Zionism and the Fin de Siecle
Zionism and the Fin de Siecle

Author: Michael Stanislawski

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-11-10

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 0520935756

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Michael Stanislawski's provocative study of Max Nordau, Ephraim Moses Lilien, and Vladimir Jabotinsky reconceives the intersection of the European fin de siècle and early Zionism. Stanislawski takes up the tantalizing question of why Zionism, at a particular stage in its development, became so attractive to certain cosmopolitan intellectuals and artists. With the help of hundreds of previously unavailable documents, published and unpublished, he reconstructs the ideological journeys of writer and critic Nordau, artist Lilien, and political icon Jabotinsky. He argues against the common conception of Nordau and Jabotinsky as nineteenth-century liberals, insisting that they must be understood against the backdrop of Social Darwinism in the West and the Positivism of Russian radicalism in the fin de siècle, as well as Symbolism, Decadence, and Art Nouveau. When these men turned to Zionism, Stanislawski says, far from abandoning their aesthetic and intellectual preconceptions, they molded Zionism according to their fin de siècle cosmopolitanism. Showing how cosmopolitanism turned to nationalism in the lives and work of these crucial early Zionists, this story is a fascinating chapter in European and Russian, as well as Jewish, cultural and political history.

Zionism and the Fin de Siècle
Zionism and the Fin de Siècle

Author: Michael Stanislawski

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13:

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"Stanislawski shows that each of these three [Nordau, Lilien, and Jabotinsky] came to Zionism out of engagement with the larger issues that preoccupied intellectuals and artists at the turn of the century and that the adoption of Jewish nationalism was by no means a foregone conclusion or an inevitable trajectory. The chapters are written in a lively and accessible style."--David Biale, author of Eros and the Jews "Stanislawski has literally rewritten the early history of Zionism. . . . [His] discovery and masterly use of Nordau's correspondence with Olga Novikova and his treatment of Jabotinsky's youthful journalistic sallies are models of lucid and absorbing historical analysis."--Derek. J. Penslar, author of Shylock's Children

Zionism
Zionism

Author: Michael Stanislawski

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 150

ISBN-13: 0199766045

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"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"--

Zionism and Anti-Semitism
Zionism and Anti-Semitism

Author: Max Simon Nordau

Publisher: DigiCat

Published: 2022-05-28

Total Pages: 31

ISBN-13:

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Zionism and Anti-Semitism is a book by Max Simon Nordau. This study presents the state of affairs regarding Zionism in Europe during the early 20th century.

The Universal Jew
The Universal Jew

Author: Mikhal Dekel

Publisher: Northwestern University Press

Published: 2011-06

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 0810165058

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The Universal Jew analyzes literary images of the Jewish nation and the Jewish national subject at Zionism’s formative moment. In a series of original readings of late nineteenth-century texts—from George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda to Theodor Herzl’s Altneuland to the bildungsromane of Russian Hebrew and Yiddish writers—Mikhal Dekel demonstrates the aesthetic and political function of literary works in the making of early Zionist consciousness. More than half a century before the foundation of the State of Israel and prior to the establishment of the Zionist political movement, Zionism emerges as an imaginary concept in literary texts that create, facilitate, and naturalize the transition from Jewish-minority to Jewish-majority culture. The transition occurs, Dekel argues, mainly through the invention of male literary characters and narrators who come to represent "exemplary" persons or "man in general" for the emergent, still unformed national community. Such prototypical characters transform the symbol of the Jew from a racially or religiously defined minority subject to a "post-Jewish," particularuniversal, and fundamentally liberal majority subject. The Universal Jew situates the "Zionist moment" horizontally, within the various intellectual currents that make up the turn of the twentieth century: the discourse on modernity, the crisis in liberalism, Nietzsche’s critique of the Enlightenment, psychoanalysis, early feminism, and fin de siècle interrogation of sexual identities. The book examines the symbolic roles that Jews are assigned within these discourses and traces the ways in which Jewish literary citizens are shaped, both out of and in response to them. Beginning with an analysis of George Eliot’s construction of the character Deronda and its reception in Zionist circles, the Universal Jew ends with the self-fashioning of male citizens in fin de siècle and post-statehood Hebrew works, through the aesthetics oftragedy. Throughout her readings, Dekel analyzes the political meaning of these nascent images of citizens, uncovering in particular the gendered arrangements out of which they are born.

The Five
The Five

Author: Vladimir Jabotinsky

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2014-09-19

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0801471621

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"The beginning of this tale of bygone days in Odessa dates to the dawn of the twentieth century. At that time we used to refer to the first years of this period as the 'springtime,' meaning a social and political awakening. For my generation, these years also coincided with our own personal springtime, in the sense that we were all in our youthful twenties. And both of these springtimes, as well as the image of our carefree Black Sea capital with acacias growing along its steep banks, are interwoven in my memory with the story of one family in which there were five children: Marusya, Marko, Lika, Serezha, and Torik."—from The Five The Five is an captivating novel of the decadent fin-de-siècle written by Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880–1940), a controversial leader in the Zionist movement whose literary talents, until now, have largely gone unrecognized by Western readers. The author deftly paints a picture of Russia's decay and decline—a world permeated with sexuality, mystery, and intrigue. Michael R. Katz has crafted the first English-language translation of this important novel, which was written in Russian in 1935 and published a year later in Paris under the title Pyatero. The book is Jabotinsky's elegaic paean to the Odessa of his youth, a place that no longer exists. It tells the story of an upper-middle-class Jewish family, the Milgroms, at the turn of the century. It follows five siblings as they change, mature, and come to accept their places in a rapidly evolving world. With flashes of humor, Jabotinsky captures the ferment of the time as reflected in political, social, artistic, and spiritual developments. He depicts with nostalgia the excitement of life in old Odessa and comments poignantly on the failure of the dream of Jewish assimilation within the Russian empire.

Old New Land
Old New Land

Author: Theodor Herzl

Publisher:

Published: 2020-06-21

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781558766471

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Old New Land forever altered the face of the Middle East. The book was a nineteenth-century utopian blueprint for a modern state of Israel. There were Jewish settlers in Palestine, and Zionist ideas had existed in Eastern Europe before Herzl, but Herzl made Zionism into a cultural and political movement acceptable to Western governments and intellectuals. His prophecy at the end of this book became reality: "If you will it, it is not a fable." The author, founder of the Zionist movement, considered this utopian story his best literary work: an expression of his art, with a political message. His biographer, Amos Elon, placed Old New Land "in the mainstream of fin-de-siècle art. Its pursuit of arcadian bliss within a mystic community and its haunted preoccupation with dreams recall Gustav Mahler's music."

Max Nordau's Fin-de-siècle Romance of Race
Max Nordau's Fin-de-siècle Romance of Race

Author: Melanie A. Murphy

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 9780820441856

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Max Nordau (1849-1923) is the author of Degeneration and a founding father of Zionism. This Hungarian-born physician wrote fiction in which romantic and personal relations depicted in miniature the social and ethnic tensions of his day. His family stories metaphorically diagnosed the problems of minorities, especially Jewish populations, in European countries. Close analysis of Nordau's literary work opens new perspectives on his cultural and political efforts and thought.

Melancholy Pride
Melancholy Pride

Author: Mark H. Gelber

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2014-07-24

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 311095608X

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This study focuses on the emergence of a modern Jewish national literature and culture within the parameters of Zionism in Vienna and Berlin at the turn of the last century. Prominent figures associated with early modern Zionism, including Theodor Herzl, Max Nordau, and Martin Buber, were also writers and literary or cultural icons within the Central European, Germanic-Austrian cultural environment of the fin-de-siècle. More important, Cultural Zionism promoted young Jewish literary and artistic talent as part of its ideology of a modern Jewish Renaissance. A corpus of German-language Jewish-national poetry and literature, as well as mechanisms for its dissemination and reception, developed rapidly. Most of this literary and cultural production has been forgotten or suppressed. Productive, if often unlikely, partnerships between Jewish national poets and artists and Central European cultural figures and movements were forged in this context. Facets of Central European cultural life, which were somewhat oppositional to traditional Jewish culture were received, absorbed, or transformed within Cultural Zionism. For example, the relationship of German racialist thought and German-nationalist fraternity life to early Jewish-national expression is a largely unknown chapter of early Jewish-national cultural history. The same can be said for the impact of feminist, counter-culture, and bohemian circles in Berlin on Cultural Zionist personalities and their work.

The Universal Jew
The Universal Jew

Author: Mikhal Dekel

Publisher: Northwestern University Press

Published: 2011-01-06

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780810127173

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The Universal Jew analyzes literary images of the Jewish nation and the Jewish national subject at Zionism’s formative moment. In a series of original readings of late nineteenth-century texts—from George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda to Theodor Herzl’s Altneuland to the bildungsromane of Russian Hebrew and Yiddish writers—Mikhal Dekel demonstrates the aesthetic and political function of literary works in the making of early Zionist consciousness. More than half a century before the foundation of the State of Israel and prior to the establishment of the Zionist political movement, Zionism emerges as an imaginary concept in literary texts that create, facilitate, and naturalize the transition from Jewish-minority to Jewish-majority culture. The transition occurs, Dekel argues, mainly through the invention of male literary characters and narrators who come to represent "exemplary" persons or "man in general" for the emergent, still unformed national community. Such prototypical characters transform the symbol of the Jew from a racially or religiously defined minority subject to a "post-Jewish," particularuniversal, and fundamentally liberal majority subject. The Universal Jew situates the "Zionist moment" horizontally, within the various intellectual currents that make up the turn of the twentieth century: the discourse on modernity, the crisis in liberalism, Nietzsche’s critique of the Enlightenment, psychoanalysis, early feminism, and fin de siècle interrogation of sexual identities. The book examines the symbolic roles that Jews are assigned within these discourses and traces the ways in which Jewish literary citizens are shaped, both out of and in response to them. Beginning with an analysis of George Eliot’s construction of the character Deronda and its reception in Zionist circles, the Universal Jew ends with the self-fashioning of male citizens in fin de siècle and post-statehood Hebrew works, through the aesthetics oftragedy. Throughout her readings, Dekel analyzes the political meaning of these nascent images of citizens, uncovering in particular the gendered arrangements out of which they are born.