Until the present day, wide-spread confusion regarding the meaning of the terms Judaism and Zionism persists both inside and outside Israel. The popular opinion is that the terms are synonyms. But this implies the false assumption that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism. As Ruth Esther Schwarz shows the Israeli right-wing regime uses this dangerous shortcut in order to justify its ongoing colonization of Palestine. Based on the work of Israel’s New Historians, Schwarz’s book aims at deconstructing the mainstream mindset concerning Judaism and Zionism. Therefore, she analyses the nature of the principal ideological streams and their complex interconnections before and after 1948. She focusses on orthodox Judaism, religious Zionism, Jewish radical messianism, Jewish fundamentalism, the ideological change of traditional Zionism and, last but not least, the role of Christian Zionism in the United States. Keywords: - Judaism; - Zionism; - Israeli-Palestinian conflict; - religious Zionism; - nationalism; - fundamentalism

At the beginning of the eighteenth century most European Jews lived in restricted settlements and urban ghettos, isolated from the surrounding dominant Christian cultures not only by law but also by language, custom, and dress. By the end of the century urban, upwardly mobile Jews had shaved their beards and abandoned Yiddish in favor of the languages of the countries in which they lived. They began to participate in secular culture and they embraced rationalism and non-Jewish education as supplements to traditional Talmudic studies. The full participation of Jews in modern Europe and America would be unthinkable without the intellectual and social revolution that was the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment. Unparalleled in scale and comprehensiveness, The Jewish Enlightenment reconstructs the intellectual and social revolution of the Haskalah as it gradually gathered momentum throughout the eighteenth century. Relying on a huge range of previously unexplored sources, Shmuel Feiner fully views the Haskalah as the Jewish version of the European Enlightenment and, as such, a movement that cannot be isolated from broader eighteenth-century European traditions. Critically, he views the Haskalah as a truly European phenomenon and not one simply centered in Germany. He also shows how the republic of letters in European Jewry provided an avenue of secularization for Jewish society and culture, sowing the seeds of Jewish liberalism and modern ideology and sparking the Orthodox counterreaction that culminated in a clash of cultures within the Jewish community. The Haskalah's confrontations with its opponents within Jewry constitute one of the most fascinating chapters in the history of the dramatic and traumatic encounter between the Jews and modernity. The Haskalah is one of the central topics in modern Jewish historiography. With its scope, erudition, and new analysis, The Jewish Enlightenment now provides the most comprehensive treatment of this major cultural movement.

The issue of Christian Zionism is one that is fiercely debated within theology, the church, politics, and society. Comprehending Christian Zionism brings together an international consortium of scholars and researchers to reflect on the network of issues and topics surrounding this critical subject. The volume provides a lens on the history of Zion

"This Very Short Introduction discloses a history of Zionism from the origins of modern Jewish nationalism in the 1870's to the present. Michael Stanislawski provides a lucid and detached analysis of Zionism, focusing on its internal intellectual and ideological developments and divides"--

Foreword / David Smock -- Introduction -- Religion : a blessing or a curse? -- After the collapse of Oslo -- The Alexandria Summit and its aftermath -- Grassroots interreligious dialogues -- Educating the educators -- Other Muslim voices for interreligious peacebuilding -- Symbolic ritual as a mode of peacemaking -- Active solidarity : rabbis for human rights -- From personal grief to collective compassion -- Journeys of personal transformation -- Practical recommendations -- Appendices.

In Christian Zionism in the Twenty-First Century authors Motti Inbari and Kirill Bumin draw on three original surveys conducted in 2018, 2020, and 2021 to explore the religious beliefs and foreign policy attitudes of evangelical and born-again Christians in the United States. They analyze the views of ordinary churchgoers and evangelical pastors to understand the religious, social, and political factors that lead the members of this religious community to support the State of Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Through rigorous quantitative analyses and careful textual study of ordinary evangelicals' written comments, Inbari and Bumin aim to rectify misconceptions about who evangelical and born-again Christians are, about their sympathies toward Israel, Jewish people, and Palestinians, and about the sources of their foreign policy attitudes toward the conflict. Inbari and Bumin demonstrate that a generational divide is emerging within the evangelical community, one that substantially impacts evangelicals' attitudes toward Israel. They also show that frequent church attendance and certain theological beliefs have a profound impact on the evangelicals' preference of Israel over the Palestinians. Throughout, the authors aim to add nuance to the discussion, showing that contemporary evangelical and born-again Christians' attitudes are much more diverse than many portrayals suggest.

After half a century of occupation and tremendous costs of the conflict, Israel is still struggling with the idea of a Palestinian state in what is often perceived as the Biblical Eretz Israel. Mapping Zionism, enemy images, peace and war policies, as well as democracy within the Jewish State, the present study offers original insights into Israel’s role in this conflict. By analyzing Israeli history, politics and security-oriented political culture as it has been evolving from 1948 on, this book reveals the ideological and political structures of a Zionist-oriented state and society. In doing so, it uncovers the abyss between the Zionist vision of Eretz Israel on the one hand and the aspiration to achieve normalization, peace and security on the other. In view of this conflict-laden bi-national reality, the Palestinian question is identified as the Achilles‘ heel of Jewish statehood in the Land of Israel. Thus, Zionist Israel and the Question of Palestine provides a fresh, innovative, critical and yet accessible perspective on one of the most controversial issues in contemporary history.

He then describes the various streams of Zionist thought and how they were transmogrified by events and individuals, and concludes by examining both Zionism's connection with a secular Jewish identity and the nature of the Jewish claim to Eretz Israel.

A historical tour de force, The Invention of the Jewish People offers a groundbreaking account of Jewish and Israeli history. Exploding the myth that there was a forced Jewish exile in the first century at the hands of the Romans, Israeli historian Shlomo Sand argues that most modern Jews descend from converts, whose native lands were scattered across the Middle East and Eastern Europe. In this iconoclastic work, which spent nineteen weeks on the Israeli bestseller list and won the coveted Aujourd'hui Award in France, Sand provides the intellectual foundations for a new vision of Israel's future.