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Welcome, everybody. The first meeting of the reconsidering early Jewish Nationalism seminar and a speaker today is Professor Adam Sutcliff,

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who is professor of European history at King's College, London.

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And it was the most recent book is What Jews or Mystery People within Purpose.

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Right. Came out at Princeton University Press. He is also edited several volumes, including the Cambridge History of Judaism, Volume seven,

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which covers from fifteen hundred to 1815 and feel Semitism in history that came with can be University Press in 2011.

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He is currently working on the history of the idea of empathy in historical writings and pedagogy.

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I don't think is so much for coming to share with us your thoughts and.

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Okay. So thank you very much for inviting me and introducing me and in stereo.

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An interesting effect as I think yak yak.

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I've said I what I'm going to be talking about today is drawn from my latest book, which I'm just gonna flash up here.

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And there's also behind me in touch of them. Also stereo product placement.

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What a juice for. Which is an attempt to track the idea of Jewish purpose through his from history.

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The idea that Jews have a role in the world that is unique and of profound importance.

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And it's the starting point of the book that this idea, the Jewish purpose question.

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As I sometimes call it, has been central to Judaism from at least the early rabbinic question.

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Jews have a covenant with God. But to what end?

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Jews were chosen. But why? What they do on their side of the deal is at work with God.

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And it's an idea that is also from the beginnings of Christianity being very,

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very important in Christianity, because, of course, in Christian theology, Jews remain God's chosen people.

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They take a wrong turning. By not all becoming Christians, but their unique status remains.

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And are both Judaism and Christianity develop in the mediaeval period are essentially messianic answers to the Jewish purpose.

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Question that in some way the Jews will lead the world or point the way towards a future world in which things will be transformed for the better.

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Very dramatically, division and hatred will be overcome. And in some way, the division between Jews and Christians will be overcome.

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Whether that means that Christians will come, Jews as due to Halevy will have it in essence,

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or Tuval become Christians as most Christians would have it.

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Or Jews and Christians will move to some state beyond that difference, which was essentially my mon's answer to the question.

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These are all permutations, I think, on a common messianic answer to the Jewish purpose question.

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And that's the backdrop to my study.

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But the book, William, he gets going in earnest from the beginning of the 17th century because I argue that it's from roughly around sixteen hundred.

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The post Reformation period that the Jews purpose question,

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rather than being something that Jews and Christians discuss in related ways, but largely separately.

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It becomes a common Jewish Christian conversation,

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an important meeting point in cogitation about purpose in general or any activity in which Jews and Christians and in Christian,

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increasingly secular minded people from both Jewish or Christian or other backgrounds engage in through modern history.

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Up to today. So the book ranges, of course, those for centuries to the present.

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A very important hinge point is the era of judgements, a patient, the aftermath of the French Revolution,

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emancipation and the Jewish revolution like the French Revolution.

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I see is really moments where Jewish transformation is seen very much as an offer, as emblematic of an ushering in of a transformed world.

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But then once we in the 19th century that you share, that transformation isn't something projected into the future.

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It is something that is happening around everyone in the present.

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So the Jewish purpose question the future as the Jews are seen as intimately associated with our futures that are emerging.

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And this is the era, the early 19th century of the day until the mission of Israel theology and reformed Judaism in particular,

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but also in Orthodox Judaism. Jews, as teachers of ethics and lofty principles to others in the 19th century is a

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period of repeated literary representations by Jewish and non Jewish writers,

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abuser's exemplars of tenacious virtue.

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And it's the era in which Jews are associated with the vanguard of capitalism,

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seen positively or negatively or mixed, depending if your sombath or Karl Marx or or others.

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And of course, the 19th century is also when nationalism emerges.

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And that's the focus of this paper. I'm after one long chapter discussing those broad themes of 19th century answers to the Jewish purpose question.

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I have a chapter on which his paper will draw about Jews.

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A national purpose is how I title it, in which I see or the previous.

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We discuss strands of thinking about Jewish purpose in particularly those 19th century themes that I've just enumerated,

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flown together, being rearticulated. In a very complex way that is of great importance in understanding the history of science.

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So I'm going to launch in now to that topic more substance substantively.

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Now, as for everyone here is very aware, usually Zionism is considered.

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It is a belated nationalism, a late addition, and perhaps even an imitative nationalism.

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Following on Italian, German, Central and Eastern European national movements.

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Steve, in the perspective of my book, I think it's very important to understand that in the early 19th century and indeed long before that,

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the underlying template for European thinking on peoplehood was based on an account of Jewish collective identity in the Hebrew Bible.

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And this is the backdrop for the Department of Zionism. So if we go back briefly to the 17th century,

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we see the newly postern nations of the Dutch Republic and England strongly identified with the ancient Hebrews,

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both regarding themselves as the divinely chosen new Israel and the self-righteous person piety and also the economic

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expansionism of the early modern Dutch and English with theologically underwritten by the sense of neo who break divine choses.

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The ingathering of the Jews in the Holy Land,

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which had long been understood by both Jews and Christians as the key event heralding the imminence of the messianic age also resonated.

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In the early modern period, think back to Chabert Heights v. the Sabatier movement ingathering of Jews in Palestine in the wake of that.

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Met with great excitement by a number of millenarian Christians, particularly in the Dutch Republican England,

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and then through John Tollan, Joanna Southcott, other Christians in the 18th, early 19th century interested in the millenarian idea,

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Jewish millenarian idea, and this gathered critical mass of eighteen thirties, which is when evangelical Christians in England,

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led by the social reformer Lord Shaftesbury, vigorously promoted the idea of the restoration of the Jews in the Holy Land in 1840.

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At the time of the Damascus affair, Shrewsbury successfully persuaded the Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston,

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to consider extending British protection of the existing Jews in Palestine and to support

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in principle 38 Jewish settlement that entwinement of Zionism and imperialism emerges.

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I would argue from this long history of Christian and particularly Protestant British fascination

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with the idea of Jewish purpose and the blending of the idea with notions of British purpose.

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And it's really from around 1840 that British geopolitical interests and the rest nation

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restorationist understanding of Jewish purpose began to dovetail extremely neatly.

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In the middle decades of the 19th century,

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Jewish internationalist politics became increasingly identified with both the rhetoric and the power of the two leading European imperial nations,

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invoking their rival civilising missions in support of their authority over amongst Europeans,

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both the British and the French loosely laid claim to the mantle of chosen US and higher purpose that was traditionally associated with Jews whose

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imperial missions would therefore particularly usefully burnished to association with Jewish causes and also to support from Jewish leaders,

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which Alfonz come year in France and Moses Montefiore in Britain enthusiastically provided,

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and the role of those two leaders in the Mortara affair of eighteen fifty eight,

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which in some ways rhetorically repeats, are some of the issues of the Damascus affair just two centuries,

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two decades earlier is a good example of that.

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Is against the war Brack's backdrop that we should interpret the work of the first thinker on whom I'm going to dwell for a bit,

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and that's the French Jewish scholar Joseph Salvador,

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who had been writing about Jewish history in the long Jouvet in a broadly messianic vein from the eighteen 20s,

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from the time that British evangelical proto Zionism really gets going.

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But this all comes together in in some of those writing in his last major work published in 1860,

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which is titled Paris, Rome and Jerusalem, or the Religious Question in the 19th Century.

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And this book, some of you might know, but I'm going to try to outline it for those who don't in that book,

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Self-rule put forward a very ornate schema in which each of his three titular cities, Paris, Rome, Jerusalem, represent firstly a spirit.

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Secondly, a temporality. And thirdly, a period of history since the French Revolution.

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So Paris Bear with Me stands for the spirit of Revolutionary Change for the present as it's made

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as its key temporality and also for the years from 1789 to 1815 in which progress was dominant.

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Rome signifies the spirit of not revolution, but reaction of the past since the era of the Roman Empire and the emergence of Christianity.

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And then in modern history, the throne and altar era from 1815 to 1840.

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Jerusalem. Finally, its spirit is the spirit of re edification, rights and renewal, and its dual temporality.

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Temporality is an ancient period, the pre Roman era of ancient Judaism and in modern history, the present and future.

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From 1840 through to when he's writing, making 60 and crucially onward to the future.

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So the essence of the Jewish mission for Salvador is the link that the Jews provide,

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unlimited by his interpretation of the significance of Jerusalem as a distinct people,

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both bridging between the deep past and the universalism as of the future, both a particular and a universal people.

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Salvador writes that the Jews have been preserved, quote, as a repository of a seed for the future.

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Paris, Rome, in Jerusalem, although it's more convoluted than most other texts in that vein,

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it also echoes many earlier 19th century articulations of the mission of the Jewish people.

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But what's maybe not brand new,

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but I think Foregrounded Sharpley by Salvador that no one else could get done is the anchoring of that in space and also time.

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So, as I said, the movement of Jerusalem begins in 1840, waiting 40, of course, because of Damascus affair,

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which Salvador identifies as bringing to the fore both Eastern question in political terms.

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And with that, the plight of the Jews as a people.

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It also that year and that episode for Salvador marks the beginning of, quote, the movement of Europe into Asia,

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which so little sees as reaching its first potential combination with the concluding piece of the Karmi and war in 1856.

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Only a few years before writing this text. And that's what this historical narrative was for ends.

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And at that point, the world is looking at Jerusalem as a figure of the future.

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And to some degree, the Jerusalem of the future is an abstraction.

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It's utopian, but it's very clear that there is a messianic expectancy that is extremely ripe in Salvador's writing and couches.

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This in a strikingly specific geopolitical language that reflected the interventionist Western European mood of the year around 1860.

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So solvable doesn't explicitly declare any Proteau Zionist strategy or intent.

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But he unmistakeably narrowed the conceptual distance between the theological ideal

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of Jerusalem and the anticipated future of the actual concrete city of Jerusalem.

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Others at this precise time went further. Also in 1860 and Aslan, a liberal Catholic civil servant possibly attached to the secretariat of Napoleon,

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the third published a pamphlet titled The New Eastern Question The Egyptian and Arabian Empires Reconstitution of the Jewish Nation,

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in which he called for the Ottoman Empire to be replaced by you by a European sponsored Jewish state extended extending from the Suez dismissal.

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So what one could see as several hinting at possibly Lagaan is laying out as a political agenda.

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And he envisaged this envisioned this state, but as the fulfilment of the mission of the Jews.

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And as the guarantor of future world peace and prosperity.

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It was due to the subjugation of Jews at the hands of Christians that the Jewish people were at the moment, land rights,

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not master of their own home, but with European encouragement, particularly from their French emancipators.

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They would surely fulfil their holiest of missions and establish the most successful and harmonious of states.

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So here's a quote from the Hahne addressing the Jews. He writes, You, the Jews,

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you will be intermediaries between Europe and the extremities of Asia and you will open

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up the great routes that lead from India and China and to archipelagos still unknown.

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You will be a moral compass of the world in East.

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You will be the camp for arch of the future era of peace.

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And under this huge portico, repacks will come to be sealed.

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Witnessed by the shadows of the past and the hopes for the future.

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Stirring stuff happen. I think it's clear from that quote was an ardent admirer of Jews.

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His vision of their future state was intensely liberal, profoundly linked to the French imperial civilising mission,

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and also firmly rooted in the pedagogic, universalist and messianic understanding of Jewish purpose once.

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However, in their own nation, the Jews would become teachers to the peoples of Africa and Arabia,

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purifying them all superstition and fanaticism and unifying the world in common belief in,

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quote, the principles of emancipation, love, charity, alliance and peace.

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So that's in 1860, in 1862, Moses Hess publishes Rome and Jerusalem, in which he quotes at great length from the Hakkinen.

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As I mentioned, some of you know, he really.

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It's perhaps then too far to say he really isn't part of nicking virtue's ideas from the heart, but it's something quite close to that.

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And he also cited Salvador, whose title he more or less stole, is cutting down to two cities from three.

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He cites Salvador as evidence for wider Jewish support for the restoration of Jerusalem.

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It's not just me. He says, Jews or Jewish readers. So how's Salvador is in favour of this offer.

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He also picks up the fight, picks a quarrel with Salvador, arguing that his Salvador's religious vision is fusion east.

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It's a word that's going to come up bit by fusion. East has means that Salvador envisions a Jewish state that would dissolve Jewish distinctiveness.

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Hess advocated, in contrast, an enduringly Jewish national state in Palestine.

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The argument of Rome and Jerusalem was underpinned by his conception of Jewish purpose, which had preoccupied him in some form throughout his life.

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He explored the idea most fully in his early socialist writings from eighteen thirties and particularly his first book,

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The Holy History of Humanity 1837, in which he set out his theory of history and has in that book guess what also divides time into three eras.

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Shadow of Hegel looms very heavily over all of this. Of course, to run through that structure very briefly hit three errors.

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Has the three years in the history of Hoby. History of humanity are the early plant kingdom, which was the originary era of Judaism,

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followed by the animal kingdom in which Christianity was dominant and then emerging in the late 17th century.

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The human kingdom and both those two latter eras have tells us in 1837 were initiated by messianic Jewish individuals.

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In the first case, Jesus Christ, and in the second case, Spinoza has a great interest.

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However, was not in the past but the future. He writes at length about the transformations heralded by Spinoza beginning from the late 17th century,

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which would soon give rise to a new Jerusalem, which would be governed by a new holy constitution of equality and social justice.

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And the Jews, he argues, will play a key role in this process.

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The nationalism of Rome and Jerusalem of the 60s seemed the first site to set it sharply apart from his earlier writings,

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which are strongly socialist,

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has himself insisted, though, on his continued adherence to the schema, the historical schema of the holy history within Roman Jerusalem.

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And indeed, a kind of an epilogue to Jerusalem titled Christ and Spinoza.

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Spinoza, in which he essentially reraise, repeats his theory of history from the 18th.

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That is, he quietly dropped the harshly critical assessment of Jewish economic activity that is visible in the whole history.

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And it's been the focus of his essay on money of 1844.

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Some, you might know, resembles strongly Marx's on the Jewish question.

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Instead in Roman, Jerusalem has commented that amongst Jews, quote,

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solidarity and social responsibility were always the fundamental principles of life and conduct,

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Judaism insisted in 1862 was the root of civilisation and humanitarianism.

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And the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine would bring about the regeneration of all humanity.

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In what sense, then, would this Jewish state remain distinctively Jewish?

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Has argued strenuously against the fusion ism that he associated with somewhat and also with

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the mission of Israel rhetoric most strongly associated with 19th century German reform,

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rabbis such as some would push in order to account for the continuing significance of Jewish distinctiveness.

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Even in the era of universal harmony that would follow,

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the establishment of a Jewish homeland has offered an elaborate biological method for each nation,

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he argued, performed a unique role as an organ in the living body of humanity.

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So England is sort of an industrial digestive system.

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Germany discharges the function of thinking for Germany's brain, essentially.

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America has a assimilate tree function of regeneration and grow the Jewish people.

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Is very distinct and fascinating and also the most transcendentally Mystikal they represent.

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He writes, quote, The living creative force in universal history, namely the organ of unifying and sanctifying love.

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But it's unlikely, given Hesse's religious upbringing, that he consciously adopted this image from view to Halevy,

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who in his 12th century, Chisari used the same metaphor, describing Israel as the heart amongst the nation's.

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And that metaphor appears again 14 years later in George Eliot's final novel.

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Daniel Deronda of 1876, image Mordecai, the intellectual inspiration of the eponymous hero Daniel Deronda,

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declares explicitly citing Halevy that, quote, Israel is the heart of mankind.

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And he makes this pronouncement are in the novel as a working men's philosophers club meeting, which he has brought Deronda,

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whether whined where the wide ranging discussion moves from how ideas and societies progress to a focus on the question of nationality.

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Mordechai, his voice at the meeting, Elliot remoulded,

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the classic features of Victorian thinking on Jewish purpose into a highly textured Zionist argument.

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Jewish history is here once again encapsulated as a tale of remarkable tenacity in the face of relentless suffering.

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And that theme of Jews as tenacious survivors in the face of suffering is the literary trope

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of 19th century Jewish purpose that I discussed in the previous chapter at some length.

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So Mordechai, in this key chapter of Daniel Deronda, insists on the active energy of the Jews in history, diffusing knowledge and virtue,

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as well as material goods across the nations of the world,

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and repeatedly renewing their religious life and their economic dynamism in the face of waves of hatred and oppression.

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Their purpose in the world, however, will be fulfilled only with the establishment of their own homeland.

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Elliott, through Mordechai, imbues this Jewish seising of their own destiny with immense spiritual and historical significance not only for Jews,

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but for the world as a whole. So from. To quote it through Mordecai.

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Quote, The messianic time is the time when Israel shall will the planting of a national inside the divine principle of our race is action.

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Choice resolves memory. Let us help to will our own better future and the better future of the world, not to renounce our higher gift.

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So the Jewish policy envisioned by Eliot Will as fellaheen and for Hess, both reinforce European colonialism by projecting Western values in the East.

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And it will tilt simultaneously transcend this division between east and west.

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It will be, quote, a new Judea poised between East and West, a covenant of reconciliation.

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So this is Renick,

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internationalism conveys the sweepingly universalistic hopes that Elliott associated with the fulfilment of the Jews particular national destiny.

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In the final essay of her final work in the volume The Modern Hop of 1879,

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Elliott focussed specifically on relating the Jewish case to the broader question of national identity and sentiment.

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All the nations are distinctive.

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Elliott argues in this essay, in this essay, each in their own way, that, quote, superlative peculiarity of the Jews, though,

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should be recognised by English and others and appreciated in a spirit of affinity with them, as one might appreciate,

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quote the distinctive note of each birds issues while recognising that commonality as birds.

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Why, Elliott asks, should we look forward to the, quote, complete fusion of the Jews into the various nations of Europe?

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Jews should, on the contrary, feel bound to sustain their exceptionally rich heritage like her fictional creation.

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Daniel Deronda, they should remain, quote, steadfast in their separateness and aim to constitute a new beneficent individuality amongst the nations.

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And here. Crispi summarises what one might call in shorthand, the Jewish purpose as a national purpose argument.

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The Jews for her are the vanguard of the discovery of national identity and fulfilment for all or peoples.

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So moving into the second half. You want to pace yourselves in the same year as the publication of Elliot's hip hop essay.

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Vilhelm MA founded his legal anti Semites in Germany two years later in 1881.

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As I'm sure we all know here, anti Jewish pogroms swept across Russia,

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leading to a shift of Jewish political energies from the ideal of legal emancipation to other options socialism, immigration and Zionism.

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The modern dynamism is conventionally seen as emerging in this moment,

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the beginning of the 18 80s, and as a response to that context, to those pogroms especially.

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And I noted that this seminar on early Jewish nationalism gives 1881 as its start points.

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I think implicitly that assumption is in the framing of all of the seminar series.

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But I'd like to suggest I have been suggesting hitherto that the early association of Jewish Nationhood,

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with the fulfilment of Jewish world, historical purpose above all amongst non Jews,

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particularly from around 1840 and even more particularly from 1860,

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played a crucially important role in preparing the ground for the Jewish Zionist movement.

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And just as importantly, for the high level of non Jewish receptivity to it.

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So what all that movement itself? Well, Theodore Hertzel, belief in Jewish exceptionalism and his insertion of this into the established

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narratives of late 19th century Europeans is imperialism has been widely noted.

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Less commonly observed, though, I think is the extent to which his rhetoric echoes that of Salvador Vahan and Hess in 1860 as.

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Or we're all familiar with the quote from that,

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you wouldn't start of head of Hertzel that in Palestine a Jewish state would form a rampart of Europe against Asia,

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an outpost post of civilisation, as opposed to barbarism.

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But that, I think, very clearly echoes formulations in the text, something quoting from earlier,

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Hertzel did not explicitly couch his proposal in that you wouldn't start of 88,

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didn't start with 1896 in messianic terms, but he clearly imbued it with deep, universal significance.

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A Jewish state would not only secure the welfare of Jews, but also, he confidently concluded, unfailingly benefit humanity as a whole.

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But from Hertzel, the world will be freed by our liberty, enriched by our wealth, and magnified by our greatness.

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Huxtable's most prominent early supporter in France was the Jewish radical.

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Journalist Donatella Zaw, who, like Hertzel, was jolted into Zionism by closely witnessing the Dreyfuss affair.

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Shortly before that scandal erupted, Bazaar published his anti-Semitism is history and causes of 1894,

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in which he both critiqued anti Jewish prejudices and described them to a considerable extent to the reality of Jewish difference from others.

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The separateness of the Jews, he argued, had profoundly marked that character,

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heightening both the mystical intellectuality and the worldly commercialism.

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These traits provoked anti-Semitism, which in turn further reinforced Jewish separateness and distinctiveness.

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Most significant film tsar, however, was quite the revolutionary spirit in Judaism,

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which he argued stemmed from Judaism's emphasis on justice in this world rather than in Christianity of justice and often not emphasis,

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he argued, engendered in Jews and intellectual and political restlessness that place them at the fore of social and intellectual progress.

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And the most important example of this philosopher was Marx, who he described as having a clear Talmudic mind.

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Ultimately, though, for are both anti-Semitism and the distinctiveness of the Jews were destined for oblivion.

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And he said, this is his presider honest face.

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anti-Semitism, he argues, was itself self undermining as hatred for Jewish capitalists ultimately led to hatred for capital in general,

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and thus hastens hastened the ascent of socialism. Judaism, Lozar also believed in the early 90s,

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was in a process of dissolution and would ultimately be superseded by a new

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international spirit of what he calls cosmopolitanism and universal altruism.

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Lasalle's analysis of anti-Semitism was principally based on his understanding of Jewish world historical purpose,

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which drew together the pedagogical,

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ethical and economic strands of 19th century thinking on this topic and was framed by a prophetic messianism modulated into a secular socialist key.

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Was our stance. I would say as a key figure in the left wing tradition of Jewish purpose,

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which has an important 20th century afterlife both within Zionism and in antagonism to it.

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The venom unleashed by the Dreyfuss affair that does up to temper his optimistic predictions

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of the imminent transformation of the world into a socialist universalised utopia.

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However, in embracing Zionism, he didn't renounce socialism or his proud conception of the ethical loftiness

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of the Jewish spirit and of the special role of that spirit in the world.

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Jewish nationalism. He insisted, was in no sense incompatible with internationalism,

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and Jewish naturalism was necessary so the Jews could restore their dignity and be themselves.

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However, the project of Jewish nationalism was not one of pure self-interest, but was imbued with profound moral importance for the world as a whole.

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Lizotte Lazaar exhorted the Zionist movement never to forget that quote.

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You were the people who introduced justice to the world. And therefore, always to be, quote, soldiers for justice and human fraternity.

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The socialist universalism of our Zionism and its fusion with the with his

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unflinchingly critical analysis of Jewish capitalism and religious insularity,

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was similar in many respects to the early arguments of Moses Hesse.

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Al-Azhar split with Hertzel in 1899 over the direction of the Zionist movement.

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Prestidge, the profound strain between outward and inward oriented visions of Jewish purpose.

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As I'm going to describe them by shorthand here, too. In the later history of Zionism.

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So moving into the 20th century, some early Zionists were profoundly hostile to the widespread nineteenth century idea

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that still endures in the early 20th century of a Jewish mission to others for hot arm.

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For example, the idea of a Jewish mission was Kraven. Jews should probably assert their own cultural identity.

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And argued in their own terms and as an end, in its own sake, he nonetheless retained an ethically lofty notion of Jewish purpose,

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seeing the Jewish people as an expression of, quote, the highest type of morality.

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And the early scholars of the Hebrew University, while heavily influenced by a heart,

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nonetheless embraced an output oriented vision of Zionism in many ways echoing the key hormones marks of Mission of Israel rhetoric.

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Due to Magnus, for example, argued in 1930 that the Jewish people was a wondrous and paradoxical organism.

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And unlike all other nations, its dispersal, its dispersion, dispersion of the Jewish people enabled the fulfilment of its function as a teacher,

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spreading light and learning by providing a centre for the renewal and deepening of Jewish philosophy and religion.

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Settlements in Palestine, Magnus argued, quote, can help this people perform its great ethical mission as a national international entity.

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Gershon Sholom forelimbs thinking of Jewish purpose is fascinating and complicated.

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I'm going to simplify grotesque. But in that grotesque simplification like Hotta, who was an important influence of on Shulem.

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Of course,

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Shulem preferred to focus on the internal dynamics of Jewish history rather than to explain or justify it in relation to the historical hope not.

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Nonetheless, Shalom also believed that the messianic messianic idea was the fundamental Jewish contribution to humanity.

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By screaming collective agency and rejecting the deferral of messianic realisation.

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Into the future, the Jewish people for Sholom were finally entering into the quick concrete realm of history.

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This was, as with any country with messianism, a dangerous transition.

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Sholom was nonetheless convinced that it was invigorating, bold and.

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By the late 1940s, after the horror of the Holocaust, also an undoubtedly essential task.

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In a sense, then, Shulem, regarded Zionism as a political normalisation of Jewish life.

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No longer would Jews live in deferment.

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They would instead work together just like other nationalities in their own states, to build a better future for themselves in the present.

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However, as a movement that was at its core messianic, the final phase,

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which column's view of the history of Jewish activist messianism that Summerside

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C had unleashed Zionism was for Shulem by no means only significant for Jews.

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In a 1974 essay, he declared that he had never accepted the slogan, like all the nations, as a vision for Zionism.

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The realisation of that slogan, Fleming argued in 1974, could only lead to, quote, the decline or even the disappearance of the Jewish people.

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Challenge's own Zionism, at least in his 1974 account, was, by contrast, grounded on, quote,

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an unshakeable belief in a specific moral centre which bestows meaning in world history on the Jewish people.

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A broadly similar belief in the world,

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historical significance of Jews and Zionism suffused the thinking of the leading early theologian of religious Zionism.

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Rabbi Abraham Isaac Cook, the upheaval of the First World War, the establishment of the Soviet Union, which Cooke was vehemently opposed.

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And the more general global instability in the wake of those events convinced Cook that the world had entered

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a period of epochal transformation in which the fulfilment of the Zionist vision would play a crucial role.

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Like Shulem, Cook was fascinated by the Louisiana Karbalaa and its emphasis on tickin alarm.

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The contemporary world was disordered, he believes,

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because the Jews were not in their allotted place and their ingathering would bring with it universal redemption and human unity.

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Cookies activist messianism was based on a firm belief that the renaissance of the Jews and Zionism was central to the divine plan for all humanity.

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Like due to her levy, he believed that the Jews were categorically different and superior to others.

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Quote from Cook, We are not only different from all the nations, but we have a much higher and greater spiritual order.

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The purpose of the Jews, however, was for the world as a whole.

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Like so many earlier thinkers could, expressed this in lofty moral and pedagogical terms conjugate.

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We have made many great moral contributions to the world and we are now ready.

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Mrs. Knighting in the 30s, more or less, we are now ready to become its teacher of joyous and vibrant in the 20s.

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It is teacher of joyous and vibrant living,

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whether in opposition to those who continued to argue that this mission required the dispersal of the Jews amongst the nations.

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For Cook, the Jewish people would fulfil their purpose only through their mission.

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Ingathering gathering in the Holy Land. This event was for him, inseparable from the redemptive transformation of the entire world.

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Cooke shared the concern of anti Zionist rabbis that the holy perfection of the

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messianic era must not be profaned by the corruption of the unredeemed world.

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Precisely. For this reason, Cook argued, a Jewish polity could be established only as part of a wider transformation of all human politics,

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bringing an end to the violence and nationalist animosities of the era.

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Cataclysms of the 1940s, the Holocaust and the establishment of the state of Israel transformed,

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of course, the context in which the meaning of Zionism was considered. For the radical religious wing of the anti Zionist camp,

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the Nazi extermination of European Jewry was interpreted as a divine punishment

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for the Zionist sinful violation of the oath forbidding the forcing of the end.

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And the state of Israel was rejected as illegitimate.

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And for the followers of Cook, it was certainly a first very difficult to respond to these ultra orthodox, anti Zionist arguments.

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The arguments policed the rigorous separation between the spiritual purity of messianism and the profanity

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of the secular sphere to which Cook himself had been in principle committed during his lifetime.

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And certainly the Holocaust was not readily harmonised by Cook's messianic optimism, to say the very least.

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And then further, the difficulty was posed by the borders of Israel. From 1949, which excluded, of course,

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the old history that the old city of Jerusalem and other key biblical sites after those territories came under Israeli control in 1967.

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Though messianic religious Zionism was, as we all know, vigorously renewed, spearheaded by Could Son see Huda Cook,

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who recast his father's teachings in a more activist form for the undercook.

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The twentieth century catastrophes and triumphs of the Jews were apocalyptic significance,

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singling the irreversible unfolding of the messianic climax of history.

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This was, therefore the time for Jews to settle across the newly occupied territories.

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In stark contrast with his father's a radical Zionist vision which echoed the expectation of

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many other earlier thinkers that a Jewish polity would be an anchor of international peace.

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The settler Zionism, supported by the messianism of the Younger Cook and his more recent intellectual is has abandoned.

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I would say this largely this outward looking vision is emphasised instead the importance of Jewish welfare, security and mastery of the Holy Land.

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The brand of missing ism that most influentially stumped the the design is mainstream in the third quarter of the 20th century,

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though, was that of David Ben-Gurion, of course,

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whose political vision drew together a red messianism inspired in particular by the early achievements

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of the Soviet Union with a semicircular fascination with the biblical residents of the Zionist project.

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Going back on an idea we've seen in Salvador on the Harn back in 1860 that a Jewish state would be a nodal point of connexion between Europe and Asia.

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Ben-Gurion presented Israel as a living bridge.

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His phrase between those two continents and more broadly as a mediator between the West and the Third World,

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reediting development aid and even more importantly, ethical principles of peace and justice.

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And he communicated these ideals through many channels in many essays, for example, in the Israeli government yearbook,

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in which he often emphasised Israel's exceptional role as, quote,

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a light unto the nations and that prophetic formulation of bags of ice zya much beloved by Ben-Gurion.

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For him, the profound distinctiveness of the Jewish people on all nations, Ben-Gurion wrote, regarded themselves as different from others.

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But no other nation had the same quality or strength of difference as the Jews,

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which stemmed, he wrote, from the quite unique spiritual and moral quality they possessed.

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Ben-Gurion did not adapt the Labour Zionist aim of normalising the class structure of Jewish society.

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But he probably claimed at one point in 1952 that the Jews were becoming a people of workers, as in any other autonomous nation.

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This did not mean, though, in his eyes, that they were becoming normal overall.

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Despite their modest collective size and strength, the Jews remained absolutely exceptional.

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Quote, By the standards of ethics and culture.

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Ben was in no doubt this exceptionality was rooted in their status as a chosen people with a messianic destiny.

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I'll jump now to my conclusion. And looking at more recent history for the final five minutes or so.

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So the tradition of internal critique and ethical stringency within Zionism associated with a hotta due to Magnus, an aunt.

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And many others is much less conspicuous today. This notion of Zionism continues to circulate widely, however, as a descriptive assertion.

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For example, in the frequent claim that the Israeli Defence Forces are, quote, the most moral army in the world.

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Or to just take one recent example from the appearance of Jonathan Sacks,

386
00:46:10,070 --> 00:46:16,430
recently deceased Jonathan Sacks of BBC television on The Andrew Marr Show September 2018,

387
00:46:16,430 --> 00:46:25,230
when Andrew Marr asked Sack's whether accusations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party might possibly be aimed to.

388
00:46:25,230 --> 00:46:31,100
Last word at words closed down criticism of Zionism.

389
00:46:31,100 --> 00:46:36,310
Sachs said in answering that this was clearly absolute nonsense because,

390
00:46:36,310 --> 00:46:42,170
quote from Sachs, nobody is more open to criticism and self-criticism than Jews.

391
00:46:42,170 --> 00:46:49,880
It's something we've been practising for 4000 years with the most self-critical people in history.

392
00:46:49,880 --> 00:46:53,610
So. How's that? Sex gets away with it.

393
00:46:53,610 --> 00:47:04,860
I don't know, but the straight faced circulation of these rather absurd superlatives, I think, which is not uncommon and reflects.

394
00:47:04,860 --> 00:47:12,900
I would say the continued trace of the outward oriented ideals of Jewish purpose within the rhetoric and collective self

395
00:47:12,900 --> 00:47:22,850
understanding of what is now an overwhelmingly inward oriented mainstream Zionist movement and indeed mainstream Jewry.

396
00:47:22,850 --> 00:47:30,590
Even while promoting Israel as a normal state in which Jews have finally attained self-determination like any other

397
00:47:30,590 --> 00:47:39,080
people and even deeming the expectation of anything other than normal behaviour from Israel as implicitly anti-Semitic,

398
00:47:39,080 --> 00:47:44,000
which is one of the items in the examples attached to it, a definition of anti-Semitism.

399
00:47:44,000 --> 00:47:48,800
Despite that. Forward rhetoric, if you will.

400
00:47:48,800 --> 00:47:56,430
Many Zionists today continue to associate Jews and Israel with exceptional intellectual and ethical loftiness.

401
00:47:56,430 --> 00:48:05,690
I think that quote from Sax's is a good example. The universalistic implications of these high ideals ideals, however,

402
00:48:05,690 --> 00:48:12,290
is mostly lost as they now serve, at least in those circles, less as exacting aspirations.

403
00:48:12,290 --> 00:48:23,390
Just how they used to function in earlier Zionist history, but rather now a self-congratulatory, reflexive clichés.

404
00:48:23,390 --> 00:48:32,000
In our new millennium, and particularly since the deaths of so many Palestinians at the hands of the IDF in Gaza in 2009 and 2014,

405
00:48:32,000 --> 00:48:37,910
the division between outward and inward oriented divisions of Jewish purpose has hardened.

406
00:48:37,910 --> 00:48:43,540
We are now witnessing, I would say, and this is what I argue in the conclusion to my book,

407
00:48:43,540 --> 00:48:48,620
something that can actually be described as an intellectual Jewish civil war between these two,

408
00:48:48,620 --> 00:48:59,750
our two outlooks, a war that also involves plenty of non Jewish belligerence and also fascinated non Jewish onlookers.

409
00:48:59,750 --> 00:49:05,840
The universalistic outward oriented idea of Jewish purpose is today rallied above all

410
00:49:05,840 --> 00:49:12,110
in solidarity with Palestinians and in opposition to Israeli actions and policies.

411
00:49:12,110 --> 00:49:17,570
This mobilisation holds together complex conceptual tensions, bringing together Jews,

412
00:49:17,570 --> 00:49:24,950
Christians and those who identify as neither and encompassing a wide range of motivations for placing special emphasis on the

413
00:49:24,950 --> 00:49:32,910
possibility of the politics of Jewish collective identification and action being something other than what it predominantly is today.

414
00:49:32,910 --> 00:49:36,960
And this impulse is by no means necessarily anti Zionist.

415
00:49:36,960 --> 00:49:44,600
For some, Peter Beinart would be one prominent example. The ethically lofty tradition within Zionism that I've discussed much of this paper

416
00:49:44,600 --> 00:49:51,090
is a primary inspiration for their critique of the current state of the movement.

417
00:49:51,090 --> 00:49:56,760
In the opposing camp, the mainstream rhetoric of Zionism today, which functions, functions,

418
00:49:56,760 --> 00:50:03,030
I would say is the primary binding agent booth of Israeli society and of much of the Jewish diaspora has

419
00:50:03,030 --> 00:50:09,510
largely dropped its early vision of itself as a fundamental positive force for the world as a whole.

420
00:50:09,510 --> 00:50:17,070
The light onto the nations argument, which was so prominent in the speeches and writings of David Ben-Gurion up to the 1960s,

421
00:50:17,070 --> 00:50:22,530
has given way to an emphasis on the entitlement of Jews to collective security and to an environment free of

422
00:50:22,530 --> 00:50:31,020
anti-Semitism and the right also for Jews to define for themselves the essential terms of both of those two things.

423
00:50:31,020 --> 00:50:38,460
This Jewish shift towards particularistic self-assertion has taken place alongside the rise in recent years

424
00:50:38,460 --> 00:50:44,370
of a broadly similar political outlook within strengthening nationalist movements across much of the world.

425
00:50:44,370 --> 00:50:51,420
21ST century Israel has become the focus of considerable interest and imagination and considerable interest and admiration.

426
00:50:51,420 --> 00:51:01,590
Sorry. Maybe imagination also from nationalist parties and governments in Europe, North America and beyond, from Trump down, if you will.

427
00:51:01,590 --> 00:51:08,880
We can speak perhaps here of a new variant to cause a phrase, to coin a phrase of the idea of Jewish purpose.

428
00:51:08,880 --> 00:51:17,010
A variant that sees Jews not as leading the world to a future beyond differences and divisions,

429
00:51:17,010 --> 00:51:25,090
but instead sees Jews at the vanguard of a future world in which those ideals are themselves overcome and rejected as outmoded.

430
00:51:25,090 --> 00:51:32,820
And nations in this future compete in a spirit of unrestrained and never ending self-interest.

431
00:51:32,820 --> 00:51:38,220
Under Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel has as engaged eagerly with the global right,

432
00:51:38,220 --> 00:51:45,780
conducting a foreign policy reminiscent of Captain Ski's respectful admiration in the 1930s for other right wing nationalist movements,

433
00:51:45,780 --> 00:51:55,050
even when they clearly encompassed a strain of anti-Semitism. Setting this Netanyahu base and his policies in a deeper historical context.

434
00:51:55,050 --> 00:52:03,020
Looking back to Salvador and Hess in the 1960s, we should see this currently dominant strain Zionism,

435
00:52:03,020 --> 00:52:11,550
as has ever shaped by the same shifts of current that also shape non Jewish thinking on Jewish exceptionalism and purpose.

436
00:52:11,550 --> 00:52:18,900
In a way, that's one of my central points that we need to see Zionism not as a sort of autonomous, self defining current,

437
00:52:18,900 --> 00:52:28,260
but something very much plugged in and reflecting shifts around thinking about Jews and purpose amongst non Jews also.

438
00:52:28,260 --> 00:52:32,250
So even if the legacy of the Trump administration will be the removal,

439
00:52:32,250 --> 00:52:38,040
at least in the short term of the plight of the Palestinians as a focus of global political concern,

440
00:52:38,040 --> 00:52:42,750
the meaning of Israel for non Jews will remain potently symbolic of the competing

441
00:52:42,750 --> 00:52:48,000
conceptions of national purpose on the left and the right across much of the world.

442
00:52:48,000 --> 00:53:02,260
And so the Jewish purpose question and its articulation and contestation in Zionism are certainly not lost its residents and importance in the end.

443
00:53:02,260 --> 00:53:10,210
Thank you so much for this fascinating consideration of Zionism, and I'm so much, so much food for thought and consideration.

444
00:53:10,210 --> 00:53:15,280
We are open now for questions and answers. We already have a question.

445
00:53:15,280 --> 00:53:23,770
So just to remind you, the event is recorded and will be hopefully uploaded and shared online.

446
00:53:23,770 --> 00:53:27,760
So if you do not want your name to be mentioned when you write a question, just tell us.

447
00:53:27,760 --> 00:53:33,700
So if you see the questions, you can read them.

448
00:53:33,700 --> 00:53:38,080
I'll read them aloud. Just so we have the audience also tuned.

449
00:53:38,080 --> 00:53:48,490
This was from Abigail, who had unfortunately to leave earlier, but she would have yet wanted to ask about Jewish.

450
00:53:48,490 --> 00:53:53,650
Well, about the Jewish purpose, different Christian context and imperialism.

451
00:53:53,650 --> 00:53:58,720
She writes, You moved very seamlessly between Shaftesbury and Salvador,

452
00:53:58,720 --> 00:54:07,260
but surely they are operating in such different political or religious contexts and particular in relation to Empire,

453
00:54:07,260 --> 00:54:14,540
that this is a rather difficult thing to do. Well, it's a shame that.

454
00:54:14,540 --> 00:54:20,130
Can you hear me fine. Yes, I'm. I would say no.

455
00:54:20,130 --> 00:54:24,120
I might be missing what Abigail is getting at. I guess my call.

456
00:54:24,120 --> 00:54:28,070
Ask her. So if you got back from healthy or maybe someone else might cheque.

457
00:54:28,070 --> 00:54:32,110
It might. I feel my aunt might be missing a point somewhere.

458
00:54:32,110 --> 00:54:47,220
I would say, of course, the 60s is a different Catholic world is is different from the earliest Protestantism of people such as Sharf Spring.

459
00:54:47,220 --> 00:54:53,070
But in this sort of broad brush analysis that I'm offering in my book,

460
00:54:53,070 --> 00:54:59,040
I didn't think before 1840 in 1860 or so different or deepened in France are so different that both imperial powers,

461
00:54:59,040 --> 00:55:13,490
they both seek to justify their colonial project through a civilising mission, and they both in different ways, marshal support from Jewish leaders.

462
00:55:13,490 --> 00:55:30,560
Behind that idea, and they both they both draw on brought those on the Christian side on broadly Christian ideals of Christian alliance,

463
00:55:30,560 --> 00:55:46,730
of contrasting that to Islam and the backwardness of the Ottoman Empire and the unfitness of the Ottoman Empire to be ruling over Christian sites,

464
00:55:46,730 --> 00:55:52,940
but also not fit to offer adequate protection, protection to Jews in those locations.

465
00:55:52,940 --> 00:56:00,160
That's Hofstee, central to Damascus affair in in 1840.

466
00:56:00,160 --> 00:56:08,240
I did in those concerns disappear by 1860 or in any way or in any way profoundly different.

467
00:56:08,240 --> 00:56:16,520
So maybe there's something else because I had in mind in terms of specific differences that I'm missing.

468
00:56:16,520 --> 00:56:21,710
Let me before we address the other questions that overy posted.

469
00:56:21,710 --> 00:56:28,050
Follow up on this question, maybe in a sense reverse the motivation of it.

470
00:56:28,050 --> 00:56:39,160
But I'm not sure. I'm not sure. But along the same lines, I would like it to reflect for a second upon the defence from which you come.

471
00:56:39,160 --> 00:56:47,240
Let's call the history of ideas which were in in the case of the history of the Zionist idea, tends to be very inward looking.

472
00:56:47,240 --> 00:56:51,050
What I'm trying to say, in other words, if you read we know, is, for example, the Zionist idea,

473
00:56:51,050 --> 00:56:55,490
which is like a little handbook of the official biography of the Zionist idea.

474
00:56:55,490 --> 00:57:01,130
You have no sense that Zionism emerged before Hertzel amongst Christians.

475
00:57:01,130 --> 00:57:10,280
So it does. And it does. I guess an obviously understood motivation to kind of make it a holy Jewish idea.

476
00:57:10,280 --> 00:57:15,980
And it is that emerging amongst Jews. But nevertheless, it's really weird.

477
00:57:15,980 --> 00:57:23,520
I mean, when when one reads one realise this has been, you know, circulating amongst many Jews.

478
00:57:23,520 --> 00:57:31,670
Well, how would I say? Very forcefully so if Hurtin' has read them or not, or if Hess's read them at all, has as you obviously read them.

479
00:57:31,670 --> 00:57:35,690
Right. But George Eliot was not a minor figure.

480
00:57:35,690 --> 00:57:42,590
That story as if it is with the ignore.

481
00:57:42,590 --> 00:57:51,790
Absolutely. I think this applies to the history of Zionism, it applies to a lot of other aspects to Jewish history in general,

482
00:57:51,790 --> 00:58:00,680
a preference of Jewish historians to to emphasise autonomy in in Jewish history and Jewish thinking.

483
00:58:00,680 --> 00:58:04,670
And that's something I, I, I foreswear in my book.

484
00:58:04,670 --> 00:58:09,170
Actually, I say at the very beginning that I'm not going at any point to talk about Jewish

485
00:58:09,170 --> 00:58:16,370
responses to non Jewish ideas and arguments or at any point in the argument going all

486
00:58:16,370 --> 00:58:24,890
the way from all way back to the 70s to the 17th century to systematically separate

487
00:58:24,890 --> 00:58:29,720
Jewish and non Jewish currents of thought because already in the 17th century.

488
00:58:29,720 --> 00:58:35,240
How does one position, someone like Spinoza who clearly bridges those two rounds?

489
00:58:35,240 --> 00:58:39,680
And by the 19th century, there are lots of of of of such people.

490
00:58:39,680 --> 00:58:47,900
So I think it's it's it's factually erroneous.

491
00:58:47,900 --> 00:58:54,260
With respect to the history of 19th century Zionism, it's it's it's also a rather absurd.

492
00:58:54,260 --> 00:59:00,860
If you have any understanding of the world in which most Jewish intellectuals lived in the early mid 19th century.

493
00:59:00,860 --> 00:59:13,010
Hugely admiring of European high culture, German, British, French culture, very much wanting to insert that thinking into those frameworks.

494
00:59:13,010 --> 00:59:24,110
So the mission of Israel, the theory of Reform Judaism, for example, is utterly alien in structure.

495
00:59:24,110 --> 00:59:35,280
It's a reworking of alien thought. Essentially, someone can't understand it other than in the context of a German historicism.

496
00:59:35,280 --> 00:59:44,060
I also can understand it other than in presenting an image of sort of Jewish meaningfulness

497
00:59:44,060 --> 00:59:52,760
in the world that resonates very strongly with many non Jewish Protestants and.

498
00:59:52,760 --> 01:00:02,720
Assimilation Jews in the 19th century absorb as much from those non Jews around them as from some sort of Jewish current in their in their thought.

499
01:00:02,720 --> 01:00:15,260
And I think that in the case of some like Hesse, which is just so glaring that huge chunks of Roman Jerusalem are quotations from the time Larum,

500
01:00:15,260 --> 01:00:23,770
which is oddly a text no one seems to really look at, even if it is just literally folded into Hesse's text.

501
01:00:23,770 --> 01:00:33,610
And there is Rehov Hesse in most Israeli cities I visited, but I am yet to come across a Rehov because of this.

502
01:00:33,610 --> 01:00:40,790
I do ideological. It's ideological on the one hand to see Jewish thought as autonomous.

503
01:00:40,790 --> 01:00:48,950
But it's also sort of a lazy failure of really entry mentioned Sydney into this sort of mental concerns of those 19th century

504
01:00:48,950 --> 01:00:58,940
Jewish intellectuals and that desirous of approval from non Jews is what I had to was reacting against so personally.

505
01:00:58,940 --> 01:01:06,170
Yeah, yeah. I just I must say that there is a George Eliot Street in the heart of Tel Aviv.

506
01:01:06,170 --> 01:01:11,580
I guess not. Yes. Some reason was for obvious reasons. A question for from Marcus.

507
01:01:11,580 --> 01:01:15,260
Right. So many thanks for your excellent and very thoughtful discussion.

508
01:01:15,260 --> 01:01:22,310
You mentioned that the beginning of your discussion, the possibility of Christians and Jews coming together as either Jews,

509
01:01:22,310 --> 01:01:25,420
Christians or something new as per my money,

510
01:01:25,420 --> 01:01:32,540
this was there no involvement of these two faith with the development of the third Abrahamic faith Muslims?

511
01:01:32,540 --> 01:01:39,190
And how would you explain, not withstanding the periods of Jewish development in Muslim Spain today,

512
01:01:39,190 --> 01:01:44,840
there there appears to be more of efforts to reach accommodation between Christianity

513
01:01:44,840 --> 01:01:53,190
and Judaism rather than between either of these faiths with the Muslim faith.

514
01:01:53,190 --> 01:02:00,640
Well, yes. Well, in terms of my modesty's.

515
01:02:00,640 --> 01:02:05,380
I think I misspoke. My apologies for my mon's.

516
01:02:05,380 --> 01:02:18,220
His idea of overcoming of differences would, of course, be much more with Islam and Judaism in mind than Christianity and Judaism.

517
01:02:18,220 --> 01:02:23,080
That was God. That's the world in which he operated in. And that was his. That was his.

518
01:02:23,080 --> 01:02:28,630
That was his perspective. And I I guess I mean,

519
01:02:28,630 --> 01:02:41,620
I misspoke because the general framing of my book that largely is restricted to Europe and respect to to what is mostly a Christian Jewish dialogue.

520
01:02:41,620 --> 01:02:53,830
But absolutely. I mean, Halevy as well. Otherness is either Tangela Jewish, Christian and Muslim or Jewish and Muslim.

521
01:02:53,830 --> 01:03:05,160
But neither of those mediaeval thinkers go into much detail about other faiths or about.

522
01:03:05,160 --> 01:03:11,280
Quite what sort of transformation they envisage in the messianic age.

523
01:03:11,280 --> 01:03:15,600
These are brief and elliptic comments on on from from both of them.

524
01:03:15,600 --> 01:03:21,540
From which one can draw out some sort of a distinction between more of a line, a sort of Jewish client.

525
01:03:21,540 --> 01:03:38,090
I think in Halevy, which is certainly clearer in the past, Ashkenaz writers in the early mediaeval France, very much in a Christian sphere, are.

526
01:03:38,090 --> 01:03:44,880
So once we get to the 19th century.

527
01:03:44,880 --> 01:03:53,040
Zionism is a European project. European Jews uncritically, by and large,

528
01:03:53,040 --> 01:04:07,290
accept the dismissive attitude towards Islam and are of Christian or Europeans or Europeans of Christian heritage.

529
01:04:07,290 --> 01:04:12,870
And that's what feeds into the Zionist tradition.

530
01:04:12,870 --> 01:04:19,020
So, yes, Adam, I must note that this was also my my strong impression,

531
01:04:19,020 --> 01:04:24,270
reading your fascinating book, that the focus on Europe leaves this big question, I guess,

532
01:04:24,270 --> 01:04:32,800
for the sequel of how is this how are these issues viewed from the non, non Christian and European context,

533
01:04:32,800 --> 01:04:40,020
where Jews obviously resided for generations and have develop their own views on these issues?

534
01:04:40,020 --> 01:04:45,300
But that's really outside of the framework. Daniela Roby's.

535
01:04:45,300 --> 01:04:47,520
Thank you for an intriguing talking asking.

536
01:04:47,520 --> 01:04:54,570
You mentioned the Schaller's rejection of design, a slogan like all other nations and nations, like all other nations.

537
01:04:54,570 --> 01:04:59,490
Did other Jewish thinkers who identified with one version or another of Zionism embraced

538
01:04:59,490 --> 01:05:06,660
this slogan while also thinking of Jews as chosen or task with unique ethical mission?

539
01:05:06,660 --> 01:05:16,460
If yes, how did such thinkers reconcile, chose ness and desire to be like some other nations?

540
01:05:16,460 --> 01:05:26,190
Well, that's a very good question and one of the implied questions in the paper that I was glossing over, perhaps of necessity rather superficially,

541
01:05:26,190 --> 01:05:31,350
and maybe in these rooms where the thoughtful scholars design is at the time, not to go into that more fully.

542
01:05:31,350 --> 01:05:48,600
But I would say that the the normalising aspect of the Zionist project was also very strong from from the beginning, really.

543
01:05:48,600 --> 01:05:58,810
And many Zionist thinkers. Toggle between a normalising vision of a Zionist project.

544
01:05:58,810 --> 01:06:11,430
Well, the Jewish state and an exceptional vision and and I have great difficulty reconciling the two because they're not really compensable.

545
01:06:11,430 --> 01:06:17,370
They're there. They are in profound tension to the.

546
01:06:17,370 --> 01:06:19,630
And it's for that reason that in my book,

547
01:06:19,630 --> 01:06:27,100
this is the fourth chapter on Zionism and nationalism is the fourth of the five chapters and it's the first of two that covered the 20th century.

548
01:06:27,100 --> 01:06:33,850
And I follow it with another chapter on normalisation and the idea of normalisation.

549
01:06:33,850 --> 01:06:41,860
And the many, many ways in which Jewish thinkers outside Zionism predominately have tried to sort of.

550
01:06:41,860 --> 01:06:48,280
Square, impossible, on the one hand, yearnings took towards yearning for some kind of mobilisation.

551
01:06:48,280 --> 01:06:55,720
This is based on American Judaism and yet holding on to an idea of chosen this and exceptionality

552
01:06:55,720 --> 01:07:01,790
without which it's very hard to have any real argument for Jewish continuity of any form.

553
01:07:01,790 --> 01:07:05,170
You wouldn't want to be normal as a Jew not being Jewish.

554
01:07:05,170 --> 01:07:07,120
It's very, very simple. You can computer.

555
01:07:07,120 --> 01:07:21,190
You cannot assimilate into mainstream host cultures, as it were, which, of course, many important Jews have done so.

556
01:07:21,190 --> 01:07:35,790
Sholom in. Other of his writings, I think, does come very close to endorsing the idea of.

557
01:07:35,790 --> 01:07:42,330
Monism such Israel as a state like any other nation.

558
01:07:42,330 --> 01:07:48,060
We would need a proper. Maybe there's a shot, an expert who can answer this question in more detail.

559
01:07:48,060 --> 01:07:57,910
But I include as an epigram to this chapter in the book, a statement by by Shulem in which he.

560
01:07:57,910 --> 01:08:04,390
Rejects the idea of Jewish purpose in saying that, you know, why should Jews be accept the expected to have a purpose in the world?

561
01:08:04,390 --> 01:08:08,500
No one would ask a French person or an American or a Scot.

562
01:08:08,500 --> 01:08:15,070
You know what? What is their purpose in the world? They simply Scottish, the French, the Polish state, they are what they are.

563
01:08:15,070 --> 01:08:25,080
And why shouldn't the same apply to Jews? So in that sense, I think he did seek could even demand a sort of.

564
01:08:25,080 --> 01:08:31,030
Normality. Status. But in a different register.

565
01:08:31,030 --> 01:08:36,500
Thinking more. At a more lofty and.

566
01:08:36,500 --> 01:08:41,330
Philosophical, indeed, messianic level. He most certainly did not.

567
01:08:41,330 --> 01:08:46,700
I don't think he was consistent in the interview that I quoted.

568
01:08:46,700 --> 01:08:56,480
But the core I think it was that I quoted from. In which he in 1974, when he argues that he had never accepted.

569
01:08:56,480 --> 01:09:03,640
The idea of Israel as a state like any other. That's said a very.

570
01:09:03,640 --> 01:09:08,260
Tense moment in the history of Israel's.

571
01:09:08,260 --> 01:09:15,670
After the 1973 war, at a time at a time when no debates about settlement,

572
01:09:15,670 --> 01:09:32,230
etc. is still very life and and and he's arguing for a one could say in shorthand, a a morally lofty position for the Israeli state that refuses to.

573
01:09:32,230 --> 01:09:34,420
Please correct me if I'm getting this slightly wrong, but I'm not an expert,

574
01:09:34,420 --> 01:09:43,030
but essentially I think his view and in the early 70s off of 67 is the occupied territories should not be become occupied territories,

575
01:09:43,030 --> 01:09:51,610
that this is a moment when Israel must act in an ethically lofty way and not in a straightforwardly self-interested way,

576
01:09:51,610 --> 01:09:55,210
which would be the logic of Israel being a state like any others.

577
01:09:55,210 --> 01:10:08,630
So I think after 67 and 73, this becomes really a political question in which normality becomes very much the argument of those who say.

578
01:10:08,630 --> 01:10:17,690
Israel just needs to act tough because that's what any other state would do in a, quote, bad neighbourhood, et cetera, et cetera.

579
01:10:17,690 --> 01:10:26,330
Critics of that position. Even if they were in the Zionist tradition not and in previous decades,

580
01:10:26,330 --> 01:10:34,160
not so much emphasising exceptionality, they they try to pull up to the fore again.

581
01:10:34,160 --> 01:10:39,800
But I would say pretty soon after the war, even in the course of the 70s, quite quickly.

582
01:10:39,800 --> 01:10:59,330
My sense is that within Zionism, this morally lofty tradition gets pushed to the edge and a a claims of normality move to the fore again.

583
01:10:59,330 --> 01:11:10,510
Adam, if I may follow up on this on this before moving on to, well, to the guy's reappearance.

584
01:11:10,510 --> 01:11:19,390
This is a very interesting tension. I mean, if we look back to the to the Bible as a model, to the Hebrew Bible as a model,

585
01:11:19,390 --> 01:11:29,450
did the Israelites to be light onto the nation because the nations because they will embody they will leave the law.

586
01:11:29,450 --> 01:11:34,770
So a lot of this given is what would make them the example that all other nations would look at.

587
01:11:34,770 --> 01:11:46,700
So they did the ethical calling and the light on the nation are to saw it as two sides of the same coin.

588
01:11:46,700 --> 01:11:52,940
And it's interesting to to ask to what degree are those writers and specifically in the 19th century

589
01:11:52,940 --> 01:12:02,080
that suggest that the return of Israel to political independence would necessarily amount to,

590
01:12:02,080 --> 01:12:07,310
you know, shining light on the nation? To what degree do they consider?

591
01:12:07,310 --> 01:12:12,830
How is that the nuts and bolts of an ethical life within that political entity to be?

592
01:12:12,830 --> 01:12:22,900
I don't know. I mean, when Greene didn't think much about it. Right. It's very hard to find in what he did and attempt to strive into a specific,

593
01:12:22,900 --> 01:12:34,050
higher moral standard or to make Israeli politics or Jewish politics a manifestation of some ethics.

594
01:12:34,050 --> 01:12:38,160
This isn't this is not have been part of the project of political Zionism.

595
01:12:38,160 --> 01:12:42,250
But when it comes to those of other medical prophets,

596
01:12:42,250 --> 01:12:52,800
did they think that necessarily something within this Israel is polity would have to be also unique?

597
01:12:52,800 --> 01:12:56,490
In terms of the life of the nation, again,

598
01:12:56,490 --> 01:13:04,500
I didn't I'm qualified to answer that in with the richness that it deserves because I'm not an expert on the history movement or Israel.

599
01:13:04,500 --> 01:13:19,830
But I think it is interesting thinking about Ben-Gurion, for example, that the rhetoric of of purpose is mostly at a diplomatic level.

600
01:13:19,830 --> 01:13:23,310
And Israel will be a bridge to the east.

601
01:13:23,310 --> 01:13:35,070
And this could be made concrete, for example, in temblors development of nomics in Israel and your policies to not just make the Israeli desert bloom,

602
01:13:35,070 --> 01:13:42,420
but to export tech agricultural technologies to the non west.

603
01:13:42,420 --> 01:13:49,440
And then I think Ben Green presented that and not just him very much as part of this bridging

604
01:13:49,440 --> 01:14:02,520
role that this dissemination of Know-How and intelligence and skills to the non Western world.

605
01:14:02,520 --> 01:14:07,950
Ben was also interested in terms of a scholarship in the chapter.

606
01:14:07,950 --> 01:14:12,810
I quote him addressing a Congress of Scholars of Jewish Studies in the 1960s,

607
01:14:12,810 --> 01:14:16,970
and she says, Great, you're all here to study Jewish history and Jewish text.

608
01:14:16,970 --> 01:14:26,010
What I really want you to focus on is the messianic idea of Israel, the Jewish people, as having a world historical purpose for everybody.

609
01:14:26,010 --> 01:14:32,170
So he's been studying intellectuals, having that role in terms of.

610
01:14:32,170 --> 01:14:35,760
The ethics of Israeli society. I think too much.

611
01:14:35,760 --> 01:14:39,500
I wanted to be very, very strong current. After extension to the state.

612
01:14:39,500 --> 01:14:44,300
If you go back a bit earlier today, you showed me one example that comes to mind is, um.

613
01:14:44,300 --> 01:14:48,510
I think if I had to, um. Who.

614
01:14:48,510 --> 01:14:58,810
I didn't say much about. But essentially, he his rhetoric was more emphasising Jewish normalisation.

615
01:14:58,810 --> 01:15:05,800
Opposition to the idea of Jewish mission and Jews somehow wanting to present themselves as useful for the world as a whole.

616
01:15:05,800 --> 01:15:11,080
But there's a moment when he writes a piece in Haaretz in response.

617
01:15:11,080 --> 01:15:21,790
In the early 1920s, I think it's in response to a revenge killing by Jews of a young Palestinian.

618
01:15:21,790 --> 01:15:25,970
And this is sort of rather being gleeful. Gotcha.

619
01:15:25,970 --> 01:15:40,900
Tone to the coverage of this killing and how Tom is horrified and says, in essence, this might be okay for, as it were, British or Polish or American.

620
01:15:40,900 --> 01:15:44,830
Seventy two minds about killing one of our enemies.

621
01:15:44,830 --> 01:15:51,310
But we are Jews. We are moral. We have a responsibility to maintain Hotta moral standards.

622
01:15:51,310 --> 01:15:54,640
And that sort of discourse is not okay.

623
01:15:54,640 --> 01:16:05,020
So definitely he did seek to be to protect that sort of voice of moral loftiness in terms of concrete behaviour in the issue,

624
01:16:05,020 --> 01:16:08,980
even though I think, again, its intention, if maybe say it's in contradiction, is overstating it.

625
01:16:08,980 --> 01:16:19,390
But this is definitely a tension between that aspect of his arguments and the sort of we should just be who we are just like anybody else can be.

626
01:16:19,390 --> 01:16:24,940
The down side is. Well, the run is.

627
01:16:24,940 --> 01:16:31,600
He says in a haddam says, in response to this revenge killing of young Palestinian.

628
01:16:31,600 --> 01:16:35,570
If this is the Messiah, then I is quoting sources.

629
01:16:35,570 --> 01:16:43,780
If this is the Messiah, I don't want to see it. Then I must mention that the cold sweat has a very strong critique of a hard I'm not seeing it

630
01:16:43,780 --> 01:16:50,650
on back in promulgating these by his secularising the very notion of Jewish mission innocence.

631
01:16:50,650 --> 01:16:58,060
But this is so I every guy has reappeared a few minutes ago.

632
01:16:58,060 --> 01:17:01,360
He writes, I just appeared briefly before taking my son out.

633
01:17:01,360 --> 01:17:03,960
We are all in. Yeah. Home schooling situation.

634
01:17:03,960 --> 01:17:13,840
That's I missed their response to my original question, but I'm wondering if there is a Western versus Eastern European Jewish context here.

635
01:17:13,840 --> 01:17:18,790
The history of Zionism tends to privilege Russian or East European contexts,

636
01:17:18,790 --> 01:17:27,160
where perhaps Jewish Christian dialogue was very different because the nature of Jewish society itself was rather different.

637
01:17:27,160 --> 01:17:32,290
If you think that Zionism is connected to a more authentic East European context,

638
01:17:32,290 --> 01:17:40,420
then obviously you might ignore West European and notably in Britain, though actually,

639
01:17:40,420 --> 01:17:50,020
for example, Haim Gardella had had the chapter of Dannion Derinda translated for the East European

640
01:17:50,020 --> 01:17:55,780
press must now we do it again and apologise for dipping in and out like this.

641
01:17:55,780 --> 01:18:04,160
Thank you, Abigail. Thank you. I can't see that the questions, but I'm not going to sit around and try to get upset.

642
01:18:04,160 --> 01:18:08,620
Thank you. Well, I'm sorry. The answer to my I think I gave a very good answer to your earlier question.

643
01:18:08,620 --> 01:18:13,510
I needed you to shut on on that question. I think absolutely I do agree.

644
01:18:13,510 --> 01:18:17,530
And to connect to I think it was your follow up question to my answer.

645
01:18:17,530 --> 01:18:27,910
Abigail's first question, Ya'acov on traditions, intellectual traditions in writing about the Zionist idea.

646
01:18:27,910 --> 01:18:38,530
There's very much that tendency to emphasise not just Jewish autonomy, but also the Eastern European Jewish roots of the Zionist idea,

647
01:18:38,530 --> 01:18:48,820
because this is mostly written in Israel or America by this tendency of such Jews who have greater comfort in rooting Zionism

648
01:18:48,820 --> 01:19:06,030
as a sort of Eastern European Jewish mass reaction against the assimilationist priorities of Western European Jewry.

649
01:19:06,030 --> 01:19:11,450
But some some I think, again, attention is there.

650
01:19:11,450 --> 01:19:13,790
And again, I have to mention,

651
01:19:13,790 --> 01:19:26,930
certainly is for the idea of Jewish mission is very much really a disdain for Western European Jews as Western European Jewish intellectuals.

652
01:19:26,930 --> 01:19:31,940
He feels that some like a cold, much fury in England.

653
01:19:31,940 --> 01:19:37,630
Who is the person he he most really reviled when he writes about this in the early 20th century?

654
01:19:37,630 --> 01:19:48,140
He sees cold, much authority and his sort of liberal Judaism in England and young Jews of Englishmen of a Jewish persuasion,

655
01:19:48,140 --> 01:19:55,730
as it's often caricatured as as being most odiously craven, assimilationist, inauthentic form of Judaism.

656
01:19:55,730 --> 01:20:04,800
You can imagine, and also deeply patronising towards the sort of Jewish authenticity that he and ADESA feels he represents.

657
01:20:04,800 --> 01:20:10,080
So the tension is absolutely there.

658
01:20:10,080 --> 01:20:15,750
But. If you think about Israel, about Zionism as a.

659
01:20:15,750 --> 01:20:24,480
As a movement that the power of which was very much based on its support by Western European powers and by.

660
01:20:24,480 --> 01:20:28,940
Like Jews who knew how to talk those imperial powers because they lived in them.

661
01:20:28,940 --> 01:20:34,700
Then I think England and France and a different way, the sort of German Jewish environmental.

662
01:20:34,700 --> 01:20:44,640
Absolutely crucial. And that's why I think they're worthy of the sort of emphasis that I gave them in the way I told this story.

663
01:20:44,640 --> 01:20:51,380
And again, they're sort of ideological reasons why that sort of.

664
01:20:51,380 --> 01:21:04,640
Dependence on Western European, non Jewish thinking, and indeed also power has not been part of the preferred internal Zionist story.

665
01:21:04,640 --> 01:21:09,680
Thank you, Adam. I think it's a it's a great point to conclude this fascinating seminar.

666
01:21:09,680 --> 01:21:18,140
I really appreciate your spending the time and presented your work with us to remind.

667
01:21:18,140 --> 01:21:28,250
The book is called What Are Jews For? It came out with Princeton University Press in 2020 and I highly recommend everybody reads it.

668
01:21:28,250 --> 01:21:35,560
Also, just a short reminder that next week's Israel Studies seminar will feature unappreciated

669
01:21:35,560 --> 01:21:42,230
guest talk about Russian Mizrahi Mediterranean pop culture in the Israeli periphery.

670
01:21:42,230 --> 01:21:53,136
Thank you so much and hope this Dewson.