Examines the cultural, ideological, and political mutation of the Israeli Left, discerning how the Left detached its moorings from reality and principle - a compelling indictment, yet ultimately seeks reconciliation between the Right and the Left in a spirit of unity for Israel in the days ahead.

The Great Rift Valley, which runs some three thousand miles from Syria to Mozambique, is one of the earth's most extraordinary geological features. The result of Syria's split from the African continent fifteen million years ago, this great "crack in the earth" crosses Jordan, Syria, Israel, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Kenya. In 2004, Israeli journalist Haim Watzman set out to explore the northern part of the Rift Valley, where he had lived for nearly two and a half decades. He interviewed a number of scientific experts: a zoologist fascinated by the behavioral patterns of indigenous birds; an archaeologist trying to re-create the standing stone formations left to us by ancient cultures; a geologist speculating on the valley's origins. Watzman raises provocative questions about the nature of this massive feature in the earth's crust: where it comes from, how it has developed, and how human civilization has fared on its shores. "Humankind has overlaid the geology not just with cities, dams, fields, and roads," he writes, "but also with history and biography and meanings."

What is a homeland and when does it become a national territory? Why have so many people been willing to die for such places throughout the twentieth century? What is the essence of the Promised Land? Following the acclaimed and controversial The Invention of the Jewish People, Shlomo Sand examines the mysterious sacred land that has become the site of the longest-running national struggle of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The Invention of the Land of Israel deconstructs the age-old legends surrounding the Holy Land and the prejudices that continue to suffocate it. Sand’s account dissects the concept of “historical right” and tracks the creation of the modern concept of the “Land of Israel” by nineteenth-century Evangelical Protestants and Jewish Zionists. This invention, he argues, not only facilitated the colonization of the Middle East and the establishment of the State of Israel; it is also threatening the existence of the Jewish state today.

Drawing on personal experience as well as all kinds of artifacts from Israeli popular cultureshopping malls, fast food, public art, television, religious kitschhe puts forward his controversial view that the sweeping Americanization of the country, rued by most, has had an extraordinarily beneficial influence, bringing not only McDonalds and Dunkin Donuts but the virtues of pragmatism, tolerance, and individualism.

Fourteen essays examining the dynamics of trust and mistrust in Jewish history from biblical times to today. What, if anything, does religion have to do with how reliable we perceive one another to be? When and how did religious difference matter in the past when it came to trusting the word of another? In today’s world, we take for granted that being Jewish should not matter when it comes to acting or engaging in the public realm, but this was not always the case. The essays in this volume look at how and when Jews were recognized as reliable and trustworthy in the areas of jurisprudence, medicine, politics, academia, culture, business, and finance. As they explore issues of trust and mistrust, the authors reveal how caricatures of Jews move through religious, political, and legal systems. While the volume is framed as an exploration of Jewish and Christian relations, it grapples with perceptions of Jews and Jewishness from the biblical period to today, from the Middle East to North America, and in Ashkenazi and Sephardi traditions. Taken together these essays reflect on the mechanics of trust, and sometimes mistrust, in everyday interactions involving Jews. “Highly readable and compelling, this volume marks a broadly significant contribution to Jewish studies through the underexplored dynamic of trust.” —Rebekah Klein-Pejšová, author of Mapping Jewish Loyalties in Interwar Slovakia “An exemplary compendium on how to engage with a major concept—trust—while providing load of gripping new information, new theorization of otherwise well-covered material, and meticulous attention to textual and sociological sources.” —Gil Anidjar, author of Blood: A Critique of Christianity

This edited collection of exciting new scholarship provides comprehensive coverage of the broad sweep of twentieth century religious activism on the American left. The volume covers a diversity of perspectives, including Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish history, and important essays on African-American, Latino, and women’s spirituality. Taken together, these essays offer a comparative and long-term perspective on religious groups and social movements often studied in isolation, and fully integrate faith-based action into the history of progressive social movements and politics in the modern United States. It becomes clear that throughout the twentieth century, religious faith has served as a powerful motivator and generator for activism, not just as on the right, where observers regularly link religion and politics, but on the left. This volume will appeal to historians of modern American politics, religion, and social movements, religious studies scholars, and contemporary activists.

From the much lauded author of Breaking News comes a version of Walking the Bible just for Israel. With its dense history of endless conflict and biblical events, Israel's coastline is by far the most interesting hundred miles in the world. As longtime chief of NBC's Tel Aviv news bureau, Martin Fletcher is in a unique position to interpret Israel, and he brings it off in a spectacular and novel manner. Last year he strolled along the entire coast, from Lebanon to Gaza, observing facets of the country that are ignored in news reports, yet tell a different and truer story. Walking Israel is packed with hilarious moments, historical insights, emotional, true-life tales, and, above all, great storytelling.

"At the age of thirty-five, the fashionable Viennese playwright and journalist Theodor Herzl fantasized about the collective conversion of the Jews in a mass ceremony at the cathedral of St. Stephen. By the time he died, a mere nine years later, he had redefined Jewish identity in terms of a modern secular faith and created a national movement which, within less than half a century, led to the foundation of the Jewish state." So begins Ernst Pawel's remarkable study of Herzl. In The Labyrinth of Exile Pawel restores the vital link between the myth of the founding father of Zionism and the human being and demonstrates that the reality of Herzl's life is much more complicated and far more interesting. Legendary and all too human, Herzl remains one of the emblematic figures of modern times.

The Great Recession, institutional dysfunction, a growing divide between urban and rural prospects, and failed efforts to effectively address immigration have paved the way for a populist backlash that disrupts the postwar bargain between political elites and citizens. Whether today’s populism represents a corrective to unfair and obsolete policies or a threat to liberal democracy itself remains up for debate. Yet this much is clear: these challenges indict the triumphalism that accompanied liberal democratic consolidation after the collapse of the Soviet Union. To respond to today’s crisis, good leaders must strive for inclusive economic growth while addressing fraught social and cultural issues, including demographic anxiety, with frank attention. Although reforms may stem the populist tide, liberal democratic life will always leave some citizens unsatisfied. This is a permanent source of vulnerability, but liberal democracy will endure so long as citizens believe it is worth fighting for.

"A Land With A People began as a storytelling project of Jewish Voice for Peace-New York City and subsequently transformed into a theater project performed throughout the New York City area. A Land With A People elevates rarely heard Palestinian and Jewish voices and visions. It brings us the narratives of secular, Muslim, Christian, and LGBTQ Palestinians who endure the particular brand of settler colonialism known as Zionism. It relays the transformational journeys of Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, Palestinian and LGBTQ Jews who have come to reject the received Zionist narrative. Unflinching in their confrontation of the power dynamics that underlie their transformation process, these writers find the courage to face what has happened to historic Palestine, and to their own families as a result. Stories touch hearts, open minds, and transform our understanding of the "other"-as well as comprehension of our own roles and responsibilities. A Land With a People emerges from this reckoning. Contextualized by a detailed historical introduction and timeline charting 150 years of Palestinian and Jewish resistance to Zionism, this collection will stir emotions, provoke fresh thinking, and point to a more hopeful, loving future-one in which Palestine/Israel is seen for what it is in its entirety, as well as for what it can be"--