New Book: Novak, Zionism and Judaism

Novak, David. Zionism and Judaism. A New Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

 

Why should anyone be a Zionist, a supporter of a Jewish state in the land of Israel? Why should there be a Jewish state in the land of Israel? This book seeks to provide a philosophical answer to these questions. Although a Zionist need not be Jewish, nonetheless this book argues that Zionism is only a coherent political stance when it is intelligently rooted in Judaism, especially in the classical Jewish doctrine of God’s election of the people of Israel and the commandment to them to settle the land of Israel. The religious Zionism advocated here is contrasted with secular versions of Zionism that take Zionism to be a replacement of Judaism. It is also contrasted with versions of religious Zionism that ascribe messianic significance to the State of Israel, or which see the main task of religious Zionism to be the establishment of an Israeli theocracy.

 

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• 1. Why Zionism?
• 2. Was Spinoza the first Zionist?
• 3. Secular Zionism: political or cultural?
• 4. Should Israel be a theocracy?
• 5. Why the Jews and why the land of Israel?
• 6. Can the state of Israel be both Jewish and democratic?
• 7. What could be the status of non-Jews in a Jewish state?
• 8. What is the connection between the Holocaust and the state of Israel?

 

DAVID NOVAK holds the J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair in Jewish Studies as Professor of Religion and Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the American Academy for Jewish Research. He is President of the Union for Traditional Judaism, and Vice President of the Institute on Religion and Public Life. Novak also serves as a Consulting Scholar for the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, and as a Project Scholar for the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University.

 

Conference: Moses Hess between Socialism & Zionism, Jerusalem, March 18-20, 2012

Click here for PDF file of the Program, including contact details.

 

International Conference

MOSES HESS BETWEEN SOCIALISM AND ZIONISM

200th Anniversary of his Birth (1812)

150th Anniversary of his Book “Rome and Jerusalem” (1862)

(Jerusalem, Sunday-Tuesday, March 18-20, 2012)

 

Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem * Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Israel Office * Martin Buber Chair for Jewish Thought and Philosophy, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main * Centre for German-Jewish Studies, University of Sussex

 

Opening Event

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Venue: The Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, 20 Radak Street

 

18:30 Gathering

 

Greetings

Anja Siegemund, Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem

Peter Prügel, Minister and Chargé d’Affaires a.i. of the Federal Republic of Germany

Christian Wiese, Martin Buber Chair for Jewish Thought and Philosophy, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main

Angelika Timm, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Israel Office

 

Keynote Lecture

Shlomo Avineri (Jerusalem)

Moses Hess – Revolutionary, Communist, Zionist: A Re-Assessment.

 

Chair: Shulamit Volkov (Tel Aviv)

 

Reading of Hess’s texts by Illi Gorlitzky (in Hebrew)

 

 

Monday, March 19, 2012

Venue: Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem, 33 Bustenai Street

 

9:30-11:00 The Spinozist Hess

Willi Goetschel (Toronto / Göttingen)

Hess and the Philosophical Moment of Radical Spinozism

Tracie Matysik (Austin)

Politics of Spinozist Friendship: Moses Hess and Berthold Auerbach

Chair: Shlomo Avineri (Jerusalem)

 

11:20-12:30 Hess and Marx

David McLellan (Kent)

Moses Hess, Karl Marx, and ‘True Socialism’: Similarities and Differences

Michael Kuur Sørensen (Odense)

The Concept of ‘Verkehr’: A Source of Conflict between Karl Marx and Moses Hess

Chair: Mario Kessler (Potsdam)

 

13:50-15:00 Hess in Paris

Silvia Richter (Heidelberg)

Moses Hess and Paris: The Influence of France and French Thinkers on his Work, with a View on Heine and Marx

Mark Gelber (Beer Sheva)

German-Speaking Jews in Paris and the Turn to Jewish Nationalism in the 19^th Century: Heine, Hess, Herzl

Chair: Natalie Goldberg (Ramat Gan)

 

15:20-16:30 Money – Hess’s Criticism of Judaism

Adam Sutcliffe (London)

Moses Hess, Jewish Autocritique, and the Politics of Money

Sharon Gordon (Jerusalem)

Gold is the Language of God: Symbol and Metaphor in Hess’s “Über das Geldwesen”

Chair: Gideon Reuveni (Brighton)

 

16:50-18:00 The Universal Mission of the Jews

Ofri Ilani (Tel Aviv)

Hess’s “Die heilige Geschichte der Menschheit” and the Place of Jews in Universal History

Ron Margolin (Tel Aviv)

The Historic Mission of Jewish Humanism and its Maskilic Origins

Chair: Willi Goetschel (Toronto / Göttingen)

 

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Venue: Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem, 33 Bustenai Street

 

9:30-10:50 Rome and Jerusalem (1)

Iveta Leitane (Riga)

‘Socialism’ in ‘Nationalism’ and Vice Versa: The Narratives of Jewish Tradition and Religion in Moses Hess

Lorenzo Santoro (Cosenza)

“Rom und Jerusalem”: Giuseppe Mazzini and Moses Hess: Revolution, Nationalism, and the New Politics within the Boundaries of Religious Discourse

Chair: Gideon Freudenthal (Tel Aviv)

 

11:10-12:20 Rome and Jerusalem (2)

Kenneth Koltun-Fromm (Haverford)

Visual Authenticity in Moses Hess’s Rome and Jerusalem

Michael K. Silber (Jerusalem)

Languages of Nationalism: The Collective Representation of Jews in Moses Hess’s “Rom und Jerusalem”

Chair: Anja Siegemund (Jerusalem)

 

13:30-15:10 Jewish Messianism

George Y. Kohler (Beer Sheva)

The Dispute between Moses Hess and Leopold Löw: A Renewed Messianic Thought in Nineteenth-Century Germany

Christian Wiese (Frankfurt am Main)

Moses Hess and Samuel Hirsch on Judaism and Christianity

Mirjam Thulin (Frankfurt am Main)

Moses Hess and Heinrich Graetz: Science, History, and Concepts of the Jewish Nation

Chair: Paul Mendes-Flohr (Jerusalem)

 

15:30-16:40 The Dialectics of Socialism and Nationalism

Moshe Zuckermann (Tel Aviv)

Georg Lukács on Moses Hess: a Materialist Critique of Idealism 

Mario Kessler (Potsdam)

Moses Hess and the Marxist Discourse since 1945

Chair: Angelika Timm (Tel Aviv)

 

17:00-18:30 Round Table Twin Revolutions: Socialism and Zionism

Shlomo Avineri (Jerusalem)

David McLellan (Kent)

Anita Shapira (Tel Aviv)

Moshe Zuckermann (Tel Aviv)

Chair: Christian Wiese (Frankfurt am Main)

 

Conference website:

https://sites.google.com/site/moseshessconference/

 

Free Admission

Limited Number of Seats Available

 

 

 

Poster of conference (PDF).

Invitation 1, 2 (PDF).