Language, died on this date in 1937. A decade before Theodor Herzl launched the Zionist movement, Birnbaum founded Kadimah (“Forward”), the first Jewish nationalist student association in Vienna, and established Selbstemanzipation! (“Self-Emancipation!”), a journal […]
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