Donno, Antonio. “Recenti studi sull’ebraismo, Israele e Medio Oriente.” Eunomia 4.2 (2015): 627-32.
URL: http://siba-ese.unisalento.it/index.php/eunomia/article/view/15754 [PDF]
Abstract
This article reviews recent publications such as Artur Patek’s Jews
on Route to Palestine, Hillel Cohen’s 1929, Eric Gartman’s Return to Zion, Ofer Shiff’s The Downfall of Abba Hillel Silver, Jesse Ferris’ Nasser’s Gamble, Daniel Zoughbie’s Indecision Points, and more.
Sherrard, Brooke. “American Biblical Archaeologists and Zionism: How Differing Worldviews on the Interaction of Cultures Affected Scholarly Constructions of the Ancient Past.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 84.1 (2016): 234-59.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfv063
Abstract
A major critique of American biblical archaeologists has focused on biblical presuppositions they brought to their work, whereas Israeli archaeologists have been critiqued for promoting Jewish ethno-nationalism through their work. I maintain, however, that American archaeologists also participated in the debate over Zionism, implicitly (and not necessarily consciously) through writings about the ancient past, and explicitly through political activism. This article focuses on contemporaries William Foxwell Albright and Millar Burrows, who disagreed about Zionism. Burrows, who opposed Zionism, characterized the ancient world in terms of cultural interaction and fluidity, while Albright, who favored Zionism, characterized the ancient world in terms of rigid ethnic boundaries. Burrows published a book about Palestinian refugees; thus, his political involvement was no secret. Albright’s political involvement in favor of a Jewish state, which he later denied, is reconstructed here from archival materials. The terms of this debate still resonate, as demonstrated by the current controversy over archaeological theory at the City of David site in Jerusalem.
Shiff, Ofer. The Downfall of Abba Hillel Silver and the Foundation of Israel. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2014.
URL: http://syracuseuniversitypress.syr.edu/spring-2014/downfall-abba-hillel-silver.html
In early February 1949, American Jewry’s most popular and powerful leader, Abba Hillel Silver (1893–1963), had summarily resigned from all his official positions within the Zionist movement and had left New York for Cleveland, returning to his post as a Reform rabbi. In the immediate years prior to his resignation, during the second half of the 1940s, Silver was the most outspoken proponent of the founding of a sovereign Jewish state. He was the most instrumental American Jewish leader in the political struggle that led to the foundation of the State of Israel. Paradoxically, this historic victory also heralded Silver’s personal defeat.
Soon after Israel’s declaration of independence, he and many of his American Zionist colleagues were relegated to the sidelines of the Zionist movement. Almost overnight the most influential leader—one who was admired and feared by both supporters and opponents—was stripped of his power within both the Zionist and the American Jewish arenas.
Shiff’s book discerns the various aspects of the striking turnabout in Silver’s political fate, describing both the personal tragic story of a leader who was defeated by his own victory and the much broader intra-Zionist battle that erupted in full force immediately after the founding of Israel. Drawing extensively on Silver’s personal archival material, Shiff presents an enlightening portrait of a critical episode in Jewish history. This book is highly relevant for anyone who attempts to understand the complex homeland-diaspora relations between Israel and American Jewry.
Israel Affairs, Volume 20, Issue 3, July 2014 is now available online on Taylor & Francis Online.
This new issue contains the following articles:
Articles
The ‘Arab Spring’: implications for US–Israeli relations
Banu Eligür
Pages: 281-301
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.922802
The effects of the ‘Arab Spring’ on Israel’s geostrategic and security environment: the escalating jihadist terror in the Sinai Peninsula
Yehudit Ronen
Pages: 302-317
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.922807
Consolidated monarchies in the post-‘Arab Spring’ era: the case of Jordan
Nur Köprülü
Pages: 318-327
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.922803
Turkish foreign policy after the ‘Arab Spring’: from agenda-setter state to agenda-entrepreneur state
Burak Bilgehan Özpek & Yelda Demirağ
Pages: 328-346
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.922806
Myth and reality, denial and concealment: American Zionist leadership and the Jewish vote in the 1940s
Zohar Segev
Pages: 347-369
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.922808
Middle Eastern intellectual correspondence: Jacob Talmon and Arnold Toynbee revisited
Amikam Nachmani
Pages: 370-398
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.922804
Fiscal allocation to Arab local authorities in Israel, 2004–12
Tal Shahor
Pages: 399-409
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.922809
‘Spring of Youth’ in Beirut: the effects of the Israeli military operation on Lebanon
Dan Naor
Pages: 410-425
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.922805
Book Reviews
Bohaterowie, hochsztaplerzy, opisywacze: wokół Żydowskiego Związku Wojskowego [Heroes, hucksters, storytellers: the Jewish Military Organization
Yehuda Bauer
Pages: 426-429
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.897470
Israel: a history
David Rodman
Pages: 430-431
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.897025
Holy war in Judaism: the fall and rise of a controversial idea
David Rodman
Pages: 431-432
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.897027
Saturday people, Sunday people: Israel through the eyes of a Christian sojourner
David Rodman
Pages: 433-434
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.897028
The Arab Spring, democracy and security: domestic and international ramifications
David Rodman
Pages: 434-436
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.897029
Operation Damocles: Israel’s secret war against Hitler’s scientists, 1951–1967
David Rodman
Pages: 436-437
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.897030
A Jew’s best friend? The image of the dog throughout Jewish history
David Rodman
Pages: 437-438
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.897031
2048
David Rodman
Pages: 438-440
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.897032
Tested by Zion: the Bush administration and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
David Rodman
Pages: 440-441
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.897033
Routledge handbook of modern Israel
David Rodman
Pages: 441-442
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.897034
Israel’s clandestine diplomacies
David Rodman
Pages: 442-444
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.897026
Erratum
Erratum
Pages: 1-1
DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2014.937589
Segev, Zohar. “Universalism, Ethnic Identity and Divided Nationality: Abba Hillel Silver’s Role in American Zionism.” Journal of Jewish Studies 63.1 (2012): 105-126.
URL: http://www.jjs-online.net/toc.php?subaction=fullcontent&id=063_01_105_1&type=article&review
Abstract
Among the most significant events in American Zionism between 1938 and 1948 was the rise of Abba Hillel Silver to the leadership of American Jewry in the late 1940s. A close reading shows that throughout his public career in general, and in relation to the establishment of Israel in particular, Silver sought, in theory and in practice, to enlarge the concept of Israeli sovereignty on one hand and to create a theoretical and practical basis for the continued ethnic-national existence of the Jews in the United States on the other. He tried to minimize as far as possible any injury to the status of Jews as American citizens because of their Zionist activity. Silver regarded Jewish national existence in the Diaspora in a most favourable light, maintaining that it could and must continue alongside Israel.
Funeral at the edge of a cliff: Israel bids farewell to David Ben-Gurion
Online Israel Studies Bulletin Board 