Zionism and Jewish Nationalism: An Inquiry into an Ideological Relationship

The axiomatic link in modern Jewish thought between Zionism and Jewish nationalism is questioned in this essay. It will be suggested that the connection between both embodied an ideological “marriage of convenience” blessed by both Jews and non-Jews, but not a deep-rooted bond, and that the idea of a “Jewish nationalism” deserves critical reconsideration. Three complementary hypotheses are proposed and analyzed: that Zionism and nationalism were basically unconnected; that Zion-related concepts, rooted in Jewish historical awareness, were a constant ideological factor among broad sectors of modernizing Jewry; and that Zionism was a modern concoction rooted in Zion-related concepts which also absorbed ideological elements from the general European milieu, among them national notions—national, in this context meaning “national in general,” and not “Jewish-national.”     

法国宗教战争与欧洲近代政治思想的产生

在欧洲宗教改革的研究中,有一种矛盾的现象：一方面大力肯定宗教改革运动,称之为第一次资产阶级革命,特别推崇加尔主义的资本主义性质;另一方面,忽视或贬低法国宗教改革和法国宗教战争(胡格诺战争),还往往强调其贵族性或反动性。加尔是法国人,他一生中最关心的是法国的宗教改革,他的学说也产自法国的特定环境,这些明显的事实被惊人地忽视     

Indifferent but Mobilized: Rural Politics during the Interwar Period in Eastern and Western Europe

What did peasants discuss at party meetings? Were they mobilized by ethnic politics or indifferent to them altogether? The end of the First World War brought about universal male suffrage in much of Europe, and with it the process of mass politics began. The concept of national indifference is important in understanding interwar politics, because this period is often studied teleologically with attention focused on extremism and nationalism as the primary mobilizing issue

Agrarian movements have been under-researched, and when Agrarians have been studied, it has been through the prism of elite politics. This comparative paper seeks to redress this omission by looking at grassroots rural politics. The interwar countryside was marked by profound political, economic and social transformation but also in terms of what Robert Paxton has described as the ‘triple crisis of the countryside’ – worsening economic conditions, the declining status of the countryside and inadequate political representation. The paper will explore how reform and crisis impacted how agrarian politics functioned at a local level by asymmetrically comparing cases from Romania, Poland and Ireland, with the final case helping to contextualize Eastern Europe within the wider European experience This paper argues that the rural population was mobilized, but primarily in the context of local issues rather than national ethno-political questions. Local party organization was, to paraphrase James C Scott, the site ‘of an exchange of small arms fire’ in rural class conflict, as questions regarding the control of public space, generational conflict and power within the village mobilized peasants. Thus, I argue that it was the underlying socio-economic issues that mobilized the rural population, not nationalism. The dynamics of these conflicts were shaped by local economic, political and social power dynamics, and by using indifference as a concept, we can look more deeply at interwar politics from a grassroots perspective and develop a more nuanced understanding of local, national and European politics.     

Sensitive travelers: Jewish and non-Jewish visitors from Eastern Europe to Palestine between the two World Wars

Beginning with a reference to early modern, religiously motivated pilgrimages to Erets-Yisroel, this article explores the quest of four travelers of the interwar period for clues of personal, cultural, and political belonging by visiting Mandatory Palestine. It reveals to what significant degree the perceptions of the travelers – two East European Jews, a Polish-Catholic journalist, and one Central European Jewish author – were shaped by preexisting attitudes towards Jewish history, culture, and identity, and how the narrative of the journey itself serves as an instrument to confirm these attitudes. It shows that travelogues offer fascinating insights into the complex relationship of subjectivity, identity, cultural memory, and history.     

Zionism and Irish Nationalism: Ideology and Identity on the Borders of Europe

This paper is a comparative cultural history of Zionism and Irish nationalism, focusing on themes of race, gender and identity. It seeks to highlight the strong similarities of both nationalist projects: to show how Zionists and Irish nationalists were both heavily invested in state-building projects that would disprove European racist stereotypes about their respective nations and yet, paradoxically, were also part of the general history of European nationalism. Both Zionism and Irish nationalism sought to create idealised images of the past and claimed to be rebuilding a glorious ancient society in the future as a means of escaping a degraded present. Both movements saw language revival as a key means of carrying out this ‘return to history’. And both emphasised martyrdom as a way to build up prideful ideals of devotion to the nation and used sport, militaries and agriculture as forms of nationalist social engineering. Despite their claims to the contrary, neither national movement was truly unique.     

The Roma of Central and Eastern Europe

Sherzer, Joel. Verbal Art in San Blas: Kuna Culture through Its Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. x + 281 pp. including references and index. $39.50 cloth.

Heider, Karl G. Indonesian Cinema: National Culture on Screen. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991. x + 154 pp. including bibliography and index. $28.00 cloth, $9.95 paper.     

埃及学:一门近代新兴学科的诞生

埃及学是近代诞生的一门新兴学科,是研究古代埃及的语言、文字、历史、文学、艺术、宗教、建筑和科学技术的一门综合性学科。埃及学的诞生。带来了持续百年之久的考古发掘热潮;埃及象形文字的成功释读。极大地丰富了人们对古代埃及这一人类文明宝库的认识。     

行走在东欧——访国际旅游摄影俱乐部成员

关于欧洲,国人总会有太多向往,尤其是西欧的那些国家,英国、法国等等,都是很多游人去欧洲旅行的首选目的地。但是国际摄影俱乐部的几个会员却另辟蹊径,在不久前去了东欧的几个国家,带给我们很多不一样的感觉……下面是本刊与这几位会员的对话。