Cite: Stahl, Jesus as the New Jew

Stahl, Neta. "Jesus as the New Jew: Zionism and the Literary Representation of Jesus." Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 11.1 (2012): 1-23.

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14725886.2012.646693

 

Abstract

This article deals with Modern Hebrew writers’ attempt to present Jesus as part of the national project of Zionism. It argues that Jesus functions in these works in different and sometimes opposite ways and that the Zionist project was eager to distinguish itself from the world of traditional Judaism by embracing its ultimate Other. In this sense, the reclamation of Jesus by Zionist writers can be understood as an attempt to mark the boundaries of the new Jewish self vis-à-vis traditional Judaism. But Jesus’s Otherness functioned as more than that––it provided a kind of mirror that reflected to Zionist writers their own communal identities. In order to find themselves in this mirror, they had to distinguish between the Jesus of Christianity and the historical, “authentic” Jewish Jesus.