A Concise History of a Nation Reborn by Daniel Gordis

Passages NOW Book Club Reading and Discussion Guide Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn By Daniel Gordis Spring Semester 2017 Reading guide developed by The Philos Project A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some spot of a native land, where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge… a spot where the definiteness of early memories may be inwrought with affection. -- George Eliot, Daniel Deronda Introduction The year 2017 is one of momentous anniversaries for the Jewish State of Israel. In 1917, British Lord Arthur Balfour penned a letter declaring his support for the creation of a Jewish state in the British Mandate territory of Palestine, laying the political foundation for the establishment of the modern state of Israel. In 1967, Israel defended its existence from the amassed armies of its neighbors in the Six Day War. This year marks the centennial of the Balfour Declaration, and the half centennial of that war. As such, this spring semester is an excellent time to reacquaint ourselves with the providential history of Israel’s founding and preservation. To this end, Passages and The Philos Project thought it appropriate to read and study the first eight chapters of Daniel Gordis’ book Israel: A Concise History of A Nation Reborn. The following guide will assist in this endeavor. About the book’s author Mr. Gordis is a longtime resident of Israel. He is Senior Vice President of Shalem College in Jerusalem, Israel’s first liberal arts college. He writes as a columnist for the Jerusalem Post and Bloomberg View, and is a winner of the National Jewish Book Award. 1 Week I: Introduction & Chapter 1 Introduction “Israel is a complex and dynamic place. It is a country filled with sacred places but also a secular (some would say profane) thriving bar and music scene. It is a deeply traditional society in some ways, and hypermodern in others. It is home to ultra-Orthodox Jews who shun much of modernity and one of the world’s high-tech capitals. It is home to Jews of different colors, Jews of different ethnic backgrounds, Jews who speak different languages, Jews both secular and religious--and many non-Jews, as well.” Discussion Questions: --What is Zionism? Where did it originate? What is the Zionist vision? --What happened to Jews in other Middle Eastern countries when Israel was established? --How did Zionism change the Jewish identity? --What makes Israel unique? 2 Chapter 1 — Poetry and Politics: The Jewish Nation Seeks a Home “In 1892, Jewish life in Eastern Europe was miserable in many ways. Russia’s Jews were largely allowed to live only in a specific region called the Pale of Settlement. Violence against Jews was rampant, either encouraged or ignored by the government and local authorities. Pogroms, as these attacks on Jews were called, had happened before, but toward the close of the nineteenth century, they took on a new intensity over a wider area.” Discussion Questions: --Where did the roots of European Anti-Semitism originate? What fed the fervor? --What is the haskalah? --How were Jews portrayed European media and public discourse in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? Where did the images and concepts that defined Jews at that time originate? --If you had lived in Europe at that time, what would you have thought of the Jews? What would inform your view? --Where was the alternative location for the Jewish State? --What happened at the Basel Congress? 3 Week II: Chapters 2-3 Chapter 2—Some Spot of a Native Land “For Jews, memories of Zion were ‘inwrought with affection’ because of the Bible, the book they had seen as a kind of ‘national diary.’ To be sure, for religious Jews, the Bible was God’s revealed word, filled with commandments about how they were to live their lives. For secular Jews, the Bible was one of the greatest works of literature of all time. For all, though, the Bible was the book that told the story of their people: what they had loved, where they had lived, how they had succeeded, and when they had failed. It was the story of their family.” Discussion Questions: —Why is the notion of land so important? —What were the four powerful adversaries which surrounded ancient Israel? —Prior to the Basel congress, how many times had the Jewish people had autonomy in their ancestral lands? —What is the difference between political Zionism and theological Zionism? 4 Chapter 3—A Conversation, Not an Ideology “The exile of the Jew from his own land, Bialik claims, has more than robbed the Jew of his strength and his courage. It has eroded his capacity to feel. Exile has destroyed him. And the legal system of the Jewish tradition, which might once have created moments and spaces of purity and holiness in a spoiled world, now rots the Jew’s soul by turning his attention away from what really matters.” Discussion Questions: —How did centuries of exile impact the Jewish identity? —What was the Brit Shalom plan? —What was the aim of the Betar movement? —According to the early Zionists, what does it mean to be a Jew? —Does Zionism require statehood? , 5 Week III: Chapters 4-5 Chapter 4—From a Dream to Glimmers of Reality “‘I have decided...that in order to have our own land and political life it is also necessary that we have a language to hold us together. That language is Hebrew, but not the Hebrew of rabbis and scholars. We must have a Hebrew language in which we can conduct the business of life.’” —Eliezer Ben-Yehuda “For religious Jews, the revival of Hebrew was no less problematic than Zionism itself. Hebrew was the sacred language of the Bible, the Mishna (the first major work of rabbinic literature), and the liturgy, and they insisted that Jews must not sully it by using it for purely ordinary matters.” Discussion Questions: —Who lived in Palestine when the Jews first began arriving in the early 20th Century? —Who was Eliezer Ben-Yehuda? —What significance does a common language play in a culture? Can a nation exist where a common language is not spoken? How did this affect the return of Jews from the diaspora? —Who was Baron Edmond de Rothschild and what did he do? What was the reaction of the Ottomans and local Arabs? —What are the elements of cultural renewal? 6 Chapter 5—The Balfour Declaration: The Empire Endorses the State “Considering its historic importance, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 is astonishingly ambiguous document. While it speaks of a ‘national home for the Jewish people,’ there is no mention of a Jewish state. There was no timetable as to when (or how) this ‘national home’ would be created. There was no indication of how a ‘national home’ for Jews could be created in Palestine without somehow impinging on ‘the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine. Nor was there any indication of what the declaration meant by ‘Palestine,’ for it provided no maps or definitions of the territory.” Discussion Questions: —What discrimination did Jews in Europe face in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries--before the rise of the Nazi Reich? —What did the Ottomans do in 1915? —What is the Balfour Declaration? What is its significance? —Is the Jewish State of Israel an effect of colonialism? —What is the significance of the Kibbutzim? —What was the reaction of local and surrounding Arabs to the division of the British Mandate? —Did Arabs and Jews in the Palestine region get along before the State of Israel was established? 7 Week IV: Chapters 6-8 Chapter 6—Nowhere to Go, Even If They Could Leave “The St. Louis, the Patria, and the Struma brought home a single point with terrible clarity. For Jews who had no place to go, a Jewish state—Herzl’s dream and Balfour’s promise—was more critically necessary than it had ever been before. The creation of a Jewish state was now literally a matter of life and death.” Discussion Questions: —What cultural elements contributed to the Jewish culture in what would later become Israel? —Why did the Arab revolt occur? —What was the British plan for Jewish immigration and state formation in the Palestine region proposed in 1939? Did the Arabs like it? —Was the United States welcoming to Jewish refugees such as those on the St. Louis? Why not? —What happened at the Wannsee conference? 8 Chapter 7—The Yishuv Resists the British, the Arabs Battle Partition “In a devastating twist of fate, survivors of the Holocaust who had finally made their way to Palestine often found themselves imprisoned once again, this time by the British. To delouse them, the British told them to undress and take a shower; revisiting that image was almost too much for many of them to bear.” Discussion Questions: —What did the British do in the Palestine region after the Second World War? Why did they not take steps to fulfill the promise of the Balfour Declaration? What was their reasoning? —What happened on the ‘Black Sabbath’? —What is UNSCOP? —What is the Zionist concept of the “new Judaism”? 9 Chapter 8—Independence: The State Is Born “The war over history, then, is a war over Israel’s legitimacy, and therefore, over its future.” “That so many Palestinian Arabs had to leave their homes was undeniably heartbreaking.

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