The Invention of the Land of Israel
The Invention of the Land of Israel

Author: Shlomo Sand

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2012-11-20

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1844679462

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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.

Talmuda de-Eretz Israel
Talmuda de-Eretz Israel

Author: Steven Fine

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2014-07-28

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 1614512876

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Talmuda de-Eretz Israel: Archaeology and the Rabbis in Late Antique Palestine brings together an international community of historians, literature scholars and archaeologists to explore how the integrated study of rabbinic texts and archaeology increases our understanding of both types of evidence, and of the complex culture which they together reflect. This volume reflects a growing consensus that rabbinic culture was an “embodied” culture, presenting a series of case studies that demonstrate the value of archaeology for the contextualization of rabbinic literature. It steers away from later twentieth-century trends, particularly in North America, that stressed disjunction between archaeology and rabbinic literature, and seeks a more holistic approach.

Voices of Israel
Voices of Israel

Author: Joseph Cohen

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2012-02-01

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0791499391

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Cohen takes an in-depth critical look at three novelists and two poets who stand at the forefront of contemporary Israeli literature, and whose works have been widely read, studied, and admired in the Western world. The critiques examine all English translations of these Israeli writers' major works from the beginning of their careers up to the present. Cohen demonstrates the vitality and virtuosity of the so-called New Wave Israeli writers whose sources and influences are as ancient as the stories of the Hebrew Bible and as modern as the interiorization of reality found in Proust, Faulkner, Woolf, and Joyce; and the literary adaptation of relativity found in Borges, Lowry, and Durrell. Complementing the critiques are interviews with the five Israeli writers. The issues discussed—the relation of politics and literature, the influence of literature on life, the role of the writer in society, the moral responsibility of the writer—combine with the essays to provide comprehensive insight into the contemporary Israeli psyche.