Zionism and the Fin de Siecle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky

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University of California Press, 15.11.2023 - 303 Seiten
Michael Stanislawski's provocative study of Max Nordau, Ephraim Moses Lilien, and Vladimir Jabotinsky reconceives the intersection of the European fin de siècle and early Zionism. Stanislawski takes up the tantalizing question of why Zionism, at a particular stage in its development, became so attractive to certain cosmopolitan intellectuals and artists. With the help of hundreds of previously unavailable documents, published and unpublished, he reconstructs the ideological journeys of writer and critic Nordau, artist Lilien, and political icon Jabotinsky. He argues against the common conception of Nordau and Jabotinsky as nineteenth-century liberals, insisting that they must be understood against the backdrop of Social Darwinism in the West and the Positivism of Russian radicalism in the fin de siècle, as well as Symbolism, Decadence, and Art Nouveau.

When these men turned to Zionism, Stanislawski says, far from abandoning their aesthetic and intellectual preconceptions, they molded Zionism according to their fin de siècle cosmopolitanism. Showing how cosmopolitanism turned to nationalism in the lives and work of these crucial early Zionists, this story is a fascinating chapter in European and Russian, as well as Jewish, cultural and political history.

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Ausgewählte Seiten

Inhalt

Cosmopolitanism Zionism and Assimilation The Case of Theodor Herzl
5
Max Nordau the Improbable Bourgeois
23
Nordau and Novikova Romance with an Antisemite and the Road to Zionism
40
Nordaus Zionism From Heine to Bar Kochba
78
From Jugendstil to Judenstil Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism in the Work of Ephraim Moses Lilien
100
Vladimir Jabotinsky from Odessa to Rome and Back Dichtung und Wahrheit
118
Jabotinskys Road to Zionism
152
Jabotinskys Early Zionism From In the City of Slaughter to Alien Land
180
Vladimir Jabotinsky Cosmopolitan UltraNationalist
205
Conclusion
241
Notes
251
Bibliography
269
Index
279
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Beliebte Passagen

Seite 147 - My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and the most absolute freedom — freedom from violence and lying, whatever forms they may take. This is the program I would follow if I were a great artist.
Seite 100 - For which cause reprove them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, not giving heed to Jewish fables, and commandments of men who turn away from the truth. To the pure all things are pure : but to them that are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure ; but both their mind and their conscience are defiled.
Seite 53 - And thine eye shall not pity; but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.
Seite 96 - Woe to the idol shepherd that leaveth the flock ! The sword shall be upon his arm, and upon his right eye: His arm shall be clean dried up, And his right eye shall be utterly darkened.
Seite 14 - I believe that I understand Anti-Semitism, which is really a highly complex movement. I consider it from a Jewish standpoint, yet without fear or hatred. I believe that I can see what elements there are in it of vulgar sport, of common trade jealousy, of inherited prejudice, of religious intolerance, and also of pretended self-defence.
Seite 147 - I'm not afraid of you and Anna Mikhailovna.3 The people I am afraid of are the ones who look for tendentiousness between the lines and are determined to see me as either liberal or conservative. I am neither liberal, nor conservative, nor gradualist, nor monk, nor indifferentist. I would like to be a free artist and nothing else, and I regret God has not given me the strength to be one. I hate lies and violence in all of their forms, and consistory secretaries are just as odious to me as Notovich...
Seite 53 - And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
Seite 7 - West in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth...
Seite 20 - ... is of much later origin than the Vedas; as a work of literary value it is surpassed by everything written in the last two thousand years by authors even of the second rank, and to compare it seriously with the productions of Homer, Sophocles, Dante, Shakespeare or Goethe, would require a fanaticized mind that had entirely lost its power of judgment; its conception of the universe is childish, and its morality revolting, as revealed in the malicious vengeance attributed to God in the Old Testament...

Autoren-Profil (2023)

Michael Stanislawski is Nathan J. Miller Professor of Jewish History at Columbia University. His previous books include Psalms for the Tsar (1988) and For Whom Do I Toil? (1988).

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