New Book: Schilling, Emotional State Theory. Friendship and Fear in Israeli Foreign Policy

Schilling, Christopher L. Emotional State Theory. Friendship and Fear in Israeli Foreign Policy. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015.

 

 

This book develops “emotional state theory” as a new contribution to international relations theory (IR). The text addresses the State of Israel vis-à-vis the rest of the world. The rationale for this research perspective stems from the trajectory of Israeli state-building since its foundation in May 1948 to the present date. This trajectory is constructed reflecting the trauma of the past and dreams about the future. Both contribute decisively to a better understanding of the current image and position of the state of Israel. The reference builds on two great Jewish thinkers’ works, Theodor Herzl and his book The Jewish State and Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams.

The author argues that despite the fact that both never met, taken together their ideas lend themselves to shed light on and offer an explanation for Israel’s troubled and uncertain position in current international relations. The resulting question underlying this work on the emotionality of states and its impact on international relations is therefore “whether Israel is still in a process of dreaming” and whether it is therefore to be understood a “state which has not yet woken from the trauma of the Jewish past. Not a dream’s fulfilment of an end of the Diaspora, but a nightmare based on this experience.” Drawing on these two parallel and rather influential texts, Schilling rephrases the leading questions of this book as this: “Has Israel developed an understanding of itself which sees the country as a modern state among the nations, which is dealing with its neighbors, or rather, does Israel understand itself more as being like a ghetto that is still surrounded by a hostile world? Has Israel become a strong, self-confident country, or has it continued with the nervousness of the Diaspora Jews to become a state with an emotional problem?”.

 

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Theoretical Framework
Chapter 2: Methodological Strategy
Chapter 3: Jewish Identity Constructions in Israel
Chapter 4: Israeli Foreign Policy
Chapter 5: Conclusion

 

Christopher L. Schilling is political scientist and lawyer.

 

 

New Article: Lehrer, Conversations with Steiner and Yehoshua, on Jews, Jewishness and Israel

Lehrer, Natasha. “Baggage Carousel: Conversations with George Steiner and A.B. Yehoshua, on Jews, Jewishness and Israel.” Jewish Quarterly 62.2 (2015): 11-14.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0449010X.2015.1051709

 

Excerpt

Steiner has met with a huge amount of hostility (misplaced, in my opinion) throughout his career for his vocal opposition to Zionism and his criticism of Israel, but when we meet he strikes me as more melancholy than fierce on the subject. “When Israel is in danger,” he says, “we all become Zionists. Temporary, honorary Zionists. That, I can fully understand. They are, after all, our brothers and sisters. That doesn’t mean I have to agree with them. And it does not mean that I feel I should go … . Many years ago, I was offered one or two major posts in Israel, and I had to think about it. Yes, I had a little Hebrew from my bar mitzvah, but I did not continue with Hebrew; I plunged into Greek and Latin, the other road. Perhaps that was a great mistake. If I had learned Hebrew properly, maybe I could have contributed to making Israel a more liberal, a more humane place. But I have forfeited that chance, and I have no right to criticise where I am not prepared to take the risks and to contribute. And the risks are of course enormous in Israel. But that does not mean one has to agree with their policy.”

[…]

Yehoshua has been widely, and erroneously, quoted as telling the AJC audience that Judaism outside Israel has no future. “The Diaspora has been around for over 2,500 years, and there is no reason that it shouldn’t last for another 2,500 years. I believe that just as there will be settlers in space and on Mars, there will also be Jewish communities who will still sing ‘next year in Jerusalem’. I am not as certain, I am sad to say, that the state of Israel will last another hundred years, if she doesn’t find a reasonable modus vivendi with her neighbours in general, and the Palestinians in particular.”

 
 
 
 

ToC: Shofar 33.4 (2015); special issue: Contemporary Israeli Literature

Coming soon (by July 1) in Shofar, a special issue on contemporary Israeli literature, edited by Rachel S. Harris.

Shofar is available on JSTOR and Project Muse.

Hebrew in English: The New Transnational Hebrew Literature

by Melissa Weininger

Although the historiography of Hebrew literature has often retrospectively portrayed its development as an Israeli phenomenon, recent scholarship has shown the ways in which Hebrew literature’s origins lie largely in the Diaspora. Two new books by Israeli writers written in English, Shani Boianjiu’s The People of Forever Are Not Afraid and Ayelet Tsabari’s The Best Place on Earth, return to the diasporic roots of Hebrew literature by deliberately placing themselves as a challenge to the Zionist narrative of literary historiography. This article elaborates the ways that these books use English to explore the transnational nature of Hebrew literature and participate in a larger literary conversation about globalization. Their linguistic experimentation is also tied to the thematic challenges they pose to foundational Israeli mythologies, like that of the New Hebrew Man, through an emphasis on marginal characters and themes. This literature, which I call “Hebrew in English,” stands as a critique of hegemonic constructions of Israeli identity, nationalism, and culture.

Between the Backpack and the Tent: Home, Zionism, and a New Generation in Eshkol Nevo’s Novels Homesick and Neuland

by Rachel S. Harris

The relationship between travel and home are given new life in the novels of Eshkol Nevo. Framing the contemporary reality in narratives that explore Zionism, travel, and social activism, Nevo offers a conception of the new generation of Israeli writers torn between an Israeli identity, with its increasingly inclusive and polyethnic state, and a Jewish identity with its diasporic roots.

A Spatial Identity Crisis: Space and Identities in Nir Baram’s Novels

by Vered Weiss

The following article focuses on the use of spatial metaphors, and the presence (or absence) of Jewish-Israeli identities in Nir Baram’s novels, offering an overview of his work and locating it within a Hebrew literary tradition. In order to explore individual and collective identities in a (post)modern world, Baram makes extensive and elaborate use of spatial metaphors, blurring the boundaries between inside and outside, tampering with the stable organization of the world, and presenting homes that offer neither shelter nor warmth. The various characters in Baram’s texts—Israeli or not—are either homeless or otherwise displaced, yearning for a home they cannot fully comprehend or construct. The defamiliarization of space in Baram’s work creates the sense that Jewish-Israeli identities are implicitly present even when they are explicitly absent, and detached when they are, indeed, overtly present. This elusiveness seems to be the core of Jewish-Israeli identities as they manifest, or are alluded to, in Baram’s work.

Where You Are From: The Poetry of Vaan Nguyen

by Adriana X. Jacobs

In her debut collection The Truffle Eye (2014), the Vietnamese-Israeli poet Vaan Nguyen brings a mix of cultural and linguistic affiliations to her Hebrew writing that is arguably standard in today’s multilingual and multicultural Israeli society, particularly in the cosmopolitan milieu of Tel Aviv, where she locates much of her work. But as the daughter of Vietnamese refugees who have settled in Israel, Vaan also engages and challenges—through the double position of the insider/outsider—the discourse of exile and return and the politics of memory in Israeli culture. In the 2005 film The Journey of Vaan Nguyen, the Israeli filmmaker Duki Dror offered a nuanced portrait of the friction between Nguyen’s Israeli and Vietnamese identities and her family’s Israeli present and Vietnamese past. In this article, I address how Vaan negotiates and articulates her double position through a close examination of scenes from the film and selections from The Truffle Eye. Against the problematic reception and reading of her poetry as exotic, I argue that the cosmopolitan and transnational movements that shape her work evince a characteristically twenty-first century Israeli mode of travel and translation.

The Shape of Time in Microfiction: Alex Epstein and the Search for Lost Time

by Adam Rovner

This article presents a general theory of microfiction that focuses on the formal elements of the genre’s poetics. My analysis argues that a symmetry exists between microfiction’s contracted spatialization, and the compression—and hence violation—of temporal norms of the reader’s anticipation. The violation of conventional reading anticipation makes microfiction seem not only to be new but also transgressive. Indeed, much microfiction is transgressive of prevailing ideologies of time that are premised on the existence of contingency and the efficacy of human agency. This article takes the work of Israeli microfiction author Alex Epstein as its touchstone while advancing a framework for a theory of the genre.

Alon Hilu and the Hebrew Historical Novel

by Shai P. Ginsburg

In this paper, I discuss Alon Hilu’s two historical novels, Death of a Monk (2004) and The Dejani Estate (2008), as symptomatic of Israeli culture of the twenty-first century. I argue that the question of genre—historical fiction—is as central to the construction of the novels as it is to their reception. As the latter evinces, historical fiction is perceived as blurring the proper boundaries between the “objective” and the imaginary and thus feeds anxieties about the relationship of Jews to history, anxieties that have been haunting Zionist discourses from their inception. Hilu’s novels trace these anxieties to concerns about sexuality and desire and employ them to explore the relationship between two central foci of the Hebrew historical novel, namely, historical agency and historical writing. The novels construct numerous “scenes of writing,” in which writing seeks to retrieve historical agency, embodied in the two novels by desire and sexual potency. Simultaneously, writing is revealed as a mere substitute for desire and sex. Both novels consequently suggest that writing attests to the failure to produce historical agency.

Femininity and Authenticity in Ethiopia and Israel: Asfu Beru’s A Different Moon

by Adia Mendelson-Maoz

This article discusses the work of the female Ethiopian-Israeli author Asfu Beru, whose collection of stories, Yare’ah Aher (A Different Moon) was published in 2002. The small corpus of contemporary Hebrew literature by Ethiopian-Jewish immigrants in Israel usually focuses on the narrative of homecoming and the journey to “Yerussalem,” while often viewing the African space retrospectively in utopian terms. By contrast, the stories in Beru’s collection are set in Ethiopia and do not deal with the journey or immigration to Israel. They depict a rigid traditional society that the protagonist, an adolescent female in many of the stories, has to confront. This article analyzes the convoluted relationship between multiculturalism and feminism through Beru’s hyphenated identity as a member of a traditional society, a woman, a Jew, and a Black, but who identifies at times with the hegemonic Israeli-Western perspective and takes a critical stance toward traditional Ethiopian society.

Settlers versus Pioneers: The Deconstruction of the Settler in Assaf Gavron’s The Hilltop

by Yaakov Herskovitz

This paper engages in a close reading of settlers, settlements, and the portrayal of settler ideology in the novel The Hilltop. This trailblazing novel from 2013, written by Assaf Gavron, foregrounds the image of the settlers in the West Bank and their relationship to the State of Israel. The paper explores this relationship through a discussion of settler ideology and how this set of beliefs comperes to Zionist ideology at large. Thus, the images of the settler and of Zionist pioneers are coupled and reexamined.

 

Conference Program: NAPH 2015 (June 22 – 24, University of Memphis)

The preliminary program for the upcoming NAPH 2015 Conference at the University of Memphis is now complete and has been posted on its website. Click here for full program (PDF).

• Registration is now open for non-presenters. To register, please go to the above link and click on the “Conference Registration” feature. Banquet tickets can also be pre-purchased there.
• For information regarding the conference venue as well as conference accommodations, please visit: https://naphhebrew.org/conference/naph-conference-2015. Navigate to “Travel and Accommodations Info” feature for Travel and Accommodations information.
• Non-presenting members who are interested in chairing one of the conference sessions should complete the short webform at https://naphhebrew.org/conference-chairs.
• For those who wish to purchase additional kosher meals (other than the Banquet), they may be pre-purchased and delivered to the Holiday Inn every day during the conference. The meals will be double wrapped in a to-go box and delivered to the Holiday Inn. (They cannot be delivered to the Fogelman Convention Center as they will charge a costly delivery fee per order.) Double wrapped plastic cutlery will be also be provided.

 

Panels on Israeli Literature and Culture

 

Day 1 (June 22, Monday)

Session 1: 9:00-10:45

1.1 Literature: Literature and Politics

Batya Shimony, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

כבר לא קזבלן – ייצוגי החייל המזרחי בספרות העברית

Rima Shikhmanter, Tel Aviv University

הפנייה ימינה: הימין הפוליטי ברומן ההיסטורי הישראלי לילדים ולנוער

Tzipora Kedar, Zefat Academic College

“מרובעים” של דה-האן: פוליטיקאי מול משורר?

 

1.3 Pedagogy: Teaching the Hebrew Textual Tradition across Cultures

Organizer: Or Rogovin, Bucknell University

Or Rogovin, Bucknell University

The Hebrew Bible in Israeli and American Culture

Naomi Sokoloff, University of Washington

“Modern Poetry, Traditional Prayers: Teaching Jewish and Islamic

Traditions”

Edna Lauden, Tel Aviv University

“Take your son, your only son, whom you love…”: One story, Two

narratives.

 

Session 2 11:15-1:00

2.1 Literature: Female Master Poets: Yocheved Bat Miriam and Dalia Hertz

Organizer: Ruth Kartun-Blum, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Ruth Kartun-Blum, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

בת-מרים: משוררת למשוררים

Uzi Shavit, Tel Aviv University

עמי והם: התגובה השירית של שלונסקי ובת-מרים למלחמת העולם השנייה

והשואה בזמן אמת

Anat Weisman, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

דליה הרץ – משוררת לעצמה?

 

2.2 Literature: Studies in Modern Jewish Thought and Classical Hebrew

Fiction

Yoav Ronel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

מלאך ההיסטוריה של ברדיצ’בסקי: תשוקה וכתיבה ברומן “מרים”

Laura Wiseman, York University

התרוצצות בין הקדרות: המתח בין הצמחונות לבין התשוקה לבשר ברומן

שירה מאת ש”י עגנון

Mark Kaplowitz, University of Memphis

Hermann Cohen, The Last Maskil

 

2.4 Pedagogy: On Teaching Hebrew in Israel and Around the World

Nataliia Bakulina, National Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine,

Institute of Pedagogy, Kiev, Ukraine

הערכת הישגים לימודיים בעברית כשפה נוספת בבתי ספר יסודיים באוקרינה

Paul Overland & Jennifer Noonan, Ashland Theological Seminary; Liberty University Baptist Theological Seminary

Assets of Communicative Language Teaching for an Oral-Based Culture: a Field Report

Rachel Rosner, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; The David Yellin Academic College of Education

בחינת מונחים ועניינים בתכניות להוראת כתיבה במוסדות החינוך בישראל בראי תאוריות פילוסופיות

 

Session 3 2:30-4:15

3.1 Literature: The Displaced, the Detached, and the Hebrew Canon

Aviv Ben-Or, Brandeis University

The Arab-Jew as Displaced Intellectual in Shimon Ballas’ Fiction

Nancy Berg, Washington University in St. Louis

The Canon, the Academy, and shelilat hagolah

Ronit Gez, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

הגרסה הנשית לנארטיב התלוש בטרילוגיה – ‘בחינות’, ‘שוקולד’, ‘קיצו של זיו סנדר’ מאת דבורה בארון

 

Session 4 4:30-6:15

4.1 Literature: New Views of Time in Hebrew Literature

Organizer: Roy Greenwald, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Roy Greenwald, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

קול בלי בעלים: על משחק המבוכים בשירתה של יונה וולך

Hanna Soker-Schwager, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

“הכול כאן מולחם וחותך”– הצזורה בשירת חדווה הרכבי

Vered Shemtov & Elena Gomel, Stanford University; Tel Aviv University

Limbotopia: Being Stuck in the Continuous Present in Hebrew Literature

 

4.2 Literature: Hebrew Drama: Theory and Practice

Olga Levitan, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

זיכרון כמופע: שולחן על פי אידה פינק – יצירתה של נעמי יואלי

Israel Hameiri, University of Haifa; Oranim College

העיבוד הדרמתי, תיאוריה ופרקטיקה: ‘אכזר מכל המלך’ ו’בגדי המלך’ מאת נסים אלוני

 

Day 2 (June 23, Tuesday)

Session 5: 8:30-10:15

5.1 Literature: Studies in Works by Leah Goldberg, Avot Yeshuron, Erez Biton, and Haviva Pedaya

Sara Meyer, Haifa University

יסודות ארספואטיים בספרי הילדים של לאה גולדברג

Chaya Shacham, Haifa University

“זְמַנִי חָרוּט בְשִירַי”: גלגולם של חומרי מציאות מן היומן אל השיר ביצירת לאה גולדברג

Lilach Lachman, Haifa University

‘Revealment’ and Blindness in Hebrew Poetry: Avot Yeshurun, Erez Biton and Haviva Pedaya

 

5.2 Language: Language, Stylistics, Translation, and Rhetoric

Aharon Gaimani, Bar-Ilan University

לשון וסגנון באיגרות בשורת הפטירה כמנהג תימן

Mohammed Alghbban, King Saud University

Literary Translation Activity between Hebrew and Arabic

Adel Shakour, Al-Qasemi Academy

מאפיינים רטוריים בשיח הפוליטי של מנהיגים ערבים במדינת ישראל

 

Session 6 10:45-12:30

6.1 Literature: Archeology of a Future: Treasures from Hebrew Literary

Archives

Chair and respondent: Giddon Ticotsky, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Raquel Stepak, Tel Aviv University

שירי יהודה עמיחי מתקופת הצבא הבריטי בהקשר לכלל יצירתו הספרותית

Maayan Gelbard-Aziza, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

הדרך שלא נבחרה: מה מספרים המחזות הגנוזים של תרצה אתר?

 

6.2 Literature: Politics and Ethics

Amit Assis, McGill University

ס. יזהר: פואטיקה, פוליטיקה ושמירת הטבע

Renana Keydar, Stanford University

מיתוס הרב קוליות – על המתח שבין סיפור סיפורים ועשיית צדק במשפט אייכמן

Ari Ofengenden, Brandeis University

Globalization and Biodisaster in Contemporary Literature 2000-2015

 

6.3 Pedagogy: Language and Thought, Language and Culture

Esther Raizen, University of Texas at Austin

מקומן של מיומנויות חשיבה מסדר גבוה בכיתות הלשון

Arielle Friedman, Oranim Academic College of Education

כלי לניתוח סמיוטי של השפה הקולנועית: ניתוח הסרט הישראלי “שש פעמים” במסגרת חינוכית

Miri Talmon, Tel Aviv University

“Films from Here”: Discourses of Locality in Modern Israeli Culture

 

Session 7: 2:00-4:00

7.1 Literature: Home and Homelessness in Modern Hebrew Literature

Iris Milner, Tel Aviv University

קריאת התיגר על הבית ב”והיה העקוב למישור” לעגנון

Hannah Naveh, Tel Aviv University

ביתה של עקרת הבית: נשים בבית בסיפורי “משפחה” של דבורה בארון

Michael Gluzman, Tel Aviv University

חוסר-בית, נדודים, בריחה: גנסין בארץ ישראל

Uri Cohen, Tel Aviv University

ביותו של הכוח הזר: שכול וכישלון ומגילת אסתר כמודל מגדרי פוליטי

 

7.2 Literature: Hebrew Press and Hebrew Culture

Orly Tsarfaty, Academic College of Emek Yezreel

המאבק על הזיכרון: השיח על השואה בעיתון החרדי “משפחה” – כמרחב לכינון זהות תרבותית נבדלת

Michal Meishar, Bar-Ilan University

כתב העת ‘גזית’ כמעצב תרבות

Moshe Pelli, University of Central Florida

דרכי עריכה וסגנון של יהושע השל שור – החלוץ

Gideon Kouts, University of Paris – 8

מלחמה ושלום בעיתון “הלבנון”

 

8.1 Literature: Studies in Modern Hebrew Fiction: Nathan Shaham, Tsruya

Shalev, and A.B. Yehoshua

Ayala Amir, Bar-Ilan University, The Open University of Israel

הפרטים כפי שנצטלמו אז: מרחב, מראות וזיכרון ב”שבעה מהם” וב”הם יגיעו מחר” מאת נתן שחם

Yigal Schwartz, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

סיפור ההתקבלות ואמנות הסיפור של צרויה שלו

Gilead Morahg, University of Wisconsin-Madison

הגרושה המשחררת: ישן וחדש ב’’ניצבת’’ של א’’ב יהושע

 

8.2 Language: Early Modern Hebrew

Eran Buchaltzev, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

נברא במילים – ועד הלשון העברית ככוהני השפה הלאומית

Doly Levi, Levinsky College of Education

עיון לשוני סגנוני בפיליטון “בטלנות” של אלחנן לייב לוינסקי

Keren Mock, Ecole Normale Supérieure/ Sorbonne Paris Cité

הערך המילוני “מצפון”: מקורותיו בספרייתו של אליעזר בן-יהודה

8.3 Pedagogy: Israel in Short Films: Integrating Film into the Hebrew

Language Classroom

Isaac Zablocki, Director of the Israel Film Center at JCC Manhattan

This session will feature three Award Winning Short films and conversations coming out of Israel’s blossoming film industry followed by a demonstration of how films can be best integrated into the classroom.

 

Day 3 (June 24, Wednesday)

Session 9: 8:30-10:30

9.1 Literature: Studies in Current Hebrew Fiction; Part I: Leah Aini’s Works

Irit Ronen, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

הפואטיקה של לאה איני: שבירת הז’אנר

Ofra Matzov-Cohen, Ariel University

מעשה הנתינה ל’אחר’ ומשמעויותיו על פי הרומן ורד הלבנון מאת לאה איני

Talila Kosh-Zohar, Kibbuzim College of Education, Technology and Arts

חריגות והתנגדות: ייצוגי גוף בנובלה “בת המקום” של לאה איני

 

Session 10: 10:45-12:30

10.1 Literature: Studies in Current Hebrew Fiction; Part II Shimon Adaf and Merav Nakar-Sadi’s Works

Rina Baroukh, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

“החיתוך של האור מבעד רצף הזמן”: על האור ביצירתו בפרוזה של שמעון אדף

Hadas Shabat Nadir, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

חידת האחים המתים וגילויה של תורת סוד גנוזה ממרוקו בטרילוגיה “ורד יהודה” לשמעון אדף

Nurit Buchweitz, Beit-Berl University

NIMBY, or Multicultural Inclusion in Merav Nakar-Sadi’s Oxana

 

10.2 Language: Proper Names, Language in Advertising

Shlomit Landman, Achva Academic College

שמות פרטיים דו-מיניים עבור יילודים במגזר היהודי במדינת ישראל

Bat-Zion Yemini, Levinsky College and Talpiot College

השמות הפרטיים המקראיים והמודרניים– בבואה של מערכות שונות של זמן-אספקט-מודוס

Irit Zeevi, Oranim Academic College of Education and Emek Yezreel Academic College & Lee Cahaner, Oranim Academic College

שפת הפרסומת החרדית לנדל”ן כמייצגת את תפיסת המקום

 

Session 11: 2:00-3:45

11.1 Literature: Jewish Traditions and Modern Hebrew Literature

Zafrira Lidovsky Cohen, Stern College of Yeshiva University

“צדיק ורע לו”: מוטיב הצדיק בשירת אביגדור המאירי ואברהם שלונסקי

Moshe Yitzhaki, Oranim Academic College of Education

התקדשות ורליגיוזיות בחיי היום-יום: הצעה לקרוא ביצירות י.ח. ברנר כממשיך ומחדש מסורת מדרשי חז”ל

Moria Dayan-Codish, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

האסתטיקה החז”לית ביצירתו של שלום יעקב אברמוביץ

11.2 Language: Sociolinguistics, Linguistic Creativity, Morphology (Word Formation)

Esther Bahat, Tel Aviv University

“כשהתותחים רועמים – המוזות שותקות”. האומנם? יצירתיות בעיתונות הישראלית בתקופת מבצע “צוק איתן”

Marc Bernstein, Michigan State University

“Give Me Your Identity!”: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Arab Labor

Nimrod Shatil, Zefat Academic College

מקומו של המשקל במוח של דובר העברית בן-ימינו

 

Cite: Schwartzmann, The Book of Esther— A Case Study of Ideological Interpretation

Schwartzmann, Julia. “The Book of Esther— A Case Study of Ideological Interpretation.” Shofar 29.4 (2011): 124-147.

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URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/shofar/v029/29.4.schwartzmann.html

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Abstract

Each generation of commentators has imprinted the Book of Esther with its own values and world views. The present article deals with the commentary of Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, one of the leading figures of religious Zionism, on Esther as a case study of the religious Zionist interpretation of this book. Committed both to Zionist ideology and to the Biblical canon, Aviner is determined to find a way to reject the exilic ambiance of the Book of Esther without tarnishing its two principal protagonists. He invests this story of courtly intrigue with modern insights and validates its religious and moral value for his vibrant, well informed readers. In Aviner’s interpretation the story of Esther and Mordecai is no longer that of two successful Diaspora Jews who find themselves involuntarily caught up in the antisemitic plot of a lone evildoer; rather, it becomes the story of the daring struggle of two indefatigable warriors standing shoulder to shoulder in total combat against the forces of evil.

Cite: Ofer, Quietism and Activism in Israeli Consciousness

Dalia Ofer. "Victims, Fighters, Survivors: Quietism and Activism in Israeli Historical Consciousness." Common Knowledge 16.3 (2010): 493-517.

 

URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/common_knowledge/summary/v016/16.3.ofer.html

Reviews: Nicosia, Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany

Francis R. Nicosia. Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

 

Reviews:

• Roderick Stackelberg, "How Ideological Enemies Collaborated to Achieve Divergent Goals," Monthly Review Magazine, May 2009.
• Anthony D. Kauders, German History 28,3 (2010): 385-386.
• Larry Eugene Jones, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 24,2  (2010): 297-299.